by Stephen Hunt
‘Tachyon conversion is at thirty two percent,’ announced the honeyed tones of the ship’s computer, Granny Rose’s voice rumbling from every corner of the command centre. ‘Please brace for expulsion turbulence.’
Two spare chairs lowered towards the deck, crane arms at their rear whining as they stopped an inch short of the floor. Calder dropped into his chair, its sides reforming around the front of his stomach as if it had been custom moulded for his frame, the slight pressure from its crash field invisibly protecting him. Across from Calder, the professor had taken her own seat, and she winked in his direction. ‘Any landing you can walk away from, eh?’
‘I think we can do a little better than that,’ said Lana from her chair, not sounding impressed by her passenger’s comment in the slightest.
Calder would have kept his head down if he weren’t already being lifted into the air, a loop of colourful hologram displays rotating around his position as though he were the centre of an orrery. The system they were entering contained an ancient red sun, most of its nuclear mass already spent. That meant that the Gravity Rose could drop out of hyperspace exceptionally close to the target world, without worrying about ripping the guts out of their gravity-sensitive hyperspace vanes. A low-gravity interaction short drop, to use the naval jargon the new crewman had learnt in the Hell Fleet sims. Calder might not have been travelling in a fleet war vessel – simulated or no – but he had already picked up on the fact that Polter was one of the best jump artists in this corner of space. The new crewman gazed into the infinite reach of hyperspace visible between the spars of the bridge. The effect was only a projection, but it looked indistinguishable from really travelling exposed to the void outside the hull.
‘We’ll see,’ said the professor, clearly enjoying irritating a woman she regarded as the hired help.
‘Thirty five percent,’ reported the ship’s computer.
There was a low buzzing vibration sounding from the hull, the harmonics of their shifting molecular structure becoming more and more disagreeable to hyperspace.
‘Thirty seven percent.’
‘Confirm lock on exit point,’ said Lana.
‘Lock confirmed, revered captain,’ said Polter. ‘Transition dive is calculated and stable.’
‘Start dive manoeuvre, on my command, then terminate and drift for at least four seconds,’ said Lana. ‘See what we can flush out behind our stern.’
‘What are you doing?’ demanded the professor.
‘Just being careful,’ said Lana. ‘You never know what might be creeping up on your tail.’
‘You have reason to think we’re being followed?’
‘Thirty eight percent,’ said the computer. The Gravity Rose was really beginning to shake now, her hull buffeted by the turbulence of two competing sets of physics interacting with the cold hard fact of the ship’s existence.
‘Just being cautious,’ smiled Lana. ‘DSD was very clear about how few scruples the competition would have in throwing a spanner into his operation’s works.’
‘Do you know something I don’t?’
Lana shrugged knowingly. ‘Oh, I’m almost certain of that. Mister Skeratt, sensor declination angled to stern, all dishes, maximum scope.’
‘Jolly good.’
Calder glanced between the chairs, confused. Were they really being followed, or was Lana just trying to throw the professor a scare to get even for the woman’s needling? Hyperspace encounters between vessels were rare, and they weren’t exactly exiting in a major trading hub like Transference Station, either. Given that only DSD and the professor knew what work the Gravity Rose was signed up for – and Dollar-sign Dillard wasn’t exactly going to blab – how would a tail even know to go after them?
‘Thirty nine percent,’ said the computer. Calder’s seat field whined as its cushioning kicked up a notch, the shaking easing off in his immediate vicinity. The edges of the ship were starting to blur. Lana wouldn’t have long to make a controlled dive. If she left it any longer, they were going to be spit out the hell knows where – deep space if they were lucky, or the centre of a sun if they weren’t.
‘Approaching exit safety margins,’ said Zeno, the android’s voice chiding.
‘Make for a false dive,’ ordered Lana, raising her voice over the sound of the vessel’s juddering. ‘Record full sensor logs on our bow.’
‘Holding at forty percent,’ said the computer. Even she didn’t sound happy about it.
There was a wrench as the ship started to drop back into normal space, then a sudden juddering as the manoeuvre was partially terminated. They were shaking the hell out of the Gravity Rose now, skimming between the edges of two universes, only the chair’s crash field stopping Calder being sent flying across the bridge and dashed against the hull. A maelstrom of colours erupted outside the ship, tachyons and other exotic particles flaring as they were half-dragged into normal space, mad glimpses of the dark velvet star-scattered reaches of normal space interspaced with the alien vaults of hyperspace.
‘Hold us steady,’ ordered Lana over the ship matters’ screaming protest, ‘hold us steady…’
Calder gritted his teeth. He didn’t know if the professor was scared, but right now, he sure as hell was. He felt his body torn between two states of existence, his hand shaking with primeval fear, the crash field unable to compensate and blinking ruby warning alarms as though it shared his rising panic.
