The Broken Third (Digitesque Book 4)

by Guerric Haché

  Elsa was still dressed - she’d insisted they both keep a basic layer of clothing on, despite the discomfort. Ada could appreciate the awkwardness of there only being two bunk s for four people in the ship, but she didn’t see why they hadn’t put her with Turou or Baoji if Elsa was uncomfortable sleeping in the same bed. Another conversation she had quickly given up on, since it seemed to matter less to her than anyone else.

  “The jumpgate. We’re almost there. Also, you’re a furnace, did you know that?”

  She cricked her neck left and right, wishing she hadn’t had to keep the suit on. It was comfortable in just about every position other than lying down. “Nobody’s ever mentioned it. Is that why you didn’t want the blanket?”

  “Yeah, I’m not looking to get baked.” She opened the door and leaned outside, looking up. “Ada’s up! How long do we have?”

  Baoji shouted back down. “Ten minutes. Just started retro burn.”

  Elsa stepped outside without another word and started climbing the ladder; Ada stared around herself for a moment before Turou’s head appeared in the doorway. Just the head, the rest of him being obscured.

  “You need to fold the bed back into the wall.”

  “Oh, right.” She stood and turned to face the bed’s mechanism, and tried pulling it upward from the side, but it didn’t budge. “Um.”

  “There’s a trick to it.” He froze for a moment and glanced down. “Uh, let me put a shirt on.”

  She took two steps out and into the hallway, and found him wearing a pair of short pants and little else. She raised an eyebrow. “What for?”

  He stammered and sighed wordlessly, stepping past her to push and pull on the mattress in a different, odd direction before the bare mattress swung up and receded into the walls.

  “Do colonials have some problem not wearing clothes?”

  He stumbled as he turned around to leave the room, and the cockpit suddenly went quiet for a moment before Elsa spoke. “Ada, this is not the time.”

  Turou shook his head sheepishly as he reached between the ladders and slipped into the other bunkroom. “It’s just considered a bit private, that’s all. Are there any taboos on Earth?”

  “Taboos?”

  “Things that society says you shouldn’t do or even talk about.”

  She frowned. “Cannibalism?”

  “What?”

  This time her words had failed, it seemed. “Eating other people. But nobody does that.”

  He reappeared wearing a simple shirt and pants. “How do you know if nobody talks about it?”

  She pursed her lips. He had a point. “I don’t see what this has to do with not wearing clothes.”

  “Five minutes to jump. Get up here.”

  She let Turou scrabble up, noticing the blankets and pillows still on a fixed table in the bunk room. She stepped in to stow the blankets and pillow in a cupboard - that, at least, was easy, though she still wished the ship could do everything on verbal command.

  “Ada? We might need -”

  “Just give me a second to -” Pain slammed into her brain as she hit her head on the top of the doorframe. “Fuck!” She clutched her forehead, bending down a little. Her skull was throbbing. “Gods fucking damn it!”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Who the hell designed this thing?! There isn’t even a door, why the hell is there a doorframe?”

  Baoji’s voice sounded out from the cockpit. “I pulled the door out myself a few years ago. Hit your head?”

  She made for the cockpit, climbing the ladder while wincing as hard as she could. “Yes. Fuck, Baoji, you’re my height. Why don’t you whack your head all the time?”

  “You say that like I don’t.” He was sitting in the pilot seat, Elsa next to him, and Turou on the opposite side of the cockpit’s current floor. There was nothing in front of them. Pain panged in her head again, and this time she clutched her skull.

  “I thought you said we were near the jumpgate.”

  “Almost there. We’re going ass-first while we retro burn. It’s all on the cameras.”

  Elsa turned around to look at Turou, then smirked at Ada. “You two ready for this? I’ve been trying to track communications on the Chang’e side of the jumpgate, but we don’t have the best tech and I don’t know all the protocols. I’m not sure what we’re going to find on the other side.”

  “What exactly do you expect to find? I thought we were just jumping away and getting out of here.”

