[Confluence 01.0] Fluency

by Jennifer Foehner Wells

  She sensed it opening, slowly, a giant garage door in space. Ei’Brai confirmed the gravity was cut.

  As each second passed, Ei’Brai labored over extensive calculations. They flowed past her. She waited patiently for him to calculate the best formula as they adjusted course.

  “Trajectory and velocity are currently optimal, Qua’dux. You may proceed with lateral thrust.”

  This was it. If Ei’Brai’s calculations were wrong, or if Jane didn’t execute them correctly—or if the occupants of the capsule lit the thrusters now—all would be lost. Even at these low speeds, the capsule wasn’t that robust. It was not made to endure serious impacts. It would crumple like aluminum foil. Pressurization would fail. The three of them would be dead almost instantly in the vacuum of space.

  “Yes,” Ei’Brai conceded. “Yet no other option exists. They’ve met dusk already if we do not act. You give them hope.”

  Jane lifted her chin. “Right. Engage thrusters.”

  Secondary impellers blazed all along both flanks of Speroancora and in a full circle around the bow, in a combination Ei’Brai had carefully planned. Almost all of them cut out in less than a second along the ship’s length, particularly toward the tail, but the ring around the bow kept firing, now thrusting even harder. The nose of the ship maintained course and speed alongside the Providence, held rigidly in position by a precise and unusual combination of forces as if it were a fulcrum, while the tail of the ship swung around laterally toward the capsule.

  Jane held her breath.

  Ei’Brai switched the source of her viewscreen feed to a camera inside chamber 246. Providence grew in size at an alarming rate. Her heart pounded a tattoo.

  “Prepare to terminate rotation,” Ei’Brai reminded her gently.

  “Yes, yes—terminate rotation on my mark,” she told the computer.

  Speroancora pivoted inexorably.

  Jane bucked against the straps. “It’s not going to fit!”

  “Steady. My calculations are impeccable. Standby, Qua’dux.”

  There couldn’t be more than inches of clearance.

  Her hand went to her mouth, physically keeping herself from screaming, “Abort!” It was too late to abort anything.

  Her eyes widened as the Providence scuttled across the floor of chamber 246.

  “Qua—”

  “Mark! Mark!”

  Every lateral thruster on Speroancora lit off at once. The Providence bumped against the inner wall of chamber 246 and bounced around, but Jane and Ei’Brai, in joint-thought, didn’t think it was enough to cause much damage. It settled into place near the open door. It hovered there, slightly cocked at an angle, just a few inches from the floor as the momentum of both vessels equalized.

  Jane exhaled in a whoosh. “Close the external service hatch on chamber 246, repressurize the chamber, and reinstitute synthetic gravity. Execute ionic pulse.”

  Jane unlatched herself and headed for the door.

  Ei’Brai’s voice rumbled in her head, “Ionic pulse has been successfully effectuated, Qua’dux. Squillae transmission has gone full-silent. The pulse was successful.”

  “We’ve got them. We should be out of the woods, so let’s find a safe place to park,” Alan said.

  Ei’Brai’s mental voice sounded flat, resigned. “This location will serve well enough as an insertion point for solar orbit, Qua’dux, if that is your wish.”

  Jane shrugged as she tapped a key in the nearest deck-to-deck transport. They hadn’t even discussed what they needed to do next. The priority had been the ionic pulse and the rescue that wasn’t even complete yet.

  It suddenly occurred to her that, back on Earth, the maneuver she’d just performed would be recorded. The folks in Houston might also have received some unsettling transmissions from Providence over the last few days. They were probably beside themselves with worry and apprehension. She’d need to send them a reassuring message ASAP. But that would have to wait a few more minutes.

  “Okay. Let’s just stay here for a while, then,” she said abstractedly.

  "Do you mean to engage reverse thrust to come to a full stop, Qua'Dux? Or do you prefer to maintain a circular orbit around Sol at this radial distance?”

  Jane sighed. She squinted her eyes shut so she could visualize what he actually meant before answering, “Yes, just put us in orbit here.”