‘Dive, dive, dive!’ called Lana, just as the prince thought that the vessel was going to break up and be scattered across both universes. Calder’s vision flared, a cascade of Higgs boson particles burning across the back of his retina – his own body suddenly fully reassembled, jolting in the cold, harsh grasp of reality. He slouched forward, trying not to retch, as the seat field caught his limp body.
‘Now I know why your ship’s so big and your crew’s so small,’ coughed Sebba, kicking her chair angrily down towards the deck. ‘You’ve hit your natural limit of all the crew in the Edge actually crazy enough to fly with you.’
‘Any landing you can walk away from, professor…’ grinned Lana. She glanced out towards the reach of space.
They had made a short drop, all right. Outside the Gravity Rose, the massive sphere of a new world filled the heavens. But even to Calder’s relatively untutored eyes, the world looked, well, wrong. It squatted there, a dull uniform crimson colour, matching the dead red light of the sun beyond, whirls in its atmosphere slowly twisting as lightning bursts lit it up from below. This is a gas giant, surely, not an actual planet?
Lana was obviously thinking the same thing. ‘Professor, these are the co-ordinates you gave us, so what the hell is that? Jungle world, my ass?’
‘Well then,’ smiled Sebba, ‘it seems I know something you don’t after all.’ She sounded satisfied, as though the natural order of things had been restored. ‘What you see before you is Abracadabra. It has an exotic troposphere, a top layer of gas that interacts with the sun’s residual solar winds. That’s an interplay of energy discharges you can see down there. The world is exactly as described… only, below its gas layer.’
Calder watched the mesmerising sight of energies chasing each other across the world’s whirling gas coating. It was no wonder that DSD had the planet to himself. Most ships passing through the system wouldn’t give the place a second glance, and a dying sun was enough to put off any would-be colonists. The system’s eventual star death and supernova might lie many millions of years in the future, but humanity was superstitious about such things. Hell, just looking at the unwelcoming sight of the baneful sun beyond, Calder realised that he was superstitious about such things.
‘Skrat,’ said Lana, ‘what do we have on the sensor logs?’
‘No pings,’ said the first mate, his lizard-like tail whipping thoughtfully in the hole formed for it in the command seat. ‘If we were being pursued, any following vessel was too far behind us to track our dive.’
‘Outstanding,’ said Sebba. ‘You nearly broke the shi
p in half to scan for a damned sensor ghost.’
‘I wasn’t even close to breaking the Rose,’ said Lana. ‘She can surprise you like that.’
Calder sighed. The ship was a lot like the captain that way, too.
‘Mister Polter,’ said Lana, ‘you and the chief have the con. Skrat, Calder, Zeno, you’re with me. We’ll take the control shuttle down to the camp, set up homing beacons, and guide our cargo landers in one-by-one.’
‘I’ll take my own ship and meet you at the camp,’ said Sebba. ‘There’s equipment on her that the expedition needs.’
‘As you wish,’ said Lana. Now, Sebba making her own way off the ship, that the captain sounded happy about. ‘With so many years’ experience behind you, I’m sure you can make a safe re-entry on your own. How is the autopilot on the Hineh Ma Tov?’
‘Expensive and of superior quality,’ retorted Sebba. At least she left the “Just like me” unsaid and hanging in the air.
That was the kind of conversation you could almost build on, Calder mused thoughtfully. Almost.
***
Lana ducked into the rear cargo chamber of the control shuttle. Zeno, Skrat and Calder were waiting there, the android clutching the controls for the shuttle’s rear ramp. The light on his box was blinking green, indicating a breathable atmosphere waiting for them on Abracadabra’s surface with no hostile pathogens detected. Lana had insisted on waiting for the air check before cracking open the ramp, survey results or no. She wouldn’t have put it past the maleficent professor to forget to mention that the air contained some nasty spores capable of seeing her laid up in sickbay, Zeno in attendance to regenerate her a new pair of lungs. Wouldn’t you just love that, high and mighty Professor Sebba? Me covered with red blotches and itching from some jungle fever. Out of your way while you work your goddamn horny way through my crew.
Lana had caught all the glimpses she’d needed of Abracadabra’s endless jungle on the way down, a thick canopy only broken by the towering mountain range they were homing in on. There were hints of crimson chlorophyll in the foliage intermingled with emerald green – it gave the jungle the ominous appearance of an ugly green brain streaked with throbbing red veins, a vast living entity spread across the length of the world. Even inside the shuttle, Lana could hear the chatter of perimeter guns behind the camp’s laser fence; some of the aerial predators still curious about exactly what titbits had landed on the base’s runaway. She had barely avoided the flock of terrifying flying creatures on their approach, leathery pink monsters large enough to scoop up pterodactyls as though they were insects in a bird’s beak. Lana had been a second away from opening up on them with her shuttle’s cannons, before the heat she had been dumping from the re-entry tiles drove the creatures off, beating away on their giant lizards’ wings before they could be further singed. There were two landing zones, runways intersecting each other in a cross-shape. The base had been set up at the end of a strip close to the mountain range; a large clearing filled with quickset concrete buildings and hangars, none taller than two storeys, and the complex constructed with the stubby, functional lines of a fortress.
