Nearspace Trilogy

by Sherry D. Ramsey

  Now, though, the crow-like aliens had been forced to set aside the niceties. Few even gave us a glance as we stood in the doorway to the room, so engrossed were they in the task of trying to repair and maintain their station. And none attempted to hide their hands. They extended from open sleeves and had the same sleek, dark colouring visible on the Corvids’ heads, although for some it lightened along the length of the hand. Each hand had three long, bony fingers, thinner and more flexible than human fingers—in fact, they had twice as many joints as ours. The “palm” was much smaller in relation to the length of the fingers, and on either side, a pale, wicked-looking claw curved out and down. The claws were so at odds with the calm, restrained, and polite nature I’d come to associate with the Corvids both from Luta’s encounters with them and the diplomats’ reports, I felt an involuntary spasm clench my gut. A swipe with one of those could open a human throat, I thought, and then wondered what had prompted it. Some instinctive, primal reaction, left over from a more primitive time. I swallowed hard and hoped my face hadn’t shown the obvious recoil I’d felt.

  One tall Corvid had turned when the door opened and now glided toward us. At first, I thought it wore a hat, then realized that one side of its head and an eye were completely covered by a thick, coarse bandage. The one visible eye, however, was bright and intense in its gaze. As the alien approached, it tucked its hands away, and I felt a strange relief at the disappearance of those claws.

  “Brother of Luta Paixon,” the Corvid said, and inclined its head in a brief bow. “I am Fha, and you are welcome to our sadly damaged uruglat.”

  So, this was the Corvid who had helped Luta. Her voice resonated with a sadness so profound it was almost a physical thing. “You have my deep thanks for the help you gave my sister, and we’re sorry to find you in such trouble,” I said. “Can we offer any assistance?”

  Yuskeya and the others were my priorities, but it was inconceivable not to offer help to such a voice.

  The Corvid inclined her head to me. “We have repairs well underway, thank you. And it is your own people who concern you. We understand.”

  I nodded. “You—or someone—told me that they are not here. What happened to them?”

  A look passed over Fha’s face—a face so alien that it would be difficult to believe one could identify emotion. But it held a deep and painful distress.

  “Come,” she said, and turned back into the room. Her invitation encompassed the group, so the four of us followed as she moved smoothly to a light screen and, keeping her hand partly hidden within her sleeve, poked a long finger into several spots in the display. Moving images replaced the symbols, and although the display was mainly monochromatic, I realized that it was a video representation of the Chron attack. The ships that dove toward the station launching torpedo-like missiles were the same as those the Tane Ikai had recorded. There was no audio.

  After several seconds, the playback switched to the interior of the station, and I recognized what must be the figures of Andresson and Didkovsky. They huddled against a dark wall in full Protectorate EVA suits—it could have been anywhere in the station, from what I had seen—and a third figure crouched near them. Summergale, judging by the elongated helmet that accommodated the Lobors’ distinctive head shape. A Corvid stood nearby, interacting with a small light display that sprung from a device it held in a long-fingered hand. Then the scene shuddered violently as the station suffered an impact, and the Corvid staggered and fell hard, one arm twisting unnaturally as it landed. The screen device flew from its hand and smashed into the wall. Summergale made a motion as if to go to the fallen alien, but another EVA-suited figure arrived from off-screen and got there first.

  My mouth felt suddenly too dry. Yuskeya. The arm patch on the suit clearly identified it as the Tane Ikai’s.

  She helped the injured Corvid sit against one wall. One of its long-fingered, clawed hands hung limply to the floor, but it seemed otherwise all right. Yuskeya and Didkovsky put their helmets together for a brief conversation. The image flickered and re-formed frequently—probably every time the station took a hit. I wondered where, at this point in the scenario, Luta had been. Making for the wormhole, I guessed, and feeling terrible.

  Before the trio made any further move, I saw Andresson startle and bump back against the wall. Then five figures moved into the view of the camera, and the discomfort I’d felt at the sight of the Corvid claws was nothing compared to the raw, gut-clenching fear those figures inspired.

