Nearspace Trilogy

by Sherry D. Ramsey

  It was one of the few drawbacks of the Ford-Roman system for traversing wormholes that energy shields had to be disabled inside the wormhole. “I’ll switch the shields on myself once we’re through,” I told her. “You’ll be busy flying us and nav will be looking at the asteroids, too.” Luta had told me the tale of how she and Rei had navigated these same asteroids by working in tandem from the two pilot’s boards, but I didn’t think that would work with a much larger Pegasus-class cruiser. Fortunately, Linna Drake was one of the most competent pilots I’d encountered in the Protectorate. She flew a ship through some strange synergy between herself and the vessel. I couldn’t explain it, but I did trust it.

  “Admiral, if I might,” Viss said. “I can switch on the shields. Why don’t you keep yourself free to assess whatever we find on the other side?”

  I grinned. “Don’t trust me, Mr. Feron?”

  “I just like to be useful,” he said, grinning back, and I transferred the controls he’d need to his console.

  “Send it one more time,” I told Medenez. “We’ll wait five more minutes for a reply. Commander Drake, alert engineering that we’ll be switching the shields to full as soon as we exit the wormhole. I want a Level 2 brownout in effect so there’s lots of juice available.”

  I didn’t really expect an answer from the Corvids now, but I thought we might get third time lucky. But the comm board stayed silent, and so five minutes later, I ordered Drake to take us in to the wormhole.

  Skipping through a wormhole is an experience that never grows old, just as sunsets and sunrises never grow old. The swirl of light and colour is breathtaking, its beauty sharp-edged, otherworldly, and dangerous. “A hundred rainbows spinning down a drain,” Luta had once described it to me, and I never skipped without hearing her words. The sensation that always accompanied a wormhole skip was somewhat less pleasant. I’ve heard many people say that it doesn’t affect them, but even after countless skips, I still feel it—a tug on the bottom of my stomach, a silent protest at the back of my eyes. I’m not really complaining. It’s another reminder that after all this time, I’m still alive.

  Commander Drake piloted us through with deft fingers, so smoothly that the sense of vertigo was slight. “Coming out of skip,” she said.

  “Shields to full,” I said automatically, still engrossed in the play of cosmic forces across the front viewscreen.

  Dankas dio, Viss had been right to suggest I might need all my attention on the end of the wormhole. I’d given the shields command, but I wasn’t expecting the bone-shaking impact that waited for us at the end.

  AS THE IMPACT rattled the ship the viewscreen exploded in a blast of light. The ship yawed starwise. Another impact battered us from that side and I bit the inside of my cheek, hard. I clutched one arm of my chair, shielding my eyes with my other hand as I tasted the hot, coppery tang of blood.

  “Fek, fek, fek!”

  I heard Linna Drake swear just above a whisper as she fought to right the Cheswick. Nav had been knocked half out of his chair but was snapping low instructions at her. I caught the word asteroids.

  “Cut all drives. Weapons, fire particle beams, wide array,” I ordered. “No target, just spread.”

  Another impact came from above, and the Cheswick dropped away under me for the space of a few heartbeats. My stomach lurched as the artificial gravity compensated. As the light from the initial explosion faded from the viewscreen, I saw the problem. The asteroids were not moving, and a huge one had been parked almost directly in front of the wormhole’s mouth. We’d barely emerged from the skip when we plowed directly into it, knocking an enormous chunk of the rock free. The explosion had been a combination of the impact and the intense flare of the shields. Now we bounced around between the static chunks of rock and ice like a drunkard trying to navigate an unfamiliar living room.

  No wonder the tracer beam had bounced straight back at us. But it hadn’t encountered a phalanx of tumbling asteroids, just a massive one parked in front of the wormhole’s mouth. I mentally smacked myself on the forehead.

  “They’re not moving this time,” Viss said. “And they look like they’ve been shot to hell.”

  “Reverse thrusters; cut our speed,” I ordered, finally leaving my chair and stumbling over to the auxiliary piloting board. “Commander, I’ll get us slowed down, you deal with evasives.”

