Under Nameless Stars

by Christian Schoon

  Treth’s stare grew even more intense.

  “Charlie,” Zenn said then, turning to the Loepith. “Do you have any of your bug eyes on the Delphic Queen? In the sickbay?”

  “Could be. Not sure,” he said. He touched the view screen. The images rapidly cut from shot to shot – a large cargo hold of some kind, an empty dining saloon, a small storage closet, a rusting airlock. And then a sickbay. And on a gurney in the dark at the far corner of the room, a figure. It was human, male, lying on his back. He was motionless. Charlie zoomed in on the figure. It was immobile. Held in a force field? It was impossible to tell. But there was just enough light to see the man’s face, his beard…

  “It’s him…” Zenn breathed the words softly, almost unable to speak.

  “Are you certain?” Jules said, coming closer.

  “Yes, I’m sure.” Tears came, then. She didn’t try to stop them.

  The screen suddenly flickered, went black, then displayed a cryptic symbol Zenn didn’t recognize, accompanied by a low buzzing sound.

  “What happened? Bring it back!”

  “Nope, better not,” Charlie said as he called up another image. “Alarm code. Got a problem.” The new view was the shot of the corridor they’d just left. Two Khurspex could be seen. They were examining the part of the passage where Charlie had erected his false wall. Their glowing foreheads glimmered and flashed in agitation.

  “Uh-oh.” Charlie pointed to something coiled at the bottom of the frame. The Khurspex had another creature with them, restrained on a short, thick leash attached to a harness. The thing was long, the size of a large python but with hundreds of tiny legs along its belly, like a fringe. Its muscular body was covered with smooth, glossy yellow skin covered in brown diamond patterns. The triangular head was pock-marked with half a dozen tiny eyes, the mouth full of chisel-like teeth. Sprouting from the head were three fleshy stalks; they terminated in flared growths of some sort, like tropical orchids, but made of thin, flexible skin. The creature swept these “flowers” back and forth across the floor.

  “What is that, Charlie?” Zenn said, trying to get a better look at the thing.

  “Sniffer snake,” Charlie said. He ripped the view screen off the wall, compressed it back down to a handkerchief-sized square and thrust it back into this vest. “We gotta go! Go right now.”

  “I thought you said the Spex couldn’t find you,” Liam said as they set off at a quick trot.

  “Spex? No! Sniffers… maybe.”

  They came to the stairway’s exit, rushed out into a short corridor, then into yet another stairwell, which they descended rapidly. Finally, they entered a wide passage that led to a dead end. Charlie slid aside another hidden panel, and they stepped out into a long, low-ceilinged room, its floor littered with great piles of garbage and discarded packing crates.

  “Where are we?” Liam asked, peering into the darkness beyond the pools of light from Jules’s walksuit headlights.

  “Must be the lower deck,” Treth said. “Lifeboat bay. Charlie, any lifeboats still functioning?”

  “Lifeboats,” Zenn said. “We could take one to the Queen, couldn’t we? We could get to my father.”

  “Not likely,” Charlie scoffed. “No boats left. No docking ports to use, anyway. They sealed most of em. And you only get to the trip-ship on shuttles. Only take a shuttle from the docking ports. All those dock ports guarded.”

  “The functioning shuttle ports,” Treth said. “Where’s the closest?”

  “Down at the Ghestan Star. She’s the one. But why even try? Every other ship is bad deadly. Breathe in one, can’t breathe in the next, too hot, then too heavy, then too wet.”

  “But you did it,” Treth said. “You made it through the other ships. How?” She reached out to take him by one shoulder. “Charlie, is there a way to reach the Star?”

  “Could be, could be,” he said, ducking out of her grasp. “But not for this many. Not the way I came. This many-many would have to go some bad, hard places to get that far.”

  Treth turned to the others. “We have no choice. We must reach the shuttle bay of the Ghestan Star. From there, we can access the central ship.”

  “But why?” Liam protested. “If Scarlett here is the damn nexus thing, the key to their whole plan, can’t we just… hide her, keep her away from them?”

