by Loren Rhoads
She had no idea what she expected, but the squirrel-faced creature paused on the screen wasn’t it. “What’s happened?”
“Mellix uncovered a flaw in the tesseract drive,” Haoun said.
Raena twitched her head no, not grasping what that meant.
“The tesseract is the newest star drive technology,” Vezali explained. “Every big ship built in the last five years has one. The shipbuilding cartels have really pushed the technology, creating incredible demand for it. It’s revised travel times across the galaxy. ”
“Mellix has drawn a pattern between the sporadic disappearances of transport ships over the past five years,” Mykah explained. “They’ve been jumping into tesseract and never coming out.”
“At first the manufacturer blamed pilot error: exiting into asteroid fields, jumping into suns. Then they accused workers of sabotage. Mellix interviewed a whistle-blower, a Shtrell engineer who was assassinated shortly after they spoke. Mellix worked through the documents the guy smuggled out—and they point to a flaw in the drive’s design,” Coni finished.
The four of them gazed at Raena as if they expected her to piece it together on her own.
She struggled to catch up. “How many ships are affected? If it’s only ships built in the last five years …”
Vezali corrected her. “A lot of older ships have been upgraded. A lot. Maybe most.”
“This news is going to seriously disrupt interstellar travel,” Mykah said. “It will halt tourism, trade, shipments of food and medicine, relief efforts …”
“Everyone is going to be afraid to leave wherever they find themselves stranded right now,” Coni said. “The whole galaxy is suddenly full of refugees, until they can find a ship with pre-tesseract technology on which to travel.”
Raena sank onto the bench next to Vezali, who shifted her tentacles invitingly to make room. The galaxy will grind to a halt, she finally understood. “Is he sure?”
“Mellix is the most trusted journalist in the galaxy,” Mykah said. No one contradicted his hyperbole. “He wouldn’t have announced it unless he was absolutely certain.”
“We were about to watch the evidence,” Vezali said. “We thought you would want to see it, too.”
“Yes,” Raena said, touched to be thought of when they were all obviously so stunned. “Thank you. But first, before you start—we are okay, right? We’re not suddenly going to get trapped in tesseract space?”
“We’re fine,” Haoun said. “We haven’t been able to afford to upgrade our drive yet.”
Vezali nodded her eyestalk. “The Veracity still has its original Earther drive. I’ve been hoping we could replace it, but updating the living spaces and media capabilities took precedence over the engine, for the time being.”
“Thank the stars,” Coni said.
Mykah jumped up to rummage around in the galley. Everyone watched him silently, puzzled by his behavior. He returned with a bottle of green on a tray with five glasses. “I get the feeling we’ll want a drink to absorb this news.”
“What about the gate system?” Raena asked suddenly. She didn’t understand exactly how they worked, but the gates were Templar tech for the masses. When the Templars controlled galactic trade twenty years ago, the gates provided checkpoints where the Templar could track who was moving what around their galaxy. Although several different FTL drives existed, most people used to travel through the gates.
“The gates don’t go everywhere you might want to,” Haoun explained.
“And a lot of the new tesseract ships are too big to go through the gates,” Vezali explained. “Until the technology improves to allow bigger gates, or the big ships can be re-engineered to have their drives replaced with older tech, they’re grounded.”
“How long is that going to take?” Raena asked. She envisioned ships lining up at shipyards, ready to be retrofitted.
“Old-tech engines of every size are going to have to be recreated practically piece by piece in factories that have switched over to something else. And how are you going to get the new engines delivered to the ships, or get the ships to the factories where the engines are being made? It will take a while to sort it all out,” Haoun said.
The evidence Mellix laid out was meticulous and complex. Raena didn’t understand a lot of it, but it boiled down to the fact that the tesseract drives were based around Templar technology. There was a lot of math—and experts to explain the math—for how the drives worked. The math also accounted for the times when the drives malfunctioned. Apparently, the Templar had workarounds. So far, the surviving galaxy had not discovered them.
“Fucking Templar tech,” Haoun said, as he poured another round of green for everyone. “I’m amazed they got it to work once, let alone installed in all those ships.”
“Getting it to work isn’t the problem,” Vezali countered. “Getting it to stop is a whole ’nother thing. Remember all those plague ships that arrived at their destinations after all the Templars onboard were dead?”
“You think all the tesseract ships that have been lost might show up someday?” Mykah asked.
“Who can say? They went somewhere, whether through space or in time or into another dimension. It’s Templar tech. Their philosophy was really fascinating,” Vezali chirped, full of enthusiasm—or catching a buzz from the green, Raena wasn’t sure. “Have you read any of it?”
The conversation spun onward, but Raena leaned back against the wall, nursing her drink, content to watch her crewmates. She was amused to find she had grown rather fond of them, even Haoun with his hissing, growling voice.
Mykah moved to come sit beside her and top off her glass. “I haven’t read much Templar philosophy, either,” he confided.
Raena laughed. “I haven’t read much of any philosophy. My education is pretty thoroughly lacking.”
That left nowhere for the conversation to go, so Raena retreated into honesty. “I think this stuff is going to my head.”
