by Joe Vasicek
“We can’t do it,” he said. “No way—never.”
“Hold on,” said Elijah, stroking his beard in thought. “What if we got another mind to connect with the network? If we could shift some of those cycles to someone else, would it give her enough time to do what she needs?”
Jeremiah opened his mouth to protest, but Elijah silenced him with a stern look and a gesture of his hand. Mariya hesitated for a second before posing the question to Noemi, who took a sharp breath between her teeth before answering.
“She says that it’s possible in theory, but that we’d never be able to do it. If she tried to break a second person into the network, the pirates would detect it and cut her off. The only way it could be done is to get someone on the Revenge and have them hook up at the same time she does.”
“We can’t do it,” said Jeremiah. “This kind of neural interfacing is too dangerous. People have died from things like this, and with the baby, she’s in no condition to take this kind of risk.”
“I’m afraid we don’t have much of a choice,” said Captain Elijah. He sighed heavily. “Noemi is the best hacker we have—certainly the only one who can crack into the pirate network and seize control of their own ships.”
“But can’t you see she’s pregnant? The doctor says—”
“I know, Jeremiah, I know. But we only have ten days before we get to the planet—ten days before that pirate bitch puts us down on the surface and cuts us off forever.”
Noemi leaned forward and waved for them to stop arguing. Looking directly at Jeremiah, she spoke in a low, calm tone.
“She asks that you don’t try to stop her,” Mariya translated. “She knows it’s risky, but this is the only way to build a future for your family.”
For your family. Jeremiah swallowed—everything seemed so complicated, with nothing for him to do but sit helplessly and watch everything spin out of control around him. If it was just himself he had to worry about, it would all be so much easier—but with her and the baby to look out for, he didn’t know what to do.
“If only there was some way to get a message out of the system,” he thought out loud. “Some way to call for help.”
Elijah shook his head. “Even if we could get someone out, it would take months or even years to rally a strike force—assuming one could be organized at all.”
“I think I could do it,” said Jeremiah. “I’ve got a lot of friends in this sector—Amos out at Gamma Oriana, and Thomas at Rift Station on Zeta. Samson knows a lot of people too, and he’s bound to be on his way back from the New Pleiades by now. If worse comes to worst, I could even go back to my birth world at Edenia. These pirates don’t threaten just us, after all—they’re a danger to the whole sector. If we can get the other outworlders to see that, then they’ll rally to our defense at once.”
“Are you sure?” said Elijah. “Because in ten days, we won’t have any other options.”
Better than watching my wife kill herself to save us.
“Trust me, I can do it. Just get me to my ship.”
Mariya conferred with Noemi. At first, she seemed a little resistant, but she offered no protest. After glancing at Jeremiah, she sighed and nodded.
“It sounds like a great idea,” said Mariya. “Where is the Ariadne?”
Captain Elijah raised an eyebrow. “Unless I’m mistaken, the pirates have docked her here with the Hope of Oriana. There isn’t a bay large enough for the ship on the Revenge, and I doubt those pirate bastards would put a crew on board to fly her separately.”
Jeremiah’s heart leaped in his chest. “If she’s docked with the Hope of Oriana, then can we hack into her?”
Mariya spoke with Noemi, whose face brightened noticeably. She began to talk very fast. “Yes,” Mariya translated. “We can even charge the jump drives, at least partially.”
“That’s it,” said Jeremiah, jumping to his feet. “The Ariadne has a much smaller mass than the Hope of Oriana—it would only take about fifteen minutes to charge her enough to make a short-range jump.”
“And once you’re a good five or six light-hours away, you’ll have plenty of time to charge the drives for a full one,” said Captain Elijah. “Even if they were looking for you, it would take a few hours for your signal to reach them—plenty of time to charge.”
“Right!”
Noemi looked up at Jeremiah and smiled. He choked up a little as he realized what it would mean to leave her now. Her pregnant stomach bulged out almost to her knees and sat so low she had to keep her hand under it to support herself. She would almost certainly have the baby while he was gone.
“Don’t worry about her,” said Elijah, as if he could read his thoughts. “We’ll do everything to make sure your wife and her baby are fine.”
It’s what you have to do, Jeremiah argued with himself. You aren’t abandoning her—you’re doing this to save her. Still, even though he knew it with his mind, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was making another mistake. Noemi took his hand again and looked him straight in the eye as she began to speak.
“She says,” Mariya translated, then stopped and blushed deep red.
“Says what?”
The two girls turned and conferred with each other, their tone much more intense than before. Mariya bit her lip and nodded, but only with reluctance.
“What is it?” Jeremiah asked. “What’s going on?”
“She says that if you’re going to go, she wants me to come with you.”
He frowned. “Why?”
“To take care of you.”
“Take care of me? How?”
“She says she’s worried about you being alone out there—that you might have a breakdown, or get lonely, or give up. She says she knows she can trust me with you, and wants me to keep you company.”
“Are you kidding?”
“No I’m not—honest! That’s what she really said.”
He snorted in disgust, the strength of his repulsion surprising him. “I got here just fine by myself, didn’t I? I don’t need you to come with me—I’ll be fine by myself.”
