Nearspace Trilogy

by Sherry D. Ramsey

  Chapter 40 – Jahelia

  Trust and Other Rare Commodities

  OKAY, SO I hadn’t piloted a ship the size of the Tane Ikai in decades, but I wasn’t about to tell Luta Paixon that. With Little Miss Pilot and Gramps both out of commission, and Paixon dealing with her bioscav sickness, I was obviously the only hope to get us out of there. I’ll admit there was a small voice in my head suggesting that maybe if I could get the PrimeCorp folks to listen, tell them about my assignment from Alin Sedmamin himself, I could extricate myself from this mess. But a smarter voice replied that there was no guarantee these guys would believe me—or care. And I no longer trusted anything PrimeCorp. So I stuck with Paixon. Better the devil you know and all that.

  Furthermore, I’d already hidden a small stash of goodies from the Chron station here on the ship. They’d finance the next part of my life. It would be a shame to have to leave them here.

  So I was doing pretty well, I thought. It was all coming back to me, and once you’ve flown a few ships around Nearspace, you can fly almost anything. All I had to do was make this one skip and then I had no doubt they’d find someone else to take over. Paixon needed me, but I could tell she didn’t really like to see me sitting in Little Miss Pilot’s seat.

  But when Baden yelled that the PrimeCorp ship had opened fire on us with an energy weapon, I have to admit I had a bad moment. I hadn’t seen the shot that took out the wormhole to Delta Pavonis, but I’d seen the end result. That red vortex of an eye, spewing radiation. I had no doubt that anything inside that wormhole when it had gone boom had gone boom also.

  I bit down hard on my tongue, until I tasted blood. The hot, coppery tang steadied me, kept my hands solid on the controls. Seconds passed. The wormhole seemed normal. Luckily, piloting a skip was mostly a matter of a few small steps, done in the right order and repeated until you got to the end. Touch. Nudge the drive thrust. Repel off the side. Slide around. Touch.

  Maybe the weapon the Chron had used had been some other kind, and a mere particle beam wasn’t enough to disrupt the stability of a wormhole. And if nothing bad had happened so far, there still had to be a chance that if I could hold us steady through this wormhole, we’d come out the other end intact.

  “Sord? You all right?”

  I didn’t take my eyes or hands from the skip controls. “Holding on, Captain. Happy to see we haven’t blown up yet.”

  “True enough. Baden, Viss, Hirin, how are we doing?”

  Paixon tried to keep her voice light, but the strain was hard to hide. I didn’t know how she was still upright, unless it was whatever the Chron had given her in that shot. And who knew how long that would last? Despite my concentration on getting us through the skip, my thoughts darted to my father’s desperate, last-ditch attempt to save my mother’s life. The memory flickered through my mind like a series of still images strung along a wire.

  Longate had been a disaster, instead of the game-changer my father and Nicadico Corp had banked on. I’d been suspicious that everything hadn’t been on the shiny side of the law when my father came home regularly with enough for us to live on and plenty for him to gamble away. We’d had to move quickly when the deadly flaws in the treatment had come to light, like cockroaches scurrying away from prying eyes. My father swore to me repeatedly that he’d known nothing of the shortcuts, the paid-for endorsements, the manipulated research results. His version of our swift and secretive departure was that they’d be looking for scapegoats, and he was a logical choice, having occupied a primary place on the research team. That also made him a logical choice for someone who’d bent the rules, but I didn’t say that. I was too worried about my mother’s rapidly deteriorating health and how much of my time it was taking to care for her.

  So when my father finally came up with his brilliant plan to simply remove the malfunctioning bioscavs from her system, we were months and systems and wormholes away from the Nicadico lab where, if he’d only thought of it earlier, he could have borrowed the equipment he needed. As it was, I had to exert all my skills at obtaining things in secret deals and shady trades to come up with what he wanted. A high-tech dialysis machine, with a lot of tweaks and add-ons that hadn’t come cheap—except for the couple I’d been able to obtain by blackmail.

