Nearspace Trilogy

by Sherry D. Ramsey

  In the moment, I’d been thinking the way I would if I had any of my usual companions with me—people without the benefit of microscopic internal surgeons ready to go to work and fix things. If I’d had any of my crew with me, a broken ankle would have been a real impediment. Luta, however, only needed some time. If Jahelia Sord’s injuries weren’t too severe, and Sedmamin was all right, we could get them back to the pickup spot.

  “What about Sedmamin? Any sign of him?”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t see him. I managed to drag Sord here so we’d have some cover, but the smoke was too thick.”

  “Okej, this is a good place for you to hunker down and wait for the crew to come and get us,” I said. “You called them?”

  Luta made a rueful face. “They should have been notified when I blacked out, thanks to a little something Baden set up in my implant a while back. I tried a direct call anyway. No response.”

  “What?” I pulled back my sleeve and activated my implant; we’d synced it to the Tane Ikai’s comm system when I’d come on board. “Hirin? Baden? Anybody listening? We need immediate pickup.”

  I waited, counting heartbeats, but there was no response. I frowned at Luta. “What’s wrong with it?”

  She shrugged wearily. “Your guess is as good as mine. Something’s wrong with the ship and they can’t answer; our implants were damaged in the accident; something triggered a communications block on the planet or this area; maybe they hear us but we’re just not getting their response. Take your pick.”

  “Doesn’t seem likely that both of our implants were damaged,” I said. “But maybe they’re on the way.”

  “Maybe,” she said, but she didn’t sound convinced. “I think we should proceed on the assumption that there’s no help coming from that quarter any time soon.”

  “All right. I’ll look for Sedmamin.” I risked standing up for a look around.

  The groundcar lay on its side ten metres from us. Two tires looked intact, the other two buried in the sand. It looked like the drone had hit the back end a glancing blow, so there was twisted metal and a hole where the storage compartment used to be. I thought we could probably get it moving again. Righting it on my own would be a challenge, but if we could get it upright, we might be able to drive out of here. The question, however, was where to go? On toward the mountain, or back to our rendezvous point? And would someone—Chron, PrimeCorp, or other unfriendlies—come looking and simply follow our tracks in the sand?

  On the other hand, if we stayed here, they were just as likely to investigate. No good options.

  I surveyed the area. The ruins were just that—ruined. They offered no place we could shelter under or inside. I might be able to rig up some kind of roof or shade if there was a tarp in the groundcar, but again, it would make us too obvious for anyone looking. I had to do better than that.

  But first I had to find Sedmamin. Keeping low again, I scuttled over to the groundcar. If he’d been trapped underneath it, it wouldn’t be pretty.

  Fortunately, he was on the other side, sprawled on his stomach, his injured arm flung out to the side. I watched for a moment, trying to decide if he was breathing, and saw his hand twitch. I crossed to him and knelt in the sand, putting a hand on his shoulder.

  “Sedmamin,” I said. “Wake up. I want to get you out of the open.”

  He groaned and moved his head. “Fek,” he managed. “I’m going to kill Sord for this.”

  “Not her fault,” I said. “She probably saved all our lives.”

  “Well, I want to kill someone,” he said, cradling his injured arm as he tried to get to a sitting position. “Maybe Regina Holles. If it wasn’t for her I wouldn’t even be here.”

  I almost laughed, thinking what fun Regina, a zelendu master, would have physically kicking Sedmamin’s azeno, probably even with her broken leg. Keeping that to myself, I helped Sedmamin to his feet and led him, hunched over to protect his injured arm, to where Luta and Jahelia waited.

  Should we still try to make the short trek to the forest and get in under its sheltering green canopy? The vegetation that sharply demarcated the edge of the desert was thick, verdant, and looked imposingly dense. We couldn’t guess what kind of wildlife it sheltered, or how deadly or unwelcoming it might be. Still, we did have weapons, and we’d be out of the sun and away from prying eyes.

  And probably totally lost within hours.

  Frustrated, I looked down at Luta. She’d closed her eyes. The pain in her ankle must be fierce, but she must have felt my eyes on her and looked up. She smiled.

