Nearspace Trilogy

by Sherry D. Ramsey

  It was implied that this would be the proper course of action. I was tempted to ask further about the Ambassador, but made myself wait.

  “I’m coming down myself, yes. And Viss Feron is with me. We’ll have plenty of room to bring four back, when the time comes. Unless you’re coming now, too? We can make room for five.”

  There was a pause before the Lobor historian answered. “Not yet, no, Admiral,” she said, “although I am anxious to meet and speak with you, and it will be good to see Viss. I believe I am of far more use to Nearspace if I stay here on Tabalo.”

  “Understood,” I answered. “Then if you’ll send the proper coordinates, I’ll see all of you shortly.” We closed the connection, and I said to Linna Drake, “I’m going to change into casual clothes. The Ambassador is the official Nearspace representative, and I don’t want to muddy the waters. Assign a pilot and let me know when the launch is ready, all right?”

  “Will do, Admiral,” she said. “Are you going armed?”

  I thought about that for a moment and then shook my head. “I don’t think Professor Brindlepaw would lead me into any danger, and I’m only one man, after all. If there’s a horde of aggressive Chron down there waiting for me, even a plasma rifle won’t help.”

  Viss had poked his head onto the bridge just as I ended my conversation with Professor Brindlepaw, and now he followed me into the corridor.

  “Permission to accompany you down to the planet, Admiral?” he asked formally.

  I grinned. “Granted. I didn’t expect you to sit up here and wait. In fact, I already told Brindlepaw you were coming.”

  He clapped me on the shoulder. “I’ll gather some things and see you in the docking bay, then.”

  He was a few steps away from me down the corridor when I said, “Viss?”

  He turned and looked back at me.

  “No weapons, I think. Shouldn’t be any need for them down there.”

  “Well, you’re no fun,” he said, but touched his hand to his forehead in a mock salute.

  In my quarters, I considered my off-duty wardrobe and decided to take a page out of my sister’s book. She always swore that a good pair of jeans, white t-shirt, and leather coat could take a person almost anywhere, so I tried to follow her advice. I didn’t own a white t-shirt, but I did have jeans, a button-front shirt in transform fabric that I could set to white, and a short dark leather jacket. I kept my Protectorate boots on because there’s nothing more comfortable than a well-worn pair of prots, as we call them. Mine had trod the dust of countless planets in Nearspace, so it felt right to wear them down to the surface of my first Otherspace planet.

  I slipped a few necessities into my pockets and hoped I was ready. It wasn’t a first contact, but it felt that way, and the weight of responsibility lodged in my gut. With a quick glance in the mirror to make sure I was presentable, I left my room and headed down to the docking bay.

  One of the two ship’s launch vessels sat with its door open, and I glimpsed movement inside. When I crossed to it and climbed in, I was surprised to find Linna Drake running through the pre-flight and chatting easily with Viss about the launch’s engineering specs. Like me, she’d swapped out her Protectorate blues and now wore navy pants, a green high-necked sweater, and a many-pocketed hiker’s vest.

  “Who’s watching the store up top?” I asked her. I realized that I hadn’t ordered her to stay on the bridge when I’d left, and Linna Drake was not averse to taking advantage of a loophole.

  “Commander Shule is on duty,” she said unblushingly. “He was scheduled for next shift, but he was happy to take the chair so that I could pilot you down to the surface.”

  “I don’t think I’m really in need of a commander for this job,” I said dryly. “You might be slightly overqualified.”

  She threw me a grin over her shoulder as she buckled into the pilot’s seat. “Technically we’re escorting Council officials on the return flight, so you should be accompanied by at least one other officer of a rank above lieutenant-commander,” she said. “Shall I quote from the regulations?”

  I shook my head and held up a hand. “Not necessary. I bow to your superior knowledge of little-known Protectorate minutiae. Although I doubt they were written to cover this sort of situation,” I added.