  “Aye, sir,” she breathed, her hands flying on the board. We still darted forward, smaller impacts sounding and flaring around the ship, but she’d straightened us out and managed to avoid some of the larger obstacles.

  Slowly I realized that the asteroid field was not simply static—that wasn’t what Viss meant. As opposed to the orchestrated gauntlet of tumbling boulders, as Luta had described, this was a drifting field of debris. Someone had tried to destroy the asteroids—some had been pulverized almost to dust, while others sported ragged gouges as if a hungry monster had rampaged through, biting and clawing at will.

  “Sensors, are you getting all this?” I asked.

  “Yes, sir!”

  “What happened here?” Linna Drake asked, her voice and hands now steadier as she wove us through the obstructions. The shields still flared, but less intensely, and fewer impacts rattled the ship.

  “Someone shot the place up,” I said. “Tried to destroy the whole asteroid field, or at least make it so that the Corvids couldn’t use their technology to form a barrier to the wormhole.”

  “I was thinking the same thing,” Viss said. Something in his voice made me look up, but his face was impassive.

  “So, was it the Corvids? Funny for them to want to shoot up their own defences,” Linna Drake asked.

  I glanced at her profile and saw her chew her bottom lip, a sure sign that she was worried or pensive.

  “You think any Chron went through that wormhole?” she asked. “If they were the ones who tried to blow it up?”

  I drummed my fingers on the edge of the console. “If so, where did they go? We’ve had a patrol on the Nearspace side of the replacement wormhole since before the diplomatic mission went in. No-one’s come out except the Airavata and the Tane Ikai.”

  “They could be in the in-between system,” Viss said. “We’ve only been in one small corner of it, after all.”

  “True. If they’re there, they must have moved deep in-system, because we didn’t pick them up on scans when we passed through.”

  “Coming up on the edge of the debris field,” Drake announced, and we left our musings about the Chron for the time being. A moment later we cleared the last of the shattered and pock-marked asteroid remains and emerged into the clear dark space of the Corvid system. In the distance, a dim orange star threw off heat that would dissipate long before it reached here. Reddish light reflected off an interstellar dust cloud, painted with haphazard brush strokes of sulfurous yellow. There were no planets, at least not in this sector of the system. Only the Corvid station waited for us, dimly lit in the weak reflected sunlight.

  I hadn’t seen the station personally before this, but I’d seen images of it from the sensors aboard the Tane Ikai. What waited for us now beyond the edge of the debris field was immeasurably changed from the visuals Luta had brought back. Sweat bloomed cold and damp on the back of my neck and the palms of my hands as I tried to make sense of what I was seeing.

  “Merde,” Viss muttered.

  “It didn’t look like this in the pictures I saw,” I said to Viss.

  It wasn’t really a question, but he answered. “No, sir. Very different. But it doesn’t look—exactly—like damage.”

  Where the station had previously sported gelatinous-looking extrusions or spikes in varying sizes, it was now almost perfectly spherical. It looked more like a small, round moonlet than a station, hanging silent and alone and limned with red light. At first, I’d thought the change had been effected by the Chron forcibly, by somehow shearing off the spikes—but Viss was right. It didn’t have the look of violence—no scorch marks or ragged edges or gapin
g holes. Considering what Luta had told me about the extreme adaptability of the Corvid environment suits and the malleability of the station itself, it was possible the Corvids had transformed their habitat on purpose.

  While it was an interesting consideration, I found that I cared about the answer only insofar as it related to the health and well-being of Andresson, Didkovsky, Summergale, and Yuskeya Blue. The pressing question was only are they all right?

  “Keep the shields up, and take us in slowly toward the station,” I ordered. “Medenez, broadcast our intention message, please. Keep it looping unless and until we get a response. Commander, take us on a slow circuit of the station so we can attempt to determine its status.”

  The bridge was very quiet as we made our approach to the station and began to move around it. Medenez said nothing, which I assumed meant no reply from the station, but I didn’t want him to tell me that outright. No response could mean there was no-one left to respond.

