The Wrong Stars

by Tim Pratt

  “I’m so sorry you lost them, Stephen. I know you took a lot of comfort in the church.”

  “Oh, yes. The faith saved me. When I was furious, disinherited, disowned, wandering, they showed me I could be part of something greater. A small part, of course, but not unimportant, because no one is unimportant. Then, when I joined your crew, and met Drake and Janice and Shall and even, believe it or not, Ashok, I knew just what great thing I was a part of. But the despair is always there, you know. It’s not just chemical, though that’s part of it. It’s existential. Philosophical. I think too much. That’s why, even after I found my place here, with you, I still kept the faith, however imperfectly. I long for that dissolution. I long for the feeling of peace and belonging it brings. But we are lost, and soon to embark on a time of terrors, and so I cannot. And the despair looms up.”

  “I know. But we’ll go fast. After we get to the alien station, I’m giving us a seven-hour window to complete operations. When the time is up, we go.”

  “Just enough time for the bridge generator to become operational again?”

  “Assuming we’re right about its recharge time, yes. If that little Liar is right, the less time we spend on an Axiom base, the better.”

  “We will almost certainly die in the attempt.”

  “Death doesn’t scare you, Stephen. You always say ‘Why fear death?’ You won’t be around to be bothered by your own non-existence.’”

  “Death does not frighten me, no, at least not in the abstract. I do fear suffering greatly, however, and it sounds like Elena’s people suffered, and Lantern’s certainly did.”

  “You’re going to stay on the ship with Drake and Janice, well out of range of the station’s tractor beams, or whatever the hell they are. I hope. Me and Elena and Ashok will take the canoe over. If we find survivors, we’ll send them, and you can take care of them, right?” She knew if he had people to take care of, he’d come out of himself a bit, and put the despair aside. He was, as he said, a pragmatist.

  “You should take Shall, too,” Stephen said. “The range should be short enough, he’ll be able to operate with full functionality, remotely operating from the White Raven.”

  “I–” She stopped. “You’re right. I don’t want to take him, but that’s a stupid reason not to. If there are things on that station that can hijack human brains, it’s smart to have a member of the team who doesn’t even have one.”

  “In addition to Ashok, you mean?” Stephen chuckled. “All right. Assuming we all survive, we’ll be back in our solar system not long after the festival is scheduled to begin. That gives me something to look forward to.” He waved his hand in front of his face. “In the meantime, I’ll just meditate and hope for people with grievous injuries to arrive and take my mind off the emptiness of existence.” He sighed. “I could really use a congregation though.”

  “Maybe I should join your faith.”

  “You’re too uptight. The naked cuddle communion would be a hard limit for you, I think.”

  “Ha. I am a little selective about my naked cuddle partners.”

  “That’s why I have so much more fun than you do, Callie.”

  * * *

  Callie went up to the cockpit. “Drake? Janice?”

  “Drake is sleeping,” Janice said. “I’m on watch. Not that there’s much to watch. Murder planet turned graveyard planet. Do you believe the stuff the little tentacle-turd said?”

  “I don’t know what to believe. Doesn’t change the mission. Not at this point. If, by some miracle, we survive this rescue attempt, then we can worry about everything else.”

  “Huh. Almost makes you hope we’ll die so we don’t have to worry about all that stuff, huh? Fate-of-the-galaxy type things.”

  “You like to talk a cynical game, Janice, but we both know you’re a survivor.”

  “Who even knows if we can die? We never even get sick, after what the Liars did to us. I don’t know so much, though. Existence still has a few pleasures for me. How long before we take off here?”

  “Less than an hour. I’m glad Drake is getting some sleep. No one else seems to be. I heard Elena murmuring to the computer in her room, Stephen is lying awake, and Ashok and Lantern are deep into a heavy discussion about Axiom technology, with no sign of ever coming out the other side. I told them all to catch some rack time. Nobody follows orders worth a damn on this boat.”

  “I can’t help but notice you’re awake too, captain.”