  But he wasn’t done. “It would be advisable to don protective gear before approaching the vessel.”

  “Ei’Brai—”

  “Your colleagues are not themselves; their actions, unpredictable. I urge prudence, Qua’dux.” His voice vibrated with insistence.

  Jane turned a corner and stopped short. A single suit of armor squatted in the middle of the corridor. Ei’Brai had sent it there to wait for her.

  Jane shook her head, remembering Alan’s response to the armor. “I don’t want to frighten them.”

  “That hardly matters,” Ei’Brai countered disdainfully. “A single explosive-propelled projectile could bring dusk upon you. Prevention is more important than remorse.”

  His reasoning was selfish, but he was right, she conceded. She’d harbored a childish hope that the ionic burst alone would instantly cure them. That wasn’t realistic to assume. It was possible, but only if the squillae had just set up shop in their brains in order to interfere while damaging or altering nothing. Based on what she’d seen, it seemed more likely that the squillae had… done things to them. If she really was to save them, she had to protect herself from them. She stripped down, wadded up her clothing, and shoved it into an armored compartment, then stepped into the suit.

  The suit conformed to and integrated with the brace she wore on her right leg. It enveloped her, squeezing her lightly, like a warm hug. The HUD came up. She silenced its prompts with a thought.

  Ei’Brai’s voice vibrated in an effusive manner that she hadn’t heard before. “This endeavor has proceeded more than satisfactorily, Qua’dux Jane Holloway. We work proficiently together, despite the newness of our alliance. As I predicted, we compose a union far superior to the sum of its components. An illustrious future awaits us. There will be elaborate tales woven into great tapestries of narrative about this exalted day. The female Terran, Quasador Dux Jane Holloway, and the sislix Kubodera, Ei’Brai.”

  Jane didn’t reply. She wasn’t in it for fame and glory on some remote planet. He knew that.

  He wasn’t really, either—well, not much, anyway. It was just easier for him to say these kinds of things than to express gratitude, for her companionship, for accepting the role he knew she didn’t really want. But she knew how he felt. It was an undercurrent in every conversation. She wasn’t ready to acknowledge it yet. It was too fresh.

  She stretched and flexed within the suit, retrieving the muscle memory she needed to operate it smoothly, and turned to resume her course toward chamber 246.

  The capsule was locked from the inside. No one responded to her attempts at communication. Standing outside, she could hear muffled voices. From time to time the capsule vibrated.

  Finally, Jane activated a cutting tool embedded in her armor and carefully circumscribed the outline of the hatch. There was a loud hiss as the pressure between the two environments equalized. Jane grasped the hatch and lifted it outward with exceeding slowness, so as not to alarm anyone inside. She peered inside.

  Even with Ei’Brai’s preparation, she was shocked. Walsh was slumped in a corner, his eyes vacant and glazed over. Varma was perched on top of Gibbs, hammering a fist into his face, repeatedly. Gibbs pulled his knees to his chest and used them to push Varma off him. Varma was scrambling to her feet when she saw Jane. She picked up a piece of her analytical equipment and raised it over her head.

  Jane backed up a step, still holding the hatch. “Ajaya? It’s me, Jane, inside this suit.”

  Varma growled. Her eyes had gone feral. She launched herself at the opening in the hatch, clambered through, and threw the instrument with both hands, leaping after it inst
antly. The heavy device jarred the sheet of metal from Jane’s hands; both clattered on the deck at her feet. Jane stumbled backwards and then Varma was on her, knocking her to the floor.

  The HUD flashed several options. One of them was an anti-combatant sedative injection. That sounded like a fantastic idea. Would the stuff work on human beings? The suit said yes, and she felt rather pressed at the moment. The suit calculated Varma’s mass and prepared the dose.

  Varma raged on top of Jane, spittle flying, hair whipping around her face.

  Jane stayed limp and rocked in the suit until the dose was ready so she wouldn’t inadvertently hurt Varma.

  A sound came from the capsule. It was Gibbs climbing out of the hatch. His face was bloody, contorted and swollen. Varma ceased beating Jane’s armored head against the floor and turned, eyes wild.

