by TJ Berry
“Bah. Useless.”
“Are you looking for someone?”
“No. I’m looking for the human race to go extinct.” The troll whirled back out of the room, smacking into the door frame on the way out. Gary saw bare and weeping patches where his thick hide had been stripped away for making decorative purses for wealthy humans.
“I could help you,” said Gary. The troll turned around, bending over to fit in the doorway.
“How could you help me?” asked the troll, gesturing toward Gary’s disintegrated legs.
“My blood,” said Gary, keenly aware that it was already working overtime trying to grow him half a body. Nonetheless, he felt the need to offer.
“I would be foolish not to accept,” said the troll. He handed Gary a knife from his tool belt. Gary ran it down his palm. It stung, but he’d done this enough in his lifetime that it was more of an annoyance than truly painful.
Silver blood welled in his cupped hand. The troll moved closer and Gary smeared it onto the stripped area. It sank into his flesh and spread with a shimmery glow. The troll caught his breath and tilted back his head.
It always secretly pleased Gary to see the reaction that various creatures had to the healing properties of his blood. Some of them felt a sting, some felt euphoria, and some flat-out got high. The troll seemed to be trending in that direction. His breath came fast and hard as the blood worked through his limbs. Gary wiped the last of what was in his hand on the spot. His cut had already healed. He sheathed the knife and handed it back to the troll.
The troll shuddered for a moment, then shook out his matted hair and let out a single loud laugh. It echoed throughout the building.
“That is amazing. I cannot thank you enough for such a precious gift,” said the troll, smiling wide.
Not all things in the universe could be fixed in an instant, but when they could it made Gary feel incredibly satisfied. A light appeared in the darkness of his world.
He clapped his hand on the troll’s arm. “At your service,” he said. “If there are others who need assistance, bring then to me.”
“You’re the one who’s supposed to be healing,” said Kaapo leaning in the doorway.
The troll excused himself and slid past her.
“Thank you for pulling me out,” said Gary. “I would not have survived if you hadn’t come back for me.”
“Thank Unamip,” she said. “He told me to go back for you. Anyway, your father was here last night but he went back up to your place for meetings. He said he’ll be back later this morning.” Gary pushed himself to the edge of the bed.
“Can you help me get back to the fortress? I don’t need to be hospitalized,” he said.
“Gary, no. Just stay here until you have legs again.”
“I have a message for my father,” he said.
“I’ll deliver it,” said Kaapo. “Angels are great at sharing news. I can even find a horn to herald it.”
“Go as fast as you can, and speak to no one on the way. Tell my father the humans have arrived.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Five Unicorn Flush
Jenny decided that having Kamis inside her head was really not all that bad. He wasn’t intrusive and didn’t interrupt or attempt to take over her body, which was better than some girlfriends she’d had. In some cases, he was actually kind of helpful. Like when she miscounted rations while doing a quick inventory and he supplied her with the correct numbers.
You aren’t very careful, he said.
“Nope,” she agreed. “Mary, how many ships are in the cargo hold?” she asked.
“Seventeen,” replied the ship.
“Why would they bother capturing a bunch of small ships? No one has horn,” she asked out loud to both her ship’s AI and her elf ghost parasite, whoever felt like answering first.
“I don’t know,” said Mary. “They already have a better ship.”
The Reason is in an information-and-resource-gathering phase before their full-on assault on the Bala. If they divide up their horn and put necromancers onto these ships, all of them will be able to navigate to the Bala and attack, said Kamis.
At the mention of necromancers, Jenny’s mind flashed to an image of Bào sealed in his protective ball, floating off into openspace. She regretted having let him go while she was under attack. Given the state of the Reason these days, she wasn’t sure whether to hope that had survived or perished.
That memory is of Bào Zhú, said Kamis. One of the great necromancers of all time. I hope, for your sake, that you did not allow him to float away into openspace like your memory shows.