  “Pain’s already fading,” she said.

  “You’ll feel better soon,” I said. Even though it hardly mattered now what he knew about us, I hesitated to mention the nanobioscavengers in front of Sedmamin. Old habits, I guess. I squatted beside her. She put a hand to my face gently, and when she took it away it was bloodied.

  I put a hand where hers had been and felt the wet heat, although it already felt sticky, congealing. “Damne, I didn’t realize,” I said.

  “Here.” She reached inside her jacket and pulled out the hem of her t-shirt, then ripped a strip free. She passed the makeshift cloth to me and I wiped and blotted my face as best I could. It stung a little, and more blood than I’d expected came away, so I had to imagine that mother’s little machines were hard at work in me, too.

  I tried to hand the cloth back to Luta but she held up a hand. “Please,” she said with a smile that was only half grimace, “just keep it.”

  I smiled back and pocketed it. “Now, as long as Sord’s injuries aren’t extensive,” I said, “we should be able to move her once you’re feeling stronger. Sedmamin can’t help much with that arm of his, but we can manage her together.”

  Something passed over Luta’s face, a look I couldn’t parse.

  “What?”

  She pulled a sigh and looked at Sedmamin again, but he’d leaned his head back against the low wall and had his eyes closed. “We probably don’t have to worry about Sord,” she whispered.

  “What? Why not?” I looked down at Jahelia in confusion. For a moment, I thought Luta meant the other woman had died, but the soft rise and fall of her chest was evident.

  “Jahelia Sord has more in common with us than you’d think,” Luta said, still keeping her voice low. “Her father worked with Mother. She’s only a couple of years younger than we are. As in, actual age.”

  I felt my throat go dry and tried to swallow, but it was as if I had taken in a mouthful of the dust and sand that swirled around us. We weren’t the only ones?

  I’d encountered many things in my years at the Protectorate, things shocking, gruesome, frightening, unbelievable. But this made the world tilt. I felt my legs go watery and leaned a hand against the ruined half-wall, hoping Luta wouldn’t see.

  “H—how did you find out?” I had to force my voice past what felt like a gritty blockage in my throat.

  Luta looked out across the expanse of sand separating us from the trees. She shrugged. “She told me, when we were stranded in Otherspace. Her parents had them, too, and both died. Her mother first, and then her father. They didn’t have the same generation, the same prototype, and her father didn’t have the means to keep updating his research and creating new versions. Eventually they failed.”

  I gestured to Jahelia. “What about hers?”

  Luta looked down at the still-unconscious woman. “I think—and Mother thinks—she’s due for upgrades. Mother’s willing to provide them. But I haven’t convinced Jahelia yet that it’s necessary.” She quirked a smile. “She’s as stubborn as an Erian snowcat, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  Before I could answer, Jahelia Sord’s dark brown eyes flickered open. “I’m right here, you know. Ouch. Merde, what’s wrong with my head?” Her hand came up to gingerly touch the matted spot. Luta reached out and caught her wrist.

  “I think a piece of flying stone caught you there,” she said. “It’s probably healing now, because the bleeding stopped pretty
quickly. But don’t touch it until we’re sure it’s closed, okej?”

  Jahelia dropped her hand obediently.

  “How do you feel, otherwise?” Luta asked her.

  After a moment of cautious consideration, Jahelia said, “All right. Nothing feels broken or otherwise in need of repair.” She gasped. “Pita?”

  Luta reached into the folds of the rolled-up jacket and pulled out the datapad. She handed it to Jahelia with a grin. “A few scratches, but she’s still functional.”

  “I am, thank you, Captain,” Pita said.

  Jahelia sat up and brushed dust and sand from her arms. “The more I encounter them, the more I think those Chron are complete bastardos.”

  “Huh. You think the Chron are responsible for the drones? I thought it was PrimeCorp.”

  “Seems to be less difference between them all the time.”

  I held out a hand to her to help her to her feet. She hesitated for a heartbeat and then took it. After divesting herself of more accumulated dust and sand, she turned to offer Luta a hand.

