by J. N. Chaney
“C’mon, sweetheart, you got this.”
All but one of the particle beams missed. An alarm buzzed as one raked across the shield, sending glowing, ablated chunks into the Slipwing’s wake. Each second, though, brought her closer to Dash’s target.
Now he had to hold the Slipwing on a steady course, which meant the particle beams found their mark. More alarms sounded, and more shield vaporized. Dash gritted his teeth then spun the ship around.
“Okay,” he shouted at the comms, “cut your engines!”
“What? Are you crazy? We—”
“Cut your engines or we’re both done!”
He heard the sound of a heartbeat, then the exhaust flare trailing the smaller vessel died away. The Slipwing, still accelerating, immediately closed in. As she zipped past, Dash activated the magnetic drive. It was a low-power system, intended for in-system use, letting a ship ride the magnetic fields of stars and planets as a fuel-saving measure. He’d reconfigured it, though, to—
“Oof!”
The magnetic drive latched onto the other ship, whose mass yanked the Slipwing sideways, slowing her so suddenly that it punched the air from Dash’s lungs. Both ships, locked together, tumbled off on a new course, disrupting the attacker’s firing solutions. The particle beams tore through empty space, as the attacking ship overtook its quarry.
Dash ignored the massive ship sliding past the cockpit ports as they spun. His fingers tapped the maneuvering thrusters, bringing the Slipwing’s docking port into line with that of the Raven. There was a metallic clunk as they joined, then the sounds of venting to create a usable walkway for his new guests. Dash shouted at the comms, “Now would be a good time to come aboard!”
The lock indicator went red as the hatch opened. Dash gritted his teeth at the scanner. The mag-locked ships spun along the flank of their looming attacker, only a few thousand meters away. Thrusters flared along the massive hull, as it sought to shove itself back into a firing position. As he’d hoped, this close, the particle beams couldn’t get a firing solution, but that wouldn’t last.
He scowled at the lock indicator. Still red.
“C’mon, let’s go.”
The scanner blared a warning. Something had just lit them up—a fire control system. A particle beam lanced past, accompanied by a crash of static on the comms. Way too close.
He hit the thrusters, rotating the Slipwing and its temporary docking-mate. The particle beam fired again, slamming into the Raven with a dazzling flash, another crash of static, and a spray of vaporized hull. Yeah, that was a critical hit. He felt a little bad about using the Raven as what amounted to extra armor for the Slipwing, but you do what you gotta do.
Another warning sounded. The Raven’s fusion drive was failing. In the rush, whoever had been piloting it hadn’t shut the reactor down. Now, still generating plasma as hot as the surface of a star, it was about to lose containment. The flash of stellar heat would vaporize them both.
“Damn it!” snapped Dash, and he quickly jammed a hand toward the mag-drive. Even if it decompressed the Slipwing through an open lock, he couldn’t wait any longer.
The lock indicator went green. With one hand, Dash killed the mag drive, letting the stricken Raven spin away. With the other, he stabbed the thrusters, rotating the Slipwing onto the most awkward heading he could envision for their attacker to follow, then punched his own fusion drive. The Slipwing accelerated like a bullet. Particle beams reached out for them, converging like the fingers of a clenched fist. Several scoured the hull, while one raked across the rear plating protecting the fusion drive.
Then the abandoned vessel exploded in a searing flash. Incandescent plasma washed over the Slipwing, but she’d gained enough distance that it was a tenuous cloud, just enough to singe the hull. The electromagnetic pulse of the blast was more damaging, provoking overloads and showers of sparks from injured electronics. Dash scanned the status board. Fortunately, all the failures were secondary systems—or, at least, secondary to the immediate goal of staying alive.
After a thump from behind him, Dash turned and found himself staring at a woman. She was of average height, with dark blonde hair, green eyes—actually, very green eyes—and she was pretty good looking, actually.
“Welcome aboard Dash spacelines,” he said, offering a grin. “Sole proprietor Dash Sawyer, at your service.”
