The Broken Third (Digitesque Book 4)

by Guerric Haché

  Ada had no idea what that meant, but a disbelieving hiss escaped Adrall. Baoji and Tenrac, however, both reacted by perking their ears up instantly. Baoji spoke first. “Are you serious? How good at it -”

  Adrall cut him off. “Kosk, how accurate is the simulation? ”

  Kosk seemed skittish. “It’s - that’s the whole selling point. As far as I know it’s as accurate as any real astrochart would be.”

  Ada frowned at the word game , and Elsa had an even more intense reaction. “You can’t be serious.”

  Tenrac stood up and raised her hands. “No, no, he’s right! Listen - games can earn their makers bomb threats for pettier things than inaccurate orbital simulations. Spaceflight enthusiasts and navy people love this thing .”

  “What are we talking about?” Ada looked wildly around them.

  Kosk made straight for the lockers while Baoji explained. “He’s got a game about building space probes and launching them on interstellar missions. It’s build on an accurate orbital mechanics simulation. It has the twelve and Earth and Mir and a lot of uninhabited systems nearby too. If he sets the simulation date to today, it can calculate three-dimensional coordinates for Earth and Chang’e, and Tenrac can aim the tachyon beam manually using those.”

  Kosk and Tenrac were already staring at the screen together, tapping it quickly and muttering between themselves. Ada still had a hard time understanding what was going on, but if it meant they were going to be able to transmit to Earth it was good enough for her. She stepped towards Elsa. “Is it true? If we send out a general distress call -”

  “The military will come for us. Responding to distress calls is their job.” She pursed her lips. “Nobody else will come. Ada - this is a really long shot, you know that right? If we don’t do anything -”

  Ada gripped Elsa’s shoulder and squeezed it gently. “Trust me. We’ll get through this.”

  She shook her head, but didn’t dispute it outright. “I hope you’re right.” She glanced at Turou, who still looked haunted. Maybe he was actually worrying about his colleagues being attacked by the military.

  After a few minutes Tenrac looked up and scurried back to her terminal. “Captain Hesk, we’ve got coordinates. I can target the transmission.”

  “How accurately?”

  She glanced at Kosk, who was standing next to her, holding his screen up for her to see. “As long as the simulation is broadly accurate to within a reasonable margin of error, I just need one shot. If we get too long a response that might drain the batteries, but otherwise we’ll be okay.”

  A response. Would Cherry speak to her?

  “Miss - uh, Ada?” Tenrac was looking nervously at her. “I’ve got the tachyon relay pointed at Earth. What’s your message?”

  “Can you send our location along with the message?” Ada led Turou back over to Elsa, and Tenrac nodded. “Okay. Who will get it? Anyone anywhere near Earth?”

  “I can tighten the beam but I’d rather not, in case the simulation is a bit off. Frankly, at this angle, we’re covering everything in the Sol system all the way out to Saturn. And anything in an expanding cone behind that.”

  She nodded. “Tell me when I can start talking.”

  Tenrac’s ears twitched. “Now.”

  Everyone fell quiet. Ada took a deep breath, and spoke in her own first tongue.

  “Gods on the ring, this is Arbiter Ada Liu. I need my ship - Cherry - and if this message doesn’t reach Cherry directly, I need you to relay it. No demands, no quibbling. I need my ship. If I don’t get it, I’m never going to be able to get back to Earth and help you uphold the zeroth law. I can come back and help humanity thrive, but not without Cherry. Send me my ship.”

  She took another deep breath.

  “Cherry, if you can hear me directly - I really, really need your help. Come quiet, find my suit, and be ready for a fight.” She slipped back into the colonial tongue and glanced at Tenrac. “That’s it.”

  There was a clicking sound, and Tenrac nodded. “It’s done. Now let’s see if -”

  She froze, and everybody else tensed up as the officer looked back up.

  “We’re - we’re receiving an answer! But I can’t hear it.” Her ears swiveled wildly. “What’s wrong with the speakers?”

  Ada’s heart leapt and crashed at the same time. “I blew them up to stop that virus from shouting at us! Don’t you have anything else?”