  It was the perfect opportunity. Jane injected her in the stomach.

  Varma bucked and screamed, but fell limp on top of Jane a second later.

  Jane eased Varma to the floor and rolled to her feet. She held out a hand. “It’s me, Ron. It’s Jane.”

  He shook his head slowly. He circled her in a crouch. He was like a coiled cat, ready to pounce, but warily exploring his options before deciding his next move.

  Jane realized he might slip out the door into the corridor. She didn’t relish the idea of chasing him around the ship. Ei’Brai shut the door before Jane could even formulate a command.

  That seemed to make the decision for Gibbs. He barreled into Jane, knocking her back into the side of the capsule with a crash. She was ready with the sedative. It was over a second later.

  Jane slipped Gibbs to the floor and staggered clear of the capsule to survey the scene. She felt a little weak from the emotional turmoil of the day. What would she have done if the decades-old sedative hadn’t worked? She didn’t want to contemplate that.

  Ei’Brai was silent. The nanites had not been his fault. She couldn’t blame him for this. She and her team had taken a million different risks when they’d stepped aboard the Speroancora, and a million more when they’d gone in without protective suits. The nanites had been programmed to seek out and attach themselves to humanoids. It was a small miracle that she and Alan had remained clean.

  The tight quarters of the capsule must have allowed the nanites to infect all three of its occupants rapidly. All three of them needed some quality time in the Sanalabreum. She just hoped it would be able to reverse the damage done to them.

  She fetched the gurney she’d left in the corridor and piled all three of their bodies onto it. It was undignified, but they’d never know as long as she got them to the medical chambers as soon as possible.

  She retracted the helmet as she pushed off for the nearest deck-to-deck transport. The suit made the task effortless and she was glad she took Ei’Brai’s advice. The worst of this business was over. It was time to tie up the remaining loose ends from her past and look ahead.

  The future seemed inscrutable, formidable, frightening, but… exciting.

  She couldn’t wait.

  27

  The Squid had said Jane was in the captain’s quarters—the Qua’dux’s quarters. Whatever. She’d taken up residence there, she called it home apparently, and that was where she was. Bergen was pacing the corridor just outside her door, trying to train himself to minimize his limp and rehearsing what he hoped to say to her… if he could just get it to come out right.

  Where are we?

  Where do we stand, Jane?

  Or…

  Where do I stand, in your life?

  Do we have a future?

  Do you want one?

  What do you want?

  Is it… my leg?

  Ugh. No. He looked down at the leg, disguised inside a fresh flight suit. Don’t say anything about the goddamn leg. Just relax. Smile. Be charming as all fuck and it should be fine.

  Everything had been going great until the damn Squid had messed everything up. Alan wasn’t aware of all the details, since he’d been on an extended stay in Jello-land, but the squid had gotten what he wanted from Jane, it seemed, and she hadn’t been the same since.

  He shook his head. They’d survived. He guessed that was all that really mattered. All six of them would make it back alive, if not completely intact. A normal life was within their grasp, for most of them anyway. He still wasn’t sure about Walsh.

  Bergen wondered if Varma’s mission report had included the incident that had happened a few days before, when they’d attempted to take Walsh out of the tank prematurely in preparation for the meeting today. Walsh had been disoriented, narcoleptic, then had suffered a grand mal seizure, so they’d hurriedly plopped him back in to marinate a while longer.

  It hadn’t been pretty. The reprobate nanites had clearly inflicted some pretty extensive damage to Walsh’s central nervous system. However, Compton had been infected the longest, and he was fine now, so theoretically Walsh should be the same eventually. While things hadn’t turned out as badly as Walsh had predicted, the irony of him possibly being the only one left with a serious deficiency wasn’t lost on Berg.

  They were so close to home now. Jane could have them home in a matter of hours. He could almost taste the french fries. They were going to be heroes when they got back. Not only that, they’d be bringing home the most exciting piece of technology that man had ever known. He was going to savor every moment of dismantling this ship and learning its every nook and cranny. He was already picking out teams of engineers in his head, along with their initial assignments.

