by Mel Keegan
Travers stood to make space on the stairs as they went up, and looked at Marin, waiting. Curtis gave him a nod and walked up with him, while Dario and Tor remained behind to close down the equipment. Travers had caught a little of the conversation from the lab and asked,
“Are we leaving – Alshie’nya?”
“The Wastrel’s leaving,” Marin mused, “but there’s no reason you and I should go back so soon.”
He stopped in the living room while Mark went on into the study. The blinds were open on the wide front windows, and the view was superb, with a sky in every shade of mauve and green, so typical of Saraine. A light rain had fallen in the morning; the plane where the Eternal City was slowly being excavated was lush and green with the spring season.
“You want to stay for a while?” Marin asked. “I can’t even remember the last time we took downtime for long enough to relax. Saraine has some beauty spots, and I lived here long enough to know them.”
“We could head back to Alshie’nya with Mark,” Travers agreed. He wore a perplexed expression. “You feel this?”
“You mean, we’re not running, getting shot at, trying to figure out how to survive one more day?” Marin took a breath, held it, breathed it out as a long sigh. “It’ll take a while to get used to this, but I could get to like it.” He paused to listen as Mark and Jazinsky shared schedules.
The Wastrel was outbound tomorrow; Lai’a – the AI chassis – would be transferred this evening. Vaurien and Jazinsky were talking about looking up old friends in Sanmarco – a week, ten days, and gone again before Terran agents could identify them and get close enough to cause trouble. Again, Shapiro declined the offer to accompany them. By now he was listed among the honored dead of the Colonial War, and he wanted to keep it that way.
He was safe enough on Saraine for a short time, and Marin guessed he would choose to stay where he was. At that moment, Shapiro had taken a handy and retired to the courtyard at the rear of the house, which caught the afternoon sun. The Confederacy maintained no orbital surveillance over Saraine, and since the only humans on the planet were the archaeological crew, agents were difficult to hide. If one place existed where Harrison Shapiro could sit in the sun without a platoon of bodyguards around him, this was it.
“The Aenestra will be here tomorrow, perhaps the day after,” Mark was saying. “She’s bringing data from a nasty star system, four days closer to Carahne – we’ll be mining rare fuel elements there next year. I need to transfer the same data to Velcastra, get the lode legally registered before some other survey ship stumbles on it, and suddenly we’re brawling like Freespacers. No offence intended, Barb.”
“None taken,” she said easily. “It works out well. I was talking to Lex and Mick this morning. It’s the first opportunity she’s had to spend some time with the husband in years, and it turns out her son’s back home right now. He’s been playing with an orchestra in Westminster, but he just took a teaching job in Elstrom. Lex is talking about riding back to the old homestead with the Aenestra, if you’ve got the space.”
“It’s been organized,” Mark agreed. “She’s a science ship, there’s not much luxury, but after fifteen years on Fleet ships, Lex won’t mind! The Aenestra can handle a few extra. Ernst and Jo are going over with her. And Mick,” he added, “needs to spend some time with his father. While he can.”
Jazinsky made cynical noises. “I told him the same thing. Delay for long – put off visiting till after the Gypsy launches, for instance – and Charles might not be there.” She sighed. “Humans are so short lived.”
“Feeling your mortality?” Mark guessed.
“My humanity, perhaps,” Jazinsky allowed. “Mick’s going to grasp the opportunity? Smart boy. And Ernst … I know he’s been wanting to show Jo places he remembers from before. I don’t think he realizes how much of the world has changed.”
“Or perhaps he does,” Mark said slowly. “Ernst has already said he and Jo are staying on the Wastrel when you head out. He might be returning to Velcastra simply for closure, looking for the freedom he needs to walk away, find somewhere new.”
“You could be right.” Jazinsky tilted her head at him. “You said, when you head out. You’re not coming with us?” She sounded troubled. “I assumed you’d want to…” She caught herself, forced a smile. “Well, I guess you’ve a lot to keep you here.”
But Mark’s lion-maned head was shaking. “Less than you think. I liked Carahne, the world, but not the current community. I’ll always love Saraine, and Riga, but I’m too easily identifiable there, and even now I’m not quite ready to – what’s that term humans use? Throw in the towel.”
“Then, you’re coming on this quest of Richard’s?” Jazinsky reached outside the vid pickup for a coffee mug. “Let’s go see what kind of trouble we can get ourselves into. It could be a wild ride – find the ‘queen of worlds’ and stake a claim. Terran agents will start to wonder if we ever existed at all.” She was wheedling, and mocked herself with a laugh. “Seriously, Mark, it could be a whole lot of fun, and a lifetime safer than staying here like a bunch of gun-range targets for bounty hunters.”
