by J. N. Chaney
Dash leaned forward again. “What’s that?”
“Fight.”
“We don’t really do a lot of fighting.”
“Tell that to those guys,” Conover said, tossing a nod somewhere behind Dash.
Dash turned. Sure enough, a trio of thuggish looking men hovered just outside the confines of the noodle stand. Their glowering attention was clearly fixed on them. Or, Dash noted, it actually seemed to be fixed on him.
“Well, shit,” Dash said, putting his noodle bowl down. “I think we should plan to head back to the Slipwing…like, right now.”
“Do you know them?” Leira asked.
Dash shook his head. “Nope. I know the type, though. Muscle for somebody.”
“Somebody must have recognized you, sent them after you,” Leira said.
“It happens.” Dash pushed his chair back and stood. “You guys don’t need to get involved.”
“Dash,” Viktor said, “there are three of them.”
Dash looked over his companions. Viktor might be able to carry himself in a fight, but he was on the old side. Leira was probably okay in a scrap, but she’d recently suffered a bad concussion. And as for Conover…well, he said he couldn’t fight.
“Once I’m done with these guys,” Dash said, “we’re going to move, fast, back to the ship. Okay?”
Everyone nodded and stood. Dash turned on his charming smile and approached the trio.
“Howdy, fellas. We’re just heading back to our ship. Got places to go, people to see. You have a nice day, now.”
He started to walk around them. One of them, a swarthy man with a patchy beard and what looked like a series of random lines tattooed on his face, moved to block him.
“You’re not leaving Penumbra until you’ve had a chat with Ely.” The speaker was a second man—big, chiseled features, but marred by a bad plasma burn-scar across one side of his face. The last man, the smallest of the trio, with a patchy beard and dreadlocked hair, moved to start working his way behind Dash.
Dash frowned. “Ely, huh. Don’t recall anyone named Ely.”
“Ely,” Burn-Scar said, “from the Broker’s Quarter. He seems to know you. Found out you were here, wants some money you owe him.”
“Clearly, there’s been some mistake.”
“Nope. He was clear. You come with us to see him, or we beat you to shit and take whatever we find. Might take that ship of yours, too. He gave us the name Slipwing, I think.”
Dash looked at his companions. Both Leira and Viktor looked on the brink of intervening, which would just make things complicated. So he turned back to the trio then kicked out, his foot striking a vicious blow that buckled Burn-Scar’s knee. The other two immediately moved in, but Dash spun a full circle and now crouched, arms spread, knees bent. He lunged, punching and chopping Tattooed Guy to the ground while kicking out at Dreadlocks, deflecting him for a second, but a second was all he needed. It let him spin back and straight-arm the man in the throat, sending him stumbling back, gasping. He followed up with a pair of vicious jabs that knocked him flat, then spun again and dropped Dreadlocks with piston kick to the head. A last, brutal chop put Burn-Scar down like a sack of trash. Dash ended up back in a crouch, ready.
He relaxed. All three were down for good; Burn-Scar and Tattooed Guy groaning, Dreadlocks gurgling wetly through his punched throat. A small crowd, displaced by the sudden fight, gave the whole situation a curious look before mostly moving on.
Leira, Viktor, and Conover just stared.
Dash shrugged. “Taught myself some moves. It’s a way to pass the time on those long trips, you know?”
They kept staring.
“Um, so,” Dash said, “we should probably go now. Ely might not be the only one who wants to, you know, talk to me.”
As they hurried back to the Slipwing, Viktor asked, “Who’s Ely? And how much do you own him?”
“No idea. Probably just a shakedown.”
They reached the Slipwing to find that Pinetti’s fuel had been delivered, as promised. Once they’d loaded it and lifted off—making a fast burn up to orbit so they could put Penumbra behind them sooner rather than later—Dash took a moment to try to remember who Ely was.
He hadn’t been lying to Viktor. He really couldn’t recall.
Between that, and now Conover, who was hunkered down sullenly somewhere behind him, there was a feeling that space just might be safer.
Maybe.
