by T. J. Berry
Between the pleasant buzz of trisicle shells in his brain and the topsoil that the dwarves had finished laying in the halls, the walk to the cockpit felt almost like the old days. The ship shuddered – a roiling wave like an earthquake through mud. One of the dwarves made an alarmed sound and ducked into a tiny door. Gary hung onto an outcropping in the wall until the ship settled back down.
He opened the cockpit door to chaos. Jenny was trying to steer the panicked ship with her clumsy tablet while Jim shouted into the comm at whoever was attacking them. Ricky leaned over Jenny’s shoulder, offering what she probably thought was helpful advice.
“Maybe you can hide behind the Moon,” she said, pointing to the gray disc in the distance.
“Too far,” snapped Jenny, dragging her finger across the tablet. There wasn’t any object nearby that would offer protection for a ship of this size.
“More pirates?” Gary asked, squeezing himself past Ricky and into the corner. The biological Bala instruments throbbed with alarms, warning of incoming magic-based attacks.
“They’ve got some kind of magic weapon,” said Jim, which Gary interpreted as a request for his assistance in identifying said weapon.
“They do not. They’re normal bullets coated in magic, which gives them the ability to disrupt Bala technology, which this ship runs on.”
Human artillery modified with magic was especially dangerous to the Jaggery. Conventional bullets pinged off the surface of the ship, but magic-laced projectiles affected its Bala heart. A stoneship heart was difficult to destroy, but the right kind of weapon could confuse it into protective hibernation. Waking a hibernating stoneship could take days… or years.
On the viewscreen, a sleek fighter zoomed past faster than the external cameras could track. In the distance, a handful of larger ships hung back, waiting until the fighter disabled the Jaggery.
“What about Jiàrì Park?” asked Ricky, who was clearly familiar with the stations up here. Gary had never heard of it.
“Too crowded,” said Jenny. “It’s February.” As if that explained it.
A second shot grazed their flank. The lights in the cockpit flickered and a wave of dread went through the room – not the people in it, but the walls themselves.
“Unidentified fighter, we are friendlies, I repeat, we are friendlies. Do not shoot,” said Jim into the comm.
“You know not every human is on your side?” asked Ricky. “Most of these quags will kill you for a barrel of water. No offense, Gary.”
“None taken.” He’d never thought of himself as a quag, even though he’d spent ten percent of his life there.
Jim grumbled and hit the firing mechanism for the retrofitted guns he and Jenny had installed on the ship. A group of projectiles sprayed ineffectively into openspace. It was difficult to aim at a target going that fast in a 360-degree starfield.
“How’s the ship doing, Gary?” called Jenny, spinning the Jaggery and dropping it under a Mars shuttle like a boulder hiding behind a pixie. He was grateful she’d kept the artificial gravity on. Jenny was as skilled a stoneship pilot as Gary had ever seen, even among full unicorns who could control the ship with their minds. She had a clarity of purpose that the Jaggery responded to. As if it wanted to please her. But right now, it whined a bit through a crack in the stone wall.
“The ship is concerned,” he replied.
“Me too,” said Ricky.
Jenny sat back in her chair and tapped her teeth with a fingernail. The fighter circled behind them and let off another volley of shots. Two hit the Jaggery in the rear and the ship bucked like a wild gryphon.
Ricky gasped as the artificial gravity didn’t compensate fast enough and she left the floor for a moment.
“Gonna get someone killed out here,” she said, hanging on to the back of Jenny’s wheelchair.
“Gary, any growth yet?” asked Jenny, spinning them around a water transport ship. Human faces pressed to the windows to watch the stoneship zigzagging across space as if it wasn’t the size of a small moon. Gary bent down and showed her that there wasn’t a shimmer left in sight. Nothing but grey skull bone.
“Bollocks,” said Jenny, flicking her finger on the tablet and sending the ship careening toward a decrepit old station that had been constructed as a mashup between several spacefaring nations. At the last minute, she swiped the ship down and around the station. It wasn’t big enough to hide them, but it was a historic monument that the Reason was unlikely to destroy. It might buy them a minute or two. Jim let fly another volley of shots, a handful of which hit a shuttle on its run to the Moon. The shuttle skidded off course and he cursed under his breath.
