by Stephen Hunt
‘I’ve lost a clean lock on the exit jump.’
‘How the hell did that happen?’ demanded Lana.
‘It’s the enemy ship, revered captain. They’re using their hyperspace vanes to disrupt local space, throwing my jump calculations off balance. They know we’re trying to jump out and they’re seeking to trap us here.’
Oh shizzle. Lana cursed the bulky survival pod hardened into existence around her bridge chair. Trying to control the ship from inside the pod was like trying to tread water wearing a suit of armour. ‘Come on, Polter,’ she cried towards her navigator. ‘Get us the hell out of here. Dive for hyperspace.’
‘But we’re too far outside our safety margins,’ moaned Polter.
Lana briefly regretted pushing her overly sensitive crewman. Well, not so much a man, more a sentient crab. He was attempting the impossible, here, for her. Polter had created twin wormholes to tunnel through into hyperspace. One a super-sized singularity – a frothing wild giant to draw the incoming missiles’ attention. Its tiny twin was far too small for any sane skipper to want to fly down to escape this cursed system. Taming a black hole was a pretty insane act in itself; taming two was double the trouble; attempting the act under heavy fire was as bad as it got. And damned if Lana didn’t need a stable wormhole to pull off this hyperspace jump and live to boast about it.
The other crewman in their troika on the bridge, Skrat raz Skeratt, yelled from his crew chair, not bothering to hide the desperation in his voice. ‘This is no time for caution, dear boy!’
‘Jump us!’ ordered Lana. Her chair display flashed up the telemetry of warheads being chewed up against their wall of flack, her guns targeting a wave of missiles twisting and turning past their last line of defence. ‘We’re dead if we stay. Better a chance of jumping out alive, even if it’s a damn slim one.’ Lana bit hard on her lip. This was a game of chance and she was doubling down on Polter’s talents. Nobody could navigate a hyperspace translation as fast and efficiently as her navigator. That’s what she told every client who wanted cargo transporting across the stars. And Lana’s boast wasn’t just an idle sales pitch. Is it?
‘Tidal eye locked,’ said Polter, his voice hesitant as he reluctantly obeyed Lana’s order. ‘We’re going in dirty!’
Lana tried to ignore the shaking as the Gravity Rose dipped in towards the raging singularity, thrusters at the rear of the ship accelerating them forward.
‘Transit is unsafe,’ announced Granny, the ship’s computer core; her voice clear and reasonable inside Lana’s helmet, unaffected by anything so common as hormones, stress or fear. Lana wished she felt as calm as her ship’s artificial intelligence. Lana’s chair pumped her body full of chemicals, allowing her mind to work at the same swift speed as the ship’s systems. She might regret the dosage later, but only if she lived to be so lucky. ‘Command override, Granny. There are no safety margins for this ride.’
‘Command override accepted. Good luck, Lana.’
Lana checked the overlay of weapons data floating in front of her, the skipper’s chair layering it directly against her retina with a laser. The Gravity Rose’s sudden potentially suicidal dive into the unstable black hole had thrown off the sneaky artificial minds guiding the incoming warheads. That’s it, you metal ghosts. You weren’t expecting that, were you? Of course, the main reason the missiles weren’t expecting it was because what she was doing was utter madness. The desperate and the foolhardy, my speciality. The Gravity Rose’s hunters only carried a limited supply of reaction mass; the first wave of the missiles’ engines started to flutter out, turning off and closing in uncontrolled, unable to outmanoeuvre the freighter’s rapidly chattering point defences. From the way the missiles’ mother ship turned, Lana guessed the enemy vessel had spotted a third ship in this deadly duel of theirs. Rex Matobo, curse him. Lana’s ex-crewman’s pleas for help had brought her to this system, and as usual, it was one of his dishonest schemes that were about to get them all killed. The chances were that Rex’s ship was the attacking vessel’s real target, with the Gravity Rose counting as collateral damage. Guilt by association. At least, Lana couldn’t remember irking anyone recently to the extent that they would be willing to dispatch a fleet-class warship after her. I’d certainly remember annoying someone that badly, wouldn’t I?