“Yeah, I definitely gotta stop owing people money,” Dash muttered, as the rumble atmosphere rushing past the hull faded and the sky turned to endless black.
5
Dash frowned at the vid transmitted by the maintenance drone. He’d dispatched it to examine the Slipwing’s hull, something he hadn’t gotten around to doing during the whole rush to, and then from, Penumbra. The planet now lay far behind, but was still visible as a mottled, bluish disk. They still hadn’t translated, because they hadn’t decided where to translate to. As his nominal employers, that was up to Leira and Viktor, and they were hunkered down in hab module now, discussing that very thing.
Unfortunately, that left Dash with Conover. The young man sat in the copilot’s seat, looking alternately bored with everything inside the cockpit, or bored with everything outside of it. Dash tried making conversation, but Conover’s one-word answers, distracted nods, and monosyllabic grunts convinced him to give it up. Instead, since they were staying in real space for now, Dash decided to launch a maintenance drone and look over the damage they’d taken from those particle beams. He was especially keen to see the parts of the Slipwing’s hull he couldn’t check while they’d been landed.
The drone drifted past the auxiliary comms array, moving across the top of the hull just ahead of the fusion drive. The drive was shut down, of course—the drone would just be a puff of vapor, otherwise—but there were enough residual neutron emissions to make this part of the ship hazardous for direct inspection.
“Ouch.”
Dash zoomed the image, taking a closer look at a deep furrow plowed through the ablative armor that protected the drive. Unlike most of the other scars on her hull from the encounter, this one cut at least halfway into the armor. This beam must have been cranked up, power-wise, compared to the others. Only a small gash just above and behind the cockpit was anywhere near as deep. This was going to be an expensive repair, requiring time in a compositing bay.
“About eight Gigawatts.”
Dash glanced at Conover. The kid was peering over his shoulder at the vid display.
“How’d you figure that?” Dash asked.
“Your ablative armor is a refractory dura-ceramic composite. That damage vaporized about half of its thickness. I’m assuming a two-second impact time, but that’s pretty approximate, so there’s some uncertainty.”
“Yeah, I get it.” Dash looked around but saw no data pad, and nothing about it entered into any of the screens or terminals around the cockpit. “How’d you calculate that?”
“The armor’s ablative index times thickness in centimeters, divided by two, then—”
“No, I get how you calculate it. But how did you calculate it, like, just now, sitting there?”
Conover shrugged. “I just calculated it.”
“In your head.”
The kid nodded.
Dash looked back at the vid. He punched a few commands, and the drone calculated the particle beam’s power at eight-point-zero-five Gigawatts, plus or minus an uncertainty factor.
Dash knew the formula—roughly—but there was no way he could have done it in his head.
He looked back at Conover. “That’s quite a trick.”
The kid’s freckled face hardened in a frown. “A trick? It’s not a trick. The calculation is—”
“Yeah, okay, just a figure of speech.” Dash looked into Conover’s strikingly pale grey eyes. “Where did you learn, well, how to do that? Or learn the formula?”
“I told you. I like science stuff.”
“H
uh.”
Dash looked back toward the vid.
“The question is,” Conover said, “why was whoever shooting at you just trying to disable your ship?”
“What?”
“Except for that one up there”—the kid gestured up and behind the cockpit—“all the other hits on the ship are less than four Gigawatts. Those wouldn’t burn through the armor much at all.” Conover gestured at the drone’s imagery. “That one, though, was a lot more powerful. If it had cut through the armor, it would have taken your fusion drive offline, right?”
Dash gave a slow nod. “Yeah, it would have. It would have taken down the translation drive, too.”
Huh, again.
Dash thought about the damage to Leira and Viktor’s Raven. What he remembered of it had been similar. Their drive had been knocked out, but the damage to the Raven had otherwise been mostly superficial. Meanwhile, Dash remembered the weapons fired at the Slipwing as he approached the battle had been full-power discharges. One of them had hit, leaving a deep gash near the cockpit. That had definitely been an attempt to take Dash out of the battle before he’d even joined it.