  Mamma’d been almost entirely bedridden anyway by the time we had it all set up in the mildewy back bedroom of the four-room apartment I’d found us on Xaqual. I had to empty the trashcan next to the bed every night—it would be filled to overflowing with bloodied tissues from her nosebleeds. When I’d help her to the washroom, her legs would often begin a wracking tremor that ended in a weakness so profound she’d drop to her knees. The headaches, angry outbursts, and paranoia were everyday occurrences now. The new normal.

  It took the entire night for her blood to filter through the machine that Dad had altered. She slept through most of it, although she kept unconsciously knocking the transcutaneous diverter out of place, and I had to sit beside the bed and monitor her. In the morning she actually woke up brighter than she had in a long time, and demanded to be let up out of bed so she could have a shower. She was still weak, but the other symptoms had abated drastically.

  Until that night.

  I shivered myself out of the memory. “Last skip coming up,” I said, and when we’d slid around the inside of the wormhole one more time, we shot out the end. I flipped the ship over to the auto-nav to guide us through the tumbling asteroid field we’d been expecting.

  The nose of the Tane Ikai grazed the side of an irregular grey rock the size of a small house. The shields flared and it was close enough to make out individual craters on its pocked surface.

  “Merde!” I switched to manual and punched the controls again. The asteroids that were supposed to form a constantly moving barrier to guard the wormhole mouth were frozen in place like an avalanche stopped in mid-slide. Now, instead of being able to navigate it via the pre-set coordinates in the nav computer, I had to run it manually like a demented obstacle course.

  Gasps and exclamations came from around the bridge as I jammed on the reverse thrusters and kept my fingers on the maneuvering jet controls, tweaking our course with minute bursts as we wove through the eerie graveyard of stones.

  “Everybody quiet! Sord?”

  I knew what Paixon was asking in that one word. Can you do this?

  “No. Problem.” I’m not sure how convincing I sounded, speaking through gritted teeth. But what was the alternative? If Paixon wasn’t capable of flying us through a skip, she certainly couldn’t guide the ship through this. The path through the asteroids narrowed and gaped, twisted and spun, making the passage treacherous, even at a crawl. If they suddenly started moving again, we’d be battered and crushed in seconds.

  “Bad news,” Baden said. “The PrimeCorp ship—they followed us through.”

  “They must have something to do with the asteroid field being like this,” Paixon said. “They had to have known.”

  We were almost through the field—the asteroids began to thin ahead of us, and I could see the greater unbroken darkness of space beyond.

  Except it wasn’t as unbroken as it should have been. Darting bits of movement and flashes of light told me something was wrong. It wasn’t until I could see my way clear through the last of the asteroids that I realized what I was seeing.

  “Worse news,” I said. “I think we’ve landed in the middle of another firefight.”

  “THAT’S THE CORVID station,” Paixon said. “Merde, it’s under attack!”

  The station appeared identical to the one where the crew had first met the Corvids. I hadn’t been on the bridge at the time, but Pita had shown me feeds from the viewscreens after the fact. This one was as dark, creepy, and completely alien as the other one had been. Unfortunately, it was a lot busier. Small Corvid fighters engaged with both PrimeCorp starrunner and Chron ships. No surprise there.

  “Damne, damne. We’re not in very good shape to help out here,” Paixon said.

  “We
’re not in any shape to help out here,” Viss confirmed. “Our shields took a beating from the torps and the particle beam.” He threw a glance at me. “And if we lose another pilot—”

  “Viss is right.” Hirin used his one good hand to bring up the coordinates for the asteroid field leading out of this system. “We can’t get caught up in this. We need to verify these coordinates and reach Nearspace.”

  “And, um, if I could just mention,” Baden added, “the PrimeCorp ship is sailing through the asteroid field behind us like he knows the way. We slowed down to get through it; he’s accelerating through. And I’m guessing he plans to skip the party around that station and keep coming after us.”

  “Tell me where I’m going, folks,” I said. “I need a plan.”

  Paixon hesitated a moment more, then said, “Right, the wormhole it is. Baden, contact the station to confirm the coordinates we got from Fha. Sord—punch it for the wormhole.”