  “We cannot remain concealed in this ship forever,” Treth said. Zenn knew she was right. They had to leave or be captured.

  “But didn’t you say Indras can’t tunnel all the way back to the Accord?” Liam protested.

  “They cannot. Not with the tech we possess. We must find a way through these ships. After we are aboard the central ship, the Khurspex technology that brought us here will allow us to tunnel home.”

  “If we do this,” Jules said, “if we indeed reach this central tripping-ship, do you know how to use the Khurspex science? To cross this large and horrible distance?”

  Treth gave him a somber look. “One step at a time, dolphin.”

  “My father. We have to try and get to him. We have to!”

  Treth leveled her eyes at Zenn. “Everyone, on all the ships, is depending on us, Novice. We cannot risk their lives for the sake of any one person. You understand what I am saying?” Zenn nodded yes. But she wasn’t going to give up. Not yet. There had to be a way.

  “Charlie.” She turned to the Loepith. “What ships are between us and the Ghestan Star?”

  “That would be the Prodigious, then the Dancer and the Tson, next the Queen, and, after her, the Star.”

  “So, the Delphic Queen is on the way to the shuttle ports on the Star,” Zenn said.

  “I know this, Novice,” Treth said.

  “I have an idea,” Zenn said. She slipped off her backpack, set it down and began digging through the contents.

  “But this crusher ship,” Jules said. “It is a foul and broiling place, I believe.”

  “Foul enough,” Charlie said. “Hotter than five suns, I’d say.”

  “Something in your bag of tricks, Scarlett?” Liam said.

  “Acadarine; yes, here it is,” she said, holding up a large tube. “It’s a nano-augmented antipyretic administered to megafauna during some surgeries.”

  “Yeah, uh… in terms a towner school drop-out can understand, please?” Liam said.

  “It’s a drug we give to really big animals to bring down their body temperature when we operate. As the body cools, vessels constrict, slows blood loss.”

  “Big animals? What, like whalehounds the size of a house and stuff? Is it safe for us?”

  “I don’t actually know. I’m not a human-Asent doctor, Liam. I’m not even qualified to treat animals. Technically. But I think… if I cut the dose way down and mix it with a blood conditioner, it could help protect our brains and internal organs. Not sure if it’ll do anything for the epidermis…”

  “Scarlett?” Liam shook his head at her.

  “We might get a nasty sunburn.”

  “Will the effect last long enough to traverse the Prodigious?” Treth asked.

  “I’m not positive. This hasn’t been tried before.”

  “So, that’s our choice?” Liam said. “Captured by the Spook Shepherds, or roasted like a Solstice goose.”

  “Zenn Scarlett will not allow our roasting,” Jules said. “She is a well-versed novice. Her methods will shield us from the oppressive heat.” He bent to whisper to her: “Won’t they?”

  “Shielded from the burning of a crusher?” Charlie hooted. “Not likely in that ship.”

  “Shielding…” Treth said, but to no one in particular. She stared for a moment into the air before her, thinking, then she spoke fast, looking back the way they’d just come, “You will proceed to the airlock leading to the Prodigious. I will join you there.”

  “Join us?” Zenn was baffled and not a little alarmed. “Where are you going?”

  “This ship’s Indra chamber,” the Groom said. Zenn wanted to protest, wanted to grab the woman and tell her
she couldn’t leave them, but she knew it would do no good – Treth was already squeezing past Jules and moving off.

  “But why?” Zenn’s mind raced as she tried to imagine what she could say to Treth to keep her there with them.

  “The Loepith knows the way; go quickly,” Treth said. “Wait for me there. I won’t be long.”

  TWENTY

  Charlie led them rapidly up several decks. At every blind corner, they paused to check the way ahead before setting off again.

  “Zenn Scarlett,” Jules said, “this all seems to me a risk-filled plan. I feel we may be gambling with unlucky cards in our hands.”

  “It’s our best chance right now, Jules,” Zenn told him, trying to sound confident. “We’ll find my father. And we’ll get to the center ship. And then… we’ll all go home.”

  She hoped it sounded more plausible to him than to her.