Lana’s display divided into two in front of her eyes. Half devoted to weapon systems, the remainder showing the dark rotating whirlpool of their wormhole twisting outside. Her hyperspace vanes had created this beast, now they would have to ride out its fury. Fingers of frothing space-time reached towards the Gravity Rose, the vessel shaking violently as she speeded up towards its impossibly small tidal eye. A tiny winking tunnel of safety that they would need to precisely collide with to survive hyperspace translation. There was no more conversation across the bridge. Skrat’s attention was on the weapons board, Lana’s first mate desperately gaming the battle computers inside the surviving warheads. Polter’s attention was fully focused on the mathematics needed to model the artificial black hole and safely translate them through its raging heart. Lana worked hard to hold down the contents of her stomach. They were beginning to change the state of their matter, every molecule of the Gravity Rose and every living thing on board in a state of flux as they converted to the exotic physics of hyperspace. Tachyons riding faster than light, far beyond the grasp of the mortal universe. Polter’s race, the kaggens, believed they were transiting the lower realms of heaven by skimming through hyperspace. If his species was correct, then breaching the walls of heaven sure hurt like a mother.
‘I believe!’ called Polter in an almost joyous agony, the rapture of joining with his jump mathematics overwhelming him.
I wish the hell I did. Lana yelled as the ripples of her altering state swelled and coursed through her body. Skrat cursed like a trooper, too, falling back into his race’s sibilant mother tongue and forgetting his civilized Lingual. Lana remained just cognisant enough to focus on her flickering weapons display, the pursuing warheads crushed by the gravitational stress plane, missiles exploding in smeared streams of exotic particles. The bridge’s survival pod systems started to die around her, temporarily unable to adjust to existence in this unfamiliar plane of existence, half inside the real universe, half inside the higher realms of hyperspace. We’ve never dived as tight as this before. Have I just killed us all? Matter was changing, time was changing, physics were changing, but the deep shizzle they were in… that just stayed the same old, same old.
Lana woke up in hyperspace just as she always did. Her body aching from the chemical soup of accelerants left swilling around her bloodstream, a throbbing migraine from the chair’s injection arousing her from unconsciousness. Also as usual, Polter was awake before her. In all likelihood, the navigator hadn’t even passed out. Kaggens were tough little buggers . . . organic tanks under that tattooed, armoured carapace of theirs. The perfect navigator, really. Lana’s chair had shifted down from battle mode, returning to being a bridge command chair again; all its armour hardening and environment pod systems absorbed back into the ship’s mass.
Lana coughed to clear her throat. ‘We’re alive, then?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Polter. ‘But only, I believe, due to you commanding the creation of the second wormhole, revered captain. Its unnatural size meant that the enemy ship couldn’t destabilise our transit wormhole. The volatile singularity acted as a shield against more than just their missiles.’
‘I might have ordered it, but damned if it was my idea.’ Lana wished she could take credit for the notion, but the idea for a decoy wormhole had come from the latest addition to her crew. Calder Dirk. And in his case, she suspected, disrupting the enemy ship’s attempt to trap the Gravity Rose inside the system was an unexpected side effect of the decoy. ‘Beginner’s luck.’
‘Calder might come from a far more primitive culture,’ said Polter, ‘but you should not underestimate his intelligence. His people survived for a thousand years on an icy perdition of a planet
where you and I would be hard-pressed to last six months.’
‘Only because his ancestors were dumb and desperate enough to try to colonise that shizzle-hole of a world in the first place,’ said Lana. ‘And taking his barbarian ass into exile with us was the favour Matobo was calling in, in the first place. If it weren’t for Matobo and his tame barbarian prince, we wouldn’t have just had that mystery warship trying to detonate nukes off our hull. It was only fair Calder came up with the plan to jump us to safety, wouldn’t you say?’ Descended from the dumb and the desperate. Lana snorted. Calder Durk would fit in just fine on her crew; as long as he stopped trying to seduce her, that is. She glanced around the bridge. Its design gave the effect of being open to space between its reinforced girders. Hyperspace’s rainbow smears had replaced the velvet star-studded night of normal space. Flying through a dimensionless, colourful plane – a little like being gift-wrapped by the Northern Lights. Lana never tired of watching planets and stars from her command chair, but there was something about hyperspace’s perspective-free alien depths that always left her unnerved.