The woman’s lips curled. “What kind of name is Dash?”
“Mine, for starters.”
“Viktor has the fuel. He’s loading it now.”
Dash glanced at the status. Sure enough, the anti-deuterium level was coming up from, well, pretty much zero. Whoever Viktor was, he knew his stuff. Tapping into the fuel system from inside the Slipwing was a complicated job, but this Viktor had managed it in just a few minutes.
“You used the blast from my ship as a smokescreen,” the woman said, pointing at the scanner. “That was after you used it as a shield.”
“Yeah, look, sorry about that, but—”
“No, it was smart. Buys us time. You still owe me a ship, though.”
“Uh, yeah, I don’t think so.”
He saw her wry smile and grinned back. “Okay,” he said, “so between that cloud of plasma out there blinding them, and the time it will take them to turn that beast around, we should—”
He was cut off by a warning buzz. Another fire control system had found them. No, wait. Two. Make that three.
Dash spun back to the Slipwing’s controls. “Missiles.” They accelerated far faster than the Slipwing ever could, which meant they had thirty seconds, maybe, to detonation. He watched as the projectiles raced in.
He grimaced at the screens.
“Okay,” a gruff voice called from deeper inside the Slipwing. “You should have enough!”
Dash didn’t wait for the voice to finish. The fuel level was low, but there was enough for him to activate the translation drive. The Slipwing did as her namesake suggested and slipped from real space to the space between and finally to unSpace. Energy bursts showed the missiles detonating, both right on top of them and an entire reality away.
Dash let the thrumming tension in his muscles relax and turned to the woman. As he did, a man as gruff as the voice he’d heard appeared behind her. He was older, kind of grizzled, and was that a pencil behind his ear?
Dash turned his smile on the man. “Viktor, I take it?”
“That’s me.”
“Damned good work on that fuel thing.”
“Damned good work is what I do.”
Dash wheeled his smile back to the woman. “And I don’t think I caught your name.”
The woman blinked. “My name, I’m…”
That was all she managed before her eyes—her very green eyes—rolled back and she slumped into Viktor’s grasp, either unconscious or dead.
3
At the ship’s cooling systems, Dash eyed the man named Viktor, who had just explained how he’d been able to manage adding the fuel. On closer inspection, he was even more grizzled than he appeared, with hair once brown, now greying, tossed in a wild tangle of curls and spikes that blended into a scruffy beard and moustache. He had puckered scars on his hands—probably plasma burns—and wore shabby blue coveralls with a blaze of orange splashed across the back, paired with mag boots. A plasma pistol and sundry tools hanging from a maintenance harness.
The anti-deuterium tank, now empty, was still hooked by magnetic transfer conduit into the Slipwing’s unSpace drive cooling system.
The cooling system? There was no way that should have worked; the only result should have been a colossal explosion as anti-deuterium contacted some component or other, each annihilating the other to raw energy. But here they were, entirely explosion-free.
“I’d never even have considered that,” Dash said, impressed. He shook his head at the collection of compromises and workarounds that had allowed Viktor to co-opt a system meant to dump excess heat from the translation drive’s matter/antimatter reactions and use it
to put fuel into the system instead. “Not in a million years.” He looked at Viktor. “You could have vaporized us, and probably everything else within a few light-seconds.”
Viktor shrugged. “Could have but didn’t.” He scratched the ear not holding a pencil. “In any case, we wouldn’t have felt a thing.”
“You’re kinda crazy, Viktor.”
He gave a toothy grin. “The best engineers are. So are the best pilots. I’ve never seen flying like you did back there.”
It was Dash’s turn to shrug. “I guess we’ve all got what we’re good at.”
A tone chimed over the intercom. Dash had set it to alert them when the woman—whose name was Leira—woke up. This hadn’t been the first chime, though. She’d been drifting in and out of unconsciousness for hours, now. Viktor described how she’d smashed her head into a panel during a hard acceleration burn, right before Dash had shown up. She’d seemed okay, but head wounds were notorious for being lethal, no matter how trivial.