  Elsa shook her head. “Not that simple. They’re definitely monitoring us - after all, we did EMP a couple of ships back there. They might have guessed we were headed for Chang’e earlier, but they definitely know now, and they’ll be mobilizing a force on the other side to try and capture us. If they do…” She shrugged. “Maybe we can just say we were kidnapped or something, lower our charges. I don’t know.”

  Baoji glanced sideways at Elsa but said nothing. Ada frowned. “That doesn’t sound convincing.”

  “Well there’s not much else we can do, is there? This isn’t a warship.”

  Ada rubbed her head and thought back to Cherry, to the way the fighter had dodged and wove through the sky. Why had the starfighter stopped answering her hails? Had it been necessary, to protect Elysium? “If I had my old ship I don’t think this would be a problem.”

  “Did it get blown up?”

  “It disappeared.”

  Baoji’s ears twitched. “Disappeared? Did you ever go looking for it?”

  She frowned. “Well… I called for it.”

  “You called the ship? What if it was out of transponder range?”

  Ada shook her head. “That’s stupid. It was just in orbit around Earth. Why would it be out of range?”

  “How did you call it?”

  “My suit. If I think with it, it sends a message.”

  Baoji looked her up and down. “No offense, but I’m not sure how strong a signal that thing has. There’s not much room in there for an antenna.”

  “Cherry is ridiculously advanced. It could hear -”

  “It can only hear whatever’s reaching it. If your suit doesn’t have the range to reach it, or to clear the atmosphere, the ship can’t talk back.”

  Ada frowned. She had never been able to contact the gods with the suit, either. Nor had she been able to control the Chengdu from particularly far away, though she had thought that was the Chengdu ’s limitation, not hers. Cherry had sometimes been fairly far during conversations… but never in space, beyond the atmosphere. Perhaps that meant something too. Perhaps Baoji was right, and Cherry was still waiting for her out there.

  Her eyes widened.

  “Now I really need to send a signal to Earth. I can help all of us.”

  Baoji laughed. “Ada, I love my ship, but she can’t send a tachyon ray anywhere, let alone Earth. We already told you the main relays don’t point to Earth. Now let me keep an eye on the gate. We’re almost there.”

  “Turou?” She turned to look at him. “Are there tachyon communicators on Chang’e?”

  He nodded. “Sure, networks use them to beam between the twelve, and there are special-purpose ones besides. The campus doesn’t have one, but there are some nearby you can pay to use.”

  “I want to get to one of them.” She started feeling a bit giddy. “Maybe I can call my ship back! Or get the gods to send it to me.”

  The three in the cockpit were silent for a moment, and Baoji grunted. “The machine gods. Right.”

  She looked at them all. “Why do you all get so weird when I talk about our gods?”

  “We can talk about theology later.” Baoji pointed at the screen. “We’re about to hit the jumpgate, it’s just switched over to Chang’e. Whatever happens on the other side, we’re going to have to be fast.”

  Ada looked at the glowing shapes on the screen. She wasn’t sure what was going on, but she knew she was good for a fight. “I can be fast.”

  “Fast at what?”

  Ada looked out into the void o
f space, trying to think. She couldn’t go out there, but maybe, if she thought of some way to get a wraith out there that she could control… “Is there a way for me to throw something out into space?”

  Baoji flatted one of his ears, a mirran gesture of concern. “Uh, the entrance is also an airlock. What are you going to chuck out there?”

  She opened her mouth to explain, shut it again, then opened it. “It’s complicated. Just trust me, okay? If there’s a problem on the other side, I can try to handle it.”

  Elsa turned around. “Handle it? Ada, by handle it , do you mean kill people?” Her expression was somber. “We haven’t killed anyone yet, besides those people who shot you, and I’m not keen on starting. Civilians, military, whatever - they don’t need to die.”

  Ada nodded. Elsa was right, of course - killing people needlessly would bring a lot more anger down on their heads than they already had, and any attempt at pointing out the wrongdoing of whoever had tried to kill her, or wanted to, would be pretty severely compromised if Ada ran around killing people herself. It would make them seem right. “I’ll try not to kill anyone. I’ll just disable their ships. Speaking of which, can’t we do what we did last time?”

