Linked

by Imogen Howson

  They reached the passenger lounge by following the plan Elissa pulled up on-screen, traveling along two corridors joined by a flight of stairs, then through a final set of doors.

  It wasn’t a large room, but the viewing panel made up one entire wall, curving to follow the line of the ship, running up into the ceiling and down into the floor, forming a slight lip so travelers could stand with their toes over emptiness. At the moment, with the bright lights that had jumped to life when they’d entered the room, the glass reflected the girls, distorted in its slight concave surface, back to themselves.

  “I can’t work out which way we’re facing.” Elissa looked around for an override switch. “There must be a way of dimming the lights so we can see. Lin, can you—”

  She stopped. The first rumble of the engines vibrated through the floor, the walls, the insides of her ears. A steel shutter slid smoothly across the glass of the viewing panel.

  Lin’s face fell. “I thought we’d be able to see liftoff. Isn’t that what he said? He— Oh.”

  Elissa’s stomach dropped. Her ears crackled. There was antithrust cushioning built into all the ships, but it would take more than that to stop their bodies from registering that all at once they were climbing at hundreds of miles an hour, picking up speed enough to blast them out of the planet’s orbit. “It’s okay. It’s just an auto-safety precaution. They’ll raise it in a moment.”

  Elissa’s stomach lurched a little more, and she looked over at Lin. During Elissa’s first spaceflight she’d been scared, and Lin hadn’t even traveled in an airplane or high-speed train before. But Lin’s eyes were shining, her lips parted in a smile. She crossed to the shuttered window and put a hand on the gently thrumming metal, not for support but as if to feel the ship blasting up into space.

  “You can feel it,” she said. “I didn’t know. I . . . Wow.”

  Elissa felt her own face break into a smile. For the first time since she’d met her, Lin looked utterly, completely happy.

  Around them the vibration lessened. The distant roar of the thruster rockets died. They were out of orbit, completely off-world, in territory owned by no planet and no government.

  “Did you feel that?” Lin’s voice was a whisper. “We’re—”

  Elissa knew perfectly well that the gravity drive of the ship exactly replicated the conditions of Sekoia, but all the same, when she took a breath, it felt as if her lungs were working more easily than they had planet side, as if she’d been laboring under gravity turned up a little too high. “We’re outside planetary jurisdiction. We made it, we did make it.”

  The steel shutter slid away from under Lin’s hand. Around them the lights dimmed. Their reflections melted into blackness. Far away against that blackness, green and blue and white-misted, Sekoia hung. And beyond it were points upon points of white fire, endless and unobscured, stars beyond imagining.

  In the dimness Lin’s face showed lit by starlight, pale and spellbound, her eyes huge. “In space,” she said, finishing the sentence Elissa had interrupted—and completed wrongly. “We’re in space.”

  AN HOUR LATER, dizzy with tiredness, Elissa managed to drag Lin away from the window with the promise they’d come back the next day. She found their way back to their cabin, stripped down to T-shirt and underwear—she hadn’t managed to get them nightclothes, but at least the ship would have a laundry facility, and it was only for two days, after all—scrubbed her face in the tiny sink, and crawled into the soft coolness of the top bunk.

  She woke three times in the night, thick-headed with sleep, heart banging so hard, she felt sick. Once it was the dreamed sound of sirens that woke her. The second time it was her father calling her name, his phantom voice echoing in her ears even after she woke up. The third time she woke with a jerk to a real sound—a choked whimper from the bunk below.

  She touched one of the side lights. It came on with a glow so soft, it scarcely lightened the darkness. Elissa peered down over the edge of the bunk.

  Lin’s eyes were tightly shut, and although the whimpering noise came from her, she was making it in her sleep. Elissa watched her for a moment, chewing her lip, wondering if she should do anything, but she was still so tired that she found herself drooping, her forehead knocking on the edge of the bunk, and so she gave up, pulled the covers over her ears, and fell miles down into sleep.

  In the morning—by Sekoian time and Elissa’s body clock, at least—the room lights woke them, creeping around the edges of the ceiling like a gently rising sun.