“Hello? Anyone around?”
The voice had come through the intercom. It jarred Dash a little to hear a woman’s voice echo through the Slipwing.
“She’s awake,” Viktor said, then gestured to the bastardized cooling system. “I’ll put this back the way it was, if you want to go talk to her.”
Dash took a last look at Viktor’s amazing improvisation, trying to commit it to memory. It really wasn’t that complicated, but it was damn dangerous. Of course, no more dangerous than having a bunch of missiles bearing down on you.
He finally nodded to Viktor and headed back along the narrow passage leading forward from the Slipwing’s engineering bay, toward her habitation module.
Leira sat up in what was actually Dash’s bed. Unlike the others, it was mostly clear of random crap—miscellaneous containers, components, and things that were, frankly, junk. Dash couldn’t bring himself to just toss the latter out, though. After all, you never knew when you might need an energy transfer junction—for an entirely different type of ship than the Slipwing, sure, but it might be adaptable, and it might even be worth something, if he ever thought to try selling it.
Leira smiled as Dash leaned in through the hatchway, then immediately winced. “Ow. That hurts.”
“What does?”
“Everything.”
“Well, my auto-doc is a pretty basic model. It scanned you and just told us to let you rest. Now that I think of it, it says that for a lot of things, actually.”
“I think I’ve had enough rest,” Leira said, gingerly touching her head. “What I need now is something for the pain.”
Dash nodded at a small box on the deck beside the bunk. “Figured you would. Good stuff, too. Takes the worst edge right off… a bad headache,” he finished lamely. He’d been about to say “hangover,” but realized it made him sound like a lush.
While Leira fished out the painkillers, Dash took a moment to take her in. Such green eyes-emerald green-adorned a face with a straight nose and prominent cheekbones. And that was just one beautiful part of a stunning woman.
The green eyes were looking at him. “Got any coffee?”
“Uh, coffee?”
“Yeah. It’s a beverage, made from hot water and—”
“No, I know what coffee is. If you just need something to wash those pills down, there’s a flask of water right there.”
“Water is meant to be made into coffee.”
Dash shrugged his surrender. “Galley’s this way, if you’re up to walking.”
Leira clambered to her feet, wobbled a bit, then followed him along the passage.
“I guess,” she said from behind him, “I owe you a pretty big thank you for saving us.”
“You do. You also owe me payment, per that contract.”
They entered the tiny galley.
Leira nodded, then winced as she did. “I guess we do. And we’ll make it good, once we—”
“Here we go.”
Leira frowned. “What?”
Dash crossed his arms and looked into those captivating eyes, now much closer thanks to the cramped little space.Green, with some golden-brown flecks.
“The oldest story there is for couriers. ‘Yes, I’ll pay you what I owe, just as soon as I get to this place and sell that thing to those people.’”
“Sorry, I don’t carry around many credits.”
Dash pointed out the hot water dispenser, then the storage locker where he kept the coffee. He only drank the stuff occasionally himself.
“This is coffee?” Leira scowled at the container. “Not much of a coffee drinker, are you?”
“No, I am not. But, hey, feel free to return to your friends back there and see if they’ll offer you a cup.”
She sighed, clearly resigning herself to his offering. “This’ll do.”
“So,” Dash said, “while we’re on the subject, who were your friends back there, anyway? And how’d you get onto what’s pretty obviously their bad side? I’d also like to know more about that really, stupendously valuable something you mentioned.”
Leira put a coffee pack into a clean-ish mug and added steaming water, and the earthy aroma flooded the little galley. She took a sip and winced again—this time apparently at the taste—and said, “There are some things it’s better for you to not know.”
“Really.”
She gave Dash an earnest look. “Look, you did Viktor and I a huge favor. We thank you for it and will make sure you get paid…well. But you really don’t want to know anything more about our business than that.”
