It’d be terribly inefficient to replace you now.”
Leah caught the joking tone he was laying down, and replied in kind. “Gee, thanks. Y’all know how to make a girl feel welcome.” Leah looked over her shoulder as Roman strode in, already changed into sexy-grubby space-traveler garb—a ratty sweater over mesh shirt, loose cargo pants, and a shoulder bag which she’d bet dollars to donuts contained guns. Or blasters, or whatever the term-du-jour for the SF weapons of the world.
“Do you have a bag of guns for every world?” Leah asked.
“Of course not. No guns in Fantasyland,” he said, not missing a beat.
“But you should see his collection of wands and staves,” King said. “I want takeoff in ten.
Roman, you and the newbie on walk-around.”
This part, at least, she knew. Roman went to stow his bag of guns and supplies, so Leah started her checks for hull damage or anything else that might cause minor to catastrophic failures during their cross-dimensional flight between Earth Prime and the story world.
She’d done the walk-around as they left Western world, so she knew ostensibly what to look for, but it didn’t stop her from starting over and doing another complete circuit when Roman thundered down the hatch stairs to do his own inspection.
“How do I tell the difference between a scuff and a mark that could become a tear or gash or another we’re-all-going-to-die kind of thing?”
“Scuffs will buff off. Plus, we don’t usually scuff. Dimensional turbulence dents and bends more than scuffs. We keep the ships clean, so you should be able to spot any we’re-all-going-to-die things pretty easily.”
Leah scanned the ship’s hull. “This looks good. Anything I missed?”
“Nope. I’ll check the circuitry here, and we’ll be good for pre-flight. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, this walk-around is just for show.”
“But nobody wants to be time number one hundred.”
Roman tapped his nose. “Especially if King’s around. We’ve got time, so you can change into your off-world gear now. We’ll arrive within sight of Ahura-3, and they use visual comms. Protocol says we all have to be in field gear when we launch.”
Leah turned to start dashing, ten minutes being nowhere near enough time to walk to the wardrobe room, find clothes that fit, change, and get back to the launch.
But once again, Shirin proved to be a little bit psychic. Crossing the hangar floor in an anklelength maroon-and-yellow robe-dress-thing, she held up a black-and-silver duffel bag for Leah. “Dressing corner there,” she said, thumbing at a corner that had a tri-folding screen and a stool.
“High tech.”
“Quick changes don’t have to be fancy, but they do have to be done. Two minutes.”
Leah hustled over, pulling the curtain across the floor behind her as she shrugged her sweater off. While in HQ, all field agents were required to wear VDUs, Versatile Dress Units—aka underwear that could pass in any number of worlds. VDUs didn’t apply to all worlds, but eight out of ten wasn’t bad, and SF world was one of the eight.
Leah zipped open the bag and pulled out the first item, a black underskirt. She swapped out her jeans for the skirt, and then drew out the expected big damn Science Fiction dress-robe hybrid, similar to Shirin’s, but emerald green and less fancy. The bag also had a variety of jewelry—anklets and bracelets and earrings—which would have to wait until they got on-world. No way was she going to try to put on earrings during dimensional chop. Four holes per ear were enough.
That was another thing she missed. Regs meant that she was only allowed the “normal” stud earrings, which meant her other earrings and bar had to stay at home.
Unless SF world turned out to involve Bajoran levels of ear-bling.
She stuffed her Earth Prime clothes in the duffel and then jogged across the hangar floor to climb into the ship. She stowed her bag in one of the airline-esque locked-and-secured box cubbies, and then climbed up the rungs along the side of the ship and slid into her seat to buckle the X-straps that would keep her roughly in place even if they ran into more dimensional chop.
“Not bad, Probie. But next time, finish the job,” Shirin said, pointing to her own resplendently adorned ears. “And when we get there, there will be makeup.”
“It’s the future! Haven’t they outlawed makeup already?”
Shirin shook her head. “It’s the only way Xenei can tell human women apart, unfortunately.” “Well, that sounds horrible and rife for abuse,” Leah mused.