Each of Lana’s crewmen had shouldered a rail rifle inside the hold, and she noted from the guns’ LEDs that the weapons were dialled up to maximum acceleration; ball bearings in drum magazines ready to be accelerated at velocities capable of chewing chunks out of a castle wall. Before she’d landed, Lana would have said she was being over-cautious in ditching her pistol belt’s webbing for an assault rifle. Having seen the local wildlife up close, now she was wondering whether bringing rifles rather than cannons might be considered reckless.
‘This is your first real alien world, Mister Durk,’ said Lana.
‘Transference Station doesn’t count, skipper?’
‘Orbitals are all the same,’ said Lana. She gestured at the android to drop the ramp. ‘At least, the human-designed ones are. Some bigger, some smaller. Always too many citizens and too much advertising being hosed in your direction. Out there, beyond that ramp… are sights that only a handful of people have ever seen. Maybe ever will see.’
‘With good reason, one suspects,’ said Skrat. ‘This skirl would settle for a little staid uniformity right about now.’
‘I hear that,’ said Zeno. A light in the shuttle’s ceiling started rotating and bleating an opening warning as the ramp lowered. ‘Not many trading opps on a world with horse-sized spiders and dragons in the air that could treat pterodactyls as fast food. Hey, Skrat, maybe some of those fliers are your long-lost cousins?’
‘If so, they can stay lost, dear boy.’
As the ramp thumped on the ground, the heat of the world outside flooded in like a tsunami, almost bowling Lana over. Jesus, the heat outside was thick enough to carve with a laser. Lana reached out, tapping the controls woven into the arm of Calder’s smart suit to active it, and then thumbed the cooling system up to max. Lana’s own suit was already reacting to the heat, set to keep her flesh at a constant comfortable body temperature. She sighed as she walked down the ramp, resigning herself to being either too hot or too cold as she wandered around the base. This mission was going to end with her getting a cold, she just knew it. And apart from the new crewman, Lana couldn’t even comfort herself with the thought that her misery would enjoy company – the android was as unaffected by temperature as he was by all physical frailties, and as far as Skrat was concerned, Abracadabra was as good as home living for her lizard-like first mate.
Lana and her crew emerged onto the landing field; ground blackened from the napalm bombing it had originally received to clear the jungle for the base. Robot tanks rumbled around the landing field on caterpillar tracks, anti-aircraft chain guns on the turrets spinning around and occasionally releasing bursts into the sky. Two-legged sentry guns, little more than cannons with steel feet, patrolled the inside perimeter of the laser fence. Jesus, this feels more like a military base under siege than a mining camp. Despite the heat, the ground was being splattered with heavy gobs of rain. Layers of steam drifted up from puddles in the trampled mud.
Sebba’s larger vessel had landed before the control shuttle, parked seventy feet away, thrusters still leaking mist from its touchdown. A tube-shaped lift had descended to the ground from the vessel’s belly, the professor disembarked to speak with one of the expedition members, a head or two shorter than Lana’s haughty passenger. From the gesticulating and arms thrashing about, the conversation appeared to be growing as heated as the planet’s atmosphere.
‘You’d think they’d be happy to see us,’ said Calder.
‘Maybe they’ve struck the galaxy’s biggest vein of diamonds,’ said Lana, ‘and think they’ve got to split the find with us now.’
‘A girl’s best friend,’ said Zeno. ‘Apart from her go-to-android, that is.’
Lana listened to the discordant, alien song from the distant jungle – eerie cries, screeches and whistles that sounded like nothing she was used to. ‘I’ll take artificial vat-grown gems.’ Especially if it means getting out of here.
‘This heat is incredible,’ said Calder, his face ruddy and sweating as the four of them trudged towards Sebba’s ship. ‘You couldn’t fire a greenhouse to run this hot back on Hesperus.’
Lana shrugged. Shit, when you came from a failed snowball colony, running the ship’s air-con at body temperature must seem like a miracle to the exiled nobleman. Calder appeared stunned by the novelty of what he was seeing around him. Jungle, jungle, and a little more jungle. Yeah, sims were one thing, real life was always another.
‘I rather like it,’ said Skrat. ‘Properly bracing!’ Just as she’d predicted. Skrat was unphased by the environment, his thick tail swishing merrily behind him as they crossed the landing field. All the first mate needed was a cane and he could have been going out for an afternoon stroll around what passed for a park on a skirl world. Well, at least she wouldn’t be picking up the tab for the heating bills in Skrat’s cabin down here.
‘Yeah,’ said Zeno, ‘defi
nitely related to those flying critters.’
‘The calls coming from the jungle,’ said Calder, ‘they sound… wrong?’