“I might have,” said Jenny. “It wasn’t as if I had a choice. It was him or Gary.”
Bào will not forget that choice, said Kamis.
“Great. Just what I need. More beings tagging me with a death wish,” said Jenny. Her mind flashed on Gary, just for a second.
You have a complex relationship with Gary Cobalt, said Kamis.
“Yeah,” she said.
It speaks well of you, that you’re able to hold two competing thoughts in your head at the same time and function in light of both of them. Most humans are dedicated to a binary, beings must be black or white, male or female, when we know that beings are fluid and nuanced, filled with contradictions and complexities. That is our beauty and we must work to accommodate every being within the spectrum of life, said Kamis.
Jenny nodded. Gary was indeed not just one thing or another.
“What did the Reason take from our ship?” Jenny asked Mary.
“They took the unicorn horn from the drive and a copy of my logs. They noted how much food and water was in storage, but left both in place for the moment.”
They’re assembling resources for a battle, said Kamis.
“Agreed,” said Jenny.
“I’m sorry, what are you agreeing with?” asked Mary.
“I’m talking to Kamis,” said Jenny.
“Great,” said Mary flatly.
“Don’t be jealous,” said Jenny.
“I just want you to remember that I kept you company for six weeks before Kamis came on board and also I didn’t haunt you like a ghost and stalk you around the ship trying to take over your body,” complained Mary.
“Just because you want a body and Kamis got one first, don’t be mad at him,” replied Jenny.
Mary didn’t speak to her for nearly ten minutes after that. Jenny used the quiet time think about how to get her piece of horn back and disable the Kilonova. Now that she was getting better at tracking, she didn’t need a Reason necromancer to direct her toward the Bala. Thankfully, her piece of horn probably wasn’t in their FTL drive yet. Only an idiot would open a drive cabinet while it was powered up.
You could use your necromancer abilities to disable the ship, said Kamis. You wouldn’t even need to be near the FTL drive. You could do it from quite far away.
“That’s not in my skillset,” said Jenny.
You forget that I am living inside your entire being, said Kamis. I feel every part of you, especially the parts that can use nullspace energy. Ever since we dropped into the null, your cells have been humming with power.
Jenny had to admit that she felt better in nullspace, stronger and more confident. She did things in here that she would never contemplate in openspace.
“If I can break their external navigational beacon, it will cause them to drop out of FTL to fix it,” she said. “Then I can get the horn out of their drive too. With that much fuel, I can definitely find Kaila.
But they already have the location of the Bala planet, said Kamis. They’ll find it eventually.
“No,” said Jenny. “The necromancers give them a general heading, but it’s the navigational beacon that coordinates the jumps through nullspace into forward motion. Without it, the ship just hops around in a random pattern. On stoneships the ship itself sets the path by talking to the null. On Reason ships the two can’t communicate, so the ship has to do it with massive computers
that compile data in real time via the beacon and determine where the next jump should take them. They only know the next few jumps, not the final destination.”
You know a lot about this, said Kamis.
“As a captain, it was my job to know a lot about this,” replied Jenny. “Otherwise people die.”
This will be a good test of your precision with nullspace energy, said Kamis. You’re simply going to reach outside of the Kilonova and pluck off the beacon.
“I don’t know how to do that,” said Jenny.
I’ll show you.
“Just tell me.”
Kamis did an elvish eye roll, which was just like a regular eye roll but above sharper cheekbones.
Grab the energy and use it as an extension of your reach. As if you were locked inside of a larger version of yourself that mimicked your every motion, said Kamis.
“Like an energy mecha,” said Jenny.
Exactly.
It sounded so simple. No one had ever explained necromancy in terms that made sense before. She’d always heard of concentration and being one with the world. The only thing Jenny wanted to be one with right now was her missing wife. Using nullspace energy as a giant invisible mecha to extend her reach and strengthen her grasp sounded bloody freaking awesome.
“I get it,” she said. “Mary, can you tap into the Kilonova’s external camera feeds?”