“All very true,” Mark said easily. “And it’s an attractive enough offer for me to be thinking about committing the Carellan Djerun to the same expedition.”
“Fly in convoy?” Jazinsky was interested. “If you’re serious, I’ll tell Richard we’ll have the company.”
“Do that.” Mark gestured at the house, and by extension Saraine. “This is why I’m taking a few weeks here rather than running right back to Alshie’nya. I’ve a lot of groundwork to do.”
“Dendra Shemiji,” she said shrewdly.
“And finding a crew for the Carellan that’s willing to go out for a year or three,” Mark added. “One assignment I’d like the Wastrel to take on as we leave the Deep Sky is to lay a data conduit behind us, for boosted comm traffic between Saraine and … wherever we land.”
She was nodding as he spoke. “I’ve been thinking the same thing. God knows, we could wind up a month away, at high-cruise. This jewel among worlds can’t be right around the corner. If it was, Freespacers would have found it by now.” She paused, frowned. “Distance will make it difficult for the Veldn to contact the Carellan.”
“They’ll contact Saraine, get Joss, and a message.” Mark was unconcerned. “They can follow the data conduit. They’ll find us soon enough, if they’ve a reason to – or leave a message of their own. Lai’a,” he added, “will be returning to Zunshu space with a science team in a couple of months. Several specialists from the Carellan will be there; they can inform the Veldn we’ve headed out, and why, if not where.”
They were covering every base, Marin thought. Business would be secure behind them, from Dendra Shemiji to patents and claims. He felt a not unpleasant oddness creeping along spine and limbs and was aware of Travers’s eyes on him, but he could only shrug. “What can I tell you? I guess I’m actually starting to think about the future. This time last year, if I tell you the truth, I didn’t actually think we had one.”
Travers’s brow lowered in a frown; his voice was very soft. “You thought the Zunshu would get here too soon?”
“Or we’d buy the ranch in a crash, a gunfight, a battle.” Marin took a long deep breath. “We pushed our luck to the limit a long time ago, Neil.”
“We’ve been making our own luck,” Travers argued. “We still are.” He cocked his head at Marin. “You want to go over to Velcastra, since the Aenestra’s headed that way? We’re welcome on StarCity.”
The suggestion had its merits, but Marin shook his head. “I’d rather spend a few weeks in air that’s still so fresh, you can almost taste it. Mark has a place in the highlands west of On’rabi. Actually not too far from here, just a cabin with a lake about half a kilometer below, and a view of the mountains.” He spread his hands. “Last chance to get some air that didn’t come out of a can, fool around in the sun, go skinny dipping. It could be six months before you see a tree again!”
“Done deal,” Travers decided. “Mark won’t mind?”
“He’ll be here at the house – business.” Marin took Neil’s hands, kissed the palms, offered an embrace. “You still want that horse property in the river country?”
“Still,” Travers confessed against his hair.
“You just might get it.” Marin was thinking of Carahne – of Velcastra and Jagreth, two centuries before, when the terraformer fleets preceded human colonists into the Deep Sky. He hugged Travers tighter for a moment, inspiring a curse. “Damnit, Neil, we’re alive.”
“And I have the bruised ribs to prove it.” Travers leaned back, cupped Curtis’s face in both hands and looked down the short difference in their height. “I love you. And I don’t tell you often enough.”
“You don’t have to … though I could stand to hear it once or twice,” Marin admitted. He reached up with a devouring kiss, and only released Travers when Vidal stirred on the couch. The handy and veeree visor slid to the floor and he sat up with a theatrical yawn. “You missed all the excitement,” Marin informed him.
“I did?” Vidal stood, stretched. The pearl gray tunic gaped at the chest, displaying the Daku tattoo. It was well healed now, and he could show it anywhere in the Deep Sky without fear of criticism.
“Lai’a.” Marin gestured back toward the lab.
“It worked.” Vidal was pleased, not surprised.
He checked his chrono and rummaged under the couch for a long familiar case. The tunic pulled down around one sinewy arm; the hypogun thudded against the biceps, and he was done. Shot bruises mottled the skin there, but Vidal was indifferent and Marin had seen far worse.
“Lai’a petitioned to work with you on the Gypsy,” he said as Vidal repacked the case and stacked it with the game set. “It’s going right back to Alshie’nya on the Wastrel … you’ll have a lot of catching up to do, when you get there. You’re on the Aenestra?”
