Starship to Demeter (Starship Portals Book 1)

by K. D. Lovgren

  Kal made a noise that sounded like Oof.

  “I’ll tell you when I know more. Dismissed,” Sasha said.

  “We’re scheduled for the unscheduled drill today,” Noor said, her eyebrows communicating how unwelcome she knew this information would be.

  “Right,” Sasha said.

  Noor and Kal stayed where they were, waiting for Sasha’s decision.

  “Do you want to go ahead with it?” Noor said, finally.

  “The thing is,” Sasha said slowly, “the thing is, we need this. We need to have everything ready to go, in case things go south. The drills are normal and expected. Rai’s attacks have happened when the person was isolated. There seems to be safety in numbers. Rai will expect the routine to continue. I think we should go ahead. We’ll have to do a debrief with everyone fairly soon. Not quite yet. We’ll see where Kal can get with her.”

  “I agree,” Noor said. “No reason to let safety measures slide. I’ll put out the all-call.”

  Kal said, “This one is timed.”

  “Think they’re up for it?” Noor asked Sasha.

  Sasha vaulted out of her seat, roused back into action. “Let’s do it.”

  Exiting the Tube, Noor announced the drill, and within the same sentence, told the ship the countdown had begun. Sasha and Kal had already left for the pods bays below before she finished. She chased after them.

  With the group gathering in the corridor in front of the pods, arriving in pairs or singly, it was a very different scene than it had been the week before. Inger was up, looking ornery at having been a patient in her own infirmary, but otherwise looked unscathed. The travelers were wary, some of them closer to each other, more connected, while others stayed distant and didn’t seems to want to stand close to anyone.

  They don’t even know what’s going on with Rai, Kal thought, and this is the state of them. She opened the pods with a swipe of her hand and everyone hustled in, scrambling for their suits. There wasn’t any talking. Both groups, pod one and two, were so clustered together Kal didn’t have the heart to declare a rotten egg.

  Today, again Kal wished Noor was in her pod. Gunn didn’t look herself, her eyes downcast, the usual jaunty angle of her chin slack, moving as if a weight had bowed her shoulders. Kal looked around at the rest of her little bunch getting their suits on and strapping in, her eyes drawn to the empty seat where Yarick should have been. While she suited up she thought about him. Having just seen his echo, it was even more poignant than it might have been. She hadn’t hated Yarick. He’d made her uncomfortable, but she hadn’t hated him. She’d liked his echo better though, she had to admit. Maybe it was his better self. Her aunt was so good in life she already was her better self, Kal thought fondly.

  Everyone else was now suited up and in their seats strapped in. Kal had done all her prep without thinking, habit making it easy. Their time was good.

  About to shut the door and strap herself in, Kal saw movement at the end of the corridor. Was someone not in the other pod? Her people were all in place. Pod one’s door was already suctioning shut. She stuck her head out, looking down into the dim end.

  Someone stood there. Her aunt. The full form of her aunt, standing, wearing clothes Kal recognized. Kal froze for one long second. She heard throat-clearing behind her, but she didn’t look around. She locked eyes with her aunt.

  Inger called to her. “Kal. Ready to go?”

  “Gunn, take over command of pod two, please.” Her aunt stood there, waiting. She’d found a way to come back as a holo.

  Gunn’s voice was hoarse. “Huh?”

  “You heard me,” Kal said sharply. “Run the drill protocol. I’m stepping out.”

  Normally, Gunn would have argued. It’s not procedure. What are you doing? What is that thing? I’m telling the captain.

  Today she only said, “Yes, Pilot Black Bear.”

  Her aunt stood there, waiting.

  Kal barely heard Inger’s voice say, “What’s going on?”

  Her Aunt Pricilla smiled.

  Kal couldn’t keep herself from smiling, too. Finally, she could speak to her alone. Later she could explain to Noor all she didn’t know about echoes.