“It’s pretty strong,” Mykah agreed. “I never tried it until I waited tables on Kai. The restaurants held a party once a week, where all the waitstaff got to sample a different liquor.”
“That sounds like fun,” Raena said.
“Sometimes it was. Most of the time, though, it was hard work. Some of the liquors we served were pretty noxious for humans. We had to try enough of everything that we could report to our patrons what its effects would be. Warn them away from things, if necessary.”
“I hadn’t realized restaurant work could be so dangerous.” Raena smiled at him to show she was teasing.
Mykah grew serious. “What do you think about this?” He waved his glass toward the screen. The liquor slopped close to the edge, but he caught it before it spilled.
“It’s going to be bad,” Raena predicted. “Without the big freighters to haul things around the galaxy, there will be shortages. Riots. Famines.”
“You think?”
“I’m a pessimist.” She had another sip of the green. It was bitter at first, with sweetness underneath. “Even if things don’t get bad right away, there will be rationing and hoarding. People will be unhappy if they don’t get all they want, or if they think their neighbors are getting more.”
Mykah nodded and filled her glass again. He was sitting closer to Raena than she preferred to let people get, unless she was fighting them. Still, she didn’t move back, for fear of insulting him.
“Hey!” Coni snatched the bottle away from him. “Don’t drink it all, you two.”
“Case in point,” Raena observed.
Mykah held up one finger. “You think we ought to apply to haul food?”
The others fell silent to listen to her. Raena nodded. “It’s not glamorous work, but it will be necessary in the short term. If the big ships can’t do it, it’s going to take a flotilla of smaller ones to get the job done. Hungry people aren’t the most patient. Or peaceable.”
She set her glass down. “This stuff is making me see double,” she said. It was only a s
light exaggeration. “I’m going to go lie down.”
“Feel better,” Vezali wished.
After she got back to her cabin, Raena wondered if she should have asked Mykah to make her some tea. She really didn’t want to go to sleep and face her dreams, but the disorientation brought on by the green was worse at the moment.
She pulled the coverlet around her shoulders and sat up in the corner of the wall, head on her knees. That kept the bed from spinning.
It didn’t keep her from dreaming.
Raena woke sluggishly. Her wrists were pinned to a chair by heavy cuffs. Cold fluid drained through a plastic tube into the back of her right hand. That, she suspected, was the mind-dampening chemical. When she tried to switch the hair out of her face, she felt the tug of something taped to her scalp. That chilled her more than anything else.
Thallian reached into her field of vision to train a lock of hair out of her eyes, tucking it gently back behind her ear. “You deserve better accommodations, my dear, but you rejected those you had.”
Fear blackened Raena’s vision. Then a searing, nuclear-bright flash exploded in her brain, sweeping thoughts and breath out of its path. Raena felt her body spasm. Her muscles protested when she tried to control the convulsions. Tears of shame melted down her face.
“No mind drugs for you, my love,” Thallian whispered as the torture burned itself out. “The Emperor does not want you stupid and senseless when he asks why you betrayed us.”
She ignored his bitterness and swallowed hard, trying to control her voice. “What’s in the tube?”
“Nourishment. Those shocks will drain you, but you’re not to have food or sleep until we reach the Emperor’s flagship.”
“Whose order was that?”
“Mine, of course.” He brushed the tears from her eyes with the thumbs of his velvet gloves. “I’m surprised you have to ask.”
Silver blinded her. Again her thoughts were shattered in the attack. This time no tears escaped. Hatred stronger than she could have imagined allowed her to hold her head upright so she could stare at him throughout the shock.
He held her gaze with a smile that revealed his sharpened teeth.
“How this must amuse you,” Raena said. Her only hope was that she could seduce him into releasing her from the chair, from the shocks.
“You have no idea how much I’m enjoying this,” he answered. “I wish I could enjoy it more. For now, though, I’ll leave you here to consider what you’ve done and how you might make amends. That is, if you have respite long enough to consider anything at all.” The hatch slid open behind him and he slithered out.
Raena stared after him as if her gaze could melt the cell door. Around her, the room measured a scant two meters square. That bastard knew she hated small rooms. In fact, he knew more than enough to destroy her.
A brilliant flash demolished those thoughts but only stoked her hatred.
Some uncountable time later, Thallian returned to gloat. “How have you occupied yourself, my dear?”
Raena stared at his perfect black beard and envisioned the shockingly white throat beneath. “There are forty-eight electrodes threaded through my scalp.”
“Very good.” He trailed a gloved finger across her lips, daring her to bite him. When she did not, he pouted. “I do care for you, my dear. I designed this machine to give you no pain. The shock merely disrupts your brain waves. It does no physical damage. Your body harms itself as it fights the machine.”
“So generous of you,” she mocked. Knowing that the pain was self-inflicted made the next wave easier to bear. It rolled off of her, leaving only a residual ache in her muscles.
“In theory, you will never be allowed long enough to attempt escape, but I am curious to see if the voltage will indeed prevent you.” Thallian bent closer to her. “Do you regret abandoning your post?”
“Not for an instant, my lord.”
Thallian grabbed her jaw. His kiss tasted like carrion, like everything venomous and rotten. She felt his hand slide down to caress her windpipe.