  “Will do.” The Tane Ikai’s burst drive was a thing of beauty with the modifications the Corvids had made, and once Paixon gave the word I pushed it to its limit. I had to swing wide around the station to avoid the firefight still raging around it, but it didn’t put us far off course.

  “PrimeCorp ship has cleared the asteroids,” Baden said, too brief a time later. “Staying on our tail—and just fired at us again.”

  “Shields have as much juice as I can give them,” Viss said.

  “Sord, try to evade with the maneuvering jets, but not if it slows us too much,” Paixon told me. Her voice sounded fainter, as if she was reaching the end of her endurance.

  I punched the vertical thruster, and the ship dropped, making my stomach lurch. I wasn’t used to such a quick and thorough response in a ship this size. Not quick enough, though. The Tane Ikai shuddered as the shields took the hit. Paixon gasped behind me, and I hoped she wasn’t going to throw up.

  She had me really confused now; I didn’t know anymore what could be going wrong with her bioscavs. From my experience—limited, sure, but still more than most people had—she should not have survived this long without bioscavengers in her system, when she’d been dependent on them for so long.

  Mamma had lived a whole twenty-four hours once her bioscavs were gone. At first she’d rallied, symptom-free. But that only lasted long enough for us to get our hopes up. It started that night with a headache and a nosebleed we couldn’t seem to stop. The convulsions came not long after that. The vomiting, shivering, and body-wracking shakes as her entire body rebelled and, once it wore itself out with rebellion, shut down for good.

  I glanced at Luta Paixon. She’d put a hand to her temple, rubbing it absently as if she could erase the pain behind it with her fingertips. Should I warn her?

  Would she believe me? What good would it do, anyway? They seemed to think that getting her to her mother might save her. Might as well let them do that. For all I knew, it would, if we could make it.

  Then it hit me as hard as one of those PrimeCorp torpedoes. Her mother. Emmage Mahane. The woman I’d set out to hurt. The woman I’d targeted for revenge, the one I’d marked to bear the brunt for all the years of running, and hiding, and scrimping, and lying. The years of trying to save my parents from themselves.

  Of trying to save me from myself.

  It was all her fault, wasn’t it?

  I hadn’t known exactly how I was going to hurt Emmage Mahane. I thought Paixon might lead me to her, or maybe an opportunity would present itself to get my revenge on Mahane through her daughter, or her granddaughter. I figured I’d know my chance when it presented itself.

  And here it was.

  Paixon was going to die. All I had to do was let it happen. Fly a little slower. Stray off course a bit. Stretch out the time so that she didn’t make it to Emmage Mahane.

  So easy.

  Chapter 41 – Luta

  The Enveloping Fog

  I’D NEVER UNDERSTOOD what people meant by an “icepick headache,” but I thought I did now. I put a hand to my temple, blinking away tears that welled up in response to the pain. It really did feel as if someone had stabbed my head with a sharp instrument. Jahelia Sord with her fork, I thought, trying to distract myself from it. Sometimes the way she looked at me, I thought that was exactly what she’d like to do.

  I glanced at her, so incongruous in Rei’s seat. Not now, though. Now she was saving all of us—herself included. I still didn’t understand her, but I was damn glad that she’d come aboard the ship.

  “No response from the station,” Baden said. “I’ve signalled them three times on the channel Fha set up, but nothing.”

  The embattled station still showed on one of the side viewscreens. There seemed to be no let-up in the assault, and no side clearly emerging as a victor yet.

  “Maybe the coordinates we have will work,” I said, but in my heart, I didn’t believe it. I’d expect them to change all the asteroid field settings as soon as the assault began, to try and prevent further incursions into the system. That the attackers had apparently found a way to override one field—the one we’d come through—wouldn’t change that protocol.

  “I hate to say it, but we have more trouble,” Baden said. “Two ships have broken off from the attack on the station and are headed after us.”

  I pressed my lips together until they hurt. “So our stalker has called in some friends. Sord, Viss, can we get anything else from the burst drive?”

