by Stephen Hunt
‘For the love of the gods, Lana Fiveworlds, if you’re ever going to trust me, trust me now and dive for that singularity.’
‘May the Creator shelter us!’ wailed Polter. ‘This heathen polytheist counts beyond a single digit for the number of true deities in the universe, and he asks me to trust his grasp of jump mechanics?’
By way of the skipper’s answer, Calder felt the deck lurch out from under him, taking his stomach with it, as though he was hurtling down a well clutching a one-way ticket to a very dark place. He managed to squeeze out a second or two’s elation at Lana’s decision to go for the dive and then the translation process kicked in. Calder tried hard not to throw up as his body’s matter was torn apart and rebuilt in anticipation of an exotic new reality. Hyperspace. He prayed his hunch proved correct, or this would be a real short process, smeared across the singularity in his eagerness to put the raging system behind them.
Minutes later, his hunch was born out. Still alive! Calder could tell he was becoming a practiced spacer – this time he hadn’t even needed a sick bag. That’s progress. Calder met the expectant eyes of the rest of the bridge crew, no doubt wondering why they weren’t dead. ‘Abracadabra vanished behind us. That’s the only way those last sensor readings made any sense . . . to survive the supernova the whole world teleported out of the system. This must be preserved.’
Zeno hit his forehead with his palm. ‘Along with the gravity well disrupting our dive!’
‘No sun left, no world left,’ said Lana, in amazement. ‘With an exit mass that light a cadet could have jumped us out of there.’
‘A cadet did not,’ said Polter, annoyed, drumming his claws against his carapace. ‘I did.’
‘With your usual level of artisanship, Polter,’ said Lana, but she looked in the prince’s direction and silently mouthed a thank you. To Calder, that felt a lot like progress, too.
CHAPTER SIX
Of epilogues.
Lana Fiveworlds glanced up from her cabin’s desk. A second knock on her door. She half-expected Calder to step through, but it turned out to be Skrat instead. A small part of her felt disappointed. The last time the new boy had stepped over her threshold after making a suggestion that had saved the ship, he had claimed his reward by launching a surprise swoop on Lana’s lips. Skrat has many fine qualities, but kissing isn’t one of them. At least, she hoped not. Lana suspended the star map’s display, running across her desk’s surface like a river of stars. She trusted her first mate wasn’t coming to complain about the non-paying passengers getting drunk in their cabins and trying to smash the ship up again. The sooner those miners are dumped on the next inhabited system we jump into, the better. ‘Mister raz Skeratt. Are you looking to suggest a port with a good shipyard and a half-decent chance to make up for losing Dollar-sign’s contract?’
‘Not a bit of it, dear girl. I have been perusing our log entries for what happened back on Abracadabra, skipper, including the recording of events taken by Zeno’s eye cameras.’
‘And why the skeg would you do that? You planning on making a sim of that snarl-up on Abracadabra? Dumping the movie in the data sphere on the next civilized world? Knowing my luck, we’ll go viral and Fiveworlds Shipping’s name will end up as a joke across half the galaxy.’ Zeno had given up his acting career centuries ago. I don’t think he’d enjoy being famous again.
‘Let’s just say events on the surface – or rather, below it – made me more than a little curious, dear lady. As part of said perusing, I checked up on Calder’s bio-profile in the medical bay. I accessed data from the nano-surgeons injected into him during our recent contretemps. What I found confirmed my suspicions. Calder’s junk DNA has been encoded with an at-first seemingly random pattern that’s more than a tad unusual compared to say, yours, or any other base human genome for that matter.’
‘What are you telling me?’ asked Lana, confused.
‘You’ll recall the professor mentioned the original Alliance science team mutinied and deleted the Heezy genetic control codes after they witnessed their research being misused during the war,’ said Skrat. ‘That wasn’t quite accurate. They didn’t delete their research. Destroying knowledge is a little more than most scientists can cope with . . . instead, they hid it. They stored it as series of genetically re-sequenced codes inside their junk DNA. And the team vanished in the same year that Calder’s world, Hesperus, was first opened up for colonization. An ideal out-of-the-way backwater to lay low on. A tad too effective a refuge in retrospect, given how the settlers on Hesperus were abandoned to their fate when the world’s ice age started.’
‘It can’t be!’ Calder couldn’t be . . .?