“Yeah, see, here’s the thing. It sounds like whatever really valuable something you have is probably aboard my ship right now. Whatever it is, the crew of that asteroid-sized ship we barely managed to escape…well, they seem to want it pretty bad. You seem to think you’re protecting me from bad shit by not telling me what it is, but that only says to me that it’s not only valuable, but dangerous too.” Dash uncrossed his arms and pushed his gaze into those oh-so-green eyes, looking past the beautiful and into the woman beneath. “So, you see my problem here. I’m not good with not knowing what this something is, why it’s so valuable, why it’s so dangerous, who’s after it, and how far they’re willing to go to get it.”
Leira shook her head. “Please…Dash, right? Please, don’t press me on this. It’s better for you to not—”
“Know, yeah, I hear you. And I’m saying I don’t care about what you think I should know or not know, because when it comes to my ship—”
“Leira,” a gruff voice cut in from the passage outside the galley, “you’re going to have to tell him.” Viktor leaned into the galley, which would no way fit all three of them.
“Viktor,” she replied, dragging a hand through her hair. “Please, we talked about this.”
“That was before Clan Shirna discovered we had it. But I think he’s earned the right to know, considering he saved us from them. Besides, we no longer have a ship. This one is far from perfect, but it’s good enough, and Dash is a good pilot.”
“What do you mean good enough?” Dash said defensively. “The Slipwing is a damned fine ship. Good enough to save you.”
Viktor held up a hand. “Yes, yes, my apologies. Your Slipwing is an excellent ship, but it could be better. I’ve already seen a dozen things that could be refined and tuned.”
Dash thought about Viktor’s cobbled-together refueling rig. “There’s this damned hum in the auxiliary fusion generator I can’t get rid of. Makes my teeth vibrate any time I’m near it. Think you could take a look?”
“Probably a harmonic in the containment field. Yes, I can probably fix it. But that’s not what we’re talking about right now. Leira?”
Leira looked from Viktor, to me, then sighed. “Fine. Go ahead, Viktor, show him.”
In answer, Viktor extracted something from what Dash had assumed was just another tool pouch on his harness. It was a faceted, crystalline disk just small enough that he could hold it in one hand. Dash peered at it. It looked like a big
gemstone, but he didn’t recognize the type, and couldn’t even really decided what color it was. It looked black at first glance, but might actually be a really dark blue, or maybe purple, or even red.
“Okay,” Dash finally said, entirely underwhelmed. “So, it’s a gem? I mean, okay, sure. But I could probably repli-print this exact same thing back in engineering. Hardly seems worth, well, any of this.”
Dash deflated. He’d been hoping for a big payoff and got this. A piece of crystalline matter that, in the distant past, might have been rare and valuable. But when you could print things pretty much one atom at a time, things like this were worth pretty much nothing.
“It is not a gem,” Leira said. “It is a device.”
“Ah,” Dash said. “And what does this device do that makes it so special?”
Leira looked at Viktor, who just nodded.
“What it does,” she said, “is make stars explode.”
Dash stared at Leira, then at Viktor, then at the gem.
Then he laughed.
“That makes stars explode. Really. Well, then, that sure would make it pretty valuable.”
The grave looks he got in return said that these two actually meant—actually believed—what Leira had just said.
Dash, still grinning, shook his head. “You guys…okay, look, I think we’ve all agreed that I have the right to really know what—”
“This is no joke, Dash,” Leira said. “It’s no lie. This is the Lens of Eternity. It’s Unseen tech. I don’t know why it was created, but I do know what it can do. It can make stars explode.”
Dash had heard plenty about the Unseen. They had been gone for nearly two hundred thousand years, and all their technology was somehow still functional. They were, by all accounts, the ghosts of the galaxy — a warlike race who’d left things behind that no one had any business finding. Such items were lost in the dark of space, and when humanity found them, it was like a child reaching for something they knew they ought not have.