Vidal looked merely resigned. “Velcastra – StarCity, specifically. If we dock before dawn, we won’t attract much attention. Lex and I won’t be showing our faces in Elstrom. I doubt the paparazzi would recognize me from a distance in any case, but I’m not going to push my luck. I’m going there to spend a few weeks with my father, not to go cruising in every pub and danceshop in citybottom.” He made a face. “The party animals you meet there don’t understand how things just don’t work the way they used to.” He cast a disparaging glance at his body. “Beside which, I’m happy with Mahak. There’s nothing on Velcastra for me, only my father. If I’m really lucky, Trick and Ying and the rest of the parasites won’t even know I’m there.”
“Then, you’re shipping out soon.” Travers slung an arm over Marin’s shoulders. “And it seems we’re heading for the hills here … cabin in the woods.”
“Sounds appealing … and I’d take a rain check, except,” Vidal hazarded, “I don’t think we’ll be back this way for a long time. When do you leave?”
It was a good question, and Marin only shrugged. “Today, tomorrow. Where’s the hurry?”
“I’ll catch you before you go,” Vidal promised. “Yo, Mahak.”
He had just signed off with Jazinsky and the threedee in the study returned to idling. “Michael, you might want to hash out plans with Lai’a. It’ll be back in Hellgate well ahead of you, but the Zhivun – the Gypsy, if you prefer – is your project.” He graced Vidal with an indulgent smile. “Take your time on Velcastra. I’m headed back to the Carellan myself in a few weeks … work.” He gave Marin and Travers a speculative look. “Did I hear, you want to use the cabin?”
“Problem?” Marin wondered.
“No – just that it’s been closed up for so long, the power cells are probably dead, there’ll be nothing left edible in the pantry, and I can’t be a hundred percent sure of the comm system.”
Travers chuckled. “Sounds like a challenge. We’ll go out loaded … this evening?” He offered Marin the decision.
The temptation of chill mountain air, clear skies and the silence of the forest was powerful. From Saraine, they were headed for space again – and transspace. They would fly it in impossible simulations to hone their skills, coach the other flight crews. Marin did not doubt that the months would race by before the Wastrel and the Carellan Djerun showed their stern tubes to the Deep Sky and vanished into the little-charted region where Freespace itself dwindled away into what the Resalq had called the Vast.
“This evening,” he decided on a whim. “Which means we’d better start loading, if the cabin’s so neglected.”
“You need a hand?” Vidal offered.
But Travers gestured after Mark, who had headed upstairs. “Grab what time you can get, while you can get it.”
He meant, relish every moment because they only came once. Marin heard the unspoken sentiment and gave Neil a faint, curious smile as Vidal followed Mark. Travers waited for him to speak, but words eluded Marin. He settled for a swift embrace before they went down to ransack the storage lockers for power cells and comm relays.
MINDSPACE
Mel Keegan
On the far frontier, life is tough when you’re a transspace pilot stripped of your license to fly. The good jobs go to graduate guildsmen who make the professional grade ... and who play by the guild’s rulebook.
Jack DiFalco broke the rules. Busted, he found himself on the wrong side of the law and the rough side of the guild -- and his crime was mindspacing … playing one of the incredible high-tech games which are changing the future of humanity. Playing not in VR, but in the gamespace, the total-immersion rigs where players enters the realm of the machine. And some of them don’t make it back out.
Kieron Charig is a transspace navigator. He went through guild school with Jack, but unlike Jack he has no patience for the game, or for gamers. Mindspacing is the major tool of the navigator’s trade – the big transspace ships are flown via a symbiotic relationship where the mind/machine interface is dangerously blurry. Kieron works there; he scorns to play there -- and like all transspace flightcrews he fears the consequences.
The irony is that it’s Kieron, not Jack, who will pay the ultimate price, while Jack is plucked out of a rough, dirty underworld and propelled into places more opulent than the games he has played. But success comes with strings attached, and at a high price. Jack will pay his dues with skill, courage and even sex. For Kieron Charig, no price is high enough, and every moment is a battle to preserve what remains of his humanity.
Everything they are, everything they might be, pivots on Max Gorodin -- who stands at the helm of the aerospace giant, Jabalpur Industries. Max’s own struggle is about sheer survival -- and if Jack DiFalco is his dream come true, Kieron Charig is the gift he could never have expected.
Max is poised a dangerous juncture where his own personal security is dubious and his enemies seem invincible. When Jack and Kieron cross his path, his life -- and the survival plans for a company and a city – have the potential to turn around. But both Jack and Kieron must forfeit everything they have … and Max will discover that falling in love is life’s ultimate complication.
Length: 95,000 words
Publication date: May 2010
Publisher: DreamCraft
Price: $9.99 - Kindle, PDF, epub, Stanza
Cover: Jade