  “Just a second, rerouting to my console speaker - I -”

  A sudden flickering of light on the console drew the officer’s attention. Her ears drooped, and she glanced at Ada. “A circuit overload from the main network just fried our tachyon relay.”

  Ada squeezed her fists. “Did - did you record the answer?”

  “The relay is integrated with the signal storage database.” Tenrac slumped on her chair. “It’s all fried.”

  She took a deep breath, pacing back and forth across the bridge. “They - somebody answered. From Earth.”

  “Yes. But we have no idea who it was or what they said.”

  Somebody had answered. Her first thought was Cherry, but it could have been the gods. It could also have been someone else entirely. It could have been anyone, really. But if Cherry knew she was out here and needed help… Quietly, she was relieved they had at least gotten an answer.

  Turou cleared his throat. “On the bright side, this means the message was received. So if your ship got it, it must be on its way.”

  Adrall shook his head. “And it’ll have to get from Earth to the hardlinked jumpgate to Freyja, then somehow find its way to Chang’e’s only gate. That could take days. If we don’t get picked up in the next fourteen hours we’re going to be crushed in Chang’e’s atmosphere. If life support is down, we’ll be dead in ten.”

  Ada paced in front of the narrow, heavily reinforced window looking out onto space. As the others started debating options and tallying their limited resources on the bridge, she thought about what she knew.

  Cherry might be coming for her, but if not, she still needed to get off this ship. Either way, she needed another ship. Who would come pick up the crew of a random, damaged freighter headed for fiery death in a gas giant? In the midst of some kind of social crisis? Maybe nobody.

  Who would come pick up her?

  Someone she had been meaning to kill. She smiled.

  “Tenrac - we have normal comms, right?”

  Tenrac’s ears flicked. “System comms, yes. There’s a delay, but anything in Chang’e selenial should be no more than ten seconds out. That includes Chang’e, the stations on Yutu, some SysSec ships and stations, military fleet segments, a whole lot of civilian traffic -”

  “Let’s call the military.”

  Elsa immediately stepped up to her. “Ada, what are you thinking?”

  She grinned. “I say hi, Senjat comes running -”

  “That’s a terrible idea -”

  “Then I kill him and we take over his ship.”

  Adrall groaned and grabbed his muzzle with his hand, staggering away. “Baoji, why me?”

  Elsa bit her lip. “Still a terrible idea. What if they try to blast us from afar? Maybe you’re just too much trouble.”

  She stepped up to the thick glass shielding them from the nothing of space, and laid a hand on it. “Can we get to an airlock? I can put a wraith outside to defend us. But if we’re already on a course to crash into the planet, why would they need to shoot us?”

  Elsa frowned. “Baoji, any ideas for getting her to an airlock?”

  He was scratching the fur of his neck. “Ada, you don’t need to get out yourself, do you? You just need to throw some magic out there.”

  She nodded cautiously. “Yes, but I need to make it here first.”

  “Tenrac, you said we have control of sanitation? Could she send a…” He made a confused hand gesture and frowned deeply. “Something through the pipes? To an airlock, or a valve or something?”

  Tenrac blinked, closing her eyes. “I haven’t worked the pip
es in a while, but there are definitely valves along the way we could open and close. How big an object are we talking?”

  Ada mimed with her hands. “Uh, pretty small. I don’t know how small I can get, but maybe this?”

  Tenrac grimaced. “Whatever it is, if you can send it down the bridge toilet I should be able to open and close valves along the plumbing system to let you out without opening us to a vacuum. You can exit from another toilet on the floor below us, then you’re on your own.”

  Elsa raised an eyebrow at her, apparently a bit reassured and a bit amused by the plan. “This could be memorable.”

  Ada tilted her head and grinned. “Elsa, if you forget any of our time together I’ll be very offended.”

  They traded tired chuckles as Elsa took a step back. “Well - get to it. Do your magic, then we make the call.”

  “To be clear.” Adrall coughed, glancing between them. “What, exactly, is this magic? ”

  Ada shook her head. He could develop his own understanding when he saw it. She crossed her legs, rested her hands palms up on her knees, and took a deep breath that lasted for hours.