  “Buckle up, then, Admiral, and I’ll close the doors,” was all she said, and although she’d turned back to face the front of the launch, I could still hear the grin in her voice. Five minutes later we dropped out of the docking bay and down toward the Relidae planet, and whatever awaited us there.

  Chapter 10 – Luta

  Under Attack

  RUN!

  Hirin didn’t have to tell me twice. When the first impact jarred the station, panic blossomed across the crowd in the corridor. Some because they’d seen the refuge station door slam shut, and some simply because whatever was happening was obviously bad.

  I couldn’t quite run in response to Hirin’s suggestion, but I pushed quickly through the crowd, ducking and weaving to find openings between the press of bodies. I tried to sort out a plan as we wriggled through the masses.

  We’re three levels down from the docking arms. I tried to think calmly, but I knew my body was blasting out adrenaline and cortisol in reaction to stress, and it clouded my brain. My nanobioscavengers would clear the excess hormones quickly, but I didn’t have time to wait around for that. I tried to cudgel my foggy thinking into something logical.

  The elevators will shut down as a safety protocol. That leaves stairs. I know I saw a stairwell door near the elevators on the shopping level, so it stands to reason, that’s where we’ll find them on this level.

  “Elevators!” Hirin said, close behind me. I didn’t remind him they’d be shut down. At least we both wanted to go in the same direction. The elevator we’d come down in was behind us, but on the circular station, we had to come to another one eventually.

  Up ahead, the red ring icon of another refuge station blinked above the heads of the throng, but the door was already closed. There was only one place I’d feel safe now.

  On the Tane Ikai. Three levels up.

  The worst thing about this corridor was the lack of a view to the outside. We were in the centre of the ring level, with shops and services lining both the spaceward and hubward sides. I wanted to see what was happening outside. However, it was obvious that the station was under attack. Before we reached the stairwell, the station had shuddered twice more under our feet, the flash of the shields reflecting through some of the open doorways into the corridor. Each one provoked gasps and cries of alarm from the scuttling, now-panicked crowd.

  The elevator came into sight and I dashed for it. The elevator and stairwell bays were positioned in transport blocks in the centre of the corridor, with enough space on either side to allow foot traffic to flow around them. As I’d expected, the elevator doors were tightly closed. A young man, perhaps twenty-five, held a little curly-haired girl by one hand and pressed repeatedly on the button to open the door, with no result. The stairwell door stood on the other side of the transport block, just behind the elevator from this side. As I passed, the man balled a fist and punched the stubborn door in frustration. I put a hand on his arm and his head jerked toward me.

  “It won’t work. Safety shutdown,” I said, looking directly into his eyes to drill the message into his head. “The stairs are right behind here.”

  “What’s—” he started, but Hirin passed me, catching my hand and pulling me around to where he threw the stairwell door open, and I dashed inside. I felt a pang at leaving the young man, confused and afraid, but I couldn’t help everyone—and I couldn’t help my own people if I didn’t get to my ship.

  We’d circled perhaps twice up the spiralling metal stairs when I heard the stairwell door open and shut again, and two more sets of footfalls joined ours on the steps. Maybe I’d gotten through to the young man. Hirin and I pounded up the stairs, my heart hammering. I wondered how Hirin was doing, but he stayed right be
hind me and didn’t sound too laboured—at least not yet.

  Should have done less tae-ga-chi and more nicardi, I thought absurdly. Tae-ga-chi was great for muscle tone and coordination, but I could obviously use more aerobic training. And perhaps yelling.

  We reached a landing where a large blue numeral 4 had been stencilled on the wall, along with corresponding symbols in other Nearspace languages, including Lobor and Vilisian. Smaller lettering underneath, again in several languages, detailed the merchants doing business on the level. A door exited to this level, and through the viewpane I saw another, less-crowded corridor. A Vilisian scurried past with two small children in tow. A man in a Protectorate uniform ran in the other direction. Maybe more people had made it to the refuge stations on this level, or maybe it had not been as busy when the alarm went up.

