“Okej, I guess it’s time to do something about Jahelia Sord,” I said as I took my seat in the big chair. “I can’t in good conscience leave her stranded here once we leave the system, because we might not be coming back this way. Suggestions?”
“Her ship is small. It would actually fit right inside one of the cargo pods,” Viss said. “But I don’t like the idea of trying to latch on and bring it inside the Tane Ikai without knowing more about that field.”
“No,” I agreed, “I’m not willing to risk that. We still have passenger quarters two and four empty, so I guess we need to convert one of them into a brig.”
Hirin stood up. “Viss and I can do that. We’ll take the room computer off the ship’s network, and rig a plasma bar for the door. We’re sure she’s alone on that ship?”
Yuskeya nodded. “I’ve done a number of random scans. I’ve only ever read one person in there.”
“Then we’ll pick her up as soon as the quarters are ready. Rei, head over to her ship.”
Nothing apparent had changed about the Hunter’s Hope in the three days since the attack. The field still held, and I wondered if such a thing were there indefinitely, or if it would blink out when a certain amount of time had passed. What would the answer mean for the crew of the Stillwell?
“Ahoy, Jahelia Sord,” I sent over the comm. “We’re leaving this system, so I’m offering you a choice. You can stay with your ship and hope the field wears off or someone else comes along to rescue you. Or you can come aboard as my prisoner until we reach Nearspace and I can hand you over to the Protectorate.”
“Not much of a choice,” she said.
“I agree, but it’s the best I can offer. I will say I don’t foresee anything else coming along in the immediate future.”
“Very well. What can I bring with me? Not that I can get into my personal quarters anyway.”
“Anything personal is fine, but we’ll scan and search you and your possessions before you come aboard. No weapons or anything else we’d disapprove of. My engineer and my navigator, who is also a Protectorate officer, will meet you at the airlock. Trust me, you do not want to try any tricks with them.”
Whether it was my warning, her good sense, or Yuskeya’s uniform, Jahelia Sord was on her best behavior when we extended a transport tube and linked the two ships via airlocks. She brought a small bag with a standard datapad and a few personal items, and came aboard quiet and subdued. Maybe that was understandable after being trapped and alone on her ship for several days, not knowing from one moment to the next if the strange alien field would suddenly endanger her. I suppose I was cruel in choosing to leave her there during that time. But I can’t say I’ve ever lost any sleep over it.
Viss and Yuskeya brought her up from the cargo deck, and I met them at the hatchway. I was startled to see that Jahelia Sord now wore the Erian pridattii face tattoos, like Rei. In the picture I’d seen of her, in Yuskeya’s report, her face had been unmarked. Her hair was a shock of unruly, pale-tipped black curls, eerily echoing the jet-black rings and whorls on her face. She was my height, but much thinner—almost fragile in appearance. Her eyes were dark, too, hard little stones of mistrust and dislike, and she smiled without warmth.
“I won’t say welcome aboard,” I said, “but as long as you behave yourself, you’ll be well-treated on this ship.”
“I’ll try to be a good girl.” Her tone held a mocking edge, which I chose to ignore. She carried her bag slung casually over one shoulder, and was dressed informally in black military-style pants and a high-necked grey t-shirt. A black jacket hung from her other hand.
“Sord is an unusual last name for an Erian.” Erian women’s surnames usually incorporated the name of their mother, as Rei’s did in “dam-Rowan.”
“Yes, I suppose it is,” she drawled.
“We don’t have a proper brig, so you’ll be staying in one of the guest rooms, but you won’t have free access to the rest of the ship or the network. We’ll bring you meals. And, in light of the circumstances, we’ll keep you informed on what’s happening.”
“Thank you.” She studied me gravely. “Will I meet the rest of your crew?”
“I expect we’ll take turns bringing your meals and checking in with you. Why?”
She flashed a smile I could only describe as predatory. “I believe I may know your communications officer. Baden Methyr, isn’t it? I thought I recognized his voice.”