  Viss answered without hesitation. “I’m sorry, Captain. It’s full-out. The only other thing I could do is take the shields offline—”

  The PrimeCorp ship fired another torpedo, and it battered into the shields, answering that question. I glanced at the rear screens. The two ships coming to join their fellow—I couldn’t tell for sure, but were they gaining on us? If they caught up and added their firepower to the first—

  But at this rate, we’d never reach the asteroid field before the shields gave out. We couldn’t weaken ourselves further by returning fire. And I feared that when we reached the asteroids, we’d have to stop anyway. If the coordinates weren’t right, Sord couldn’t fly through the field on her own. Even Rei hadn’t been able to do it without my help, and I’d been a lot healthier then.

  I stood from the chair. I couldn’t think. I needed to move, needed to pace, clear my mind. I always thought best while I walked, letting the motion shake disparate thoughts into a shape that made sense. My legs wobbled, and I swore under my breath, clutching at the chair arm.

  I hate being sick. I hate being weak.

  Forcing my back straight and willing my legs to hold me up, I slowly paced the width of the bridge. I caught Hirin’s eyes on me, dark with concern. I managed a half-smile for him, turned and started the other way. It wasn’t easy.

  I hate the pain. I hate the uncertainty. And I hated feeling this much self-pity.

  I tried to bludgeon my mind clear. Most of all, I hated the PrimeCorp ship behind me. We had to escape them, or we had to stop them.

  Stop them.

  Stop them.

  I whirled toward Hirin, almost toppling over. The empty skimchair next to Baden, where Maja usually sat, saved me. I grabbed the arm and fell into it. “Hirin! When the Chron were chasing us before—before we all went out—Rei said something to you about the activator drive. What was it?”

  Hirin frowned, shook his head slightly. “I don’t—what was it? She wanted to use it. But I didn’t understand why.”

  “Right. Because we weren’t near a ghosting artifact.” I dropped my eyes to my hands, gripping the arms of the skimchair. Think. The smooth armrest felt oddly rippled, but I knew it was the scarring on my fingertips. The only scars I had that my nanobioscavengers had not healed.

  “But one stopped our drives once,” I said suddenly. “That’s it! At the artifact moon—we were caught in it and it stopped our drives, remember? It shut down everything. It wrecked things!” I held up my burned fingers, where the datapad had seared them. “Viss—”

  “Already on it,
Captain,” he said, his hands flying over the engineering console. “Activator drive is online.”

  “Fire.”

  A bright flash lit up the rear viewscreens as the drive activated, sending its pulse of—whatever it was—directly into the path of the oncoming PrimeCorp ship. There was no flash of impact, no explosion. The ship kept coming. But—

  “Its drives are shut down!” Baden shouted. “No weapons systems, no thrust. They’ll keep coasting, but they’ll have to reboot everything, just like we did at the artifact moon.”

  I struggled up out of the skimchair to get to my own. “All right. That gives us a little more time to make the wormhole. Sord, you all right?”

  “Perfectly fine, Captain. Running full out, straight for the asteroid field.” Her voice sounded strained, belying her words, but if she said she was okej, I’d take her word for it.

  “Baden, still nothing from the station?”

  “Sorry, Captain. Not a thing.”

  I pulled in a deep breath and smelled blood. Startled, I glanced around the bridge, then realized it was me. I put a hand up to catch the wet, hot drop that threatened to spill over my top lip. Not again.

  “Three minutes to the asteroid field,” Hirin said.

  I swallowed hard, tried to focus. “Can you tell yet if the coordinates will work? Extrapolate our course at all?”

  He was quiet as he worked, pressing commands one-handed into the nav computer as fast as he could. Finally he looked up. “It’s hard to tell—the asteroids are moving, not static like the last field. It’s impossible to predict the course this far in advance. I can find Fha’s designated entry points into the field—but not whether an asteroid will be in that location three minutes from now.”

  “The other PrimeCorp ships are still coming on,” Baden said. “Not gaining, but they’ll catch up quick if we have to stop at the field.”

  Pain stabbed into the side of my head again, blinding me with sudden tears. “We have to fly straight into the field when we get there,” I said. “Sord, can you do that?”