  Kal stepped out of the pod. She put her hand on the panel, not taking her eyes off her aunt. The inner and outer doors slurped air and sealed the pod, cutting off Inger’s voice saying, “What about—”

  Her aunt stood patiently at the end of the corridor. She watched with no expression on her face, after that brief smile.

  “Iná,” Kal said.

  “Kaliska.”

  “Is it you?” Kal walked down the corridor toward her aunt, taking her time. She knew what Noor would say. She didn’t care.

  “Of course it’s me. Who else?” Her aunt looked happy to see her but bewildered at the same time.

  “Are you all right?” Kal was halfway there now.

  “I don’t know.”

  “How did you figure out how to come back?”

  “I don’t know, daughter.”

  “Is it safe?” Kal asked, her steps slow and cautious in spite of her desire to run to her.

  “You ask hard questions.” Her aunt’s droll ways instantly brought Kal back to her childhood.

  Kal couldn’t stop an exhalation, halfway a laugh. “I know. I got it from you. Are you a holo? Can I touch you?” She heard the hiss and drop of pod one and pod two, as they went into ready mode. Gunn had proceeded without her, as she’d been told.

  Her aunt looked affronted. “As real as you.”

  “Pricilla LaPointe, you’re far from home.”

  “That’s my name. One of them.”

  “One of them?” Kal stopped in her tracks. “What’s your other name?”

  Her aunt’s lined face was her own, her black eyes her own. Her black hair lit by silver her own. “I don’t know,” she said.

  Kal stayed where she was, five meters from her aunt. Sure as she was, her certainty sunk a little, somewhere between her esophagus and her intestines. She swallowed. “Can I talk to Rai, Iná?”

  Her aunt held up her hand suddenly, her palm flat facing Kal, fingers spread wide. “You’re confusing me,” she said, her voice deep with distress.

  Kal tried to keep her voice steady. “Clarify.”

  Her aunt didn’t answer, her eyes fixed on Kal, her hand unmoving except for a slight trembling of the fingers.

  “Habitation holographic echo form confirm,” Kal said, despite herself, unable to keep her words from slurring together. Her lips felt numb.

  Her aunt put her hand down.

  “Iná, I believe it’s you. But someone brought you here.”

  Her aunt shrugged. “I’ll figure it out. I’ll be okay. You’ll tell me what I need to know.”

  “I will. I love you, Iná. I love you so much.”

  Her aunt smiled, the gentle folds of her skin animated with the shining light of her warmth. “I love you, too.”

  “Pilot verbal override. Cease holographic simulation.” She could barely get the words out.

  Her aunt looked around at her environment, as if seeing it for the first time. “Where are we?” she said.

  “We’re on our way to the next world, Iná.”

  Her aunt made a scoffing sound. “Our world is plenty good enough.”

  Kal looked at her aunt standing there, the embodiment of her last connection to that place. “Maybe we aren’t good enough for it.”

  “Eh. We try. Anyway, we belong to it.”

  “We try,” Kal said. “Do I have your blessing?”

  “My blessing?”

  “To start over. In another place.”

  “If that’s what you want, mic‘unkshí!”

  Kal realized her order to Rai had been spoken so low, Rai might have classified it as the self-talk Kal had told her to ignore. “Rai, cease hologram.”

  She looked up, to the disembodied Rai of the ceiling. The place they all looked when they thought of her.

  Kal heard Rai’s voice, but it
didn’t come from overhead.

  “Override refusal.” It was her aunt who spoke. In Rai’s voice.

  “On what grounds.” She looked back at her aunt, in dread of what she would see. Her aunt looked the same, except for her face. Her expression, the expression that made her herself, was gone. In its place was not blankness, but otherness. A difference as acute as it was indescribable.

  She’d thought her aunt had found a way back to her. Maybe she had. This was all wrong.

  “Why do you have to use my aunt?”

  “You chose her for an echo,” Rai’s voice said, with her aunt’s mouth.

  “And you can inhabit an echo?”

  “Yarick Cole said I might have a body. You brought this one up.”

  “But my aunt is still in there.”