  “Scarlett,” Liam said as Jules moved ahead to walk next to Charlie. “I didn’t have a chance to say before. But it was good to set eyes on you again. I mean, really good.”

  “I was glad to see you, too, Liam,” she said.

  “So, it sounded like to make this nexus thing work, the Skirnis wanted you to go into the Indra’s head?”

  “Yes, apparently,” she said, still reluctant to deal with the full implications of what they intended for her. “An in-soma insertion.”

  “Yeah, the thing you used to go into the body of the swamp sloo back at the cloister. But inside an Indra – kinda dangerous, right?”

  “There’s a lot of radiation in an Indra’s skull,” she told him. “But from what they said, they think I’d be protected. Because of the Indra tissue in… in my brain. When the in-soma pod enters the skull, the Indra will see me as part of itself. Won’t spike an immune response. Seems to be the theory, anyway.”

  “Is it a good one? This theory? Will you be OK?”

  “I don’t know, Liam. It didn’t do my mom any good.”

  They went on in silence for a while.

  “Um… does it make you feel weird, what’s going on inside you?” He gave her an anxious look. “Can you, like, tell what people are thinking?”

  “No,” she said, smiling at his sudden concern. “It’s not like that. You don’t have to worry. I’m not reading your mind or anything.”

  “That’s a relief,” he said, then added with his usual smirk, “Not that I’m thinking anything, you know, that I wouldn’t want you to know.”

  “Oh. Really?”

  “Look, Scarlett,” he said, lowering his voice. “I need to say something to make sure you understand. I’m sorry for what happened back at the cloister. What I did to the animals, letting them loose, making you all look bad. I was stupid for not figuring the whole thing out sooner, for not figuring out a way to stop Vic trying to take your land. Maybe I was… Maybe Graad tried to scare me and it worked. But I wasn’t scared for me. I was scared cause he said he’d hurt you if I told. I was more scared than I’d ever been… because if anything had happened to you, I’d never… Well, I just want you know that.”

  She knew how Liam felt. Of course she knew. The memory of his arms around her, his kiss, his scent, his body’s warmth against hers in the cool night air outside the cage of the thirty-foot insectoid predator that had nearly escaped its enclosure, an escape that surely would have left them, and possibly everyone in the cloister, dead. No, it all remained as unforgettable and as deeply, profoundly unsettling to Zenn as the night it happened.

  “Liam.” She took a long breath and cast about, searching for words. “You may not have noticed, but I’m not like the girls you know. The girls in Arsia, the other girls on Mars.”

  His expression told her that these weren’t the words he was expecting. But he soon recovered.

  “Uh-huh. Most of the girls I know don’t climb into a pod-capsule thing and let a swamp sloo swallow them. On purpose. They don’t risk their life to keep a centipede long as a bus from getting out of its cage and slaughtering everyone in sight. Yeah, you’re special. That’s for sure.”

  “No. I mean, I didn’t exactly grow up in a normal family. You know, doing the normal things. Playing with other kids, going to parties, worrying about what dress to wear to the dance… talking to boys.”

  “Oh. I get it. You’re the snow princess. Living in her cloud castle. In Nevermore Land. Above the rest of us.”

  “I think you’re mixing up your fairy tales. But no. I never once felt like I was above anybody. I felt like I was just too different for anyone to want to get to know. Like a permanent outsider.”

  “What? Outside looking in? You wanted to be a towner?”

  “I didn’t want that, either. No offense, but a lot of towners are narrow-minded and… well, let’s just say they’re people like Vic LeClerc. They’d just as soon she’d shut down the cloister and run us off our land. But…” She raised a hand to keep him from interrupting. “What I’m saying is that what happened that night – you can’t just do that, just up and kiss me and expect me to have anything like a normal Arsia-girl response. I don’t even know the range of responses an Arsia girl would select from.”

  “The range of…” Liam sputtered. “You make it sound like some kind of… science project.”

  “Yes,” Zenn said, “That’s exactly what I’m saying. Me having the totally wrong response. Liam, I grew up surrounded by scientists or animals. Then Mom died. Dad freaked out and left. And I was on my own. That’s my childhood. Now, half the time I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel around people. Make that ninety percent of the time. I’m not sure I’m even able to feel what I’m supposed to be able to feel about another person who… a person who’s…”

  “A person like me? A towner kid?” Liam did a good imitation of being insulted.