King climbed into the ship. “Hasn’t even touched down, and Probie already plotting to abuse Xenei? I knew you were a quick study, but this is above the call of duty. Keep this up and you’ll make the rest of the team look bad.” King closed the hatch and spun the wheel tight. “Pre-flight?”
“Finalizing now,” Shrin said. “Preeti says we are clear for crossover, forecast indicates minimal friction between here and our destination.”
Roman gave Leah a smile. “Looks like you lucked out this time.”
Leah crossed her fingers as King climbed into the copilot seat and strapped in. The team lead opened up the comms, joining Shirin in the switch-flipping game. “Mid-Atlantic Actual, this is US-3, initiating launch sequence.” Leah had never been much for flight simulators, so from where she sat, they might as well have been making it all up. As long as it worked.
Leah dug her fingers into the seat as the ship began to rumble.
“Here we go,” she said under her breath as the ship lurched ahead, punching through the dimensional barrier between Earth Prime and the story world. Through the view-screen, the inside roof of the hangar disappeared, replaced with a coruscating rainbow and VFX that looked for all the world like the Kirby Krackle from silver age comics.
The ship rattled, shaking her in her seat, but in just a few moments, the shaking receded, replaced by comparatively gentle gravitational force pushing her back against her seat. And the Kirby Krackle out in the void was replaced by … actual void. As in space. Stars and distant nebulae and a gray-ish dot in the distance.
“So, we’re in space now. Like, actual astronaut space.” Shirin said, “You got it.”
Leah’s hair floated up and around, wrapping around her head, bouncing back and forth. The edges of her dress rippled free, held back at the waist by the straps.
Not only were they in space, but their ship didn’t come with artificial gravity, which meant zerog. Honest-to-goodness, Sally Ride is my homegirl zero-g.
“I’m in space right now,” she said, her brain processing the reality of the situation through the excitement of a five-year-old who had watched shuttle launches like they were the World Series, who had made cardboard spaceships several years beyond the time frame when child psychologists said was “normal.” Fantasy had been her first love, but her heart had made space for, well, space. “Quite something, isn’t it?” King asked. “Permission to squee, sir?”
“Just don’t get it on the seats, Probie.” Leah could hear the man’s smile, an old theater trick for reading tone when you were upstage of your cast-mates.
“Aye, captain. Sanitary squeeing only.”
“Carry on.” Her grin went ear to ear, watching the interplay of light and darkness play out for infinity. What she wouldn’t give for a 360-degree view-screen right about then.
“One hundred thousand klicks to broadcast range of Ahura-3,” Shirin said. “No anomalies or other ships within sensor range.”
“That is what a dimensional crossing should feel like. Well done, team.”
Leah took a few minutes to stare out into the nothing. Internally, she was doing a class-A booty dance.
King turned in his seat. “Leah, see if you can squee and finish getting dressed at the same time.
We’ll be hailing Ahura-3 in about ten minutes.”
Leah unbuckled and floated out of her seat, hands out to brace herself against colliding with the seat in front of her or the hull above.
“How’s it feel?” Roman asked.
“This is so cool!” Leah said, failing to keep her voice professional.
“Get it out of your system—we won’t be able to mess around once we port,” Shirin added.
Fly in zero-g. That’s another one off the bucket list, she thought to herself, grabbing her chair and pulling herself toward the bulkhead, applying Ender’s lesson and interpreting the base of the ship as “down.”
I need to be able to talk about this with someone outside the team. They’ve got to have allowances for best buddies or something, right? she thought. But the orientation package had specifically said that no one, not even loved ones, were allowed to know the reality of Genrenauts operations. So she’d have to contain her excitement with friends.
For a moment, she was content to tool around the ship and tackle the challenge of applying jewelry and makeup in zero-g. Necklaces would be … interesting.