  A hundred and fifty years hadn’t changed the armour in any significant way, unless it was to make it sleeker and deadlier.

  The five newcomers were Chron.

  Chapter 8 – Luta

  Nothing but Trouble

  WE ARRIVED AT FarView Station without further incident and had the docking technicalities worked out by dinnertime. I told everyone to go off and enjoy some R & R, since there was really nothing to do until Alin Sedmamin contacted me. Well, I assumed Jahelia Sord would track me down to have a chat once she’d looked after docking her own ship. Or PrimeCorp’s ship. You couldn’t convince me that it wasn’t the same one she’d claimed Alin Sedmamin had given her, but it was none of my business. Hirin and I were the only ones who stayed aboard the Tane Ikai. Most of the food businesses in the hub would deliver up to docked ships, so we ordered honest-to-goodness pizza and lounged in the big galley armchairs to eat it. Hirin put one of the FarView music feeds on through the comm system and a soothing instrumental filled the room.

  “Dankas dio, it’s actually quiet in here,” Hirin observed. “Why is it that we keep meaning to have a vacation and we never actually do?”

  I nodded. “I sometimes think I’d be happy living in less interesting times.”

  “Ha! You’d be bored within a week,” Hirin chortled, and I threw a chunk of pizza crust at him.

  “It would take at least a month,” I retorted. “Maybe it’s the fault of the crew. Did we get into this much trouble when it was just the two of us flying this thing around?”

  “I think we did,” Hirin said around another bite of pizza. “But we were younger and better able to handle it then.”

  “Speak for yourself, old man.”

  “I am, darling.”

  We ate in contented silence for a few moments, but with so much weighing on our minds, it couldn’t last. “I checked in with Regina Holles, but Lanar’s not back yet,” I told Hirin. “I wonder where he is? And if he’s picked them up yet. He’s been gone a long time.”

  “Longer than I’d expected.”

  “They might have stayed to help the Corvids,” I said, nibbling at the crust. There were other possibilities—that someone was too badly injured to move right away, or the Chron had attacked again. I didn’t want to consider those.

  “I’d rather he was back in Nearspace if we’re going to start ferrying Alin Sedmamin around.” Hirin frowned at his pizza as if it were arguing with him.

  I licked pizza sauce from my lips. We hadn’t really talked about this much since my initial conversation with Sedmamin. “Are you starting to think I shouldn’t help him?”

  He considered. “No, it’s not that. Helping Sedmamin is for the greater good. The way you have to take horrible-tasting medicine with sugar or honey sometimes, because it will make you feel better in the end.”

  “But it’s still not pleasant.”

  He fixed me with a skeptical stare. “Having that man on this ship will be less than ‘not pleasant’. It will be a supreme test of my self-control not to beat the living—”

  My ID implant beeped. Since there was no-one else on board I’d routed all incoming calls there. I pulled my datapad off the table and transferred the message. “Oh, great,” I breathed.

  It was Jahelia Sord. I hadn’t expected her to contact me so promptly. My impression of her was that she preferred to operate as a lone gun—or at least, with her enhanced datapad AI as her primary companion. But I did encourage her to get in touch with me, after all. Maybe she’d read be
tween the lines and realized I knew more about what Sedmamin wanted than I’d said. I arranged my face into something that wasn’t obvious dismay and opened the connection. “Hello, Sord. I take it you’ve arrived at the station?”

  Her face could never seem to be free of that slightly mocking look, but she smiled. She no longer wore the Erian pridattii. I’d been quite sure they were an affectation or an attempt at a disguise when she wore them before, so their absence wasn’t a complete shock. She’d also abandoned the striking profusion of black-and-white curls, and her hair now hung caramel-brown and straight to her shoulders. It swung as she nodded.

  “I’m on docking arm C, so whenever you’d like to have that conversation, I’m free,” she said with casual indifference.

  I glanced over at Hirin and he shrugged. “I have a couple of slices of pizza left here, if you haven’t had dinner yet,” I said. “We could chat over that or double caff.”