  “Like a boy. A boy my own age with… hormones and all. I do know how sexual attraction works, you know. I’ve read the books.”

  “Nine Hells, Scarlett, why don’t you just stick me under a damn microscope or something?”

  Zenn shook her head, mad at herself and getting madder. She wasn’t explaining this right at all. She didn’t know how to tell him what was going on inside her. She just didn’t have the vocabulary.

  “Faster moving,” Charlie called back to them as he broke into a trot. “Groomish said to reach the Prodigious fast. Faster is better.”

  “Great,” Liam fumed. “Now monkey-boy is giving us orders.”

  “His name’s Charlie.”

  “Yeah. Sure. Sorry.” He was quiet for a moment as they hurried to keep up with the Loepith and Jules. “So, let’s just get your microscope off of me and my hormones for the time being, OK?”

  “Good idea.”

  “About this crusher ship. Hot enough inside to make my head, like, burst into flames?”

  “No. Not quite.” She repressed a grin.

  “They say there are places on Earth now that get almost that hot, you know, with the weather going totally crazy. Humans can’t even live in the big desert zones anymore.”

  “Right,” she said. “Along the equator, it’s gotten pretty bad.”

  “Still, it’d be something to see. Earth, I mean. You ever want to go?”

  “Well, sure. But there are other planets I’d probably rather visit first.”

  “Not me,” he said. “I’d go there. See the places where forests just go on for miles. And oceans. Nine hells, can you imagine? So much water you can’t even see across? That’d be something.”

  “So,” he said after a few moments of silence, “inside the crusher is way hotter than a desert. But we wouldn’t, like, burn up?”

  “No, Liam, it’s not that hot. It takes temperatures over five hundred degrees Fahrenheit to ignite flesh. Depending on fat and moisture content, of course.”

  “Right, of course. Well, how hot is hot?”

  “Crusher ships are designed for thermal extremophiles. But even they can’t survive anything above two hundred twenty degrees. So, flesh-igniting heat inside the
ship? No. Hot enough to destroy the membranes lining your lungs? Likely.”

  “And this acadama-stuff,” he said. “The medicine you have. It’ll protect us from that?”

  “It’s never been tested for something like this,” she admitted. “But it might just work.”

  “Scarlett,” he said as the passage narrowed and he dropped back to trot along behind her. “You are such a comfort.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Charlie brought them to a halt in front of the airlock leading to the Prodigious. Too exhausted to seek out the nearest cabins with bunks, they found comfort wherever they could and settled in to wait for Treth. Zenn took off her backpack and stretched out on a length of dirty carpeting. Emerging from her pack, Katie inquired about when they were going to eat, and was told “later” yet again. After a frustrated snort, she nestled down to sleep next to Zenn. Charlie curled up in the darkest corner he could find, while Jules just locked down his walksuit where he stood and, one eye closed, was soon snoring softly. Liam said one of them should stand watch. Then he slid down against the bulkhead opposite Zenn and immediately fell asleep.

  Zenn closed her eyes but was somehow too exhausted to doze off. Disconnected images tumbled through her mind like haphazard scenes from a blink-nov. There was also the distant clang and whisper of the ship – all sounding to her distracted mind like a squad of Khurspex guards coming down the passageway.

  When at last she did fall into a fitful sleep, it was only to be startled awake by a hand on her shoulder. It was Treth. She held a wide, black mesh belt. Attached to it was an oblong metal device like an oversized buckle.

  “So, that’s gonna protect us from being broiled alive,” Liam said through an expansive yawn. “What is it? Jar of sunscreen?”

  “It is a scrim-shield,” Treth said. “It shelters the body of a groom during Indra tunneling. I knew I would find a spare unit in the pilot’s room.”

  Then she dropped into a squat and began tinkering with the shield, depressing invisible pressure plates that caused the device to open with a loud click, exposing its tangle of clockwork innards.