  On closer inspection, it became clear that our first impression had been wrong; the station had suffered massive damage. At intervals around the strangely gelatinous-looking exterior of the uruglat, fractured sections danced with yellow arcs of energy like chain lighting. In some, eyes of xanthous fire burned, shifting variably to white or red. They couldn’t be actual fires, I reasoned—no oxygen to feed them—but they contributed to the overall feeling of desertion and destruction the station engendered. The protrusions the Corvids used to control the asteroid fields didn’t appear to have been sheared off or destroyed. More likely, they’d been drawn or absorbed back into the main body of the station itself.

  We had made perhaps a three-quarters circuit of the station when Medenez blurted, “Response from the station coming in, Admiral.”

  “Switch it to bridge comm,” I said, trying to keep the profound relief out of my voice.

  “—extend our warmest greetings to the brother of Luta Paixon,” a static-riddled voice said. The words were studded with pauses for breath, as if the speaker required more oxygen than was currently available. “We are in distress and recovery mode, but if you will proceed as directed we can offer you reception.”

  Medenez looked at me. I nodded.

  “This is Admiral Lanar Mahane. We will proceed as directed,” I replied. “Do you have news of our people who were separated from our ships in the Chron attack? We’ve come to take them home.”

  There was a long silence before the breathless voice came again. “I will share all I know,” it said finally. “But I must tell you with great sorrow that they are not here.”

  THE DIRECTIONS TOOK us to a sector of the station where, since we’d passed it a few minutes ago, a large rectangular section had changed—smoothed and flattened, carving a chunk out of the spherical shape. Intermittent flashes of blue light outlined it. It was roughly the size of the Cheswick, although I was slightly mystified about what we were to do with it. There was no spot to set down.

  Viss chuckled. “Wait for it.”

  The voice came again. “If you will station your ship close to the designated area, I will attempt to offer docking facilities,” the Corvid explained. “Our systems have suffered extensive damage, and I fear we cannot extend the hospitality of a compatible environment inside the uruglat, but if you have suitable mobile enclosures you will be able to move about freely.”

  “Mobile enclosures” had to mean enviro suits, of which we naturally had plenty. I fought an urge to tell the Corvid that we’d rather he—or she—simply tell us what had happened so that we could get to wherever the others were. But the Corvids might need our help, too, and they were freshly-acquired allies against the Chron.

  I instructed Commander Drake to take us into the position indicated, and once we were there, the station did the thing Luta had described to me. Even having it described didn’t come close to the experience, though. It was . . . stunning, and terrifying, to see it happen. The body of the station flowed and elongated a dark pseudopod toward the ship, enveloping it in inky blackness as it slid and rippled over the viewscreen. Our internal lights didn’t go out, so the darkness was more a feeling than a physical thing. And then we moved—in a way that a ship should not move—until the dark matter flowed away from the viewscreen. We’d been transported to a docking bay.

  “Sankta merde!” Medenez breathed.

  As soon as we’d stopped moving, I stood from my chair. I’ll admit my legs felt watery, as if I’d been stationary for hours and the muscles had cramped up. “I’m going EVA,” I announced. “Commander Drake, you have the chair, and I’ll have a comm open the entire time I’m off the ship.”

  She turned and might have protested, but I held up a hand. “Mr. Feron, Doctor Ahmed, and Lieutenant-Commander Galwan will come with me. I don’t expect we’ll be long, but we have to have this conversation and I want to get an impression of the extent of the damage if I can.”

  Viss and I headed for the corridor to the EVA lockers, and I pinged Ahmed and Galwan, my head of security, as we walked. Annicket Galwan reached the lockers before me and had her suit half on when Viss and I arrived. She looked up and gave us a nod, her brown eyes bright with excitement. No-one loved an exploration into the unknown as much as Galwan. She was a tall, well-muscled and agile woman, and wore her dark hair cut in a close military skim. She’d had my back in more than one tight situation in the past, and I could count on her to be level-headed and smart in any crisis. Not that I expected a crisis, but I didn’t take chances.

