Starbound: Eleven Tales of Interstellar Adventure

by SM Reine

  And would almost certainly cost a Singer her life.

  Amelie felt a trickle adding to hers.

  Her eyes jerked to the screen. The little girl was standing now, hands fisted at her sides, face fiercely focused. Singing. Precisely matching resonance with Amelie’s note.

  The Singer felt her eyes bulge. Talent. Immense talent, out here in the middle of asteroid hell.

  The child stiffened as her father motioned for silence. And Sang louder.

  Amelie reached for the tablet in her pocket and, sustaining the note she knew would be her last, sent off a short, seminally important message to KarmaCorp HQ. If a rescue ship ever arrived, it might even get delivered.

  She looked back up into the fiery blue eyes of the child who would one day have the kind of Talent that might save this ship.

  The child who didn’t have enough control or knowledge to try today without putting her life on the line too. And Amelie Descol couldn’t let that happen. It violated every oath she’d ever taken, every rule in KarmaCorp’s very substantial manual, and every shred of human decency a dying Fixer had left.

  So she shifted her gaze to the man beside the girl, looked him straight in the eyes, and let him see the truth.

  He met her gaze for a long moment. And then he gave one sharp nod of respect and reached for the controls of the flitter.

  The child’s keening wail as the transmission ended nearly broke Amelie’s heart.

  And it made her smile. That one wouldn’t ever back down from a fight. The child with the blue eyes would make a fine Fixer one day. The one legacy of this final horror that she could be proud of.

  Today, only one Singer would die.

  * * *

  Kish couldn’t see the ship anymore. They were almost back to Halkyn VII’s derelict landing pad now, and the broken body of the Ios had disappeared from view long ago.

  But she could still hear it. The woman with the green eyes, begging the stars to help.

  Because the girl from the digger rock couldn’t.

  * * *

  Amelie could still feel the child. Her anguish and her guilt, and the echoing resonances of a Talent that had tried to throw itself across a vacuum of space and do the impossible.

  A child born to be a Fixer if she’d ever seen one.

  If it please the fates, not a child destined to die as one.

  Amelie took one last look around the battered bridge and then lifted her chin and blasted her high, pure note one more time out into the infinity of space. A final moment of defiance.

  Then she bowed her head and changed her Song. To a lullaby. One that would send calm to the child still listening, and put everyone still alive on the ship to sleep. The gift of oblivion, as quickly as she could bring it.

  Amelie felt the black coming. And Sang it welcome.

  * * *

  Three Months Later…

  Pops had stopped coming with her, and when Kish got back, he would look at her with that cross face that made his eyebrows join together and lines run up from his nose.

  But her astrosuit was always charged and ready to go, every night. And even though it was battered and dinged and two sizes too big, someone had done some careful repairs on all the seams.

  She had no idea why she had to be in a dumb suit out here in the cold. Singing sounded way nicer in one of the abandoned tunnels, especially if she managed to swipe her brother’s heater mitts before she left. That’s usually where she went to sing.

  But this note—it insisted that it must be sung under the night sky.

  Kish placed the carefully shaped rock that would hold the surface tube open until she returned, and stepped away from the sensors. They were rusty as hell and nobody ever bothered to look at their logs, but occasionally even beat-up old crap managed to work right, and she didn’t want any more lines running up from Pop’s nose.

  She turned herself toward the northwest. Toward the caldera.

  The broken ship wasn’t there anymore. A rescue vessel had come. It had saved the captain with the sad face and the comms intern with the nice laugh and the first officer with the gruff voice and wrapped candies in his pocket.

  But Kish had known they were too late for the lady with the voice of gold and the fierce, sad eyes.

  She drew in a deep breath, remembering. And let the single, shattering note rise up from her ribs.

  The sound reverberated inside her helmet like a space cat on synth-caf, but Kish barely noticed. She focused only on the beautiful, heartbreaking sound.

  Just like always, it made tears run down her face. And just like always, her ribs felt like they might never breathe again. It had taken her two weeks to stop panicking and triple-checking the oxygen levels on her space suit.