  She half-smiled. “Nice attempt at playing the hostess, Paixon,” she said. “I’ve eaten, thanks, but I’ll take you up on the caff. Fifteen minutes all right?”

  “That’ll be fine. Dock 25-B. I’ll meet you at the door.”

  “Got it,” she said, and broke the connection.

  Hirin grimaced at me. “And I thought we were going to have a romantic evening alone, with all the kids out playing.”

  “Hey, you could have said no!”

  “It’s all right. I doubt you two will be able to talk for more than half an hour without getting into a fight, and I can amuse myself for that long,” he said. He pushed out of his chair and took his plate to the scrubber. “Will I store the leftovers?”

  I popped the last bite of pizza into my mouth, and got up and helped him clear away the remains of our supper. Then I started a fresh cycle of caff brewing and went to our quarters to change. Okay, I put on a clean white t-shirt and brushed my hair. I wasn’t too worried about my appearance for a heart-to-heart with Jahelia Sord. Hirin kissed my cheek and said he would stay in our room and read.

  And I went off to wait for Jahelia Sord on a very different footing than the last time we’d met.

  AT THE AIRLOCK, I opened it and stepped out onto the dockway to wait for Sord. It was busy, clotted with merchants and civilian travellers going to and from ships docked along the station’s B-arm. Any military ships docked at the station would be in the A section, on another arm, while the C section on the third arm would be mainly freighters, cargo-only, and maybe a few smaller ships that overflowed from B. So I didn’t see many Protectorate uniforms, but I did see humans in family and business groups, lupine Lobors with their slightly bouncing gait and colourful, flowing clothes, and tall, amber-skinned Vilisians who seemed to glide rather than walk. Everyone hurrying or strolling about their own business. Everyone potentially affected by the favour I was going to attempt for Alin Sedmamin. A shudder ran up my back, and it had nothing to do with the temperature-controlled dockway.

  Even in that crowd, Jahelia Sord stood out. Tonight, she was dressed in tight black pants and knee-high dark blue spacer’s boots, a fitted navy-blue jacket that skimmed her hips, and a crimson shirt with a high collar that hugged her throat. Her lips were the same colour as her shirt, and even without the pridattii and striking black-and-white curls, she still looked dramatic. She caught sight of me waiting and flashed a hard-to-read smile. When she was close enough, she put out a hand to shake.

  I took it, feeling a bit awkward, as if she’d taken control of the encounter already. “It’s good to see you,” I said automatically.

  “Is it?” she asked with a quizzical smile. “I thought my presence probably fell more into the category of ‘necessary evil’.”

  “Oh, it does. I was just trying to be polite.” I smiled, though, and motioned her inside with a wide sweep of my hand. “You know how I insist on politeness.”

  “I don’t remember that,” she said playfully as we turned the corner toward the galley. It felt a little strange, how well she knew the layout of the ship, although it made sense—she’d spent enough time on it. “But I could be remembering wrong since I was essentially a prisoner at the time.”

  “A prisoner who refused to stay in her prison, as I recall. Double caff?”

  “Delighted.”

  I fixed the hot drinks for both of us and turned back to her. She’d seated herself in the chair that Hirin had recently vacated, so I returned to mine and passed her the caff. We both sipped hesitantly, and I felt as if our banter had both dealt with the preliminaries and cemented our positions. We weren’t friends, but we could manage to get along when the occasion warranted it.

  Jahelia Sord must have felt the same way because after a sip of caff, she said, “So. Sedmamin. What is up with him? He looked like merde.”

  I sipped and tilted my head to one side. “He’s in trouble—apparently PrimeCorp wants him to take a fall this time, and it’s a big one. He wants me—my crew—to help him out. I assume he has a role for you to play in his scheme as well.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “He said as much to me—but that’s all he said. No details. So, if I knew what he wanted from you, it might give me a clue.”

  “Why’d you agree, if he wouldn’t tell you what he wants?”

