A shudder chilled her bones as she gaped at the rows upon stacked rows of stasis chambers that lined the opposite wall. Most of them were unoccupied, but hundreds of people were locked in a nebulous limbo, unaware of and unable to alter the fate awaiting them.
A couple of mecha tended to the new arrivals or moved equipment around. She didn’t see any Asterions working, but a hallway cut into the center of the left wall. Offices? Labs?
Where did you say this station was located?
The galactic coordinates are l 14° 39’ 51.14” b −19° 00’ 24.25”, but the stellar system is supposed to be undeveloped. No registered activity there.
The register is lying, because there is definitely activity here. The station is storing hundreds of occupied stasis chambers and has room for thousands more, though storage might not be its only purpose.
I’m sure none of its purposes are good.
How big is the station?
One second…1.4 kilometers by 300 meters.
Her gaze swept from corner to corner and did the math. There wasn’t enough space left over for the hallway on the left to contain more than a few small offices or storage rooms. Whatever was being done to the people taken, it wasn’t being done here.
So I was thinking about the escape plan. I could just crash through the force field and free jump it like before.
That’s not funny, Nika.
Hold your position for now. I need to investigate what else is hiding in the station, then I’ll use my ‘ways’ to escape.
Silence answered her.
Come on, that was at least a little funny.
Maybe. But how do you keep such a cavalier attitude while you’re in such terrible danger?
More nerve than good sense? Time to explore.
Two additional ships were docked at the station: the personal craft from SR114-Ichi and, at the far end, a much larger vessel. Larger than the cargo ship by a factor of five, it stretched for nearly a third of the length of the station. And in contrast to the bland, utilitarian shape of the cargo ship, its hull carried the distinctive stylings of an official Asterion Dominion vessel.
What were the odds that this was the Tabiji? Considering the twists and turns her present life and this investigation had taken…pretty damn good.
She waited until a mecha finished crossing the wide central aisle then edged toward the vessel.
The vessel’s ramp was extended, the outer hatch closed but not locked. She welcomed the small favors, but she still had to get the hatch open and herself inside without any of the mecha, dynes or presumed security cams noticing.
Most of the activity on the station centered around the cargo ship and the cargo it brought, but this didn’t help with the security cams—oh, wait! A mirage field. She’d stuck one of the little shells in her pack when they’d left the Wayfarer on SR114-Ichi, because ninety percent of success was preparation. For anything.
She retrieved the shell from the pack at her hip and slowly knelt down onto the ramp, then placed it two meters out from the hatch and activated it. Observers would see the surrounding five meters as they existed at the instant of activation—in other words, a closed hatch. She stood, nudged the hatch open, slipped inside and closed it behind her.
A proper command deck greeted her. Thankfully, also an empty one. But there could be security cams inside as well, so she kept the kamero filter active as she moved with due care toward the systems control area of the bridge.
She’d never been on board a ship like this one. A real starship worthy of the name, where everything from the reinforced hull to the sophisticated instrumentation created a sense of presence, of consequentiality. When a vessel of this ilk cut a swath through the void, the void noticed.
But Nicolette Hinotori had once commanded a generation ship, which meant buried in Nika’s core operating system was knowledge about the operation of such vessels, if knowledge she’d never dreamed she’d need. The encyclopedic files on starships that she’d downloaded before departing Namino should fill in any remaining gaps.
She stood in the center of the bridge and closed her eyes.
§ sysdir(root) § Ηq {∀ ΗΓn (∀ ΗΓn = (‘*ship’ || ‘vessel’) && (‘operation’ || ‘systems’ || ‘control’ || ‘navigation’ || ‘records’) && (DS < Y12,458.A7))}
Results flooded her mind, and she hurriedly initiated a sort-and-prioritize algorithm to impose a bit of order on them.
Then she gazed around the bridge with new eyes.
Comms sat in a half-alcove off to the left. Inside its data banks, she expected to find the ship’s credentials that were broadcast to entities and locations it encountered, like Zaidam Bastille.