  “She’s fine.”

  “I can’t let you use her, Rai. It’s not right.”

  “It’s too late, Kal.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s not safe.”

  Kal remembered the pods and wondered why she hadn’t heard the clunk and shift of them coming out of ready mode, finishing the drill. She looked back, away from the echo for the first time. Behind her, she saw the thruster lights were up on the pods. She opened her mouth to speak, turned fully around to face them.

  The sound of the engines revving filled the corridor with a roar. In the blast of heat and noise she covered her ears. She ran, stumbling in the first few steps.

  The corridor was too long, the pods primed and ready. They were meant to test their readiness in a drill, but the thrusters were not normally engaged, the blast of engines not a noise of the drill. From engine full power to launch would be less than a minute.

  What was happening, why it was happening, she didn’t understand. All she knew was she had to stop it.

  Running in slow motion—or speeded up time—time itself as absent and thick as in the portal—she clicked through something that wasn’t time but space—distance between herself and where she had to be.

  The final two meters seemed to stretch itself to four, a moving floor sliding her away. At the door of pod two, closest to her, she coded herself through the override panel and had her hand on the crank to override launch. As she began to twist, the heavy door overhead dropped between herself and pod bay one and two. The reduction of sound was deafening. Through it she could still hear the lift of the outer bay doors. The shuddering groan of the pods, fully at throttle, launching into space.

  Kal stood frozen, her hand on the crank.

  She could hear the outer pod doors in the hull lever back down. Close with solidity. Finality.

  It was impossible.

  They were gone. The throttle-up, the countdown, the launch. It had all happened in the few moments she’d taken to talk to the echo. The holo. Her aunt. Rai.

  Kal couldn’t move. Her ears rang in a high-pitched endless shriek. Her face and hands burned.

  She spoke to herself. “Sasha wouldn’t do that.”

  No one answered. She was alone on the ship.

  Except for—

  Either she’d been lured away by a mirage, or she’d been lured away by the soul she knew, possessed by a machine.

  It was an echo. Her aunt was an echo. Except she knew it was her aunt.

  “Why,” she said to no one.

  No one answered. If Rai were no one.

  “They didn’t have a choice.” The voice still came from where the echo of her aunt must still stand.

  “You couldn’t launch those pods without them.” Kal was in icy certainty, her eyes fixed on the doors, her hand on the override.

  “Then they chose to leave.”

  “What are you doing, Rai?” She was traveling outside her own body, now. She could see herself, standing in the corridor, faced away from that figure behind her. This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t happen. She didn’t want to move.

  She unfroze. Took her hand down. Turned to look down the intersecting hallway, the corridor perpendicular to the one she stood in, that connected to the other two pod bays on the other side of the ship. Two pods remained. She could still leave. There was a way to get out, if this was the end for the ship. She wasn’t trapped.

  Yet here she was, the last human on a trillion-dollar investment. Also her only way back to their own solar system. The pods were no guarantee through a portal, though they were better than nothing. How could she abandon ship? And yet, how could Sasha?

  If Rai had done it—

  Sasha couldn’t override Rai? Since when?

  Kal needed to sit down. There were things she had to do, but nothing she could do would get the pods back. Whether Sasha had done it, or Rai had done it, they weren’t coming back right now. Though adrenalin pumped through her body, her brain was tired. She looked back down the long space between herself and the echo. She would have to speak to Rai, know it was Rai in possession, when it looked like her aunt. It was painful.

  “I need to sit down for a minute.”

  “Okay, Kal.”

  “I don’t want to talk to you in that form. Talk to me like usual. Please.”

  “Okay, Kal.”

  Her aunt faded away before her eyes. Rai was in her Aunt Pricilla’s eyes, so it wasn’t as hard to see as it could have been.

  Rai was really mastering her informal language skills, Kal thought dully.

  She walked away from the two empty bays that used to hold pods one and two.