  She willed tangles of black spindles, interlocking and interweaving into tentacular geometric structures, from her fingertips. The work of creating a wraith she could link to her mind was growing easier and easier each time, her mind more and more familiar with the motions. With just a splinter of time she carved out of air the fuliginous black etchings of an almost-living extension of herself.

  Then she gave it eyes, and cast up in front of the window a vast rectangle caught in four sides of writhing code where the wraith’s eyes would show what they saw. She kept another set just over her own eyes, for the sake of ease, then slipped back into higher time.

  “Good god.” Adrall grumbled. “It’s real.”

  “This is what the wraith can see, so keep an eye on it. I can still hear you. Where’s this toilet?”

  Through the wraith’s eyes she looked around, and Kosk rose from his station to make towards a small door. “Over here. It’s dry now, but when Tenrac activates some of the valves there may be water.”

  “That’s fine.” As the wraith, she clambered up onto the basin and began to contract her entire shape, looking down into the empty plumbing with certainly a slight sense of amusement. “Tenrac, tell me when.”

  The technical officer nodded, barely visible through the code Ada was using to see through the wraith’s eyes, and they started. Each mechanical thud was a sign to go, or to stop, and Tenrac called each one out clearly before engaging the systems. The wraith moved further and further into the plumbing, flaring light sigils to see, occasionally buffeted by sloshing water.

  Then she was free. She still heard the people on the bridge, of course - but they were distant from her conscience. She was alone in this part of the ship, which had clearly been torn through by a strong wind.

  Had any of the other crew made it out alive? How could she defend the ship from attack? Could she, maybe, recover that tachyon transmitter? Could she seal the ship’s open wounds and stop it from bleeding air?

  Her body, far away, smiled. She could do all those things.

  Before long she had four wraiths moving through the ship, all tethered to her, each one a room she could step into at will even as she continued feeling the others.

  The easiest thing was sealing the ship. This AI virus had only opened airlocks, and microscopic disintegrations and weldings, with a few bits of metal salvaged from unnecessary walls, were enough to force the airlocks shut. They wouldn’t readily open again, but that was for future Adrall to deal with.

  Had any of the crew survived? She shuffled one of her wraiths around the ship, looking through windows - and yes! To her pleasant surprise, and to the clear sighs of relief from the people on the bridge, several of the crew had managed to lock or seal themselves into safe locations. Some wore space suits, some were in specially sealed rooms, and two appeared to have made it into one of the smaller trawler ships, which had not been infected by the virus.

  Defending the ship from attack was tricky, but she knew it would require multiple wraiths, so she etched more and more and got them scratching the hull full of reinforcement and energy absorption sigils, and filled these wraiths with a pure desire to defend the ship from incoming attacks.

  One last wraith slunk over to the tachyon transmitter. It looked fine, but Tenrac insisted it looked bad. Still, she tore into it, digging and inspecting. Coding more reinforcement sigils. Apparently, there was nothing to be done.

  Where else had the virus gotten? Was life support still functioning? She tried leading some of the crew towards the trawlers, but much of the ship was missing air. She sealed a window that had somehow broken, defending the ship. Some of the wraiths wondered if they could divert the ship - no, she was wondering if she could use them to do it. But she was everywhere. Why was Tenrac complaining that she was looking at the tachyon relay again? They might be able to salvage it, and bring the crew to the bridge. No tunnels. She should really reinforce the pressurized gas blisters, but Adrall was shouting about magic and another broken window. She found the window and defended it.

  “Ada!”

  Belatedly, she realized Elsa had struck her body’s face with the palm of her hand. She shook her head, but when she stopped it kept shaking. “Elsa? What are you -”

  “You’re fine, you’re good, you’ve done enough. Stop.”

  Good enough? But she hadn’t looked at the tachyon relay yet. “What? Listen, just -”

  “No.” Gingerly, Elsa prodded at the video code swirling around Ada’s eyes; she had put on thick gloves. “Stop it or you’re going to kill us all.”

  She let the code fall away, knowing that at any time she could bring up a connection to the wraiths again. “What’s wrong, Isavel?”