She hadn’t planned to be engaging in heavy-duty slicing today, but this was another reason for being eternally prepared. She crouched in front of the comms module and removed its cover. Like most of the ship’s systems, it idled in a low-power state. But it wasn’t shut down, which was good enough. She tapped into a random input node, and in seconds she had the information she needed.
ADV Tabiji, Nebula Class. ID #ADV16-48189C. Captained by Asterion Dominion Advisor Gemina Kail.
Loathing flared at the mere mention of the name. The instrument of the Guides’ reprehensible schemes. A proper archnemesis.
But time was short, and it did not include a break for impotent fuming.
What did she most need to learn? Given the vessel’s identity, a tour of the interior wasn’t apt to tell her much she didn’t already know—that it was outfitted to carry every single one of those stasis chambers in the station’s landing bay plus many more. To where?
That was what she needed to learn.
Historical navigation records should be stored in the ship’s databanks as a matter of course. The ship essentially flew itself, but the captain’s perch included an override mechanism enabling the captain to take manual control. There was also a small navigation station where courses could be visualized, mapped and selected.
She strode to the rear of the bridge and plopped down in the chair at the navigation station, only stopping herself at the last nanosecond from toeing it around in circles. No need for the security cams to decide the ship was haunted.
The wall behind her wasn’t the brushed metal of the interior hull, but instead a non-conductive rubberized material that marked it as server housing. She pried off the section at eye level, followed the exposed photal fibers to an entry point and replaced the fibers with her fingertip.
§ sysdir § Ηq {∀ ΗΓn (∀ ΗΓn = ‘navigation.storerec*’)}
Φ → passcode required:
Fine, be that way….
> → δ {Σ (θn αn βn)} = ΗΓn
→ ∀ ΗΓn (ΗΓn |*>)
Φ → allowable attempts exceeded
§ Ηq
§ αβα
> → if (Ηq = αβα) {Ηq|n0}
→ δ {Σ (αn βn)} = ΗΓn
→ ∀ ΗΓn (ΗΓn |θ>)
> ββθ αθββ αα βθθθα θαβα θθθ ββα θαθθ αβαθβ βαθ βααβ θθθαθ
…
βα θαθ ββθθ αβαα αββα βαα αθβθβ θαβα ββββ βθαα αθ αθβαα
Τ → passcode accepted
§ sysdir § Ηq {∀ ΗΓn (∀ ΗΓn = ‘navigation.storerec*’)}
She pinged Dashiel.
I’m opening a nex transfer path to you. Copy the data I send off onto the data storage drive on our ship.
Understood. What’s the data?
If I’m reading it correctly, the entire travel history of the Tabiji.
Damn, Nika. You will never cease to amaze me. Now please find a way to get out of there so I can demonstrate my appreciation.
She chuckled to herself.
Just a few more minutes.
> copy datafiles (∀ ΗΓn) to Ηq(DRα.storerec.TABIJI1)
What else could she find hidden in the ship’s files? Explicit orders from the Guides detailing the conspiracy and its purpose would be fabulous…she b
acked out from the navigation system into the larger directory structure and scanned its contents, but didn’t see any likely candidates.
A distant thud echoed through the bridge—probably from out in the station, but she instinctively glanced behind her. Suddenly chilled by the bridge’s hollow emptiness and the sense she’d overstayed her welcome, she left behind a burnishing routine to erase the traces created by her slicing and deriving, then exited the system and stood. Where was a good place?
Tucked into a small indentation beside the lift was a beverage dispensing station. It should do nicely.
She went over to it, bent down and attached her last tracker to the far underside of the shelf. Initializing and….
TracUnit #NT5: Galactic Coordinates: l 14° 39’ 51.14” b −19° 00’ 24.25”
I’ll be watching, Advisor Kail.