  Elsa shook her head. “They’ll be ready this time. It won’t work. And if they have an EMP ready for us -”

  Baoji pointed at the back of the ship. “The main thrusters are hardened but the rest isn’t, at least not against anything stronger than a solar flare. We can just plow ahead if there’s nothing in front of us.”

  “Do what you have to do.” Ada hefted herself down onto the ladder. “I’m heading for the airlock. I’ll let you know when I’m ready. Turou, want to watch? ”

  He fidgeted. “I’ll stay away from the airlock, thanks.”

  She made for the entrance alone then, and when she got there, slipped into time dilation. Reaching out with code, she started the familiar patterns - a golem sigil, complex but known to her, along with all the other parts she needed for a wraith. And that wasn’t all she knew how to do, either - she knew how to create communicator sigils, and had even spoken to the gods with them. Could she use one to communicate to a wraith, too? To connect with it, like she had before, when…

  She shook her head. Not now.

  She tried, connecting the communicator sigil into the wraith where she might normally connect her own mind. She created another of the sigils and held it in her hand, and then moved back into regular time. The comm was buzzing.

  “- seconds! You ready?”

  Ada grinned. “Get the airlock ready!”

  A set of doors with thick, grimy glass windows slowly started closing around the entrance, with lights flashing. Ada stepped out of the way, leaving the wraith alone on the other side, idle and unmoving. She reached into the communicator sigil and connected it to the back of her neck, to her mind, and suddenly there was another room in her head.

  She shuddered. She remembered what it had felt like for that room to be the last refuge of her conscious mind. She felt cold.

  She tried breathing more slowly with her physical body as her mind prodded around the wraith, looking around, slowing time, coding eyes. She could see through the wraith, move it, control it.

  She found she almost didn’t want to. It made her tremble. She gritted her teeth, trying to ignore the panicked sensation.

  “Jump complete. Ada, wait a second.”

  A hissing sound filled the air, and a small screen on the wall flashed with the words Recovering Atmosphere . She started climbing up the ladder again, still feeling the connection to the wraith, and saw something bright flashing on Baoji’s screen up above.

  “What’s going on?”

  Baoji pointed at the empty space in front of them, even as he stared at different screens. The stars, Ada noticed, where moving up quickly - the ship must be spinning in space. “Nothing? Not even a patrol ship? They had a whole day to get here.”

  Elsa leaned forward, peering out the top of the cockpit. Then she hissed. “No, no, no! Go! Move! ”

  The ship suddenly kicked into gear, pushing forward, as another voice crackled on the communications. “Attention Cirrus-class vessel, please power down and prepare to be boarded, or we will neutralize your ship and take it by force.”

  “I can’t get a reading on them -”

  “They’re powered down so your shitty heat scanners won’t flag them.” Elsa tapped the cockpit glass. “I saw four Hermes-class .”

  Baoji grumbled. “That’s a lot of guns. Should we -”

  Ada smiled, settling into a more comfortable position. “My turn. Anything I should know about these ships?”

  Elsa looked at her and blinked. “Well they crew about thirty people, so don’t destroy them. Engines are the big boxy things on the sides. They’ve got rocket pods and laser turrets, and if they start shooting with lasers there’s no fucking way we can dodge that. It’ll vaporize the hull material. We can’t take more than a few hits.”

  “What do the laser turrets look like?”

  “A half-sphere with a stick out the side. Should be four of them.”

  The stern male voice broke into the cockpit again. “You have thirty seconds to power down your ship, or we will begin neutralisation procedures. This is your final warning.”

  “I’ve got them on scanner.” Baoji didn’t sound happy about that. “Powering up to pursue.”

  Ada nodded. “Okay. Keep flying and open the airlock. I’ve got this.”