“Working, Captain,” said Mary. She was still angry.
The viewscreen lit up with a picture of the hazy expanse of nullspace, then flickered to a different view that showed the Kilonova transiting through it.
“Forward camera down near the lower decks,” said Jenny.
“Yes, ma’am,” said Mary.
“Stop it,” said Jenny.
“Stop what, Captain? I’m merely following your orders,” said Mary in a monotone.
I like her better this way, said Kamis.
The viewscreen flicked to the correct feed. Jenny saw the navigational beacon pointed down and away from the bottom deck of the ship – just a small antenna-like protrusion.
Very little force, said Kamis. You merely need to pop the beacon off. Put a minimal amount pressure onto the joint between the ship and the mounting. Once you get a feel for the right amount of pressure to use, wrench them apart.
Jenny let her fingers dangle by her side. She splayed her fingers, like she’d seen other necromancers do. It did help her get a feel for the currents of energy that were flowing past, but it felt awkward and ridiculous. She imagined an arm made of energy extending from hers, reaching out toward the beacon at the bottom of the ship. She wrapped the invisible hands of her energy mecha around the beacon.
Good. Now gently pull, said Kamis.
Jenny hesitated.
“This feels silly. I don’t think it’ll do anything,” she said. Just try. If it does nothing, we can attempt something else, said Kamis.
“All right,” said Jenny with skepticism.
Pull, said Kamis.
Jenny pulled and the bottom deck of the Kilonova came off. Most of it came off in a single large chunk. Dozens of smaller bits burst outward from the sudden release of pressure. Debris soared out into the null and bodies flew past the camera.
“Oh my gods,” said Jenny, clapping her hands over her mouth.
Alarms sounded all around her. Pounding boots and shouting voices rang out in the cargo hold surrounding the Stagecoach Mary. She felt the ship drop out of nullspace as the energy around her was suddenly a fraction of what it was before.
“I didn’t mean to–” said Jenny through her fingers.
That was not what I… said Kamis, trailing off.
“I did what you said. I did exactly what you bloody well told me to do,” said Jenny.
Kamis was at a loss for words, but Mary wasn’t.
“Jenny, this was your first time attempting to use telekinesis. Of course you had no idea how much energy to use. Kamis should have been more careful. He should have let you do a few noncritical tests first. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s his,” said Mary. “And also, all of the people who were sucked out of the ship were participants in the Bala genocide, so don’t feel too bad about murdering them.”
“Thanks,” said Jenny, feeling a weight in the pit of her stomach as big as a stoneship. “You always know just what to say.”
“I told you, I’m good with people,” replied Mary.
I wasn’t aware that you would be able to do that, said Kamis. I thought that–
“Shut up,” Jenny snapped. “I don’t want to hear from you for at least an hour.”
Kamis, to his credit, stopped talking. She still felt him there, watching. And she could tell he was upset as well, but at least he was quiet.
On the monitor, Jenny watched the Kilonova’s crew gather up debris and bodies from around their ship. She didn’t recognize the star groupings in this part of the universe. It made her feel untethered and adrift. But watching the cleanup crew methodically tether in shrapnel and corpses was soothing.
The way the bottom half of the ship had simply sheared off, it didn’t look like a bomb. It appeared more like a structural defect than a sabotage. It pained her that she’d gotten the Kilonova to drop out of nullspace like she wanted, but she had no viable way of getting to her horn without being seen. The ship was likely crawling with all three shifts full of personnel.
“Jenny, now is the time for you to go,” said Mary urgently. “Soldiers were hurt in the accident. Some of them have leg injuries.”
“Which means they’ll be in temporary wheelchairs. God, I love you, Mary,” said Jenny, wheeling over to the storage cabinet where she had a spare Reason uniform tucked away for times such as these. It was old, and would look out of date in any cursory inspection, but no one would be doing a uniform check at a time like this. She slid her jumpsuit off and made the uniform look as trim as possible. All the proper pleats and placements came right back to her fingers as if she’d never stopped wearing this jacket. She left the hat behind – it was embroidered with a captain’s insignia. She wouldn’t be able to pass for the captain of the Kilonova, no matter what they looked like.