  I wondered briefly if we should try for a refuge station here, but everything in me urged a return to the ship. We didn’t stop to discuss it, just kept climbing. The habitat level lay above us, and then one more climb would put us on the docking level. Unfortunately, I suspected we would emerge near docking arm A, a third of the way around the station from docking arm B, where the Tane Ikai waited. But there should be fewer people on the docking level, and we’d be able to move faster. Provided we had any energy left.

  The stairs shook under my feet, and I clutched at the metal railing for support. Hirin grunted, and I swung my head to check on him, but he merely scowled. “Almost slipped,” he said.

  “How long are the shields going to take this?” I wondered.

  He shook his head. “They’re meant primarily as protection against space debris, small meteorites, that kind of thing. I’m sure no-one set them up expecting a full-on attack with weapons of this calibre. And to maintain them around the entire station—?”

  He didn’t go further. He didn’t have to. I knew the answer to my question. The shields wouldn’t hold out long.

  I sucked oxygen and set off again, my legs burning from the climb. Further below us, the other sets of footsteps had merged into one. I imagined the young man was now carrying the little girl. I gave myself a mental shake. Here I was complaining about the burn in my legs. I wondered briefly where they were heading—the habitat level? Surely there must be enough refuge stations on the whole of FarView to accommodate everyone who might be aboard? But the trick, at a moment like this, was finding the one that had your space in it.

  Another round of hard climbing and we reached the landing of the habitat level, marked with the numeral 3. Here they’d included a numbered schematic as well, since so many tiny apartments ringed the level. Through the viewpane only a few inhabitants came in and out of view, hurrying, I assumed, to the level’s refuge stations. Hirin’s breath sounded louder, harsher now behind me. I stopped on the landing and turned to watch him climb the last few stairs to where I stood.

  “You okay, old man?”

  He nodded, sucking in a deep breath. “Old is right. Might only have one more level in me,” he rasped.

  “That’s all you need,” I said. “We’ll make it.”

  There’d been a respite from the impacts, and part of my brain wanted to believe that the incident was over. Protectorate ships at the station would have scrambled to meet the attack, and possibly destroyed the attackers. But the klaxon continued to sound, although it was mercifully muffled in the stairwell.

  As we caught our breath, the footsteps below us drew nearer, and the young man puffed into view. Red-faced, he now carried the little girl, as I’d surmised. She had her arms around his neck and her head buried in his chest. Hirin and I pulled out of the way and he approached.

  “Thanks,” he said to me as he passed us. “I wasn’t thinking too clearly down there.”

  “Who is?” I replied, and tried to smile.

  He put a hand on the door release and almost slammed into it when the door didn’t open. The little girl whimpered.

  Hirin moved to help, but I had a sinking feeling I knew what was wrong. He couldn’t get it to open, either. The young man turned to look at me with wild eyes.

  “What’s wrong?”

  I ran a hand over my hair. “They probably locked them as part of the safety protocol,” I said. “Even a partial shield breach—”

  “—and they’d automatically lock-seal,” Hirin finished.

  “All the levels?” the man asked.

  I looked up the stairs that spiralled away from us. “Probably, but there’s only one way to find out,” I said, and started to climb again.

  WE WERE MORE than halfway to level 2, the docking level, when the big hit came. This one knocked me sideways, and I would have fallen without the railing. I caught it and held on. I heard Hirin shout and the young man gasp. With his arms around the girl, he had no free hand to steady himself. He’d slipped to his knees and almost toppled onto her, but Hirin caught him. I expected the girl to scream or cry but she must have been too terrified to do either. The station shields must have failed to stop the last attack. And with the shields down—

  The next hit dealt real damage to the station. I felt it in the odd dichotomy of sound—a deep, physical rumble and the high squeal of protesting metal. We found out later that it had impacted level 5, the entertainment level. The same level where we’d been seated at the cafe. Although the previous assaults had been silent, this one crashed in our ears as if the world were toppling. In a sense, it was. Shut inside the stairwell, we were shielded from any view of the explosion; the side of the station fragmenting away, pulling suddenly-lifeless bodies along with it, but in my mind’s eye, I knew it was happening. The sound told me we’d been breached, and I knew what happened to living things thrown suddenly into the vacuum of space. I closed my eyes for a moment, shaken and horrified.