Chapter Two: Not Remotely in Kansas Anymore
Leah could not believe her eyes, even as Ahura-3 filled the windshield, then grew too wide to see all at once. It followed the ring-and-spokes design model, three massive tubes with a dozen corridors, each connecting the tube to the central axle. Shuttles and maintenance drones swarmed around the station, and ships moved in and out of the axle, which seemed to be the main port.
She’d wrestled her jewelry into submission and applied a base layer, ready for whatever weird science fictional makeup job would be required for the station.
“That. Is. Awesome,” Leah said, gobsmacked.
Roman chuckled. “It’s not even the biggest thing around. Ra’Gar battle-moons are more than five times this size. Around a third of the size of Mercury.” On-base, Roman was always doing two or things at once. Here, in the field, he was steady, both calm and more animate. Focused.
“Mercury?” Leah asked, her brain stuck in “WOW” since Ahura-3 had gotten large enough to make out as its own thing.
“Okay, opening coms. Everyone shush and act like you belong.” Shirin flipped a switch, and then held a button. “Ahura-3, this is Free Trader Grendel, come in, Ahura-3.” Leah restrained from laughing at the name.
A woman’s voice crackled through the radio, speaking with a Russian accent. “This is Ahura-3 Command, we copy you, Grendel. Welcome back. We don’t have a flight plan from you, but what else is new?”
“Hey, Commander. No plan? Again?” Shirin asked, slipping seamlessly into character. “That’s what I get for hiring a new assistant. She must have flubbed the form before sending the Ansible. My apologies. We’re about twenty minutes out, what are my chances of getting into the docking queue this side of moonrise?”
“You do like to play right on the edges, don’t you, Grendel?” came the commander’s response.
“What can I say? Keeps things interesting.”
The station-side audio stayed on, chatter and beeping audible through the staticky connection.
“Come on over to bay five. You’re behind the freighter Salex Crown.”
“You’re a peach. Catch you in the Bazaar?”
“You know it,” the commander responded. “Mallery with you this time?”
Shirin winced. “Sorry, Oksana. She couldn’t make this circuit.”
“So be it. I will be happy to claim those apologies in vodka. Twenty-one hundred.” “Got it. See you then.” Shirin released the comms button.
“Over and out.”
“Okay, we’re good.” Shirin turned to speak to Leah, one eye still on the dash. “Oksana’s the executive officer on the station. She’s tapped into anything that happens officially and most of the stuff under the table. If we haven’t gotten the problem sniffed out by then, she’ll be able to point us in the right direction.”
Leah asked, “Last trip was you and Mallery, then?” She didn’t need to finish, just judging by the shift in Shirin’s demeanor.
Maybe ask a few less obvious questions, there, self, she thought.
Shirin flipped some switches and then unstrapped and swung herself down toward the gear.
“Okay, newbie, let’s get our faces on.”
“So, what did you mean by lots of makeup?”
* * *
Walking across the gangplank into the customs and clearance area, Leah felt like an utter fool. And not just because she was still wobbling after having been in zero-g for less than a half hour.
Mostly it was because she had on more makeup than she’d ever worn in her life, maybe even more than she’d worn for a makeup final in college, which was impressive, since her assignment had been “zombie.”
But apparently, the custom for human women traveling in space was to wear red carpet levels of makeup. Red carpet followed by a David Bowie birthday rave.
Though that would be pretty awesome, to be honest.
The embarrassment was made somewhat better by Shirin being as dolled up as she was, but the older woman wore the cosmetic face with enviable nonchalance.
May I give so few fucks when I’m her age, Leah thought.
King went ahead, wearing an outfit that was a combination of shabby chic and Han Solo. He wore a sweet forearm tablet-computer-wearable thing on his left arm, and code-switched into a patois of English, French, and something else with the customs agent, a black woman of maybe twenty-five, wearing a prim-and-proper black-and-silver uniform.
The rest of them stood by at the gate, a glass wall that ran twenty feet up toward the hundredfoot-high ceiling. Light projectors of some sort formed a red laser crosshatching across the only open way through the glass. Beyond, a similarly uniformed man with dark tan skin, in a silver beret, stood by a console.