  She walked her awareness into that other room in her mind, and suddenly she could see and feel the wraith. The door outside of Baoji’s ship opened and she moved the wraith out, aiming its levitation sigil straight at itself.

  “What is that thing, exactly?”

  Baoji’s voice felt distant with her focus in the wraith. Ada grinned, and she fed the wraith’s power into that levitation sigil, twisting it around to change direction. The wraith simply fell wherever the sigil was pointing, as though into a groove in the world. She looked around with its multiple eyes, time slowed to a crawl, and she saw the first of the boxy ships. They were closing the distance fairly quickly, even with time slowed - she could see them moving forward.

  Time for action.

  She reached out with code, stretching long, dark tendrils across the void and crawling around the first of the ships. She found the laser turrets fairly quickly, looking exactly as Elsa had described them, and wrote precisely broken power collection code onto them. As she pulled away the code glowed brighter over a slow second, then crashed, cracking the guns apart with a flash.

  Next ship. She reached across the void, watching the sparks fly from her first victim and reaching to the second, destroying its guns as well. This was too easy. She reached out for the third ship -

  Suddenly some of the wraith’s eyes were cut off. Shit.

  What happened?

  She looked through the remaining eyes to see the code tendrils dissipating, severed by flashes at a few locations. The ships were firing lasers at her wraith, and they were connecting. Damn it. Even stretched, time was running out.

  She let time move normally again to speed up the wraith’s movement, placing it between the two ships that still had lasers, throwing tendrils of code out in every direction in the hopes of distracting the lasers from the core sigils.

  “Holy shit.” Elsa’s voice was not directed at her. “She just blasted the lasers right off, didn’t she?”

  “What the hell -”

  Ada squeezed time still. Reaching out towards the laser turrets might take too long, but now she was between them, and the code was roiling and changing in space. If they fired lasers at her, the attack might pass clear through and hit the other ship. She was counting on them not to take that risk as she reached out towards the third ship again, code corkscrewing through the air.

  There was a sudden flash from the ship, slow and tedious to watch, and a large, white, sharp-angled projectile made of metal slowly emerged from a sliding panel on the side of the ship. Ah, t
hat must be the rocket. Interesting. She reached towards it with code as it slowly approached and started carving tiny inverted levitation sigils on it. The sigils started twisting the rocket randomly through space, thwarting its guidance systems.

  From there she reached out to the third ship, cracking its laser turrets one by one. She was about to reach the fourth and final turret when the wraith suddenly went blank in her mind.

  She was dying all over again.

  Then her mind snapped back to focus on her physical body, breathing heavily. She was okay. She panted and buried her hands in her face.

  “Shit.” She glanced out the cockpit, but couldn’t see anything. “I lost it!”

  Elsa was frantically doing something on one of the screens. “Execute!”

  The ship pitched forward in space as Baoji struggled with the controls. Ada grabbed onto the bulkhead to steady herself. “What’s going on?”

  “There’s a warhead spinning out of control way too close to us.” Elsa shot her a panicked glance. “Did you do that?”

  “I -”

  A flash briefly illuminated the cockpit, and something rocked the ship gently. It was eerily silent. “That was the rocket.” Baoji shook his head. “They lasered it.”

  “The last Hermes is pulling away.” Elsa was pointing. “Whatever you did out there, Ada, you scared the fuck out of them.”

  She smiled. “Good. Did I kill anybody?”

  Elsa shook her head. “I don’t think so, their ships are all still powered up and moving, though it looks like some shed a bit of atmo. They’ll do okay. I don’t see any other patrols on intercept - I think they underestimated you, Ada.”

  She grinned, still silently wishing she had done even more.

  Baoji pointed into the distance. “We’re lucky Chang’e is close. It’ll be about twelve hours.”

  “Twelve hours?” Her smiled faded. “That’s not close! Why does everything take so damned long?”

  He shook his head, ears backwards. “Physics, Ada. Physics.”

  “Well, somebody should fix those.”

  A voice sounded in the cockpit. “Unidentified vessel, charges have been laid on your license for A-grade destruction of property and attempted -”