  The oxygen had always been fine.

  Kish tipped her head back to the night sky and imagined her puny note rising up to the stars. She knew the stars would never hear her—she was just a girl from a digger rock, and a troublesome, skinny one at that. But she sang up to the sky anyway.

  It was where the song wanted to go.

  * * *

  Note from Audrey: There are more exploding spaceships in this short story than in all my other books combined… no idea how that happened. :)

  If you’re curious about what happens to Kish when she grows up and follows in Amelie’s footsteps, the book you’re looking for is Destiny’s Song, the start of my Fixers series. A lot has changed—but Kish still wants to punch someone in the nose on a fairly regular basis…

  Carl Sagan’s Hunt for Intelligent Life in the Universe

  C. Gockel

  Carl Sagan’s Hunt for Intelligent Life in the Universe

  Sometimes intelligent life is right in front of your whiskers.

  What Little Werfles are Made of

  “ … cells are made of proteins, proteins are made of molecules, molecules are made of atoms, atoms are made of particles … And do you remember what those are made of?”

  “Waves, Third One!”

  “Yes, you are waves manifest as matter. You can become waves again at any time.”

  Sliding down the embankment, his ten legs not able to lift him, Hsissh reprimanded himself, Next body, no sleeping in a field frequented by lizzar. He knew better, but the rock had been sunny and wonderfully warm. And then one of the clumsy, wave-ignorant oafs had whacked him with its tail. Now this body was beyond reasonable repair and he had to move on. Finding a dry spot, he curled into a ball. Tucking his nose to his tail, he closed his eyes and … hesitated. He blinked. He didn’t want to let this form go … Shissh, his blood kin in her last life, had been urging him for years to give up this shell and the pain that was tied to it; to let his memories of their third parent become a dream.

  “What’s that?”

  His ears perked. It was the vocal utterance of a wave-ignorant Newcomer. Ish, one of the more scholarly members of Hsissh’s kind, had decoded most of the language and shared it in the waves. Hsissh hadn’t thought the Newcomers had spread this far north. He wondered what they’d found.

  A sharp pain in his side made his body uncoil with a startled squeak.

  “Is it some sort of albino-mutant-ten-legged weasel?” There was another sharp pain, and Hsissh was flipped over. Helpless in his weakened state, he lay sprawled on his back, all ten limbs and tail wriggling. Through blurry eyes, he saw three Newcomers standing over him. They smelled strange, like alien vegetables and meats partially digested and burned. Their naked bodies, where they showed at the edges of the faux furs on their heads and forelimbs, were disgusting. They looked smaller than he’d been informed; yet, even their shorter forelimbs were longer than his entire body. They could kill him by merely stepping on him.

  “It’s a werfle,” said another Newcomer, using the enormous deformed paw on a hind limb to prod Hsissh’s limbs. “Their bites are poisonous. Don’t touch it.”

  The poison oozing from Hsissh’s fangs could kill them with a single bite, but his body wasn’t responding to his mind’s order
to roll over. And the pain was disorientating; he couldn’t focus enough to agitate the waves into starting a fire. A shadow moved. He felt a stinging in his chest and a soft squeal came from his lungs. His mind slowly processed that one of the Newcomers was jabbing him with a stick. Ish thought these beings were worthy of study … Obviously, Ish was an idiot. Hsissh felt rekindled determination to leave this body—when he was new and healthy again, he’d join the faction that was pushing to have the Newcomers wiped off The Planet.

  “Huh, looks almost dead,” said the one with the stick. He poked Hsissh again, and pain shot from every root of fur on his body.

  “My mom says they’re really soft and we should make them into coats,” said another, prodding Hsissh’s side so hard it sent him rolling. When Hsissh came to a stop, he tried to squirm, but pain shot from his tail as one of them stepped on it, and he clawed helplessly at the dirt.

  “Too small to make a coat. Maybe a muffler?” said the one that had kicked him.

  Hsissh closed all ten of his claws and reminded himself he was a wave. He just had to focus …

  “Leave him alone!”

