Void All The Way Down: The Sliding Void Omnibus

by Stephen Hunt

  ‘We’ll see,’ said Professor Sebba, clearly enjoying irritating someone she regarded as the hired help.

  ‘Thirty five percent,’ reported the ship’s computer.

  A low buzzing vibration sounded 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. ‘Let’s 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 show 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 as payback for the woman’s needling? Hyperspace encounters between vessels were rare. And we aren’t exactly exiting at a major trading hub like Transference Station, either. Given that only DSD and the professor knew what job the Gravity Rose had signed up for – and Dollar-sign Dillard wasn’t exactly going to blab – how would a tail even know to follow the ship?

  ‘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 sides of the ship were starting to blur. Lana wouldn’t have long to make a controlled dive. If she leaves it any longer, we’re going to be spat out the hell knows where – deep space if we’re lucky, or the centre of a sun if we aren’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 fold 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 fringes 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 screaming protest, ‘hold us steady . . .’

  Calder gritted his teeth. I don’t know if the professor’s spooked, but right now, I sure as hell am. He felt his body torn between two states of existence, his hands shaking with primeval fear, the crash field unable to fully compensate and blinking ruby warning alarms as it shared his rising panic.

  ‘Dive, dive, dive!’ yelled Lana, just as the prince thought that the vessel was going to break up and be scattered across two universes. Calder’s vision flared, a cascade of Higgs boson particles burned 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 reaches of space.

  We’ve 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, 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 indeed Abracadabra. The world possesses an exotic troposphere, a top layer of gas which interacts with the sun’s residual solar winds. That is the interplay of energy discharges you can see down there. The world is exactly as I described . . . only, below its gas layer.’

  Calder watched the mesmerising sight of energies chasing each other across the world’s whirling gas coating. No wonder that DSD has 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 millions of years in the future, but humanity was superstitious about such things. Gods, 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 ship 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. Their 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 navigate 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 is the kind of conversation you can almost build on, Calder mused thoughtfully. Almost.

  ***

  Lana ducked into their control shuttle’s rear cargo chamber. Zeno, Skrat and Calder were waiting there, the android clutching the controls for the shuttle’s rear ramp. The light on his box blinked green, indicating a breathable atmosphere waiting for them on Abracadabra’s surface with no hostile pathogens detected. Lana had insisted on waiting for the atmosphere checks 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 trying to work out how 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 seen all 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. 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 continent. 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’d barely avoided the flock of terrifying flying creatures on their approach: leathery pink monsters large enough to scoop up pterodactyls like insects swallowed by a bird’s beak. Lana had been seconds away from opening up on them with her shuttle’s cannons, before the heat dump from the re-entry tiles drove the creatures off, beating away on giant lizards’ wings over two runways that intersected each other in a cross. The base was set up at the end of a strip close to the mountain range; a wide clearing filled with quickset concrete buildings and hangars, none taller than two storeys. Lana snorted at the practicality of the set-up awaiting her outside. Professor Sebba’s complex had been constructed with the crude, functional lines of a fortress.

  Each of Lana’s crewmen shouldered a rail rifle inside the hold, and she noted the guns’ LEDs with approval. 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 castle walls. 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 I’m 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 for Zeno to drop the ramp. ‘At least, the human-designed ones are. Some bigger, some smaller. Always too many citizens and too many adverts being hosed in your direction. Out there, beyond that ramp, there’re 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 a warning as their ramp lowered. ‘Not many trading opps on a world with horse-sized spiders and monsters in the air that could devour dragons as fast food. Hey, Skrat, maybe some of the leathery winged locals are your long-lost cousins?’

  ‘If so, they can stay lost, dear boy.’

  The ramp thumped on the ground and the heat of the world outside flooded in like a tsunami, almost bowling Lana over. That air is thick enough to carve with a laser. Lana reached out and tapped the controls woven into the arm of Calder’s smart suit to active it, then thumbed its 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 coming down with flu, she just knew it. And apart from Lana’s new crewman, she couldn’t even comfort herself with the thought that her misery might enjoy company – Zeno’s android frame was as unaffected by overheating as it 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 when the jungle had been cleared for the camp. Robot tanks rumbled around the landing field on caterpillar tracks, anti-aircraft chain guns on 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 splattered with heavy gobs of rain. Layers of steam drifted up from puddles across the trampled mud.