‘Granny,’ said Lana. ‘Opaque the bridge’s hull. Then run a systems check and crew tally. Did we take any damage?’
‘All six members of crew are present and uninjured. No systems damage that I can sense,’ said the computer, blank walls replacing the view of hyperspace flashing past outside. ‘Zeno’s robots are running manual inspections across all areas, but I don’t anticipate locating combat damage. Gunnery logs indicate all warheads were intercepted or destroyed during transit. Jump fatigue may be an issue, however. That was not a clean hyperspace translation.’
Lana winced at the censorious tone in the computer’s voice. Jump fatigue. Another damn cost we can’t afford. She looked at Polter. ‘Any sign of Rex Matobo’s ship?’
‘Not on our transit plane,’ said the navigator. ‘And praise the holy of holies, no sign of the enemy vessel in pursuit.’
Lana grimaced. Of course not. Rex, you cheap mope. With whatever monkey Rex was paying for navigator duties on his small ship, Lana’s ex-crewman would be lucky to end up in the same galaxy he took off from. ‘Well, whoever that was shooting at us, I’m guessing that it was Rex they were really after.’
And Lana wasn’t nearly lucky enough to have them actually take out the conniving rogue. She knew exactly how that combat had played out. Sly old Rex suspected that there was going to be an ambush at the system’s exit point. Rex had slipped behind the Gravity Rose’s engine wake, set them up to occupy the attacker’s attention for long enough for him to get a firing solution on the people hunting him, then made his own jump while the attacker was dodging his missiles. You’re an idiot, Lana Fiveworlds. Every time you trust Rex, you end up in this position. Well, hindsight is a wonderful thing.
‘You know, old girl,’ moaned Skrat, coming out of the fug of the jump, ‘I really rather resent being dangled as bait.’
Lana looked at her first mate. ‘Now you know why I didn’t want to travel to Hesperus system. Settling an obligation with Rex always costs us more than I ever care to pay.’
‘And you humans are unkind enough to stereotype my race as disingenuous.’
Lana shrugged at the six-foot tall humanoid lizard. ‘Maybe he’s got a few skirl genes spliced in, somewhere.’
‘Oh, I think we can safely say that fellow is all-human.’
‘Lay in an exit translation for Transference Station,’ Lana ordered. ‘Let’s see if civilization is going to bring us a job that pays well enough to keep us flying for a while longer.’
‘I am not certain if I would characterize Transference as civilized, old girl,’ warned Skrat.
‘Civilized enough for me,’ sighed Lana. Better than the fallen civilization they had just left, at any rate. After visiting the Dark Ages, returning to the fortieth century was going to be a blessing. Lana saw a comms flash from the engine room light up on her board. It wasn’t Chief Paopao, though; it was his royal highness-in-exile, Prince Calder Durk.
‘Skipper,’ said Calder, as the hologram of his face floated up from her chair. ‘My ploy worked, then?’
‘Better than I thought, Mister Durk,’ said Lana. ‘Better than you thought too, maybe.’
‘It seemed like a sound plan at the time.’ Her new crewman sounded pleased with himself. A couple of sim entertainment series under Calder’s belt and you might think the barbarian nobleman hadn’t lived in medieval squalor for his first two decades. A week ago, he hadn’t known there was a world beyond snow-driven battlefields, clashing broadswords and a castle’s warm fireplace. Now he was lecturing her about starship combat tactics. Calder Durk didn’t lack for cheek, whatever the technological level of his upbringing.
‘I don’t suppose you know who it was that Rex had irked enough to send a frigate hunting after his ass?’
‘Sorry, skipper,’ said Calder. ‘Only that they are nobody I’m likely to have met. Hesperus doesn’t have steam power, let alone interstellar travel. The sorcerer… I mean Rex Matobo . . . he certainly has a talent for making enemies.’
‘That he does. I’d compile a list, but I don’t think our data core is big enough to hold all the names of the planets that would like to see Rex dead.’