  “I probably only have about eight more hours left to live. I’m not about to spend any of them sleeping.”

  “What would you like to spend them doing instead? And who would you like to be doing it with? Because I’m pretty sure it’s not me, lovely and charming as I may be. I think you’re looking for someone who’s a little younger than me but also a whole lot older than me at the same time, if you know what I’m saying.”

  “Ugh. Does everyone know about my little crush?”

  “We know you well, captain, so probably. Except for Ashok. Maybe if you had a crush on an industrial mining robot, then he might notice. Oh, and probably not Doctor Oh herself. So why don’t you go tell her?”

  “This isn’t exactly the right time to start pitching woo at someone.”

  “You’re alive, and maybe not for much longer. I don’t personally get the appeal of touching other people or having them touch you or being all squishy-faced at each other, but whatever. I had a friend who liked eating those peppers that are so hot they make your tongue melt and your eyes water. That didn’t make sense to me, either, but it made her happy, so I went to her Ganymede Ghost Pepper parties and cheered her on. Rah, rah. Go get her. Et cetera.”

  “You are the worst at girl talk, Janice.”

  “Thank all the available gods. I’ve spent a lifetime trying to cultivate that quality.”

  Callie went slowly back down the ladder to the crew quarters. She hesitated outside Elena’s door, then rapped gently on the doorframe.

  “Come on in,” Elena called.

  The door slid open, and Callie stepped into the dimness. “You can’t sleep either, huh?”

  “Too many thoughts about too many things, captain.”

  The door shut behind her, but Callie didn’t move further into the room. Elena had the smallest cabin, and it was mostly bed, apart from a small built-in desk that folded into the wall, and a matching chair that folded into the floor. Otherwise it was just hidden drawers and nooks in the smooth white walls. The chair was put away, so there was nowhere to sit but the bed, and Callie wasn’t about to do that. Easy enough just to stand there with her boots locked to the floor anyway. “You don’t have to call me captain.” I like hearing my name in your mouth, she didn’t say. “It’s not like you’re in my chain of command.”

  Elena got out of bed. She wore a thin gray tank top and matching underwear: what she’d had on underneath her wetsuit in the cryochamber, probably. Callie felt a sudden hot surge of lust, and she knew she was staring, but she couldn’t stop.

  Elena didn’t cover herself or look uncomfortable at the scrutiny, though. She just drifted toward Callie, her hair floating around her head, and hovered before her, right up in Callie’s personal space. Elena was small enough that Callie could have picked her up even if they were under thrust gravity. “Do you wish I was in your chain of command?” Elena said. “Is there anything you’d like to command me to do?”

  Callie blinked. “I, ah…”

  “Or should I take liberties?” Elena took Callie’s hand, lifted it to her face, and slipped the tip of Callie’s index finger into her mouth. She sucked on the fingertip, looking directly into Callie’s eyes. She pulled it out slowly and said, “Is this all right, captain?”

  “It’s a start,” Callie said. “I didn’t think… I mean, after everything you’ve gone through, I thought the last thing on your mind would be–”

  “We both made bad assumptions. Things are going to be very difficult soon. Maybe impossibly difficult. I’d be happier facing al
l the troubles ahead if I had some good memories to take with me.”

  Callie sighed. “So if Ashok or Stephen had walked through that door, would you have floated toward them so seductively? It’s OK, I just want to know–”

  “No, Callie.” She gave the captain a disconcertingly direct stare, like she was looking past all Callie’s carefully constructed layers of defenses. “It’s you. I’ve liked you from the moment I met you.”

  “I liked you, too.”

  “Show me. Show me how you’d like me now.”

  Callie wrapped her arms around Elena and pushed her toward the bed. “It’s tricky without gravity,” Callie said. “Do you mind if we use straps?”