Another huh. It was kind of hard not to take something like that personally.
But then he’d mag-locked the Raven and the Slipwing together. When he’d rotated the conjoined ships to gain some protection from the shooting bay the Raven’s bulk, the beams had come up to full power, blasting her away, then returning to their varying levels of power. In other words, once it was obvious Leira and Viktor were aboard the Slipwing, the attacker’s aim had changed from turning Dash to a cloud of glow gas to disabling his ship—just as they had Leira’s.
Whoever commanded that ship—which apparently belonged to Clan Shirna, Leira had called them—had wanted to take Leira, Viktor, or both, alive.
And there could only be one reason for that—the Lens.
“So what were they after?”
Dash jumped. Conover’s question poked unexpectedly through his racing thoughts, just as Dash had thought about the Lens. Was this kid telepathic? Looking into those weird eyes, he couldn’t really tell.
Dash offered a shrug. “No idea.”
“It must be those other two,” Conover said. “Leira and Viktor. They wanted them, or something they have.”
“Uh, what make you say that? Maybe they wanted me.”
“No.” He jerked at thumb at the particle beam scar behind the cockpit. “They tried to kill you. Then you must have taken the other two on board. And then, instead of trying to kill you, they tried to disable you. So they wanted something from those guys, not you.”
Dash looked back at the vid, just so he didn’t have to meet those grey eyes. Who was this kid? He had the attitude of a bored teenager, but his mind was like some sort of all-seeing computer.
“Well, if it was them they were after,” Dash said, looking deliberately at the vid and not Conover, “I don’t know why. Maybe those two are wanted or something.”
“Maybe.”
Dash couldn’t recall the last time he’d heard a word spoken in such a doubtful tone.
“Anyway,” he went on, “I’ve got some boring work to do up here, and Leira and Viktor are probably going to be busy for a while yet, so why don’t you go clean off a bed and, you know, try to get some sleep?”
“I’m not tired.”
“Okay, well, there’s an entertainment system back in the crew hab. I haven’t used it for a while, but it should—”
“Dash?”
Dash looked back to the new voice. It was Leira, with Viktor right behind her.
They were going to be busy for a while, Dash had said…like five seconds ago. Figures. All he wanted to do was get away from Conover and his bizarre ability to know stuff, so he’d have some time to think.
He made himself not sigh. “What can I do for the prettiest woman on the ship?” he asked, switching on his grin.
Leira flicked her eyes toward Conover, then back to Dash. “Can we talk for a minute? Like, in the crew hab?”
They wanted to get away from Conover, too. Yeah, this was getting increasingly awkward. Leira clearly wanted to keep the Lens a secret from Conover—who would never be more than a few meters away, as long as they were aboard the Slipwing, and would apparently be there for weeks, maybe months.
Not for the first time in his life, Dash kicked himself for not entirely thinking Pinetti’s price through.
He nodded and started to clamber out of the pilot’s seat. “Sure. The ship’s trimmed for stable flight, so—”
“Is this about whatever you’re hiding, that the ones in that ship that attacked you want?”
They all stared at Conover for a moment, then Leira glared at Dash. “What, exactly, did you tell him?”
“Nothing! He just kinda figured things out.”
“Really.”
Conover nodded at Leira. “Yeah. I did. Somebody really wants you, or something you have.” He scowled and muttered, “It wasn’t that hard to work out. I’m not dumb, you know.”
Dash glanced at him. “No, kid, you are not.”
Conover looked up at Leira. “So what is it? Did you steal it?”
“We didn’t steal it,” Leira said, before cutting herself off.
Dash chuckled and waved a hand at her. “Okay, that one’s on you.”
“So you do have something they want,” Conover said. “What is it? Where did you find it?”
Leira glanced at Viktor, who said, “It’s a device. And yes, Clan Shirna wants it. But—”
“But that’s all you need to know,” Leira said. “More than you need to know, in fact.” She turned to Dash. “Anyway, we need to talk to you about—well, what happens next.”
