by Joe Vasicek
She checked the time on her new wrist console: 2056. Gulchina was no doubt expecting her—though for what, she had no idea.
Her heart beat a little faster as she hurried out the door. She passed a squad jogging for PT and stepped into the elevator at the end of the main hallway. So this isn’t a shipwide event, she thought to herself. That was good: she didn’t think she could endure another execution.
When the elevator doors opened, her suspicions were confirmed. The cargo hold was empty, except for three other people: Gulchina, Wolf, and an older man that Reva had never seen before. He had a flat nose and a square, clean-shaven face, with dark blue tattoos that stretched from the end of his chin to the top of his forehead. Her eyes widened and fixated on them.
That’s not a design I’ve ever seen before, she realized. And that’s not henna, either.
“Reva,” said Gulchina, acknowledging her with a nod. “Thank you for joining us.”
Reva’s chest clenched as she realized that Gulchina was holding a long, curved sword. It was sheathed in an intricate gold scabbard and embedded with precious gems. The blade was partially withdrawn, revealing black and silver bands: meteoric steel, of the finest quality. Reva recognized it from her uncle’s dabbling in cosmic metallurgy.
“This blade was forged from the heart of a supernova remnant,” Gulchina told her. “It was made using the ancient Earth process for Damascus steel.”
“Is it… sharp?”
“Observe and see.”
Reva’s stomach fell at Gulchina’s non-answer. She looked at the man with the facial tattoos and saw that he had a laser-knife laid out before him. He sat on his heels on a dark red mat, almost fifteen feet across on either side. For clothes, he wore a pure white robe, and apparently little else. The expression on his face was as serious as death, and he barely seemed to notice that anyone else was there.
“Who is he?” Reva asked in a hushed voice.
“This is Ensign Matsuda,” said Gulchina. “He is one of my most loyal and trusted men.”
“Where is he from?”
“From the planet Shinihon, in the New Rigel system. It lies in the Coreward Stars on the opposite side of Gaia Nova.”
He’s a long way from home, Reva thought to herself. Longer even than me.
Ensign Matsuda took a deep breath and sat up straight, with his hands palm-down on his hips. In one smooth motion, Gulchina drew her sword.
Reva’s stomach dropped. “Wha—”
“Silence!” Gulchina hissed. Instantly, Reva fell as quiet as death.
Ensign Matsuda stared, unmoving, at the opposite wall, as if he were deep in meditation. Gulchina stepped onto the mat and stood so that she faced him squarely on his side. Her feet were spread, knees slightly bent, the curved sword pointed at a forty-five degree angle towards the ground. Wolf stood behind her, another silent observer. None of them so much as twitched.
The cargo hold was so still, Reva could hear her every heartbeat. Her hands trembled and her lower lip quivered, but she swallowed hard and forced herself to stay calm.
Slowly, deliberately, Ensign Matsuda retrieved the knife. With a flick of his thumb, he activated it. The laser-enhanced edges of the blades glowed red, humming like a small, hungry animal. He held the blade in front of him, then carefully turned it into a reverse grip.
What is he doing? Reva wondered. Why is he holding it like—
Stars of Earth!
In one quick motion, Ensign Matsuda plunged the knife deep into his belly. His body quivered with the impact, and his face screwed into an awful grimace of pain.
No!
Clenching his teeth, Matsuda leaned into the blade and pulled it horizontally across his stomach. Scarlet blood spread across his pure white robes, and the smell of burning flesh made Reva choke. There could be no doubt—the self-inflicted wound was fatal.
Gulchina raised the sword high over her head and swung it in a smooth arc. It cut cleanly through the ensign’s neck and sent his severed head tumbling onto the mat. Reva’s mouth filled with vomit, and it was all she could do not to spew across the floor.
Stars, the blood! The blood!
Bright red arterial blood spouted from the severed neck like a fountain. It splattered across the mat and ran in rivulets down the pure white robes. The knife slipped from the ensign’s lifeless hands, and his corpse fell forward, spilling blood everywhere. There was so much of it that the air in the cargo hold began to take on a metallic taste.