  Lin looked pale under her fake tan, but calm and clear-eyed, not at all as if she’d been crying during the night. They dialed breakfast from the nutri-machine. Coffee, cereal with reconstituted milk, and dried-fruit bars. Cadan had been right, they would have gotten a better breakfast by eating with the crew, but the lack of quality food was a small price to pay for not having to keep remembering the portfolio of lies Elissa had built up.

  She made sure Lin’s disguise was as flawless as possible—checked that the fake tan wasn’t fading, got her to wash her hair and reapply the straightening serum, stuck her false eyelashes back on—and then they returned to the lounge and viewing panel.

  Sekoia was tiny in the distance now, the stars still endless all around it. Looking out, Elissa felt as if she were on the only ship in the whole of the universe, and on a ship that wasn’t really moving, that was only floating in space, stars and moons and planets hanging motionless all about her.

  “It’s something, huh?”

  Elissa looked around. A young man stood in the doorway. He wore a uniform similar to Cadan’s and had brown hair cropped close the way all the pilots had it. His friendly face was spattered with freckles.

  He put out a hand. “Copilot Stewart James.”

  “Elissa Ivory. And my friend, Lynette May.” She half turned to include Lin and saw she hadn’t looked away from the window. Elissa laughed. “I’m sorry. She’s a big fan of space travel.” The half-truth came easily to her lips.

  Copilot James grinned. “Well, I can understand that. Cadan says you’re Bruce Ivory’s sister?”

  Somehow she hadn’t thought he’d tell anyone. Hadn’t wanted him to. Which was stupid. There was no reason for him not to mention that one of the Phoenix’s paying passengers was his friend’s sister.

  “That’s me.” She smiled, going for charming, something she’d once been able to do without effort. “I’m just keeping Lynette company to Mandolin. She’s on her way home to Agera.”

  “How is Bruce? Such bad luck, to get himself put in quarantine before he had the chance to take this flight.”

  Elissa squashed guilt. If she didn’t know how her brother was, it wasn’t her fault. “He’s . . . well, disappointed, I guess.” She smiled again, deliberately bright. “By the time I get back, he’ll be out—and if he’s not, he’ll be demanding to be allowed out!”

  The copilot laughed. “You’re probably right. We’d all feel the same—miss a few days, and you get so far behind—” He broke off. “I’m sure Bruce will be fine, though. He’ll catch up.”

  Elissa bit back a smile at the belated attempt at tact. She was still trying to remember if she knew anything about this guy. Stewart James, hadn’t he said his name was?

  He was about to say something else, when Lin interrupted him. She’d finally turned from the window and was looking at him, a frown between her eyebrows. “Shouldn’t you be flying the ship?”

  “Lin!” Oh, goodness, please act as if you’ve been on a ship before. You must know something about them.

  “Not right now,” Mr. James said politely. “I stood by during liftoff, but we’re well outside orbit now, Cadan’s on the flight deck, and the autopilot’s engaged. Our route has been set in advance, but I assure you that the moment either of us needs to be hands-on at the controls, we will be.”

  “Oh,” said Lin. Then she hesitated, seeming to notice, for the first time, Elissa’s expression. “I don’t mean to be rude.”

  “That’s qu
ite all right, Ms. May.” He paused a moment, then turned back to Elissa, his smile going from polite to warm. “Ms. Ivory, would you like a visit to the flight deck? I don’t know how much you’ve flown, but it’s usually pretty interesting if you haven’t been on one before.”

  “Oh—” Elissa spoke quickly to cover her instant negative reaction. “I don’t want to disturb Cadan.”

  Mr. James grinned. “The ship’ll be more or less flying herself now. He’ll just be running diagnostics. Trust me, he won’t mind a little bit of a distraction.”

  Oh, I think he might. She was trying to think of a better excuse, when she caught sight of Lin’s expression, all saucer-eyed excitement. If Elissa refused this invitation, they might not get another, and Lin might not get to see any flight decks. “Thank you. We’d love to come.”

  “Great!” His smile flashed out again. “If you’d like to follow me, I’ll show you the way.”