  A hissing noise sidled up the stairwell, maleficent as a snake’s warning. Something was leaking in, or leaking out, and neither prospect cheered me in the least.

  “We have to get out of this stairwell,” I said, keeping my voice as steady as I could for the sake of the child.

  “If we get to the top, we might get someone to open the door,” the young man said. He’d climbed shakily to his feet again, still clutching his daughter, and started up the stairs.

  Hirin and I shared a look. We both knew that if the station had been breached, no-one would be able to override the safety lock on these doors.

  I started up, but pressed my ID implant, comming the ship. “Tane Ikai, is there anyone there?”

  “Mother, where are you?” Maja answered instantly. She must have been waiting for us to report in.

  “Stairwell, almost at the docking level,” I said. “But the doors are lock-sealed and I doubt we can get out on our own. And—” I lowered my voice and raised my arm close to my face, speaking into the implant, “—I think the stairwell’s integrity is compromised.”

  “Which stairwell?” That was Rei, her voice flat and efficient.

  “Near A-arm, I think, but I’m not entirely sure.”

  “We’re coming.”

  That was all; no discussion, no panic, no hesitation. We’re coming. I didn’t know what they’d do when they reached us, but I felt a tiny prickle of hope.

  We quickly finished the climb to the landing. Hirin tried the door, although I think we all knew it was a futile gesture. It was as tightly sealed as the one on the habitat level. I saw no movement in the corridor beyond it. By this time everyone who had been trying to gain their ships had made it or given up and taken refuge on another level. The floor here trembled slightly but I thought it wasn’t more attacks—we were close to A-arm, where the Protectorate ships docked, and some of them would still be undocking to engage the enemy. They’d probably been waiting for enough crew to return to the ships.

  “You might as well sit for a minute,” Hirin said to the young man. “You must be ready to drop.”

  Since there was nothing I could do at the door, I turned my attention to our companions. The man looked as pale as milky chai, and his eyes
were wide and wild. The little girl hadn’t loosened her hold on his neck or lifted her own head. He nodded and leaned his back against the wall, then let himself slide down it until he reached the floor. He stretched out his legs and nuzzled his daughter’s hair. “It’s okay, honey,” he murmured, looking at me as if he dared me to call him a liar. I wasn’t prepared to do that.

  I knelt beside them. “My crew is on their way,” I said. I didn’t share my doubts about what they could do. I just wanted him to be as comforted as I was by the thought that someone was coming to help us. I tried to ignore the hissing in the stairwell, growing louder.

  A knock on the door’s viewpane drew my attention. Rei’s face appeared, peering through at us, and she motioned us away from the door. Baden glanced in as well, frowned, and disappeared again. Whatever they had planned, I was ready to comply with their requests.

  “Over this way,” I said, and the young man scooted as far from the door as he could get. He turned his body away from it, curling around the little girl to protect her. Hirin and I pressed ourselves against the far wall, but the stairwell wasn’t all that big to begin with. I hoped Rei and Baden knew what they were doing. I wanted that door open, I wanted out of here—but not at the risk of endangering anyone else. Another external hit jolted the station—smaller this time but still terrifying—and the hissing noise intensified. Or maybe I was just focused on it now. It sounded louder than the still-bleating alarm klaxon. I felt Hirin’s warm hand slide over mine, entwining our fingers. I squeezed. Thank you.

  I half-expected to see curls of smoke issuing from the door, or some other breach of its integrity, but all stayed quiet and still. The suspense was, as they say, killing me. I was keyed up for something big, but nothing happened.

  Until four loud thunks sounded from the door and it swung out into the corridor. Rei’s face appeared, a wide grin stretching and rippling the inky swirls of her pridattii. “Well, what are you waiting for?”