Another shock blotted out whatever happened next. When she was able to focus again, Thallian leaned against the door, his smile so self-satisfied she yearned to slap it from his face. “If the Emperor takes you away, he will return you to me in due time. I’ll have you yet, Raena, and then you won’t have this chair to protect you.”
Time passed, but Raena had no way to measure it, no meals or sleep to break the monotony. Left alone, her mind played tricks. Sometimes the walls crept inward, though she watched to keep them away.
For entertainment, she imagined the things she might do to Thallian, given a chance. Perhaps she would castrate him a millimeter at a time with a welding torch. Or she would mutilate his face with her knives. She hated herself while she hated him, because she had believed she loved him once.
Sometimes a med tech would come to check the needle in her hand. It occurred to her to beg them to help her overdose and escape him, but she decided against it and held her tongue. With her thoughts scrambled, Thallian could out-guess her every move. When he finally suggested the techs as an escape route, Raena only laughed at him. Her acceptance of her fate confused, then enraged, Thallian. Luckily, he grew bored with her after a while.
“Keep still,” someone whispered. “The cameras will only be off a few moments more and I don’t want my face flashed on Imperial channels. Bad for business.”
Raena looked up through the blur obscuring her vision. A med tech was pulling the electrodes from her scalp, but none too gently. She could feel the wires tearing free of her skin. Tiny prickles of blood oozed through her hair.
“… you doing?” she mumbled.
“Getting you out of here,” a man said from somewhere behind her. It was the first voice she had heard that wasn’t Thallian’s in what seemed like forever. Raena couldn’t remember its owner’s name.
“… ’s a trap,” she said in the same mumble, but already her brain was clearing. She noticed that he’d already pulled the tube of nourishment from the vein in the back of her right hand. The liquid trickled out to puddle on the floor.
She counted quickly. He didn’t have that many more leads to remove. Soon she’d be free of the chair. She realized her arms were already free and flexed her fingers.
Should she kill him before trying to escape the cell? This had to be a game of Thallian’s. Was there any way she could win it?
“We haven’t got long,” the man said, as if echoing her thoughts. “It’s the middle of the night. The guard is light. Can you shoot?”
“Yes,” Raena said decisively.
He set a med tech’s kit in her lap, pressed the release so it bloomed open for her. Inside she saw a disassembled Stinger sporting pistol. Raena got busy putting the pieces back together.
The man finished with the electrodes. He reached past her into the bag—their hands met briefly—to pull out a roll of gauze. He wrapped it sloppily around her head.
“Leave off,” Raena said. She yanked the gauze off angrily, dropping it onto the floor.
“You’re bleeding.”
“It’ll stop.”
He came around to face her finally. Raena squinted up at him: med tech uniform, new haircut, familiar muddy green eyes.
He spoke before she could admit that she really didn’t know who he was. “I couldn’t let him have you, Raena. I couldn’t let you be taken from me like that, without a fight.”
Gavin? She didn’t dare say his name aloud, on the slim chance that they would actually get out of this alive. No need to help Thallian identify her rescuer. Let him wonder.
“Are you insane?” she asked instead as he hauled her to her feet.
“Quite possibly. Ready?”
She slapped the power pack to make sure the connection was tight and thumbed the pistol live. And grinned.
He slid the jammer into the lock. Raena dove past him and found herself in Thallian’s office. That figured. She took out the guards with quick head shots, then waite
d for Gavin to come around her to unlock the door to the corridor.
As he punched coordinates into the lift control, Raena panted, “How did you get in to get me?”
“A med tech ID is surprisingly easy to get.”
The lift doors opened and Raena dropped the three men inside before they could react.
“You flew in with all the other med techs?”
“No, I needed my own ship to fly us out. So I hired a friend as pilot and told Flight Control I missed the last tech shuttle. We had the right codes, so they let us land. I’ve been lying low onboard, trying to find out where you were being held, for the last couple of days.”
Raena drew the medallion over her head and put it into Gavin’s hand. He looked it over. She knew the tarnished silver disk didn’t look like much, but he put it into his breast pocket anyway.
The lift halted. Raena shot the man waiting outside and slammed her fist on the doors closed button. “Why are you risking your life for me?” she asked.
“Those bastards tried to kill me with the Messiah. You should’ve seen me when I woke up with it stuck in my hair. I was terrified to look in the mirror.”
She examined him. He did seem older than she remembered, now that she got a clear-eyed look at him. “What happened?”
“I landed backwards in it. It looks powdery, but once you touch it, it’s gummy. I was practically sealed to the floor. I had to cut myself free, blind.” He mimed reaching over his head to hack at his hair. “Once I finally got off the floor, it took forever for me to comb it out. I never held my breath for so long in my life.” He grinned at her. “Anyway, I owed you.”
“Thank you.”
The elevator slowed as it reached the docking levels. Gavin checked the charge on his guns. “Let me shoot some this time.”
“No promises,” Raena said.
When the doors opened, an entire squadron had taken position outside, guns aimed and ready. Raena spun toward Gavin and gave him the only mercy she could. She knew what Thallian would do to him otherwise.