“If you kill civilians, even you won’t be able to dodge that charge,” warned Jenny.
“That’s not necessarily true,” mused Ricky.
“You have to sit through anti-decompression drills on those shuttles before takeoff,” said Jim. “I’m sure everyone there knows what to do. They have oxygen masks and such.”
A pair of Reason ships sidled up to either side of the Jaggery.
“FTL Jaggery, prepare to be boarded,” said Ondre from the Arthur Phillip.
“You’re not doing anything,” Ricky said, waving at Jenny’s tablet. “Do something.”
Jim looked expectantly at Jenny as well. Jenny lifted her hands.
“There’s nowhere to hide around here. Can’t jump to FTL. I don’t know what else to do.”
The fighter screamed past one more time and fired another set of shots at the Jaggery. All of them hit and the ship moaned like whalesong.
“We are so dead,” said Ricky.
“Come on, Jen,” said Jim. “You always have something.”
Jenny’s brow furrowed and her brown eyes looked troubled.
“I have one idea, but no one is going to like it,” she said.
“I bet I’ll like it,” cried Ricky, as the Reason ships inched closer so that the Jaggery was pinned between them and the historic station.
Jenny looked over her shoulder at Gary.
“Go put one of your trisicles in the FTL drive,” she said.
“Oh hell no,” said Jim, grabbing her chin and forcing her to look at him. “That is not an option.” She slapped his hand away.
“I’m entertaining suggestions,” she said. The cockpit was quiet. “No? Then this is all you’ve got.”
For once, Ricky looked to be at a loss.
“What does running on trisicles do?” she asked.
Once Gary’s stomach unclenched, he spoke.
“It thrusts you into the tormented realm where trisicles spawn,” he said.
“But it also punches you out of this space and into theirs,” finished Jenny. “We just need a second or two. Enough to get us out of here.”
“And end up where?” asked Jim, wagging his finger at her. “The ass end of nowhere.”
“You would prefer the Quag?” she asked. Jim set his mouth in a thin line. “I didn’t think so.”
She hit the ship’s intercom.
“Boges, put one of the trisicles into the FTL drive. We’re going to turn it on up here, but stand by to shut down the drive if we can’t turn it off.” She turned off the intercom. “You can never tell if the ship is going to freak out in bugspace. But even if I can’t shut it down here, Gary can try from back there, and last resort Boges should be able to just yank the trisicle back out of the drive and we’ll come out somewhere in openspace.”
No one spoke and she looked up at everyone, questioning.
“What?” she asked.
“You are going to kill us all,” said Jim, with a touch of awe in his voice.
“Or strand us in a trisicle’s fever dream,” said Gary, for once in agreement with Jim.
“Excuse me?” said Boges incredulously into the intercom.
“Boges, do it,” Gary said. There was a disdainful tisking from the other end of the intercom before it shut off, but the dwarf did what she was asked.
“Jim, you keep firing, but
be sure to miss everyone,” said Jenny.
“That shouldn’t be too hard,” said Ricky, dryly. Jim shot her a dirty look.
“Gary, let me know if we’re going to break apart or go into hibernation or anything like that,” said Jenny, tapping on her tablet. The ship spun on its axis in its tight quarters between the two ships and a station, thwarting the Reason’s attempt to extend a docking clamp toward their cargo door.
“FTL Jaggery, do not move or we will fire on you. Prepare to be boarded.” The Reason ship maneuvered itself back to the cargo door and the docking clamp extended again.
“Boges?” called Jenny, letting them drift ever so slightly away from the clamp. The Jaggery shook as a plain old explosive shell hit its surface from a few meters away. The Reason was forced back from the inertia of the blast.
“Idiots,” said Jim, tightening his harness.
“Ready, Captain,” came Boges’ voice. Jim’s eyes went wide as Jenny’s finger hovered over the tablet. She glanced around the cockpit, letting her eyes come to rest on Gary.