Dash nodded. “Yeah, you do. But now I have a question.”
Leira’s eyes narrowed. “What?”
“Where did you…um, find it?”
Her eyes again flicked to Conover. “This is something we should talk about.”
“Right here,” Dash said, rolling his eyes. “You know, the kid was right when he said he’s not dumb. He looked at the particle beam scars from your…Clan Shirna, is it? Anyway, from your friends in that big ship.”
“They are not our friends,” Viktor said.
“Yeah, I meant friends in the loosest sense. Anyway, Conover here looked over the damage and, just from that, was pretty much able to piece together what happened. Clan Shirna there wasn’t trying to kill you, they were trying to take you alive. Now, unless you and Viktor are way more valuable than it seems, I’m guessing they were after the Lens.”
Leira’s eyes flew wide with indignant anger. “Why would you say—”
“What’s this Lens?” Conover asked.
Leira ignored him. “Dash, you’re such a—”
“Charming guy, I know.” He shrugged. “One way or another, Conover would somehow figure it out. And, let’s face it, trying to sneak around and keep secrets on board the Slipwing would be like trying to hide in an empty cargo module. It wouldn’t work even if he was stupid.”
“I’m not stupid!”
Dash raised a hand at the kid. “No, you’re not. I’m on your side here, Conover.” Then he looked back to Leira. “Let’s just drop all the secretive bullshit and work out what we’re going to do.”
Conover looked from Dash to Leira. “You still haven’t said what this Lens is.”
Leira kept up the defiant glare for a moment, then looked at Viktor, who gave an elaborate shrug. She finally deflated and snapped, “Fine. It’s a piece of archaeo-tech we found.”
“Where?”
“In the Pasture.”
Dash glanced at Conover. The name obviously meant nothing to him, either. “Where, or what, is the Pasture?” he asked.
“It’s an area of space bound within the Globe of Suns,” Viktor said, “on the other side of the Shadow Nebula.”
“Okay,” Dash said, “I’ve heard of this Globe of Suns. But no one goes through the Shadow Nebula, so it’s just, well, a
bunch of stories. It’s artificial, it’s constructed, it’s…”
His voice trailed off. He looked from Viktor to Leira. “It really is artificial, isn’t it? It was built by the Unseen, wasn’t it?”
“The Globe of Suns?” Viktor shook his head. “We’re not sure. But the Pasture certainly is.”
“Okay, and what, exactly, is the Pasture?”
“It’s an artificial Oort Cloud—a massive expanse full of comets and other small bodies. Thousands of them. Maybe millions. They seem to orbit in some sort of pattern, though we weren’t there long enough to figure out what that might be. It could be millions of years old. Maybe billions.”
“And this Lens, you found it somewhere in there.”
“We did,” Leira said. “I ran across some data during a job I did, something aboard the wreck of another courier’s ship. It wasn’t complete, and it took a long time to reconstruct it, and then decipher it, but the fact that it was kept so secure seemed to mean it was valuable. And it was, just not in any way I expected it to be.”
“The data pointed you to this Pasture.”
Leira nodded. “It did. It was too good for us to pass up. We needed to at least take a look. I’ve got no idea how this other courier got the data, and the explosion that wrecked his ship looked like an accident, but now I’m not so sure.”
Dash put his feet up on the edge of the comms. “So someone else was after it.”
“Maybe. It might have been Clan Shirna even, or their agents.”
“Okay. Great. Clan Shirna, owner of at least one massive warship, and possibly employing agents on this side of the Shadow Nebula, is after this,” Dash said.
“Did you steal it from them?” Conover asked.
Leira scowled. “I already told you, we found it.”
“Yeah,” Dash said, “but one guy’s found it might be another guy’s stole it. So it really doesn’t matter if you think you found it, right? What matters is what this Clan Shirna thinks.”
“They think you stole this Lens from them,” Conover said, “right?”
“I can’t speak for Clan Shirna,” Leira said, but her indignation at having this conversation involve Conover in the first place was gone. Now, she seemed a little defensive.