  She laughed. “Who said I’d agreed? I told him I’d think about it. He told me he’d be on FarView when I was ready, and if I couldn’t find him, to get in touch with you.” She stirred the liquid in her cup and watched steam curl lazily up from it. “He sounded pretty confident that you’d help him out, but he kind of pissed me off, to tell the truth. Seemed to think I still owed him something.”

  “But you don’t see it that way?” I leaned forward. “Just between you and me, I suspect your new ship isn’t all that new, and that it originally came from Sedmamin.”

  She leaned in, echoing my movement. A half-smile quirked the side of her mouth. “Just between you and me, I think I stopped owing him anything when he got me stranded in Otherspace with hostile aliens.”

  I grinned. “You have a point.” I leaned back again and took a sip of my drink. “Well, here’s what he wants from me.” I briefly outlined Sedmamin’s request that I get him to Earth and help him retrieve files and personal items, then see him to somewhere he considered safe.

  “Huh,” she said, and sipped at her drink. “Well, that does give me an idea of what he might want from me. When I was participating in the ‘trials’ for Pita—my AI, remember?”

  I remembered the AI well. She’d helped save my life and my crew, and given me a glimpse into Sord’s personality, after whom she was modeled. I nodded.

  “He gave me access codes for some restricted areas of the PrimeCorp facility—and I had the feeling that maybe he didn’t have complete authority to do that. He as much as told me to keep it under my hat, and to take . . . precautions, anytime I used them.”

  “Precautions like, not being seen?”

  She grinned like the only cat aboard a mouse-ridden far trader.

  “And you still have those access codes, and maybe he needs them to get in, because probably he’s been locked out of the system since he’s now persona non grata around PrimeCorp.”

  She smoothed a hand over her hair, which didn’t need smoothing. “That would be my guess.”

  I swirled my own drink, seeing how close I could get it to the rim without spilling. “That makes you pretty integral to this plan. Will you do it?” I asked. “Because if you’re out, it probably isn’t worth the risk for me to try and help him at all. I certainly don’t have special access to anything involved with PrimeCorp.”

  She sighed and got up from her chair, shucking her jacket and hanging it over the back of the seat. She walked around the room for a moment as if she were a potential buyer assessing the amenities of the ship, running a finger along the countertop. Finally, she stopped and leaned against the large table, crossing her ankles and her arms. “Sedmamin did intimate that he’d pay me for my part in the plan. I expect he’s got some secret resources around N
earspace. He offered you files. Why would you help him, if you do?”

  I shrugged. “Because there’s more riding on this than just Alin Sedmamin’s health and welfare. I honestly don’t care that much about that. But the files—that could have huge repercussions over all of Nearspace. My brother would leap at the chance to have copies of those that weren’t . . . ahem . . . stolen.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.” She hoisted herself up on the table and scooted backwards, pulling her knees up to sit cross-legged. She rested her chin in her hands and her elbows on her knees and regarded me in silence for a moment. Her head tilted to the side as she considered me, a slight frown dimpling a line between her eyebrows. “Do you ever get tired of thinking about other people before yourself?”

  I snorted, and for a moment I didn’t know how to answer. “Where did that come from?”

  She lifted her shoulders. “I don’t know. I watched and listened, you know, when I was on board the ship before. And when we were on that Chron station. You’re often kind of flip about it, but you really care about everyone—your family, your crew, that Lobor—and it extends even further than that. Like now. You’re thinking about all of Nearspace when you should be wondering if you’re going to get caught helping Sedmamin—a man who’s made your life absolute hell from what I can tell—retrieve data from a secure, restricted facility where he has no legal business going. Me,” she said, sliding her hands behind her on the table and leaning back against them, “I think about what’s in it for me.”

  I got up abruptly and took my mug to the scrubber, then turned to face her. “I don’t really know how to answer that,” I said slowly. “Yes, Alin Sedmamin has been nothing but trouble for me, for most of my life. But this is not about me, or about him, really, the way I see it. I don’t have a good answer except it’s just the way I am, I guess. That sounds kind of lame, though.” I put on a half-smile.