“No,” said Noemi, putting a hand on his arm. “Jerem-ahra no go alone.” She turned to Mariya and spoke again in her own language.
“She says that she knows how difficult it is for you to be without her, and she doesn’t want you to bear that all alone. At some point, you’re going to need someone, and that’s why she wants me to come.”
He looked into Noemi’s eyes and saw a deep concern for him that reflected Mariya’s words. She’s telling the truth, he realized.
“She also says that once the pirates find out what happened, they’ll try to hunt down the hacker. If I go with you, she can make it look like it was me.”
“She can? That’s not going to put an extra strain on her, is it?”
“Not too much,” said Captain Elijah. “Remember, we have the codes for both ships—she won’t have to hard-line it to get to the controls.”
“It’s just personal data,” Mariya added. “She says it’s as easy as using a different login.”
Jeremiah nodded. “Well, in that case …”
He left the sentence hanging, unable to finish it. Noemi squeezed his hand as if to reassure him that everything would be all right. Even so, he couldn’t shake the fear that he would never see her again.
* * * * *
Two hours later, Jeremiah helped Noemi into one of the reclining chairs as Mariya took the one next to her. The dream center had been emptied in preparation for the escape attempt. A small crowd had gathered around the door, but they kept quiet enough—Captain Elijah saw to that.
“Are you ready?” Jeremiah asked.
Noemi nodded. No translation was necessary.
“Be careful,” he whispered. He patted her stomach and squeezed her hand as one of the Hope of Oriana’s crew fitted the dream monitor over her head. A quick smile before the visor went down, and her body went limp as she plugged into the simulator.
Jeremiah swallowed and steppe
d back. Beside him, Mariya plugged in and went limp as well. A low murmur rose among the crowd, but for the next few nerve-wracking moments, there was nothing to do but wait.
“When you get into the maintenance shaft, don’t come out until you hear us make the distraction,” said Captain Elijah, his voice low. “You’ll be able to hear it loud and clear through the ventilation system.”
“Are you sure?”
“As sure as I know my own ship.”
Jeremiah nodded. At that moment, Mariya began to stir.
“Well?” he said, pulling off the dream monitor. She sat up and blinked.
“It’s done,” she said softly. “Let’s go.”
Without a word, the two of them walked out of the dream center and into the main corridor. The crowd parted silently before them. Jeremiah’s movements felt wooden, like something from out of a dream. If he’d tried to stop, he wasn’t sure his legs would obey him.
The air in the corridors felt thick with a tension that seemed to run throughout the whole ship. It shone in the eyes of those they passed, a collective sense of desperation combined with an awareness that something decisive was about to happen.
They passed the bunk rooms in silence and stopped before turning down one of the narrow auxiliary corridors that circled the mess hall. Captain Elijah gave them a salute as he went the other way with a group of young men, his eyes grim and decisive. Jeremiah returned the salute.
May the stars of Earth watch over you until we meet again.
He led Mariya to a small hatch, which he swung open with some effort. Inside, a narrow crawlspace extended upward at a thirty-degree angle, with conduit and loose wiring along the walls and ceiling. It was a maintenance shaft, designed to facilitate work on the ship’s many systems. The network of crawlspaces extended virtually unobstructed from the bunk rooms to the docking bays. Captain Elijah had assured him it was a simple five-minute crawl—though at the rate Jeremiah’s heart was pounding, they might as well be entering the jaws of death.
For Noemi, he told himself, taking a deep breath.
The space inside was a lot tighter than he’d thought it would be. He crawled in on his knees and elbows, with barely enough room to lift his head. Fortunately, there weren’t too many twists or turns. He stopped at the first juncture, where there was a little more space to breathe, and waited to listen by the air ducts.
The lights along the floor were surprisingly bright, though a few of them had burned out due to age. They cast strange shadows across Mariya’s face, lighting her from below. He had to crane his neck to see her, but it reassured him that she was following close behind.
A faint echo by his ear alerted him to activity in the mess hall. He pressed his lips together as the echo came again, followed by the muffled sound of shouting.
“It’s on,” he said in a half-whisper. “Let’s go.”
She followed him down an incline as sharp as the one where they’d entered. As they went, the shouting grew increasingly louder. A sharp crack of a gunshot made his blood freeze, and he pushed on as quickly as the narrow space would allow.
He reached the exit hatch on the far end and opened it a crack, just enough to peek through. The corridor outside seemed empty, so he threw his weight against it to swing it open. It creaked on its hinges, making him cringe, but if anyone had heard, they seemed to be more preoccupied with the riot in the mess hall. He helped Mariya out and broke into a run, not even bothering to shut the hatch behind them.
“Over there!” she said, pointing. “This way!”
She led him around a bend to a series of four airlocks, with a branching passageway leading to the main corridor. Out there, a dozen armed troops ran toward the passengers’ quarters, guns at the ready. Jeremiah’s heart leaped in his throat and adrenaline coursed through his veins. He reached the nearest computer terminal and pounded on the keyboard.
“Which one is it?” he said aloud, his heart racing. “Come on, come on—”
“Number four!” said Mariya. “Hurry!”