Jenny wasn’t sure where they would store her piece of unicorn horn, but she knew that on older models of this same type of Reason ship there was an armored vault for the precious fuel near the engine room. That was the most logical place to start looking.
She hit the console to open Mary’s cargo hold. The door hissed open, then stopped with less than a meter’s clearance. She tried again. The door banged on something outside and then got stuck.
“Mary, what’s going on?” asked Jenny.
“There is one small detail,” said Mary.
“What?” asked Jenny.
“I can’t lower my loading ramp. There’s a skimmer parked right up next to us and I can only get it to open a few inches wide,” she said.
“Bloody hell,” said Jenny.
The only other exit was two floors under her, down a ladder, and through a hatch in the bottom of the ship. As a rule, the Reason didn’t build their ships to be wheelchair accessible.
She could get out of the hatch but her chair wouldn’t fit. She couldn’t very well crawl her way through the Kilonova. Her chair would fit through the cargo bay door opening, as long as it was folded, but she couldn’t get up that high to push it through the opening.
She sensed Kamis watching her work out the logic puzzle of mobility.
“Any ideas?” she asked him.
“Working on it,” said Mary.
We could retract a landing strut and let your ship fall to the side so that the cargo door is next to the ground, said Kamis. The Reason will assume it fell in the accident.
“That’s a plan so incredibly ridiculous, it sounds like one of mine,” said Jenny. “I like it.”
“What does Kamis say?” asked Mary.
“He wants to retract one of your legs and let you fall over so I can get out,” said Jenny.
Mary made a noise li
ke a gasp.
“That is a terrible idea. Do you know how many sensitive instruments and cameras I have on my hull?” she asked.
“Cool it,” said Jenny. “I’m not going to toss you over. But I appreciate Kamis’ out of the box thinking. We need more of that around here.”
“We need less of that around here,” said Mary. “I found a better option anyway.”
“Let’s hear it,” said Jenny.
“There’s a sealed access panel in the hull adjacent to the server room. That’s how they got my computers in place. It’s big enough for you and a wheelchair. And it’s even on this level,” said Mary.
“I like it,” said Jenny. “Tell me where to go.”
“Maintenance room two,” said Mary. Jenny wheeled out of the cargo hold toward a small room across the hall. She’d never had a reason to come in here. Mary took care of everything seamlessly on her own. It was big enough for her chair. Barely. The sides of her wheels scraped along the shelves filled with strapped down spare parts.
“Take the drill,” said Mary.
Jenny found an industrial screwdriver hooked to the wall; powerful enough to take a panel off the exterior of the ship.
At the back of the room was a door that led to a cold, dark room stacked floor to ceiling with computers whirring and flashing lights in a variety of colors.
“Hi, Mary,” said Jenny, patting a metal box.
“I’m cute, aren’t I?” asked Mary.
Jenny wheeled to the outer wall of the room. Just like Mary had said, there was an access panel to the outside. She got to unscrewing.
“You’ll still be far above the ground when you get out, but there’s the skimmer next to us that you can aim to land on,” said Mary. “It’s closer than the ground.”
Jenny pulled the panel off and set it down. There was a second outer panel that also had to be removed. She was already starting to sweat under her heavy jacket.
When the last screw was out, the panel clattered to the floor outside. Jenny looked out at the Kilonova’s hold. No personnel were left in the room, but ships littered the floor. It was a long way down.
Jenny pulled herself up into the opening and sat between the inner and outer hulls. She lifted her chair and folded it in one practiced motion. She grabbed a roll of cable off the wall and tied it around the armrests. She heaved it through the opening and lowered it down to the floor. It was her turn.