  Doctor Louis Ahmed puffed up as I was closing the front of my suit. Despite being one of the best doctors I’d ever met in the Protectorate or outside it, he tended to skip physical training and exercise sessions, mandated or not, whenever he could plead out of them by saying he was needed in the med bay. Ahmed had a round head atop a rounded body and when he wore an envirosuit, he reminded me of an ambulatory snowman. He carried a medunit and an emergency medkit and set them on a bench with a shake of his head.

  “I hope you don’t expect me to treat any of these aliens,” Ahmed said as he pulled an EVA suit from a locker, “even though I brought those along. I can treat humans, Vilisians, and Lobors, but beyond that—”

  I held up a hand to placate him. “Don’t worry. I’m told we won’t find our missing people here, so I doubt you’ll need anything, but you’re observant. Just keep your eyes and ears open, okay? Both of you.”

  Galwan nodded and gave me a thumbs-up, because she already had the helmet of her suit in place and locked down. Viss was ready to go as well, and he and Galwan went through the partner suit check routine. Ahmed and I hurried to catch up, checked each other, and then we all went out the airlock and into the Corvid station.

  Luta had told me about the all-black decor, but I realized as I stood in the docking bay that I’d thought she was exaggerating. Not so. Everything was black, black, and more black. Other than that, it looked like every docking bay I’ve ever stood in, except for one other detail—it also looked like it had been the site of a major earthquake. Some of the walls buckled in a way that made me think they weren’t supposed to be like that, even given the oddness of the station overall. Irregular patches broke the smooth surfaces of walls and floor. I knelt to examine one. It revealed broken arrays of small, hexagonal-shaped discs. They obviously should be seamlessly connected, but holes gaped where sections were missing or discs jumbled in snarled clots. Occasional sparks or rivulets of yellow energy erupted in these damaged areas.

  Viss squatted beside me. “That’s not normal,” he confirmed. “Not that I understand ‘normal’ here, but that’s not it.”

  “Looks like they took some heavy hits.”

  We had only a moment to take in these details before a Corvid hologram materialized near an exit door and beckoned to us. I knew from Luta’s sensor data what they looked like, but I was still struck by the alien’s height. I crossed to the door, Viss at my side and Ahmed and Galwan following behind. The hologram winked out. The door opened when I stretched out a hand to it, slid
ing into the wall on the left-hand side. Although “sliding” sounds like a mechanical or electronic movement, and this was—not. It gave the impression that the door had been absorbed into the wall, not merely retracted inside it.

  Beyond lay a corridor in similar disarray to the docking bay, but traversable. The floor slanted downward away from us and curved in a lazy arc to the right, so we followed it, delving deeper into the station. Glowing rods ran lengthwise down the ceiling of the corridor, providing a muted, organic illumination. The light itself was a pale yellow, warmer than we humans would generally use. At intervals, the damaged hex discs appeared in larger conglomerations, but they didn’t appear to be getting worse. The damage was done, but seemingly under control. Although I had my external mic wide open, the only sound it picked up was the occasional crackle or static-like sound from a damaged section.

  After perhaps a minute of careful walking, we fetched up at an apparent dead end, but when we stopped in front of the wall it slid aside as the docking bay door had done. Beyond lay a room about half as large as the docking bay, still resplendent in unrelieved black, but populated with actual Corvids. The room was a control centre, although it lacked the physical screens or consoles one would find on a Nearspace station or ship’s bridge. Instead the Corvids used a technology similar to their hologram representations. From horizontal cylinders on the floor, sheets of blue-white light projected upward, displaying darker blue images and symbols that must be the Corvid language. The Corvids interacted with them by breaking the light pattern in certain spots. I learned one thing that I don’t think any of our ambassadors or diplomats had discovered on their sojourn here—what the Corvids’ hands looked like. By all reports, they had kept their hands hidden during all encounters with our people, inside pockets or folds in the front of the long robes they wore. When asked, they replied that it was merely a cultural tradition in the presence of guests, and naturally the diplomats had not probed further.