  “Mrngh,” Elena said, or something like it, and trembled, and kissed Callie hard, which the captain correctly interpreted as enthusiastic assent.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “I would have spent more time on you,” Callie said later, tangled up in a cocoon of blankets with Elena that more or less kept them in bed instead of floating around the room. “But we’re getting close to the end of Ashok’s countdown.”

  “I would have enjoyed spending several more hours under your command, captain, but you’ve definitely given me new motivation to survive. Assuming you want to do this again?”

  Callie pulled Elena close to her, thrilled by the warm smooth flesh against her body. It had been a long time since she’d touched anyone for other than practical or violent reasons, and over a year since she’d been naked with someone in her arms. “I did not even get started on the list of ways I want you. If we don’t die horribly, we’ll take a little time off and work our way down the list. So you enjoyed it?”

  “I did. It seemed like you did, too. I was a little worried I’d be too old-fashioned for you.”

  Callie stroked her back. “Mmm. The accessories may change a little, and we can definitely do some shopping next time we’re in civilized space if you want, but I’m pretty sure the fundamentals were fully established millennia ago.” She sighed. “At least we got in a little love before the war. I have to go be captain of the whole ship again.”

  “See you on the other side of the bridge, Callie.” Elena kissed her deeply and then slid out of the way.

  Callie rose and dressed, always a tricky process when weightless, and did what she could to un-muss herself before the tiny mirror in Elena’s bathroom. Oh well. When you were weightless, you always had right-after-sex messy hair, but Elena had enjoyed plunging her hands into Callie’s curly masses, so it was worse than usual. She gathered her frizzy cloud up into a messy ponytail, stopped by the bed to kiss Elena again, then left the crew deck and went down to the machine shop.

  Lantern and Ashok were both looking at a screen. The Liar had one of her tentacles looped around a table leg so she wouldn’t float away.

  “Well?” Callie said.

  “Ten minutes until the countdown is done counting down,” Ashok said.

  “Then we open a bridge to the Axiom station?”

  “That’s the idea, but I was talking it over with Lantern. Back in the day, the only ships were Axiom ships. She says stations like that notice ships that pass within a few kilometers and send a ping to check their status. If the ships don’t respond, the station assumes they’re damaged, and grabs them. That must be what happened to the Anjou. So I’m thinking, we should probably try to appear a few kilometers out of range, scope things out, and then send the canoe over, to keep the Raven from being snatched up.”

  “I thought we could only go to places in the bridge generator’s history, though? You can adjust the coordinates now?”

  “Thanks to my new buddy Lantern here, yeah. The Axiom used a really weird coordinate system, but I wrote a program to translate their inputs into something that makes more sense to me. One thing I can pretty easily do is figure out an offset – like, ‘take us to this prior location, but this many klicks away in this direction’. So I can get us within sensor range of the station, without getting so close it reels us in.”

  Callie nodded. “If that works, it solves one of my big worries, which is maintaining any kind of plausible escape route. Do you think we’ll be able to track the crew of the Anjou when we get over there, ship?”

  The computer said, “We have Elena’s vacuum suit. The comms are primitive, but compatible with our own, so if her crew is still alive we can call out to them. Their suits all have transponders, which we can locate, too. Assuming there aren’t countermeasures in place to prevent such things.”

  “Like Lantern said, it sounds like a repair and ship-building station, not a prison camp,” Ashok said. “Once upon a time it was full of Liar workers, but now it’s just automated systems, and bio-drones like the kaiju that ate Elena’s guys. Maybe there won’t be crazy security in place. The crew communicated freely with one another while they were in there, so we can probably talk to each other too.”

  Callie nodded. “Just so everyone’s clear, the plan is: we scan the station as well as we can from a distance. We try to find any survivors. We board the station in the canoe, which is such a no-frills low-tech thing I’m hoping the station won’t even recognize it as a ship, but we’ll see. We locate the missing crew, get them on the canoe, bring them back to the Raven, and retreat to a safe distance until the generator recharges. Then we run back home and figure out what happens next.”

  “I should go with you to the station,” Lantern said.