If Baden hadn’t already made that offhand remark about her voice seeming familiar, I probably wouldn’t have been able to hide my surprise. However, I think I managed to keep my face impassive. “Really? Now, how do you know Baden?”
Her smile didn’t dim. “Perhaps you should ask him,” she said. “I wouldn’t like to say anything . . . inappropriate.”
“I’ll be sure to do that. This is my engineer, Viss Feron, and Commander Yuskeya Blue, a Protectorate officer temporarily assigned to my crew. They’ll get you settled in your quarters.”
She turned to them and said insolently, “Hello, Engineering, and hello, Protectorate. Huge pleasure to meet you both. I’m not that good with names, so I’ll just remember you by what you do.”
I turned and left them, biting my tongue, heading up the corridor toward the bridge. She was every bit as annoying as I’d expected, and I hoped she couldn’t see how much she’d rattled me. What was she playing at, anyway? I got the impression that everything this woman did and said was calculated.
On the bridge, I said, “Baden, can I see you in your quarters?” I didn’t want to ask him about Sord in front of everyone, but the Tane Ikai was unusually full at the moment and there weren’t many spots for private conversation.
Baden threw a glance at Maja, but merely said, “Sure,” and got up from his seat at the comm panel. She regarded me with a hint of her old suspicion and seemed about to say something, then subsided.
Baden followed me off the bridge, and I let him go ahead of me into his quarters, first off the bridge to the right. I shut the door behind us. The room felt cool and empty, and I knew I was right about him spending most of his nights in Maja’s quarters with her.
I got right to the point. “You said Jahelia Sord’s voice sounded familiar, but not the name?”
“I could have been wrong about that, too, Captain—”
“No, I don’t think you were.” I pulled out my datapad and called up the report on Sord, which Yuskeya had forwarded to me. I focused in on the picture, although her hair was straight and dark blonde in it, instead of the mass of dark curls she wore now, and she’d had no face tattoos. “Recognize her?”
Baden studied the image and frowned. “Relana?” he said. “That doesn’t—” He glanced up at me. “I know this woman, yes. Her name is Relana . . . um . . .” He had the grace to blush. “I met her a few months ago, on Earth, the last time we were there before we picked up Hirin. We . . . spent some time together. Are you telling me this is Jahelia Sord?”
Baden had a reputation as a lady’s man, at least until he’d met Maja, so I knew what that meant—one of his brief hookups. I had a sudden recollection of him standing outside his quarters, freshly shaven, hair wet from the shower, looking admittedly handsome. Was Jahelia Sord playing him like a pawn that very night? I felt sorry for his discomfiture, but this was important.
I nodded. “I spoke to her when Viss and Yuskeya brought her up from the cargo pod. She said she knew you, called you by name. I knew she was trying to shake me up, so it was lucky you’d mentioned finding her voice familiar earlier—it wasn’t as much of a shock as it might have been. Now she has dark hair and Erian face tattoos, but it’s the same woman.”
He sat down on the side of the bed, still holding my datapad in both his hands and staring at her picture. “This—it can’t be coincidence, can it?’
I leaned against the closed door and folded my arms. “Doubtful. I think she probably cultivated you, trying to get information about me, or the ship. We know she’s connected to PrimeCorp, but we
don’t know for how long.”
“I don’t remember any conversation about you or the Tane Ikai. But I guess it could have come up in passing. I don’t remember.”
“Maybe she wanted to get close to one of us,” I said with a shrug. “Anyway, how do you want to handle it?”
“I . . . I’m not sure. Should I confront her about it, or just act like it’s no big deal? And there’s Maja to think of. I don’t want her getting hurt by this.”
I sighed. “I get the feeling Sord won’t just let it go without comment, but for now we’ll keep you away from her, I guess. There are enough of us to take her meals that you don’t need to take a turn. If we get lucky and get home easily, you might not have to encounter her at all.”
He stood and handed the datapad over, quirking a half-smile at me. “I don’t feel all that lucky, Captain.”
“Me neither. But I think I’ll ask her about it myself, when I have a chance. And Baden, if I might give you a piece of advice?”