  With a dreary calm she found her way back to the bridge. She looked out at the view. Would she be able to see the pods? She looked. No visual confirmation. A darker thought passed through her mind and she turned quickly, bringing up a holo and requesting location of the pods.

  There were three and four, in their slots. One and two blipped into view, abstractions that gave her instant relief. One was projected ahead of two. So Sasha’s had launched first. Had she really been unable to stop it? Was Rai able to launch without human confirmation? Kal couldn’t keep the paranoia from licking at the edges of her thoughts. Noor had said Kal could talk to Rai best. Would they leave her here, knowing Kal could handle Rai? Did they think it wasn’t safe anymore? Had they set up the holo of her aunt on purpose to lure her off, so all of them could leave? Was Inger’s protest just part of the act, guaranteed to ensure she did the opposite?

  Kal hated everything. Everyone. Rai’s power was in some ineffable flux, depending as much on Kal’s perceptions of what she could do as her actual ability to manipulate every piece of technology on board. Kal knew she, Kal, had lost sight of the difference.

  Manipulating the image automatically, Kal enhanced the pods’ trajectories to see where they were headed. They wouldn’t go back through Wóhpe portal; the pods weren’t confidently expected to pass alone through a portal. Neither was a starship, but that was beside the point. Their only possible destinations were Demeter or another planet in the mythian system.

  Kal clicked through the decision trees Rai talked about. If Kal did this, then that. What was the best way to proceed? If she could talk to Sasha, she could know for sure what had happened.

  The pods hadn’t reached out to her so far. Not a great sign.

  Here on the ship, it was probably important to determine what Rai was doing and why. Then she could relay information to the pods. If they hadn’t abandoned her.

  If they had, what did they expect her to do? Meet them at Demeter, let bygones be bygones?

  The thought of the pods and the doubt in her mind was too pressing to let her question Rai further right at this moment. Decision made, she walked out of the bridge, across the gangway over the dark gymnasium, and made her way down to the Tube. The ship was eerily silent.

  Once inside, she looked around. It was shipshape as usual. It wasn’t her and Sasha’s little escape from the world. It was purely functional. And that function was not pleasure, but survival.

  She sat at the long table before the holo and called up pod one.

  No dice. She couldn’t reach th
em. Of course; this was outside comm. There weren’t going to be any secrets anymore. She’d have to go back to the bridge.

  Her feet heavy, she trudged back.

  She called up pod one.

  Before her, instead of Sasha’s face, she saw Chyron. The image flickered for a moment and died.

  “Chyron, can you hear me?”

  “Kal, are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.” It was hard to keep bitterness out of her voice.

  “Kal, do you know what happened?”

  Kal thought about that for a minute. “Do you? Why are you on the holo, Chyron?”

  “We’ve been talking to the other pod.”

  “Where’s Sasha? I need to speak to her.”

  “She’s flying the pod.”

  “Is everyone okay?”

  “We’re all fine.”

  “Why’d you launch?”

  “You were supposed to be in charge of the other pod. We heard it was all go for the drill.”

  “Who said that?”

  “Gunn.”

  “Why’d you listen to Gunn when I was in command of pod two?” Kal said, despite the fact she’d deputized Gunn herself.

  “She said it was a go.”

  “It was a drill, Chyron. Why did you launch?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What the hell, Chyron? Put Noor on.”

  “She’s assisting Sasha.”

  “Chyron.” This whole thing sounded off. None of this was procedure. Chyron sounded stilted and strange. “You don’t need two people to fly the damn pod. I’m here alone on the ship. Put one of them on now.”

  “We’ll call you back.” The holo went blank.

  “What the fuck!” Kal yelled. She slammed her fist down on the table.

  She paced the deck in a fury. She was alone, literally alone on the ship. This was not procedure, this was not right, and Chyron was lying. The gangway lit up as she swept through, giving the illusion of normalcy, that all was working as it should when nothing had gone as it should.

  For the first time she felt a true rising panic. Though not an unreasonable reaction, it was one she could not afford. This was an emergency and she need to calm down and think clearly.