She went to the hatch and reactivated her x-ray visual sensors. The mecha were almost finished moving the stasis chambers from the cargo ship into the racks, but otherwise the scene was unchanged from when she’d entered the Tabiji. No mecha or dynes patrolled this end of the station, so she slipped out the hatch, closed it and retrieved the mirage field shell.
Time for a legitimate escape plan. Despite her humorous remarks earlier, she really did not want to take a dive off the station and hope Dashiel caught her. She felt confident he would…she genuinely did, and damn but it was a terrific feeling to know she could count on him. But the intervening trip was guaranteed to be a bitch, so a different plan would be better.
The station presumably included one or two space-rated protective suits in its supplies, or the Tabiji did, but she had no idea where she might find them. Finding them would also take too long.
Her eyes fell on the small personal craft that had brought Gemina Kail here from SR114-Ichi.
She smiled.
Gemina glared at everything. The numbers on the pane in front of her, the stasis chambers stacked out in the hangar bay on the other side of one office window, the stars and planets and in-between of space outside the other window. Eight years in, she no longer cared to deny reality: this job, this ‘vital mission’ the Guides had tasked her with?
It sucked.
As an Administration Division Advisor, she’d built a worthy career out of making complex systems run so smoothly most people never noticed the systems were even there. She made things happen when and where they needed to happen, for the benefit and convenience of the government and its citizens alike.
Or she used to.
Now, she’d been forced into the role of magician. Granted, her administrative wizardry could often be mistaken for magic; perhaps she should have clarified to onlookers that any sleight of hand was purely illusory.
She was being asked to conjure eight thousand Asterion bodies where none existed. Fine, where…she checked the data on the pane…1,487 existed. And this included the bounty from two additional outposts.
Prisoner traffic from Mirai to Zaidam had all but stopped. Transfers from the other Axis Worlds and from Adjunct worlds continued, but the volume had fallen way below forecasts on account of NOIR stopping the virutox’s spread in its tracks. Even the people who would normally get arrested without the virutox (i.e., actual criminals) were nowhere to be found. Speculation ran rampant that Zaidam was a death sentence—which it was—and smart people were, shocker of shockers, playing it smart.
She leaned back in her chair and for a change of scenery glared at the ceiling. Time to resign herself to lobbying harder for the Guides to take the pre-awakening option. It wasn’t ideal, she got that. During her tour of the Kiyora One Generations Clinic, Takeda had described what must occur to get the body to the state she sought as ‘flicking the lights on and right back off.’ Yes, it was unfortunate the lights had to be flicked on at all. Life was imperfect, and full of chances to decide between imperfect choices.
And it sucked that lately, she seemed to be the only one making those decisions.
Well, she’d surely exceeded her wallowing quotient for the day by now. She shot the ceiling a final scathing glare and returned her chair to the floor. The cargo from SR114-Ichi had been catalogued, tagged, recorded and stored. Here the stasis chambers would stay, their occupants blissfully unaware, until the time came for another, longer voyage. She needed to get home, where she would try to do her real job for a few days before returning here to Hokan Station to process the next batch.
Gemina shut down the records program, stood and departed the deliberately impersonal office, then took the lift down to the main floor and headed out into the bay.
Dynes triple-checked the security and stability of the new stasis chambers. A complement of mecha moved equipment around in preparation for the next delivery. The Tabiji sat silently at the far end of the bay. And in the landing berth where her personal ship docked…sat nothing.
Where the fuck was her ship?
29
* * *
WAYFARER
Asterion Dominion Space
NIKA LANDED THE BORROWED SHIP on the surface of a small moon orbiting the 2nd planet in the stellar system the station called home. Dashiel arrived seconds after her and set the Wayfarer down a few dozen meters away.
The moon lacked an atmosphere, and after digging around in a few cabinets and drawers she found a portable oxygen mask and air reservoir. While she draped the mask’s strap over her neck, she activated an interactive pane and wrote out a little message for the ship’s owner. Then she opened the hatch and departed.