“Sure.”
I patted his shoulder. “Tell Maja all about this; don’t try to keep it a secret. Sord won’t let that happen, so you might as well beat her to the punch.”
“Just what I was thinking,” he said with a nod. “It’s ancient history, anyway.”
A few months is not exactly ancient history, I thought, but I kept it to myself. I hoped, for his sake, that Maja would see things his way.
When we returned to the bridge, I saw Maja flash a silent question at him. Baden leaned down to whisper in her ear, but he didn’t have time to say much more than “later.” To keep Maja’s questioning gaze from turning on me, I said, “Rei, here’s something unusual.”
Rei swung her skimchair around to face me. “What?”
I dropped into the big chair. “Our guest is Erian—or pretending to be.”
She raised an eyebrow. “She doesn’t have an Erian name.”
“No, and she didn’t have pridattii when her registry file picture was taken.”
“Nothing about Erian heritage in what Yuskeya found in the registry?”
“Nope.”
Rei pursed her lips. “It’s not entirely unusual. Some people adopt them because they think they’re interesting, or they feel culturally attuned to Eri.” She shrugged. “Some Erians don’t like it, but it never really bothered me very much. But for someone hoping to camouflage her identity . . .”
“That’s what I was thinking. They do change a person’s appearance.”
“Change your hair colour and add the markings, you could be a different person,” she agreed. “And they don’t have to be permanent. It won’t fool an ID chip scan, but a casual observer, sure.”
“So the question is, who was she trying to fool?” But neither of us had an answer.
A few minutes later, Yuskeya entered the bridge and reported that the prisoner was secure in her quarters. “Viss should be down in engineering by now,” she added.
Everyone else had gathered on the bridge. That was understandable. Few people liked to face the unknown alone. I felt a momentary pang—should I have brought Sord up here too? But, no. She was my prisoner, and while I’d keep her safe and reasonably comfortable, I didn’t owe her peace of mind. I opened the ship’s comm. “Viss, is the skip drive ready?”
“Aye, Captain.”
“Okej then, Rei, let’s go. Take us over to the wormhole, but stop one more time near the Stillwell. I want to make sure nothing’s changed before we leave.”
But the Protectorate ship still lay—no-one wanted to say “dead” but we were all thinking it, I’m sure—quiet and unmoving, completely encased in the dark, shadowy field. Nothing emerged from it, and apparently nothing could get in. Yuskeya scanned it one more time so that she could do some comparison analysis, and then there was nothing to do but leave it, and all its personnel, where it hung.
As we approached the second wormhole, it looked exactly like any other we’d ever gone through. I heard Baden take a deep breath as we neared its dark mouth.
“Now, Baden,” I said, “this is what wormhole exploring feels like. Or pretty near.”
He nodded and twisted a wry grin. “Now I understand the difference. And I wish I didn’t.”
“Rei, take us in whenever you’re ready.” I was pleased that my voice betrayed none of the trepidation I felt. The headache was getting worse, and my stomach had started a slow, rolling churn, but I resolutely brushed the sensations aside. I couldn’t afford to be sick now. It would have to wait.
Rei’s hands were steady on the controls as the ship closed the distance between it and the wormhole. Then she fired up the skip drive, and she and Viss exchanged the usual confirmations. We made a perfectly normal slip into the wormhole.
From the inside, it resembled every other wormhole I’ve traversed throughout Nearspace. The blueshifted radiation spun swirls of colour down the length of the tunnel-like interior, surrounding us with breathtaking beauty as we skipped our way around the sides.
The same grey streaks ran down the walls of this wormhole, as they had down the one from Delta Pav. What did they mean?
“Yuskeya, any sign of the same anomalies we encountered the last time?” I asked.
“Nothing this time, Captain. All normal.”
Then the wormhole’s terminal point came up in a rush and we burst out the other end.
And into hell.
Otherspace
Chapter 18 – Luta
The Station
“DIOS! CUT THE drives, Viss!” I shouted, diving from my chair to the seat next to Rei. “I’m on the co-pilot board.”