  He led them through the center of the ship, up the staircase that spiraled around the core that housed, among other things, the air-filtration system, the gravity drive, and the fuel tanks. Then up through one of the safety doors—this one set directly above their heads, the stairs leading through it—into a circular room that opened onto endless, star-strewn space.

  For a moment it felt like being at the top of a miles-high tower, surrounded by a nighttime sky dazzling with darkness and brilliant with stars. Elissa went momentarily dizzy, the universe spinning around her, her feet feeling as if they might float off the ground. Beside her Lin gave an awed gasp.

  Then Elissa’s eyes adjusted, the room came into focus, and she realized they’d reached the flight deck in the nose of the spaceship, and that the bridge stood on a shoulder-high platform in front of her.

  “A little safety protocol,” said Mr. James, at the foot of the short flight of steps leading up to the bridge. He cleared his throat, then rattled out the next words. “I have to warn you that, as untrained persons, SFI laws strictly prohibit you from touching any of the control panels, touch-screen displays, or instruments unless given direct permission to do so from authorized SFI personnel, namely the pilot or copilot.”

  He took a breath. “In addition you are strictly prohibited, under any and all circumstances, including a directive from ship personnel, no matter how senior, from attempting to gain entry to the hyperdrive chamber”—he gestured briskly to the base of the platform, to the outline of a sealed door Elissa hadn’t noticed—“and you are warned that this law is enforced by SFI and by the elected planetary government of Sekoia, and that contravening it carries the penalty of imprisonment.” He mimicked running out of breath, grinned, and gestured up the steps. “If you’ll follow me?”

  The bridge was surrounded by what looked like no more than a waist-high wall, until Elissa reached it and realized that was just the lower part of the barrier. The wall, made of treated glass, almost as invisible as a force field, extended up as far as the curve of the ceiling, enclosing the whole of the platform. Mr. James pressed his thumb to a control panel at the top of the steps, and a section of the barrier slid out of the way to let them through.

  Cadan, his back to them, sat on the other side of a railing and in front of a bank of screens, his hands flickering over a console as wide as the span of Elissa’s arms.

  “Stew—” he said as the door opened, then checked himself. He turned slowly to look at them. Where his gaze touched her, Elissa’s skin prickled. She shouldn’t have given in to Lin’s obvious excitement about seeing the flight deck. Cadan didn’t want her there—didn’t want either of them there—and he’d insulted her enough yesterday. She really didn’t need to give him more opportunities.

  Oblivious to Cadan’s cold gaze, to Elissa’s sudden discomfort, Mr. James—Stewart—was explaining that he’d invited them for a tour of the bridge. Cadan listened, not speaking, eyes back on the screens in front of him. On the largest, code scrolled endlessly upward. It was gibberish to Elissa and moving too fast for her to read. She remembered Bruce saying they’d all been put through an intensive course in speed-reading in order to deal with just this type of thing.

  Stewart finished his cheerful explanation and turned back to Elissa and Lin. “Like I said, Cadan has engaged the autopilot, and the ship’s following her programmed route. He’s just running a diagnostic program now—to tell us if there are any problems thinking about germinating, either in some part of the ship or on the projected flight path.”

  “What sort of problems?” Lin’s eyes were still like saucers. She was standing very still in the center of the flight deck, hands tightly clasping each other.

  “Oh, a glitch in one of the engines, or metal fatigue causing flaws in the outer shell. It’s smart-metal—it mends itself to some extent, but you have to be aware of what’s happening, whether a sheet might need replacing.”

  “And that code?”

  “That’s what tells us if something’s wrong. Those colors—” He turned to point something out, then tensed. “Cadan.”

  Cadan had reacted at the same moment. His hand flew up the screen, froze the scrolling code. “I see it.”

  “What is it?” said Lin, her voice unalarmed, fascinated.

  Cadan reached over to another of the screens and opened up a window. “The forward-scanner’s picked up a cluster of debris on our flight path.”