  Sebba’s vessel had landed before Lana’s control shuttle. The ship sat parked seventy feet away, thrusters still leaking mist from its touchdown. A tube-shaped lift met the ground under the vessel’s belly, the professor disembarked and speaking with one of the expedition members, a man a head or two shorter than the Rose’s haughty passenger. From the gesticulating and thrashing arms, the conversation appeared to be growing as hot 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 seam of diamonds,’ said Lana, ‘and they 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 discordant, alien calls from the distant jungle – eerie cries, screeches and whistles that sounded like nothing she was used to. ‘I’ll settle for 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 greenhouses to run this hot back on Hesperus.’

  Lana shrugged. When you come from a failed snowball colony, running the ship’s air-con at body temperature must seem like a miracle. Calder appeared stunned by the novelty of what he saw around him. Jungle, jungle, and a little more jungle. Yeah, sims are one thing, real life is always another.

  ‘I rather like it,’ said Skrat. ‘Properly bracing!’

  Just as I predicted. Skrat was unphased by the environment, his thick tail swishing merrily behind him as he 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 park gardens on a skirl world. Well, at least I won’t be picking up the tab for the heating bills in Skrat’s cabin down here.

  ‘Yes,’ said Zeno, ‘definitely related to those flying critters.’

  ‘The calls from the jungle,’ said Calder, ‘they sound . . . wrong?’

  ‘That’ll be your fleshy body jerking your chain,’ said Zeno. ‘“Hey! Hey, Calder Durk, you’re missing the last couple of million years of evolution you need to survive out here.”’

  Professor Sebba turned towards the Gravity Rose’s crew halting in her ship’s shadow. She indicated the local she was conversing with. ‘This is Kien-Yen Leong; he’s in charge of mining operations. We’ve got something of a problem.’

  ‘Anything we can sort with the supplies we’ve got parked in orbit?’ asked Lana.

  Kien-Yen Leong was a squat, broad man sporting a thick brown beard. He obviously came from one of the alliance’s Sino-settled worlds, and a high gravity one at that; the man’s ancestors genetically engineered in the dim and distant past for an environment that Lana would be lucky to crawl in without an exo-suit. When he spoke, observing his face’s muscles move was like watching the tectonic movement of granite slabs sliding across each other. ‘Damn straight,’ growled Leong. He indicated a pair of helicopters perched on a helipad above the base. Hybrids: half-transporter, half gunship, with missile pods and machine gun domes studding their grey fuselage. ‘You’ve brought fuel for our choppers?’

  ‘That we have,’ said Lana. ‘There’s a shuttle’s worth coming down from orbit.’ She indicated the large metal fuel tanks squatting in front of the pad. ‘But you can’t have burnt through all your tanks? You’re running a mining operation here, not an airline.’

  ‘Not much mining going on this week. One of our staff, Janet Lento is missing,’ explained Leong. ‘She disappeared seven days ago. We’ve been running search and rescue
flights over the jungle, day and night, trying to find her.’ His tone was brusque and direct, but he couldn’t hide the concern in his voice. If you were going to be swallowed up by that angry squawking crimson netherworld beyond the laser fence, Lana had the feeling you’d want someone like Kien-Yen Leong looking for you until the base burnt through its fuel reserves. I may be the captain void-side, but down here I know who wears the stripes on their uniform.

  Lana gazed back at her shuttle and the professor’s vessel. Both too big to be much use hovering above a jungle canopy – even with antigravity assist, their orbital thrusters will tear up the jungle and fry the lost expedition member well before she can be winched out. ‘Okay, I’ll radio Polter and arrange for the helicopter fuel to be loaded onto the cargo landers first. You can fill us in on the situation on the hoof, Mister Leong.’

  ‘Finding the missing woman,’ said Calder. ‘Is that a challenge, skipper?’

  I don’t like the way he said that. Challenge. Something she remembered seeing in the briefing on Hesperus nagged at the edge of her consciousness. ‘Only for me and Zeno, your most regal highness. You and Skrat stay here and work on the job we’ve been paid to do. And you can stay on this side of the laser fence while you’re doing it.’

  ‘Only offering to come out and help look for her. By helicopter . . . I’m not actually unhinged enough to want to put boots on the ground out there.’

  ‘Then you’ve already mastered the second rule of survival on Abracadabra,’ said Leong. ‘Never touch the dirt when you can stay in the air.’

  ‘What’s the first rule?’ asked Calder.

  ‘Never leave the base.’

  ‘This side,’ emphasised Lana for her new recruit’s benefit. As if she didn’t have enough problems, without Calder casting around for a white horse to rescue the missing driver . . . or maybe they rode big damn polar bears on his homeworld. I’ll definitely have to take a refresher on Hesperus.