King bade the guard farewell, and her companion pushed a button, which changed the color of the laser netting to green. King went first, then Roman.
“Go ahead,” Shirin said, and so Leah stepped through the netting. The light filled her vision for a second, but it didn’t feel like anything else, no pressure, no tactile sensation, nothing. The guard nodded, and she stepped forward.
They passed from the customs area into a long hallway.
“I have to clear our cargo, so you three go ahead and start asking around, discreetly, to figure out what the source of the breach is. Roman has your covers for this mission.”
They approached a T-juncture. A sign overhead said CUSTOMS with an arrow pointing left, the other way labeled STATION ENTRANCE. King broke off to head toward CUSTOMS.
“And Probie, don’t go wandering off alone. This place is big enough, we might not be able to find you.”
Leah watched King stride down the opposite corridor. “Well, that’s not terrifying or anything.”
Shirin tapped her neck. “Don’t worry. We’re all chipped, so the wrist-comps can find us anywhere on the station.”
Leah rubbed her own neck, though the injection site wasn’t sore anymore. “Yeah, I remember that from orientation. But he couldn’t resist the chance to be alarming, could he?”
“Nope,” Roman said, picking up the pace. “Come on, this place is amazing.”
* * *
Roman was not lying.
As they stepped out into the station proper, Leah was greeted by complete sensory overload.
Lights, speech, music, and the sensation of standing on something that was moving. There was no way she could feel the specifics of the rotation on a station this big, but it was distinct from standing in a car or a plane or bus. It was … its own thing.
The main building looked half like an airport terminal and half like an open-air version of the Star Wars cantina. She spotted a dozen different non-human races, and guessed at another dozen human-ish races, with different head shapes, skin colors, or some combination of the two, from walrus-looking people with large whiskers to tree people to a race that looked like big versions of fantasy dwarves—proportionally short limbs, but instead of being around four feet tall, they were six feet tall, nearly all in the torso, with massive, golden beards in elaborate braids that swung down to their belts like strands of Viking jewelry.
One race walked on all fours, legs as thick as a telephone pole, torsos built like rhinos, but redscaled with the heads a mixture between a rabbit and a Gila monster. Another seemed to be nothing more than brains in jars, floating along on personal hover-disks.
“I should be trying not to stare, right?” Leah asked.
Shirin passed Leah. “Your cover’s as a tourist from Mars who has never been off-planet, so you’re good. This gives you a bit more leeway, but you’re still responsible for knowing the whole setting dossier.” The older woman wove her way through the crowds, working the room like she’d done on Leah’s first mission. Judging by how many people seemed to recognize her, Leah wondered about the boots-on-the-ground reality of the “don’t make waves” commandment that King had hammered home right away, and the orientation material repeated.
Another thing she’d like to ask about, but probably shouldn’t. Instead, Leah took the opportunity to rubberneck, taking in the brains in jars, the lizard-rhino-people, and everything else.
A short walk and a longer elevator ride later, they reached a trade district, with more market stalls, airport-esque kiosks, and a two-floor bar called How Bazaar.
Shirin chatted up the hostess, a green woman wearing a dress that was half rave-wear, half space-opera gown, bands of cloth crosshatching an otherwise bare back as the alien woman led them to a black leather booth in the corner of the first floor.
“So how many people here do you know?” Leah asked as they filled the booth.
“I know a lot of people. And they think they know me. But it only takes one or two odd details for people to fill in a whole painting about someone they barely know. It’s just another mask, like the others we pick up and put down on the job. Which reminds me, covers.”
Shirin slid the sleeve of her dress back to show the wrist-screen. “Works like a tablet. The first file that pops up should be your cover, and then the details for the rest of the team. Read up, there will be a quiz. There’s a ton of material to get through, and you’ve got a couple of hours at most before we’ll be working the room trying to sniff out the source of the breach.”
Genrenauts: Season One Page 11