Reva’s whole body shook in revulsion. She tried to choke down her vomit, but the taste filled her mouth and made her gag. In contrast, Gulchina calmly cleaned the blade of her sword with a rag, sheathing it when she was done.
“I know what you are thinking, Reva, but I am not a murderer.”
“No?” Reva croaked. It was the only word she could manage to force out of her mouth.
“No. The ritual suicide you just observed is an ancient tradition of his people, handed down from the ancient traditions of Earth. It is considered a great and noble act.”
What kind of a savage culture considers that a noble act? Reva wanted to scream.
Gulchina raised an eyebrow. “Does the ensign’s death unsettle you?”
This is a test, Reva realized. Gulchina brought me down here to see how I would react—and if I can’t handle it, I’ll fail.
She took a deep breath and swallowed hard, ignoring the acrid taste of vomit in her mouth.
“No,” she lied. “It merely… surprised me. I have never seen this ritual before.”
Gulchina’s cold eyes narrowed, making Reva shiver. She could tell that her lie had not gone undetected.
“Ensign Matsuda requested that I perform it at my earliest convenience. Long ago, he made a grievous error and brought dishonor upon himself. He would have killed himself then, but I forbade it until now.”
Why? Reva wanted to ask. But she was afraid that she couldn’t take the answer.
“It is done,” Gulchina said abruptly, turning to Wolf. “Recycle the ensign’s body and clean the cargo hold. I want the floor spotless within the hour.”
Wolf saluted. “I hear and obey, Captain.”
Gulchina acknowledged the salute with a nod and left the room, sword still in hand. Reva lingered, staring with morbid fascination at the decapitated corpse that lay before her. The ensign’s head had rolled to face the ceiling, the eyes closed with the mouth hanging open at an unnatural angle. The sight made her gag.
“Don’t get any ideas,” said Wolf. “Know your place, or you’ll end up just like him.”
Reva frowned. “What?”
“Don’t be coy with me, girl. I know how shrewd you are. But I’ll be damned if I let you rob me of what’s rightfully mine.”
“I-I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she stammered, backing away from him. He kept coming at her until she was pressed against the wall, his face merely inches from her own.
“Oh, yes you do.”
For several tense moments, they stared at each other. Then, without warning, Wolf stuck out his tongue and licked her across the cheek. She shuddered and drew back, shielding herself with her hands. But before she could do anything more, he let her go and turned away.
“You’re in over your head,” said Wolf as he walked calmly toward the door. “Don’t even think of trying to turn Gulchina against us.”
The hell? Reva though, wiping his nasty saliva off her face. She didn’t know whether to be disgusted, angry, or terrified. The commander’s threat made no more sense to her than the headless corpse sprawled out on the floor.
Intentions Revealed
Isaac ate his food quickly, staring down at the table so as not to attract attention. The mess hall was almost empty, but the four men in the far corner were not quite absorbed enough in their conversation to let him slip out. Ideally, he would wait for them to leave, but after the grisly scene he’d just cleaned up in the cargo hold, he didn’t know if his nerves could hold out that long.
; A body—a headless corpse—dressed in ceremonial robes and lying in a pool of gore. What the hell was going on on this ship? At least they’d made him clean it up before he’d had a chance to eat, rather than after. The scene had made him retch so badly, his stomach was still turning from it.
Not that there was much to the food they gave him. Pure unflavored synthmeal—gray, tasteless, and with the consistency of mucous. Another month, and he’d likely starve on the stuff. He was already malnourished enough that his face had turned pale and gaunt. It made him avoid his reflection as much as possible.
The pirates broke into laughter and slapped each other on the back. One of them started telling a story about a girl he’d ravished in a raid. Isaac tried in vain not to overhear the details. His bowl was only half-empty, but he stood up and brought it to the cleaning racks anyway. None of the pirates noticed him slip out.