  The pain in his tail vanished. He shot forward and was able to feel the waves that coursed through his body. Grabbing hold, he let them carry him up and out, changing the electrical impulses in his body and mind to a pattern of particles in the waves. Bit by bit, memories from every shell he’d ever worn and his current thoughts were encoded. He felt Shissh’s consciousness in the wave, and felt her speak. “Finally! You should have left that hide ages ago.”

  Not wanting to encourage her nagging, Hsissh did not answer. As the pattern that was Hsissh expanded out and upward, he was able to feel the scene in every direction. Above him, the Newcomer’s time gate hung like a ring-shaped moon, visible even though it was nearly midday. He could just barely make out the ships that were slipping into the gate and then disappearing, primitively transported in their physical forms across the Milky Way to their home planet “Earth” and nearly a dozen other colony worlds. Below him, much closer to his rapidly dying body, a smaller Newcomer was standing at the top of the embankment, fists clasped at its sides. It looked different from the others. The fur on top of its head was nearly black and pulled back in a way that exposed a flat metal circle at the side of its skull. Its eyes were nearly as dark, and its skin was a deep brown. The others looked more like what he’d gleaned from the collective consciousness of his kind, The One. They had hazel-to-brown eyes, tan skin, and fur that flopped over the peculiar metal ornamentation Newcomers wore in the sides of their heads.

  “Are you going to stop us, Noa?” one of Hsissh’s tormentors goaded.

  Dipping its chin, the smaller one said, “Yeah!”

  “Pfft! You’re a girl.”

  One of the others whispered, “She wants to be a pilot … she doesn’t know the Luddeccean Guard doesn’t take girls!”

  The one that must be Noa snarled, “I’m going to be in the Galactic Fleet. It’s better than the stupid Guard, and they take girls!”

  One of Hsissh’s tormentors picked up a clump of dirt and tossed it at her. His other friends followed suit. Hsissh’s would-be protector sensibly retreated into the forest that surrounded the embankment.

  “Ooooo! The brave pilot retreats!” one of the tormentors hooted before turning back to Hsissh. They huffed air out in staccato bursts of sound. “What are we going to do with the werfle?” one of them asked, swinging a stick.

  Resuming his slow, steady slip into the wave, Hsissh had a moment between panic and curiosity. If he was hit hard enough in the head, and life seeped slowly from his body, would he become waveless, like his third parent? Energy could not be created or destroyed. Perhaps the waveless like Third went some place … else?

  His rumination was interrupted by a frenzied vocalization he did not understand. “Arrrrrggghhhhhh!”

  In his in-between state, Hsissh felt the girl swinging a branch thicker than his girth and longer than her body above her head. Her lips were curled, and her flat white teeth were bared.

  The boy with the stick danced over Hsissh’s body and cried, “Are you crazy?” right before the branch connected with his jaw. In his bodyless state, Hsissh felt the Newcomer’s pain. The shock sent a ripple through the wave, Hsissh lost his concentration, and he found himself back in his body, staring up at the Newcomer known as Noa. She was panting, holding the branch in front of her chest with two hands. His body, perhaps trying to avoid its inevitable passing, slipped into unconsciousness.

  A Nice Nest

  Hsissh awoke next to a wall of immense, deadly, roaring flames. He might have immediately bolted, but he hurt too much; his body felt tight and alien. It was definitely time to leave.

  Closing his eyes, Hsissh slipped from his body. Floating away, carried on the waves again, he saw that his shell had been wrapped up in some sort of plant fiber, and was cradled by a soft square of a similar fiber. He abruptly slipped back into his “werfle” form with a shocking realization. They’d made him a nest. He sniffed. More accurately, Noa had made him a nest. He smelled her all over it.

  Ever so gently, he flexed his claws. It was a nice nest, he could tell that, despite his pain. It was almost as soft as the one made by Third of ptery scales and her belly fluff. The fire was a nice touch; bigger than he would ever light on a cold night, but he supposed that the nearly naked Newcomers might need more to ward off the chill. And now that he studied it, he realized it was well contained.