‘Unlike you, I never hacked the Heezy transportation system or their curious corridor-on-demand system,’ said Skrat. ‘They simply worked for us – or rather, the systems only activated for us because we were travelling alongside Calder. I believe a Heezy sentinel kidnapped Calder and dragged him through the base’s laser fence unharmed. But the sentinel didn’t kill Calder in the jungle, or later in the hunting lodge, or even when we uncovered the wreck of the Never Come Down . . . why do you think that is? I watched the recording of what the Heezy defences did to the pirates inside the camp – it certainly wasn’t because the sentinels weren’t up to the task. No. As far as the Heezy ruins were concerned, Calder Durk was one of the ancient masters returned. The ruins were curious about Calder. That’s why it took him. It wanted to see where precisely in their ecosystem our new boy fitted.’
Lana remembered the circle of sentinels closing in on the survivors inside the cavern and then halting. I thought they were bowing to Professor Sebba’s possessed form . . . could it have actually been Calder they recognized? What if the machines hadn’t stayed their murderous assault due to whatever residual humanity was left inside Sebba. What if the only reason Lana and the rest of the crew had been teleported inside the Gravity Rose was to maximize Calder’s chance of survival? It must be preserved. Sebba wasn’t just talking about Abracadabra, it seems.
Skrat swished his tail thoughtfully. ‘So, this rather begs the question, what do we tell our Mister Durk of what we’ve uncovered?’
‘Absolutely nothing. The fewer people that know about this, the better,’ insisted Lana. ‘The Triple Alliance, the Skein, there isn’t a superpower in the galaxy that wouldn’t chase us to the ends of the universe to get their hands on Calder. Imagine! A key for every Heezy artefact they’ve collected and haven’t got a hope in hell of understanding for the next few millennia. What a mind-skeg. The best Calder could hope for is having his DNA scanned before being locked in a very deep, very secure pit for the rest of his life.’ She didn’t want to say that the more likely option was a trip to a cellular-level incinerator via a very hard, cold dissection table.
‘From what I understand, he’s the last of his family line,’ said Skrat. ‘Hesperus’s ice age was savage . . . it claimed millions of lives among the original settler group after the civilization there collapsed. Mister Durk may well be the only surviving descendant of the original science team that worked on Pluto. He’s quite possibly unique.’
‘We’re all unique, Skrat.’
‘That’s as maybe, but nobody’s willing to kill for my blasted DNA. There’s something else,’ said Skrat. ‘I think Zeno might suspect something of Calder’s true nature. He was plugged into the Heezy control board in the cavern, seeing whatever Sebba was seeing. The professor was about to tell you about something she had noticed, something “impossible”, but Zeno interrupted her before she could finish speaking. What if the good professor had detected the presence of a living Heezy genetic control set interacting with the cavern’s machines?’
‘But Zeno has said nothing to me about Calder?’
‘Maybe he’s considering selling Calder to the highest bidder? The dear boy is utterly priceless, you know. What I discovered hidden in his DNA is enough to give even an honourable chap of my calibre pause to think. I could purchase back my lost position in the nes
t. Good heavens, I could buy enough voting shares to anoint myself president of the whole blasted skirl home world!’
‘Zeno wouldn’t do that,’ protested Lana. He’s been with me from the start. Before I inherited the Gravity Rose, even. ‘There has to be an alternative explanation . . . just coincidence when he spoke up, most like.’
‘Your people place too much faith in your AIs,’ said Skrat. ‘It’s not a mistake you will find many skirls making. We prefer our machines dull, obedient and with nary a trace of sarcasm nor any talent for answering back.’
‘When I came out of a cold sleep capsule as a vegetable, it was Zeno who nursed me back to health. I was nothing more than a penniless amnesiac refugee,’ said Lana. ‘One among thousands. He’s been with me from the beginning. Zeno’s never betrayed me yet and I can’t believe he ever would.’
‘The android’s survived for over a thousand years – who knows what odd perspective his mind’s developed across the centuries. To him, we’re little more than mayflies flickering out in the dark. A brief dance and . . . gone. Keep both your eyes and mind open to unpleasant possibilities, captain,’ advised Skrat. ‘That’s all I’m suggesting.’
Unpleasant possibilities? After this Dollar-sign debacle, I’ll need to find something a little more profitable than that to haul across the galaxy. And the irony was, in their latest crewman they had their very own dreams-beyond-avarice-fortune walking around on two legs. Lana snorted and her eyes drifted down to the star charts on her screen. Somewhere in the Edge was a job that paid well and wouldn’t leave the Gravity Rose with hull damage. Somewhere out there.
Skrat made for the door of her quarters. ‘Maybe you should consider auctioning off young Mister Durk, captain. We could all depart the next port as T-dollar trillionaires.’
‘What, and live it large like a damn episode of Lives of the Planet Kings? I have something that most trillionaires will never have,’ said Lana.
Skrat flicked his tail curiously. ‘And that would be?’
Lana reached out and tapped the hull of her ship. ‘Enough.’
FIN
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