As soon as he was out of the mess hall, his hand dropped to the wrist console in his back pocket. That wrist console was perhaps their only chance of getting out of this place alive.
He turned down the next side corridor and walked quickly, his heart beginning to race. At the end of the corridor, a hatch led to the maintenance shaft for the docking bay equipment. It was the only way to get close enough to the outrider shuttles to sync with one without being seen. Isaac was pretty sure he could do it without alerting the ship’s AI, but he didn’t know the network’s architecture well enough to be sure. This was going to take some time.
After glancing behind him to make sure no one was watching, he swung the hatch open and climbed in. The only light in the place came from a single caged bulb on each level, glowing a sickly reddish orange. He ran down the stairs as quietly as he could manage and pushed into the narrow crawlspace on his knees and elbows.
Pipes and conduit ran along the walls on either side of him, some of them corroding. He slid carefully around a section of exposed and fraying wires. At length, he reached the section where he estimated the outriders to be. By pressing his face against the floor in the narrow crawlspace, he managed to reach around to his back pocket and pull out the console.
“Come on, come on,” he whispered as the device cycled out of sleep mode. Footsteps sounded through the bulkheads somewhere above him.
As soon as the console was active, he toggled through a series of menus, looking for the connectivity options. Thankfully, it didn’t automatically connect to the ship’s network—Reva must have had the foresight to turn that functionality off. But the operating system was one that he’d never seen before, and the GUI was counterintuitive and difficult to navigate. All of the options were in the wrong places, and none of the menu options made sense.
Sweat formed on his forehead as he tried to figure out how to work the damn thing. If he was gone much longer, someone was bound to get suspicious. The crawlspace was too narrow to turn around in, and he soon felt as if the walls were closing in.
Taking a deep breath, he paused for a moment to calm himself and try again. This time, things began to fall into place. He found the menu for connectivity and began cycling through the options.
At that moment, the bulkheads began to hum. Isaac ignored it at first, thinking it was just in his head, but the humming soon became too loud for him to ignore. He frowned and looked around him, only to realized that the floor grating was starting to vibrate.
We’re about to make a jump, he realized.
He paused for a few moments to wait it out. Instead of resolving, though, the humming became louder and more intense. The walls of the crawlspace seemed to collapse on him, while paradoxically growing wider at the same time. He closed his eyes, expecting it to end at any moment, but the buildup only became more intense.
Just when he thought he couldn’t possibly handle it anymore, the universe seemed to flip inside out. He gasped, and in a moment of panic thought that he was outside the ship. But when he opened his eyes again, he found himself lying in the crawlspace exactly as before.
That wasn’t a normal jump, he realized. We must have gone almost a light-year. Maybe even farther.
The thought made his heart start to pound. Normal starships never made jumps that big—it was just too dangerous. The farther one tried to travel in a single jump, the harder it was to predict where the ship would actually emerge from jumpspace. And while the likelihood of crashing into a planet or an asteroid or the heart of a star was practically infinitesimal, emerging in a high density region like a nebula or a molecular cloud could cause irreparable damage.
Not if the pirates are using the jump beacon technology they stole from us, Isaac realized. That technology would allow even a large ship like the Temujin to jump from beacon to beacon with hardly any risk. A voyage of months could be reduced to a few days.
Either way, the message was clear: He and Reva had to escape at the earliest opportunity.
“There!” he said, smiling as the wrist console connected with one of the outrider shuttles. He set the device to sync and counted down the percentage points on the loading bar. It took almost a full minute, but completed without any mishap or incident. When it was done, he closed his eyes and sighed in relief.
For all intents and purposes, the wrist console was now a remote control for the outrider. He could issue commands directly through the feeble direct connection, or he could take a risk and connect through the ship’s main network. Since the outriders were armed, he could even order it to undock and attack the Temujin at close range. The possibilities were endless.