  “He’s awake!”

  He heard a rush of footsteps and looked up to see Noa, his rescuer, leaning over him, forelimb outstretched. He drew back and another Newcomer said, “Be careful, Noa.” This Newcomer was larger than Noa, and tan like most Newcomers, with black hair and golden eyes. By smell, Hsissh identified her as a female member of the dual-sexed species, probably Noa’s mother. In spite of himself, he felt sympathy for her. How difficult would it be to raise a litter with only two adults? How would Third ever have managed without First and Second to hunt and protect her, Hsissh, Shissh, and their brothers and sisters?

  “But the veterinarian milked his venom, Mom.”

  Whiskers trembling in alarm, Hsissh slipped his tongue beneath the sharp tips of his fangs and gently pressed. There was no swell of poison. He hunched into the nest, feeling violated.

  “Yes, the veterinarian did,” said Mom, and Hsissh entertained visions of killing Veterinarian once his venom returned.

  “... but the veterinarian also said that it would take a while for his ribs to heal. You have to be gentle, Noa.”

  Heal ribs? Whatever for? It was easier to leave a shell and find the body of an unclaimed member of one of The One’s host species. He blinked. But of course, the Newcomers were wave-ignorant—like Third had been at the end. They couldn’t slip out of their shells and so had become resilient to injury and disease. They’d overcome the three plagues The One had let loose among them with “nanos” and “antibiotics.” And he’d heard that, even when they lost limbs or organs, they replaced them with mechanical parts. Those who had such parts were called “augments.”

  Noa, who Hsissh was beginning to suspect was an adolescent among her kind, gently touched Hsissh’s head. He thought of delivering a non-venomous bite out of spite for letting Veterinarian milk his venom; but her touch wasn’t unpleasant, and he was too exhausted to bother. And then she scratched him behind his ears, and he couldn’t help purring.

  “Can we keep him as a pet?” Noa asked.

  Hsissh’s eyes snapped open at the unfamiliar word and the implications of “keep.” Something to be eaten later?

  Another voice, deeper than even Mom’s, rumbled, “You know that we shouldn’t do that.” Hsissh’s nose twitched. A male of the species, also tan skin with dark brown hair, who smelled like Noa, but not like Mom. Perhaps the other parent?

  “But why, Dad?” said Noa.

  “Because he is a wild animal,” Mom said. The round metal plate in the side of her skull glinted dully in th
e light. At the center of it was an opening … and then darkness. Hsissh could smell no blood, bone, or other gore from the gaping hole. “And it wouldn’t be fair,” Mom continued. “You heard what the veterinarian said. These creatures die in cages; it would be wrong to keep him.”

  Maybe he wouldn’t kill Veterinarian … but what was this “keeping” business? They didn’t seem to want to eat him.

  Mom continued, “We don’t know why they die in captivity, but we do know they are intelligent, and social. They probably need to be with their own kind to remain healthy.”

  Hsissh’s nose twitched. He’d become rather solitary since Third died the true death. He could go months without contact with his kind. Still, even a non-claimed member of The One’s favorite host species, the “werfles,” would leave its shell, too, if caught in a cage out of sheer humiliation. But it was a well-considered hypothesis.

  “And they help us kill rats!” Noa interjected.

  The deep-voiced one, Dad, muttered, “Damn rats, invading this pristine ecosystem.” Hsissh’s mind tripped over the word “damn,” but he had the impression that Dad was angry. Whatever for?

  Noa stroked Hsissh’s head and the two adult Newcomers walked away. Another smaller, though still enormous, Newcomer came over and gazed down at Hsissh. He smelled like Noa, Mom, and Dad—a blood kin. His skin was tan, with dark brown fur on top of his head, like Mom and Dad, and his eyes were light in color.

  “I wonder if he has a name, Kenji?” Noa whispered, scratching Hsissh behind the ears and under his chin, evoking a helpless purr.

  “There are three sexes among werfles; I don’t think it is a ‘him,’” Kenji said. He idly played with the metal disk in the side of his head with the long, slender appendage of a paw.