  Elsa looked at her darkly. “ This is what’s wrong. You’ve been at it for an hour. You need to stop or you’ll collapse.”

  Turou shuffled over to them. “Here, I’ve got it.” He was offering Ada food, she realized. It was some kind of sticky bar, and as she ate it she found it sweet and nutty.

  An hour? With all the time dilation and contraction, it was difficult to tell anymore. Maybe a colonial hour was different. Hard to say. Kind of like honey.

  “What did she do to the gas blisters?” Adrall was still unhappy. “If those things explode -”

  “Made them stronger.” Ada glanced at him, realizing the great black webbing supporting the screen view of the first wraith’s eyes was still writing and alive at the head of the bridge. “The crew -”

  “Sixteen accounted for. I think we lost eleven people.” Tenrac’s voice was flat. “Slamming doors and open airlocks, mostly.”

  Adrall growled a little. “Well, if we’re ready for part two of this insane plan, we should comm the military.”

  Baoji was leaning over Kosk’s terminal. “Looks like the group coordinator is the Song of Fire .”

  Elsa inspected her face carefully. “Are you okay? Do you need to rest?”

  “I’m fine.” Ada stuffed the last of the mouth into her bar and stood up and swayed on her feet as her eyes exploded with stars. She was not fine, but she wanted to finish this. “Fine fine. Let me talk to that idiot.”

  “Just let me make the call.” Elsa straightened her shoulders. “It’s as good as you doing it.”

  She took a few steps towards Adrall’s terminal and then slumped down, leaning against it, light-headed. “Okay. Any more food?”

  Adrall flicked a gaze at Turou. “No point in rationing when we’ll either be dead or saved in a few hours. Feed the wizard.”

  “Sorceress.” She grinned as Elsa stepped past her to the terminal, and some clicks and beeps came forth from the machine’s small speakers.

  Senjat Ashur’s voice. His words seemed benign, his voice furious. “Captain Hesk, I believe? Your ship seems to be suffering from erratic behavior and a black magic infestation. How can your government assist you?”

&
nbsp; Elsa was clearly not enjoying this. “Admiral Ashur, this is Lieutenant Carrera. Unfortunately, the ship is as good as derelict. We need a rescue.”

  “Carrera?” Senjat’s scowl resonated from the machine. “Yes, we can’t let you be late for your court martial.”

  “With all due -” Elsa grunted. “Listen, we - including Ada Liu - need off this ship. I’m sure my employee evaluation can wait. And can be conducted in a public setting.”

  “Don’t worry, Elsa. You will be granted all the leniency due to you under military regulation and civilian law.” His voice crackled with static and insincerity. “Maintain your present course and do not resist boarding parties. This conversation is over.”

  Elsa kept her lips sealed as she huffed out a long sigh through her nose, then shook her head. “Well, for whatever good that will do us.”

  Ada was not feeling much better, even after Turou had given her another food bar. Perhaps she had overdone it, trying to personally command a dozen wraiths around in realtime. But they were very specific tasks that needed to be done.

  Wait, who was on the speaker now? That wasn’t Senjat. A woman’s voice, familiar. “We are here with an executive warrant for the arrest of Senjat Ashur. We will dispatch rescue craft -”

  Why were the people on the bridge shouting, now? She collapsed onto the floor. Those answers would have to wait.

  Somebody moved her at some point - two people, huffing and puffing as their weak bodies struggled to drag her across the floor. She occasionally heard shouting and comm crackling, none of it committed to memory. She did not dream.

  “What the fuck is that?”

  Was this a dream? She felt a rocking motion, and hands. Then a sharp sting to her face. She blinked her eyes open and found Turou looking at her with concern and gently shaking her shoulder, Elsa with the steely gaze of a powerful caged animal. It seemed clear which one had slapped her in the face, and she wasn’t sure whether that made it more or less likely this was a dream.

  “Ada! Get up!” Elsa gestured towards the main terminals of the bridge. “Something’s happening.”

  She did feel better, at least, even though she was still groggy. The two colonials tried to help her up and almost immediately winced under the strain, so she swung herself up and swayed a bit on her feet before taking a cautious step forward. That was fine. “What’s going on?”