“Shut it down if I can’t,” she said. He nodded and she dropped her fingertip on the tablet. The stars on the viewscreen winked out and the cockpit went dark. The last thing Gary heard was Ricky Tang’s scream.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Bugspace
Jenny had only been in bugspace once before and she had hoped to never enter it again. As soon as she heard the whispering chirps of a billion billion trisicles on threat alert, all the fear from last time came flooding back. Ricky’s screams were not helping matters.
Jenny’s hand shook and she dropped her tablet beside her chair. Even leaning far over the armrest, she couldn’t reach it. A crawling sensation spread over her entire body as trisicle spawn, too small to see, landed on her and began to feed. The Jaggery had manifested into a miasma of trisicles and their tiny babies. This was bugspace.
She was able to keep it together because of a lesson her gran had taught her. A trick to getting through anything that terrified her. Instead of waiting to feel ready, you looked at the thing were afraid of doing, and you did it afraid. She’d complained and resisted at first, but it was liberating when she finally realized her kuia was right. No amount of deep breathing or counting down from ten was ever going to take away her fear. From that moment on, Jenny acknowledged her terror and just kept on going.
There was no way to get all of the infinitesimal spawn off her without a shower, and a few of the mature specimens had latched onto her legs, digging into her jumpsuit with their pincers. She flicked the larger sucklings off and onto the floor, leaving wet divots in her skin. The ship had burst into their realm unexpectedly and thousands had jumped into the Jaggery when it materialized. The bugs swarmed it, both inside and out. Trisicles were able to teleport themselves over short distances, which is why they fueled the transition to FTL so efficiently.
Ricky flailed in the back of the cockpit, not so much dislodging the trisicles, but agitating those attached to her. Jim pried his off with the edge of a folding knife that Jenny hadn’t known about. That man had weapons secreted everywhere on his person.
“Damn trisicles eating me alive,” he muttered. An alarm sounded and the artificial gravity clicked off. Ricky floated toward the ceiling, banging into walls as she kicked and writhed. The trisicles on the floor floated skyward, latching onto whatever surface they could find. A few popped themselves to other locations. Jenny heard dwarves crying out in the walls.
Jenny hit the touchscreen to deactivate the trisicle in the drive and bring them back into regular space. The tablet did not respond. Jenny wiped her bloody fingers on her trousers and tried again. The tablet confirmed her order, but still the ship stayed in bugspace. She followed the wires that she and Jim had run from the tablet to the console and into the wall. They went all the way to the engine room, tacked along the top of the corridors. Trisicles covered every inch of the plastic-coated wire, gnawing through it in dozens of locations. Too many to fix right now.
“Gary,” she said, turning around to find him clawing at his throat. His eyes were round and frantic. He was choking.
“Boges!” she yelled, hitting the intercom button and unbuckling from her chair. “Shut down the drive.”
Boges did not respond.
Jenny floated toward Gary, who had his fingers deep in his own mouth, trying to fish out whatever was suffocating him. Tears ran down the sides of his face. He pulled out his empty hand and tried to grab onto the wall. One of the glass vials came away in his hand in pieces. His lips were starting to turn an alarming shade of purple.
“Do you need me to…” Jenny began. He nodded and grabbed her arm, pulling her closer.
Jenny took a deep breath and slid her hand into his mouth. It was as warm and wet as she’d imagined. She cringed and pushed her fingers deeper. Something sharp tickled the tips of her fingers.
“Sorry,” she whispered, and shoved her hand forward the last little bit. Gary gagged, but didn’t pull away. Jenny got her index and middle fingers hooked around something hard and spindly. She dragged out a mature trisicle as big as Gary’s fist, its pincers fully extended and coated in Gary’s silvery blood. He sputtered and coughed.
“Thank you,” he wheezed.