  “Not yet.” She pointed to her ankle. “I—twisted it, but it’s starting to feel a lot better now. Another half hour or so and I should be able to stand on it.”

  Jahelia nodded and flicked her eyes toward Sedmamin. “Technology comes in handy at times like this,” she said.

  “Have you had many times like this?” I heard myself ask.

  She turned amused eyes on me and grinned. “More than you might imagine,” she said. “Maybe sometime I’ll tell you about them.”

  I felt the beginnings of an inexplicable flush on the back of my neck and turned to look at the overturned groundcar. “We’re not getting a response from the ship. If that thing’s still usable, we could follow the treeline and see how close to the mountain it takes us. Might as well see what we can.”

  She scanned the surroundings and considered the groundcar. “Not a bad idea. Can we flip it over?”

  I’d thought Luta might help me, but Jahelia seemed just as capable. “Sure. Luta, you’re all right here for a minute?”

  She grinned and lifted the laser pistol from the sand beside her, saluting me with it. “I’m not going anywhere. And I’ve got this. I’ll be fine.”

  I stuck my own pistol in the waistband of my pants. The groundcar didn’t look any better than it had a few minutes ago, but I didn’t see any additional damage. We were fortunate that we’d all been thrown clear enough to avoid being crushed when it overturned. We trudged across to it, our feet sinking in the dislodged sand. The dust and smoke were clearing some and we had better visibility of the area around us.

  When we reached the vehicle, I kicked dirt and sand away from the two buried tires. If they were busted, righting it wouldn’t help. Jahelia Sord walked in circles around the groundcar, head down to scan the ground. Looking for her lost rifle, I realized.

  Luck was with us and the two exposed tires looked intact. “I think we’re good if we can turn it over,” I said. “Just be careful around the rear. Lot of sharp edges there.”

  She abandoned her search and came over to me, taking up a position on the upper side of the vehicle and putting her hands on the roof edge. “Count of three?” she asked.

  I nodded and made the count, and we pushed. The groundcar wobbled and lifted a bit, then settled back into the sand.

  “Okay, that was just a test, right?” she said with a grin. “We can do better.”

  “Of course, we can.”

  I dug my feet into the soft ground for better purchase and counted again. This time it came up about halfway, but then slid away from us and we had to let it drop back.

  “Bastardo!” Jahelia swore under her breath, then turned those brown eyes on me and grinned. “Swear a little yourself, it’s a great stress reliever. I’ll pretend I don’t hear if it makes you more comfortable.”

  “We’ll get it this time,” I said. “Ready?”

  “Whenever you are, Protectorate,” she said, rubbing the palms of her hands on the smudged and dirty thighs of her pants.

  And this time we did make it, and the groundcar rose, teetered for a moment, and then tipped over onto all four wheels, landing with a little bounce. Sand poured from the side that had been half-buried, then trickled off.

  I glanced over at Luta and she gave us the thumbs-up. She still wasn’t testing her ankle, which indicated unusual patience and good sense for my often impetuous sister. Either that, or it was still giving her a lot more pain than she was letting on, and the nanobioscavs were going to take longer to set her right.

  Jahelia Sord walked slowly around the groundcar, inspecting it. “Banged up some, but it doesn’t look too bad,” she said. “If it starts.”

  “One way to find out.” I climbed inside as Jahelia began kicking through the sand where the groundcar had lain—still looking for her rifle, I assumed. The electric motor hummed to life after only a slight delay, and I turned to catch Jahelia grinning at me. In her hand, she held the missing rifle.

  “Maybe our luck is changing,” she said, and swung herself up into the seat beside me.

  “It’ll have to change a whole hell of a lot,” I said.

  “Then it’s a good thing I found my lucky gun,” she said.

  “Didn’t you just get that out of the weapons locker on the ship before we came down here?” I asked.

  “Doesn’t mean it’s not lucky,” she said, and had the audacity to wink at me. “Let’s go collect your sister and Sedmamin, and see what’s inside that mountain.”