“I’ll take dock, you’re starboard,” she said tersely. Her fingers skimmed ceaselessly over the pilot’s board, gently easing the ship this way and that. Working together, we had a marginally better chance of keeping the Tane Ikai intact.
We had emerged from the wormhole into the middle of the biggest, ugliest asteroid field I’d ever seen from the inside. Initially, I didn’t think we could make it through alive. The asteroids ranged from huge—far bigger than the Tane Ikai—to pebble-sized, tumbling around us, misshapen detritus from the creation and destruction of worlds, huddled together now for comfort or mischief. Even the smallest could punch a hole through the hull if the shields didn’t stop it. The largest would overwhelm the shields and dash us to pieces. Over and behind them all lay a hideous red-orange light, burning like the embers of a malicious fire.
Viss’s voice rumbled up from the engineering deck. “Everything’s offline except maneuvering jets,” he said. “Burst drive is enabled in case we have to move quickly, but it won’t create any drag on what you’re doing now.”
No one else on the bridge had said a word yet, although I’d heard a few sharply indrawn breaths when we first saw what lay in wait on this side of the wormhole.
“When we get out of this,” I said to Rei, not taking my eyes off the screen or slowing my reflexive nudges on the board, “let’s come to a full stop while we take stock.”
“Por certa, Captain,” she answered. “I might need to go to the head and throw up.”
It probably took less than ten minutes to get through, although it passed like a lifetime. I was glad I’d told Rei to stop when we got clear. I was dumbstruck by what I saw when we emerged.
The reddish light that suffused this system like a slowly spreading stain was the result of a number of factors. Off in the distance a dim orange star burned, its meagre warmth unlikely to reach this far. Closer to us an interstellar dust cloud loomed, the orange sun painting it with a dark red underbelly and brighter, yellowish specularity streaking across the top. There were no planets in evidence from where we hung, suspended beyond the asteroid field’s outer limits.
But it was none of those things that caught my attention at first; I noticed them only peripherally. No, what drew my eye, what in fact had the eye of everyone on board, was the space station.
“Dipatrino, what is that?” breathed Hirin. I hadn’t realized that he’d moved to stand
behind me.
“Captain, I’ve begun logging navigation data on this system,” Yuskeya reported in a flat, emotionless voice, her Protectorate training kicking in, no doubt. “I don’t recommend activating scans.”
“Noted, no scans,” I said. “Good thinking. So far, no-one seems to have noticed us, so let’s try and keep it that way.”
They were coming to life now, getting past that initial shock.
“No incoming comm signals that we’re able to pick up,” Baden said, and his wording struck me. We might have had the latest and greatest technology when we left Mars, but everything was an unknown now. Someone could be screaming at us with their own communications equipment, but if it wasn’t compatible, we’d never hear them.
“Should I send a general hail to the—whatever that is?” Baden asked.
I couldn’t take my eyes away from the space station. That was all I could think to call it, although as Baden implied, it wasn’t like any station I’d ever encountered. It was dark, sleek, angular, and imposing; as malefic-looking as the spidery ship that had pursued the Chron into our midst, with the same gelatinous outer texture. This thing was big, though; as big as Sagan Station, and that could comfortably house over five thousand people. Spiky protrusions extended from a central torus, so many that I couldn’t easily count them. Six, on the sides I could see, were larger and extended further than the rest, pointing randomly to all corners of the system. The structure didn’t rotate or move, so if there was gravity on board it was generated in some way other than centripetal force. Apart from the spikes, it was featureless. No lights, no viewports, no docking bays, no gun turrets.
That last was slightly comforting, at least.
“Captain?” Baden asked.
“No, let’s not say anything yet. They haven’t demanded to know what we’re doing here, so maybe they don’t think we’re worth notice.”
Slowly I stood up from the co-pilot’s seat and moved to the captain’s chair. Hirin followed me to stand behind me again. I think he must have sensed that I needed him at my back.
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