The ramp to the Wayfarer was already extended. Dashiel stood at the airlock, holding an oxygen mask over his mouth and nose but clearly anticipating dropping it at the first opportunity.
Gravity on the moon was surprisingly strong, and she trudged toward and finally up the ramp at what felt like a glacial pace.
In the time it took her to blink, Dashiel did indeed drop his mask, hit the button to retract the ramp and close the outer hatch, yank her own mask over her head and toss it on the floor, and wrap her up in his arms. His lips met hers with a fierceness she hadn’t experienced since the life-changing night at his place.
“Don’t do that again.” It came out as a harsh whisper, delivered through teeth that scraped along her jaw to her neck.
She cut off whatever further admonitions might have followed by pressing him against the airlock wall and reclaiming his mouth in full. She was still in the climate suit, and they were going to need to rectify that pronto—dammit.
“Wait.” She faltered back a step and held out a hand to stop him from following. “We need to leave here. Kail’s likely to discover her ship is missing any minute now, and she might be able to track its location.”
His shoulders sagged, but he nodded in agreement and headed for the cockpit. “We should blow it up.”
“That would be highly satisfying, but I left her a message instead.”
He spun around in surprise. “What? Nika, she has no reason to believe you were the one who took it, or that you were ever on the station at all. Not unless you tell her.”
Her lips curled up in a devious smile as she peeled the climate suit off to her hips, then shimmied the rest of the way out of it. “Powerful and unafraid. That’s what I must be to her. To the Guides. To Justice. They have to suspect what we’re trying to do out here. Now, they’ll know we’re succeeding.”
“True….” He regarded her with unabashed lust while he reached behind him with one hand and fumbled around for the launch trigger.
“Don’t crash us into the star.”
“Right.” He reluctantly turned his back on her and properly guided the Wayfarer off the moon and back into space.
“There. We’re heading to empty space a few parsecs away.” The next instant his hands were on her once more, following the trail of her undershirt as she tugged it over her head and off. She tuned her sensory receptors to full, and what had been pleasant and enticing caresses transformed into a flood of lascivious sensations.
“You didn’t
agree not to do that again.”
“No, I didn’t.” Her own hands found the hem of his shirt and shoved it upward. “You were warned. This is me. Just because I’m finding a bit of affinity with my former self here and there, it doesn’t change who I am.” She grinned as his face reappeared from beneath his shirt. “Maybe smooths out a couple of rough edges.”
“I’m okay with rough…edges.” One of his hands fisted at the small of her back. The pressure against the cluster of nerves when he urged her closer sent shocks of pleasure rocketing up her spine to fan out across her back as he traced the contours of her tattoo with his other hand. “Who am I kidding, though? You were always fearless. The only difference is, now you have weapons.”
“Mm-hmm.” She purred as his lips grazed down her neck, where each centimeter of skin he left behind cried out for his return. “I missed you.”
He abandoned his journey to draw back a fraction and stare at her, for the briefest second revealing a mosaic of wonder and vulnerability in his eyes before passion consumed them. “I love you.”
His lips crushed hers with the force of a meteor impact, and the fact that he didn’t wait for a response she couldn’t yet give moved her so much she almost wanted to give it.
For now, this would have to be enough.
Her touch.
She unfastened his pants and slipped her hand down them, which evoked a throaty growl as he hoisted her up on the shelf in front of the storage cabinet. Waves of heat radiated off his skin, and her own body temperature rose to match it and reflect it back, creating a pyretic feedback loop.
Her trust.
His hair felt as soft as spun silk when she wound both hands through it. She nibbled on his lower lip like it was fine dessert while his hands gripped her ass and lifted her up, then yanked her underwear off with the violence of a man in need.
Her body.
His lips ghosted over her mouth, the tip of her nose, her eyelashes, her cheeks, then at last back to her mouth as he slipped inside her.
Asterion Noir: The Complete Collection (Amaranthe Collections Book 4) Page 46