She slammed her palm against the access panel, and the airlock door slid open with a hiss loud enough to alert the entire ship to their presence. Without looking back, he ran in and palmed it shut.
Moments later, he found himself on board the Ariadne, dashing toward the cockpit. The indicator lights were already on, the engines humming through the bulkheads. Mariya strapped herself into one of the cabin seats while he jumped into the pilot’s chair.
“All systems are online,” he reported, rushing through the checks before takeoff. “Jump drives at eight percent and climbing—”
“Just get us out of here!”
He punched a series of commands and pulled down the lever to disengage from the Hope of Oriana. The docking clamps groaned through the walls, and the floor shook beneath his feat as they pulled away.
“Undocking complete,” he said, gripping the flight stick in one hand. “Setting co-ordinates.”
An alarm sounded, alerting him to an incoming message.
“Attention Ariadne,” came Helena’s voice over the loudspeaker. “Stand down and do not attempt to flee. Failure to do so will—”
Jeremiah switched off the transmission and engaged the engines. With one eye on the sensor display and the other on the forward window, he maneuvered until the Hope of Oriana was between them and the Revenge. His fingers flew over the control panels as he plugged in the coordinates for the next jump. Not enough charge to go very far—just a few light hours out of the system. The nav-computer needed their present position, but he didn’t have time to plot it. Better approximate and hope for—
“Ariadne, this is the Revenge,” came Helena’s voice again. “Do not attempt to flee, or we will destroy you.”
Come on, Jeremiah thought to himself, waiting on the nav-computer. The progress bar filled for the calculations—fast, but still a hindrance.
“Jeremiah, listen to me! If you don’t abort right now, I will—”
Now! The progress bar reached one hundred percent, and he threw the switch to initiate jump.
“—personally order your wife’s execution.”
His heart leaped into his mouth as the room began to spin. He reached frantically for the switch, but it was too late. The spinning grew worse, and his vision began to freeze and blur until he lost track of his own hands. For a second, time slowed as if he were caught in a lagging simulation, and then it all came to a stop and reverted back to normal.
“No!” he screamed, slamming both fists against the controls. “No, no!”
But it was too late. The stars that shone through the forward window were noticeably brighter. The Revenge and the Hope of Oriana were nowhere to be seen. The nav-computer registered a short-range jump, with the energy reserves reduced to zero.
A cold sweat broke across his forehead, and he fell back panting in his seat. Mariya came running through the doorway, but his hands and arms were already beginning to shake.
“Jeremiah? Jeremiah!”
I will personally order your wife’s execution.
Chapter 19
What have I done?
Jeremiah stared out the window of his father’s ship with sweaty palms, the cold paralysis of quiet panic constricting his throat and blurring his vision. The stars shone clearer and more brilliant than he had ever seen, even from the main orbital at Edenia. It was almost impossible for him to believe that he was gone—that had left his birth world forever.
Barely an hour had passed since he’d made that first jump into the starry void. His father had been the only one at the station to see him off—his mother and little sister had said their goodbyes with the rest of the colony back on the surface. He still wore the New Earther pendant his mother had put around his neck, and the memory of her tears still stung him.
“Never forget,” she had told him, repeating the words of the sacred chant. “Never forget, and in passing may your spirit return to mother Earth.”
In passing. In death. That was the best way to
describe what the past few days had felt like. And yet, instead of returning to an Earth-like paradise, he found himself alone in the emptiness of space. Edenia was almost half a light-year away, an impossible distance to bridge on sub-light engines alone. The Ariadne had a jump drive, of course, but the controls still felt awkward and unfamiliar to him. His father had taught him only the basics of astrogation, taking him on short jumps to the brown dwarf at the edge of the system.
“You’ll do fine,” he’d assured him. “The Ariadne is a good, reliable ship. Take the time to learn her, and she’ll serve you as well as she served me.”
“But what if she breaks down?” Jeremiah had asked.
“If you take good care of her, she won’t.”
“But what if I make a miscalculation? What if there’s an accident? What if I get stranded out in deep space?”
His father had sighed and put an arm around him. “Son, your fears are no different than those that the ancients felt when they left the ravages of Earth, or what our forefathers felt when they left Gaia Nova for the Outworlds. It’s the same fear that grips every starfarer, the immensity of space and the nothingness of man in the face of it.”
“So what am I supposed to do?”
“I can’t tell you, son. What works for some doesn’t work for others. The ancients looked back to Earth, while the pagans worship the stars themselves. But this much I can tell you—if you stare into the infinite void for long enough, it will change you. I can’t say exactly how it will change you, but it will, and you’d better be prepared for that.”
Prepared. If there was anything Jeremiah didn’t feel, it was prepared. Despite all the planning, despite all his father’s lessons and advice, now that he was actually out among the stars, all of that paled to nothing. For the first time in his life, he was alone—completely and utterly alone—and would be, so long as he was a wanderer.
The stars shone bright and cold through the forward window, offering neither warmth nor comfort. If you stare into the void long enough, it will change you. Perhaps more than anything, that frightened him most of all.