  He turned on his heel one last time and decided that he’d gimped back and forth long enough. If he didn’t get on with it, the Squid might tell her he was out here, assuming he hadn’t already.

  As soon as Bergen had gotten out of the tank, he had begun to exclude the Squid from his thoughts as much as possible. Having all that extra shit going on all the time was too disorienting. It was advantageous for problem solving in a crisis, but a nuisance otherwise. It was simply another form of communication, and vocal speech worked just fine, thank you very much.

  He knew he could get used to it eventually, but he just didn’t feel like getting used to it. It hadn’t brought him any closer to Jane at all. Quite the opposite, it seemed.

  Maybe he was being petty or childish or stupid. He probably was. He didn’t fucking care.

  It had been fun there for a while, actually—studying the alien tech, solving the puzzle, proposing a solution—being right. That was the kind of stuff he lived for. Then, while he was healing and the cybernetic leg was being installed, there’d been the long conversations with Ei’Brai about technology, theoretical physics, astronomy—all the stuff that just geeked him the fuck out. That had probably kept him from going nuts in there.

  The concept of Anipraxia alone blew his mind. It wasn’t some paranormal mumbo jumbo. It wasn’t magic. It was fucking quantum entanglement!

  On a quantum scale, particles inside organelles in Ei’Brai’s brain reached a singlet state with particles inside comparable organelles in the brain of whomever he was anipraxing with—allowing communication far more instantaneous and comprehensive than speech. It shouldn’t be possible, but the Squid said that the human grasp of quantum mechanics was in its infancy. And that there were realms that humans hadn’t even glimpsed yet.

  But the guy’s arrogance… his possessive attitude about Jane… his smug surety about everything was too much to take. Bergen knew damn well that he and the Squid had a lot in common. Maybe that’s what it was all about. Jane didn’t need him anymore because she had the Squid. He felt useless. Completely emasculated.

  Fuck.

  Bergen opened the hand that was about to knock on her door and splayed it out across the door’s surface. His forehead joined it there and he closed his eyes.

  Jane. He hardly knew her. All the softness had gone out of her. There was a stern set to her mouth now that never went away, and she rarely smiled these days.

  But they were go
ing home. They could have their happily ever after. As long as he didn’t screw it up.

  Jane was playing it close to the vest. He’d tried over the last few weeks to get closer to her, to rekindle something between them, but she’d been cool and preoccupied, so he’d reluctantly left her alone.

  She had been busy. She had gone through the decks swarming with critters and had methodically blasted all of them to oblivion. Then she had begun repairs—not how you might expect, though. She had collected freshly made nanites and distributed them by hand all over the ship, to the places they were most urgently needed—the engine room, life support, and all the last known locations that had been critically damaged by the slimy monsters. It was time-consuming, and she worked around the clock. He had tried to help, once he’d gotten out of the damn Jello-bath, but he’d just felt like he was in the way.

  She didn’t need him wielding a wrench. That stung. He tried not to dwell on it. He wasn’t a damn whiner.

  She was dealing with a lot. He knew that. He wasn’t stupid. He just didn’t think she needed to go through it all alone. It wouldn’t be weak to lean on him, just a little, when no one was looking. He hated that the only person she was leaning on was a goddamn telepathic space-squid.

  If he could just break through whatever barrier was between them. If he could just get things back to the way they had been—the playful banter, the warm looks, the smiles that made her eyes glow and his loins throb.

  He banged his forehead against the door, then panicked when he realized he’d just knocked and covered it by pounding on the door loudly and taking a few steps back.

  She came to the door looking confused. “Alan? It’s almost time for the teleconference. Are you ready?”

  He glanced at his watch and blanched internally. He’d just procrastinated away all his time. He’d meant to come sooner, have a long heart-to-heart with her.

  He’d screwed up. Again.

  He faked a smile and a relaxed posture. “Yeah. Yeah. I was just hoping to have a word with you before it begins.”