  “It can’t do us any damage.” Stewart glanced toward Elissa and then back to Lin, his smile reassuring. “It’s not big enough. But getting through it’s likely to cause turbulence, which is an inconvenience we can do without.”

  Cadan had pulled both hands back to the keyboard and was tapping out new combinations, watching the seemingly infinitesimal changes they made to the patterns on yet another screen. His voice was distracted. “At least Ivan might finally appreciate that he’s not cooking over naked flames.”

  Stewart laughed. “Ivan’s the chef we’ve got for this trip. He swears the only way food tastes good is if it’s cooked the old-fashioned way, with direct heat, but of course all the ships’ kitchens are full of nothing but safety burners.”

  Fascinated, her attention fixed on the screens, Lin walked across the bridge to stand near Cadan. He shifted a little, his shoulders tensing. Behind him Lin unclasped her hands.

  Déjà vu hit Elissa like something grabbing hold of her. Lin, controlling currents, interfering with electric circuits to make doors leap open and fires start, with that intent look on her face, her hands opening in concentration. Lin, who didn’t react like normal people—neither in the way she treated others, nor in thoughts for her own safety.

  Elissa was across the bridge in three quick steps, her hand tight on Lin’s arm, fingers digging in, trying to send a silent message. Lin, don’t do anything. Don’t use your electrokinesis. Don’t interfere.

  “Can you not do that, Elissa? Stewart told you to stay clear of the control panels.”

  “I am staying clear,” she said, taken aback. “I’m not doing anything.”

  Cadan flapped an irritated hand at her. “You’re . . . jigging around behind me. Can you—” He broke the words off, then paused, making an obvious effort to drag his voice back to civility. “Would you please stand a little farther back?”

  “Completely no problem.” Elissa backed to the center of the platform, stiff with resentment, half-dragging Lin with her.

  Stewart cleared his throat. “You’re working out alternative routes, Cadan? You don’t want to just hop past it?”

  Cadan gave his head a quick sideways jerk. “Using hyperspeed this early in the flight, knowing the chief’s going to be asking for a full explanation for every particle of energy I’ve used when we get home? I’d rather find the slow way around this time.” His shoulders relaxed. “That’s it. Okay. We’re done.”

  He hit the enter key, unfroze the diagnostic code, and set it scrolling again, then twisted his chair around to face them. His face held some of the same stiffness Elissa knew was showing in her expression, as if maybe he felt bad
about snapping at her. Well, he should. Like she needed to be told not to touch the controls?

  “Look,” he said. “I’m sorry, but I was working the flight path out, and I really didn’t need to have someone jog my elbow or—”

  The injustice stung. “I wasn’t going to jog your elbow. I was nowhere near you.”

  Unexpectedly, his mouth quirked in a tiny smile. “Come on, now. You were somewhere near me.”

  “Oh, whatever.” Fury broke over her. “I was behind you—you couldn’t even see how close I was.”

  His eyebrows went up, making her feel like a badly behaved little girl. “Elissa, come on, this is the bridge. Do admit I have some right to not have people hopping around behind me when I’m in the middle of flying the ship.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t worry. We’re going anyway.” She turned, pulling Lin around with her, and took a step toward the exit.

  And a blast rocked the ship from end to end.

  It knocked Elissa off her feet. She hit the floor with a bump that jolted through her hip and all the way up her spine. Lin lunged for the railing, swung one-handed, and banged against it, only just managing to stay on her feet.

  At the controls Cadan reacted instantly, swinging his chair around to grab the throttle and drag the ship’s speed down. The Phoenix gave a shudder as the stability drive kicked in.

  Stewart, at the screens so fast that Elissa didn’t see him cross the platform, pulled up full-perimeter visuals. “Pirates.”

  Elissa’s stomach turned upside down. The screens showed four spacecraft surrounding the Phoenix. They’d come out of nowhere, jumping from God knew what distance away—small, sleek, built for speed, their sides bristling with guns that could tear a ship’s sides open. All SFI ships had shields—shields that were second to none, if Cadan and Bruce could be believed—but even the best shields, if hit hard and often enough, would degrade, leave the ship herself open to attack.