  “I don’t tend to go on missions with prisoners. Not even ones who seem to be cooperating.”

  “Lantern can actually understand Axiom systems,” Ashok said. “She reads their language. Me, I’ve picked up a few things, and hey, give me a week and I could maybe puzzle out how to make the station open its doors or turn on the lights. But if you want to get anything done over there in a timely fashion, I think Lantern should go. If she wanted to hurt us, she could have done it a lot more easily when she was crawling around in the walls.”

  Callie sighed. “Fine. But we’ll be watching you, Lantern. Follow my orders over there, and don’t improvise. I’m going up to the cockpit. I’ll take tactical control there. Ship, tell everyone to get strapped in and ready for our next bridge passage.”

  She climbed back to the nose of the ship and strapped into the left-hand chair beside Drake and Janice. “System pre-checks done?”

  Drake said, “The Tanzer drive is happy, life support is happy, weapons are online, defenses are operational, everything is green on all boards.”

  “Everyone else ready?” She got affirmatives from the ship, the crew, Elena, and the Liar, and nodded. “Ashok, as soon as you can, open a bridge to our new position.” She pulled up the tactical screen, its layout already set to her preferences, with lots of interesting new sliders and dials indicating their improved offensive capabilities. She almost hoped she would get to blow something up. It seemed a shame to have all this shiny new ordnance and not to use it.

  Callie was thrumming with energy, her body still flooded with happy chemicals from her time with Elena, all intensified by the adrenaline buzz she always got before launching into an operation. She could eat suns, shatter moons, conquer galaxies. She loved this feeling. It was a shame about the likelihood of death waiting on the other side, but the danger only enhanced her current sense of vitality.

  “The generator appears to be back online,” Ashok said. “Opening the bridge.”

  A swirl of iridescent black appeared outside the viewscreen, liquid against the airless void, and spread out in a lazy languid blossom. This time the tendrils didn’t reach out and seize their ship, though, as it had in the emergency situation: the bridge just coalesced, and then floated, a waiting darkness, its ragged edges drifting like the fronds of an anemone. “Drake, take us in,” Callie said.

  The Raven eased forward, the Tanzer drive barely engaged, and nosed them through the bridgehead. Then the tendrils enveloped them, surrounded them, and they were transported to the liminal space, the tunnel of–

  Light. Just as Drak
e had described it, a bright white strobe of light flickered by, very fast. Too fast to make out the nature of the tunnel, but the lights were close, like the space they were moving through was barely big enough for them. That had to be variable, though, didn’t it? Ships fifty times the size of the White Raven passed through bridgeheads all the time.

  After twenty-one seconds exactly they emerged, and the spreading inkstain behind them drew into itself and vanished. They were in a nowhere-in-particular spot in the void, as far as Callie could tell, but the ship said, “Ahh, that’s so much better. I can actually tell where we are. It’s not charted space, but I recognize the constellations, and I have the Anjou’s navigational data to back us up. We’re about fifty light years from our system, very close to the place where the Anjou was captured.”

  “So where’s the station?” Callie said.

  “There’s nothing at all on our sensors,” Drake said. “The external cameras aren’t registering anything, either. Commencing visual scan.” The ship began to turn, slowly, reaction wheels spinning it counterclockwise. There were no nearby stars to provide light, but the Raven’s exterior lights picked up a faint gleam of something silvery in the corner of the viewport.

  “There,” Callie said. “Zoom in?”

  When the screen switched to zoom, however, the silver flash vanished entirely.

  “It’s not just invisible to radar and our other sensors, it’s invisible to cameras,” Drake said. “How is that possible?”

  “The Axiom could do things to light,” Lantern said. “They created the displacement technology I used to trick my way onto your ship. Fooling your cameras isn’t that hard. They could fool your eyes, too, if they wanted.”

  “Wait,” Elena said over the comms. “We could see the station just fine on our screens, when we found it. The material was resistant to our sensors, yes, but the station did show up on camera.”

  “So what changed?” Callie said.