“Oh sure, any time,” she said, flicking his saliva off her hand with a grimace and wiping it down the sleeve of his sweater. A bolt of pain shot down the back of her leg and she hung onto the wall for a minute to steady herself. Everyone except Jim, who was still harnessed, floated toward the ceiling. A caustic smell wafted through the cockpit. Boges burst through the dwarf door, gasping.
“Captain, I had to evacuate the engine room and the bottom three floors of the ship. We’re filling with ammonia gas from several small hull breaches caused by the trisicles. And also, we’re falling.”
Jenny checked the viewscreen. It was still working, but wasn’t communicating with the tablet. The exterior cameras were picking up swirls of peach-colored clouds right outside the hull. As everyone had feared, the ship hadn’t been able to map bugspace properly and had materialized in the same location as an existing celestial body.
“We jumped into a planet,” said Jim.
“No, we jumped into the ammonia rings of a planet. Just low enough to be falling out of orbit,” said Jenny, reading external data off the tablet. Sensors were pinging errors as trisicles gnawed through them on the outside of the Jaggery.
“I told you so,” said Jim.
Inertia started pushing them flat against the ceiling. Jim had to look up at her to deliver his smug satisfaction.
Jenny turned to Boges and Gary. “Seal the doors between the decks.”
“There aren’t blast doors in here like on Reason ships,” said Boges, fighting the gathering force in order to slide herself down toward the dwarf door. “These aren’t warships.”
“Decompression happens to everyone,” said Jenny.
“This is true, it’s a common problem,” said Ricky. The ship shifted and she slid toward the back wall. Jenny peeled a persistent trisicle off her neck and flung it toward the corner of the room. It was getting difficult to turn her head and her throat burned as ammonia gas seeped into the rest of the ship.
“Can you get us into orbit outside of the rings?” she asked Gary.
Gary pulled himself against the force toward a series of holes in the biological instruments and whispered a few words in a language that Jenny recognized as a unicorn dialect. The ship careened above the surface of the planet, no longer falling, but not rising either. Everyone fell to the floor as the gravity of the massive planet exerted its pull.
“That’s not orbit,” said Jim, hanging onto his harness with two white-knuckled hands.
Jenny pulled herself up into her chair. The air still burned, but if she was going to smash into the surface of a bugspace planet, at least she would die sitting up. Her eyes filled with tears from the corrosive gas burning her throat and lungs. She tried to take shallow breaths. Boges sat bleary-eyed,
half in and half out of the dwarf door. Jim was awake, but stared out at the planet passing underneath them in a daze.
Ricky pulled herself upright on Jenny’s chair. She pulled a filtration mask out of her pocket and put it over her mouth and nose and stepped over the piles of trisicles to join Gary at the instrument panel.
“Hey you, ship, get us into orbit,” she said through her mask.
“That’s not how it works,” said Gary, swiping across a clear tube as different colored gases rushed through it.
“It can’t hurt,” said Ricky. She tapped a section of moss fronds on an outcropping in the rock.
“You just opened the cargo bay door,” said Gary, tapping the same spot again. “Stop touching things.”
“I don’t think any of these baubles actually do anything,” said Ricky. She leaned close to the instruments.
A rush of fresh, chilly air blew in from the open dwarf door. Jenny took as deep a breath as she could before her ribs twinged. It cleared her head. Ricky took off her mask.
“You’re prepared,” said Jenny.
“Gassing everyone was a good way to stop a brawl at the Blossom,” said Ricky.
“Bet you picked a few pockets in the process,” said Jim, patting his shirt. Jenny made a note to check him for more weapons when they got back to openspace. That man was going to kill someone if they didn’t disarm him.
“Good thinking, opening the cargo bay door,” she said to Ricky. “It vented the gas in one of the largest areas of the ship.”
The corner of Ricky’s mouth went up. She playfully punched Gary’s shoulder.
“See? I’m helping.”
“I will admit, that did vent the majority of the ammonia gas.”
Boges lifted her head and listened to the whispering along the dwarf tunnel. With the door open, Jenny heard it too.
“We have two more hull breaches to fix before we ascend to orbit or jump out of bugspace. A matter of minutes,” said Boges.