There was still much to do. The outrider would be useless for escape until the jump drive was charged. It would take at least half an hour to get the shuttle primed for a short-range jump, and much longer for a proper long one. There was a significant risk that the pirates might detect it while it was charging, but even if they didn’t, he had no idea how he and Reva were going to sneak into the docking bay to make their escape.
But those details could be hashed out later. The outrider was no Medea, but it was their best hope for escape in months.
* * * * *
Reva hesitated outside the door to Gulchina’s personal quarters. The captain had summoned her by private message, which made Reva nervous. Normally, Gulchina sent one of her underlings to fetch her. The fact that Reva was alone was more than a little disconcerting.
Taking a deep breath, she palmed the access panel and stepped through the open door. Gulchina sat in a chair, reading from a tablet. Upon Reva’s entrance, she set the tablet down on the low table and rose to her feet.
“Hello, Reva,” she said in her own language. “Come in.”
Gulchina’s private quarters were unlike any other place on the ship. A stunningly ornate rug covered the floor, its intricate woven design mesmerizing the eye. The table that sat in the center was made from authentic wood and inlaid with mosaic patterns of burgundy, teal, and mother-of-pearl. The wallscreens were set to show planetscapes viewed from the surface, mostly of deserts with ancient ruins jutting out like the bones of long-dead civilizations. The only sign that they were still on a starship was the single porthole on the opposite wall.
The door slid shut with a faint hiss, making Reva flinch.
“You are wondering why I called you here,” Gulchina said, waiting for Reva to take the other chair before resuming her seat across the wooden table. “I have many duties to attend to, so we will not waste time with small talk.”
“Very well,” said Reva.
Gulchina tapped the keypad on the armrest of her chair, and a server bot emerged from an unseen receptacle with two glasses of hot tea. Reva accepted one of the porcelain cups and held it in her lap while Gulchina took a sip from hers.
“In the next twenty-four hours, I will leave the Temujin to oversee an operation several parsecs from here. I am leaving Commander Wolf in command.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I believe you have something to tell me—a secret you have been keeping from me for some time.”
R
eva’s heart skipped a beat, and her legs went suddenly numb. “What do you mean?”
“We have already agreed not to waste each other’s time. I advise you not to test my patience.”
Sweat began to pool on the back of Reva’s neck as her mind raced for some excuse. She set her cup down carefully on the table, her hand trembling noticeably. Gulchina eyed her with all the studied patience of a cat waiting to pounce.
“I-I didn’t think you knew.”
“I make it a point to know of everything that happens on my ship.”
“It’s just an innocent fling, I swear. We had a history together, and after you took us captive, our feelings for each other—”
“I’m not talking about your bi-weekly make-out sessions in the fourth deck maintenance closet,” said Gulchina. “That was merely a cover for your true intent.”
Reva’s fear quickly turned to panic. Her clandestine meetings with Isaac, their secret plans to escape—there was nothing Gulchina didn’t know. Corporal Sarnai’s execution and Ensign Matsuda’s ritual suicide flashed across her mind, threatening to break her.
“Are you going to kill me?” she asked softly.
“If you don’t confess, I will be forced to.”
Reva hung her head. “Isaac and I—we were planning to escape.”
Gulchina rose to her feet and began to pace. The wallscreens shifted to display a panoramic deep space starfield. The room dimmed noticeably, with the milky band of the galaxy stretching all around the room.
“It was all my idea though,” Reva said quickly, surprising herself. “I was the one who initiated it. If anyone should be punished, it’s—”
“Ever since I took you on board this ship, I have been testing you,” Gulchina interrupted her. “By now, it must be obvious why.”
“Because you’ve been grooming me as your successor?” Though Reva had always suspected as much, neither of them had openly said it until now.
“Indeed. And I must confess, you’ve performed quite admirably. In only a matter of months, you’ve learned our language and become quite fluent in it. Your insights into history have been incisive, and your observations of the crew have demonstrated a remarkable understanding of the principles of leadership. You have consistently shown yourself to be resourceful, independent, adept, and intelligent.”