Part of Lana felt sorry for Calder, tangled up in Rex’s latest failed get-rich-quick scheme. Calder had lost his family, friends and kingdom, and all because Rex has chosen to play Wizard of Oz with Hesperus’s slipped-back society. Calder had joined the “Screwed-by-Matobo Club”. It wasn’t a particularly exclusive establishment, Lana was a member herself. But as Rex’s favours went, maybe having Calder on board wouldn’t be too bad. Part of Lana hoped the nobleman-in-exile wouldn’t be tempted to jump ship after they made planet-fall. That he would choose to remain on board as crew. A nice warm planet with a decent welfare system and a stable society . . . that was going to prove a hell of a temptation for a man as new to the modern galaxy as Prince Calder. And her feelings were clearly nothing to do with the kiss that Calder planted on her lips before they jumped away from his home system. I need extra crew, and this neo-barbarian prince is cheap and fresh, and that is all there is to it. ‘You and the chief give the engines a thorough examination before we arrive at Transference Station. That was one dirty jump we made out of your system,’ chided Lana. ‘It’s a wonder we didn’t tear off a few vanes diving through a hole that unstable.’
The chief of the drive room’s cantankerous voice emerged from her chair’s comm. ‘Only thorough maintenance, here! Do you say I am not doing my job?’
‘Calm down, chief. The Gravity Rose is creaking around the gunnels now, and you know it. Just the way she is. Nobody’s fault.’
‘Hesperus isn’t my home anymore,’ said Calder, a tinge of sadness in his voice. ‘I can never go back, can I?’
‘No,’ agreed Lana. ‘You can never get back what you’ve lost, Mister Durk. The only trick is never to miss it.’ Calder signed off. Maybe after a few years of repeating those sentiments, I might even believe them myself.
***
Lana wasn’t pleased. Most the time, hands-on flying a starship the size of the Gravity Rose wasn’t any challenge. All you could really do with her was boost out of a system until you got to gravity-clean space, then make your hyperspace jump. Arriving at a system wasn’t any better. Translate down into real space well clear of any gravity wells and decelerate until you made orbit at your destination. The single piece of half-demanding flying Lana ever got to make was closing with orbital stations and gently nosing into their docking clamps. And here the tugs were, spoiling her fun. Hologram telemetry bobbed either side of Lana’s command chair, her crane-suspended seat elevated under the bridge’s topside viewing dome. She watched the two tugs hovering a mile off her position, each vessel packing antimatter engines large enough to make a game attempt at dragging a small moon into a new orbit. Frankly, their presence was insulting. Or perhaps the pilots’ fees that Transference Station would undoubtedly try and sting Lana for was just anothe
r way for the locals to shake a few extra dollars out of her on top of cargo duties. Lana glanced down towards Skrat’s chair hovering below hers, the first mate running search algorithms across the terabytes of data he was downloading from the world’s data sphere. If there was a currency differential to be squeezed out of a trade or an intersystem commodities discrepancy to be leveraged, Skrat would seize onto that nugget like a prospector panning for gold.
‘Tugs,’ she called down, not even bothering to signal it chair-to-chair. ‘Two of them!’ The tone she used indicated she wouldn’t have been more surprised if they had arrived to find a pair of winged unicorns galloping through the void. ‘I must be getting old. Sweet Nebulae, and here you were worried about Transference Station not being civilized enough.’
‘Compared to the alliance,’ said Skrat. ‘Only compared to the alliance, dear lady.’
From the way Skrat’s thick, muscled tail was quivering through the perfectly Skrat-sized tail-hole in his seat, the first mate must have honed in on an opportunity or two for her vessel. Or is that just me hoping against experience? Every year the lawless border systems of the Edge got a bit closer to being fully absorbed inside the Triple Alliance, and after that sad day occurred, Lana wouldn’t be sliding void any more. She’d be flying through a meteor storm of safety rating agencies, ship insurance claims, export documentation and health & safety directives. She’d be competing against the big commercial space lines and corporate houses, and then pickings would get real slim, real quick. Might as well convert her vessel into a casino ship and select a gas giant in a T3 system with a pretty weather system to orbit. She could slit her wrists to the sounds of games of baccarat and the endless clink of slot machines.