  Chapter 22 – Luta

  Discovery and Unmasking

  I GRITTED MY teeth as the groundcar lurched across a particularly rock-strewn stretch of sandy earth. I wasn’t letting on to the others, but my ankle throbbed alarmingly even as my nanobioscavengers worked (I hoped) to heal the break. It must have been bad, because usually the small amounts of chemical nerve-blockers they’ll construct are enough to reduce the pain to manageable levels. I tried to ignore it and keep my eyes on all sides, watching for more drone attackers.

  Alin Sedmamin grunted in the back seat beside me as the groundcar hit another half-buried obstacle and bounced on its tires. He cradled his injured arm, even though it still bore the yellow plasticast. “Must we go this fast?” he snapped at Lanar. It was a ridiculous question, but pain made his voice harsh.

  My brother didn’t answer, but Jahelia Sord turned to look at Sedmamin over her shoulder. “Unless you can guarantee that there aren’t anymore drone surprises waiting for us, I don’t think we want to hang out here in the open.”

  Sedmamin didn’t answer, just pressed his lips together and didn’t meet Jahelia’s eyes. I expected this was all quite a kick in the teeth for him, to learn that there were so many things PrimeCorp had done without his knowledge, even though he’d ostensibly been the head of the entire corporation. If I believed him about his ignorance. I wasn’t entirely sure.

  One way to find out, I thought. “So, you didn’t know anything about this base?” I asked him over the jouncing of the groundcar.

  “Not until recently,” he said, and his voice held a grim simmer of anger.

  “But you must have known PrimeCorp had a big secret,” I pressed.

  He barked a laugh. “Everything at PrimeCorp was a big secret,” he said. “Even I didn’t know how big.”

  “But the collaboration with the Chron?” I said, as the green of the forest flashed by to our right. “That’s huge. I don’t see how you couldn’t have known about that.”

  Sedmamin kept his eyes on the mountain ahead of us. “Not all that long ago I learned we had some Chron tech. That sometimes we could get something from it, reverse engineer some ‘innovation’ and pass it off as original work. But PrimeCorp had that project underway long before I came on the scene, remember. I was told it was technology or artifacts that we’d acquired during the Chron War, and simply never reported to the Nearspace Authority. Questionable, but nothing to get too excited about.”

  He looked at me. I shrugge
d. “The Authority might disagree with that, but compared to some of the things PrimeCorp has done, failing to report spoils of war is tame.”

  Sedmamin went on. “That sector operated entirely separate from the rest of the corporation, and that’s the way it had always been. They were described as a research branch, and there was the understanding that what they ‘researched’ was old Chron technology. But I realize now that anyone who got too interested was quietly diverted until they lost interest. I think that being Chairman looked like the top job at PrimeCorp, but it was still far below these people. They held the single most important asset and secret the corporation had, and they protected it against everyone else.”

  There was a sharp, bitter edge to his voice that surprised me. But Alin Sedmamin prided himself on being a master manipulator. It must have been the most bitter pill imaginable to realize he had been the one manipulated. That he wasn’t trusted with the most vital secret of the corporation he fondly thought he controlled.

  I almost felt sorry for him.

  We stopped talking as the mountain loomed closer and Lanar slowed the groundcar. Everyone was on the alert now, listening for the low hum of more drones and watching for movement ahead of us or behind. Even the dense forest felt like it held many eyes silently watching us.

  “No tracks along this trail,” Lanar said over his shoulder, addressing all of us. “No recent groundcars, or footprints, or any other kind of vehicle or movement from this direction.”

  “Maybe the entrance isn’t on this side,” Jahelia said.

  “No,” I said, pointing ahead. “There it is.” I’d just seen it, in a dark recess under an enormous overhang of rock. A giant entry door. No detail at this distance, but it was tall and too smooth to be a natural rock face. Metal, painted to blend in with the mountain. “Look how well that would be hidden from above, too. You’d never notice it unless you were down here on the ground.”

  Lanar brought the groundcar to a halt and flipped open the console between the two front seats. He rummaged inside and brought out a miraculously undamaged zoomlens. He studied the mountain through it for a moment and then handed it over to Jahelia. I tried not to feel wounded that he hadn’t offered it to me first.