by C. Gockel
James’s brow furrowed and Zoe whispered to Raif, “They’re talking in their heads again.”
“Thank you, Monica,” Noa said aloud.
“Can we take the werfle?” said Raif.
Noa’s breath caught, remembering Fluffy I and Fluffy II. How many times had she confided in her pets when she was afraid, or angry? She gave a commandery nod to the boy. “Sure, you can. I think he needs you,” she said, knowing it was the other way around.
She inclined her head to the door. “Go ahead.”
Doctor and children went down the hall toward the lift as James and Noa watched.
Aloud, James said, “We need to talk to Wren.”
Noa nodded. A few minutes later they were outside the door of the cabin James had stowed him in. He went to the panel by the door and pressed in a fast number and symbol sequence.
Given enough time, Wren would figure a way out of a locked cabin … even if it was just by conning whomever was in charge of bringing his meals. She hadn’t been lying when she said they couldn’t keep prisoners.
The door whooshed open and she found herself face to face with Wren. Wearing Ark-issued clothing, he was sitting on a narrow cot, back to the wall, scowling at his feet and rubbing his head, obviously suffering from a Stun-ache. He looked up at Noa and then his eyes flicked over Noa’s shoulder to James. For a moment, Noa saw something calculating in his gaze. But then he leered. “Noa, if you were planning a threesome, you could have brought Monica.”
“Cut the crap, Wren,” Noa said. “Why are you here?” Could he know about the time gate at the Kanakah Cloud and be hitching a ride? A man like Wren had been places and heard things … If he knew that, others would know, too …
Putting a hand to his chest, Wren said, “Hello, Wren, nice to see you, Wren.” Sitting up fast, he hissed, “Thank you for saving my life, Wren.” One of his nostrils flared. The leer had left his face completely.
“What do you want, Wren?” Noa said, crossing her arms. She could feel James just centis behind her.
Wren looked up at James and then looked away. He wiped his jaw and met Noa’s gaze again. “Did it occur to you that I might have wanted my life? And, well … life for that kid.” He scratched the back of his neck, looking uncomfortable, like he’d put on a coat full of xenofleas.
Noa shifted on her feet. “Your ship was in bad shape, but you had access to parts and plenty of Monica’s credits—”
Wren scowled. “The only credit that is going to be useful anywhere soon is food and Adam’s Station is almost out of that. I’m hitching a ride with you to Libertas, the only self-sustaining planet left in this system besides Luddeccea, but I might have a slight reputation there.” He winced. “And possibly a death warrant—but that wasn’t really warranted, if you know what I mean.”
James said, “They let you off their ship easily enough.”
Wren lifted his hands and gestured dramatically. “Yeah, I’m not sure why, either. Because they’re out of their jurisdiction, because Adam doesn’t like it when you abduct people from his dock, or because they turned off their lizzar pissing ethernet and don’t remember they’re supposed to arrest me?” He rubbed his stubble. “I think I might be slightly hurt by that.”
James muttered, “Must be nice.”
“By the looks of the crowd on the tarmac, I wasn’t the only one who wanted aboard,” Wren said.
“And now they’re dead, but you’re here, and that’s all that matters, right?” Noa retorted.
Leaning forward, Wren said, “It was the only plan I had, and I was only trying to hit Adam’s men … I wasn’t expecting the mob to—”
“Get crazy?” Noa all but shouted.
James lifted an eyebrow. “That is what mobs do.”
Leaning back, Wren picked at the drab Ark stock clothing James must have given him. “Your enemy is my enemy now. Can we at least be friends until we reach Libertas?” He raised a hand. “That kid you saw, he is my son … I have … I fucked up with him.”
Noa snorted.
Wren rolled his eyes. “Look, I don’t want to die and I can be useful—”
“No,” Noa said.
“Noa …” James said, sweeping past her. Wren jumped back, but James was heading toward the porthole.
“James?” Noa asked, but her voice was drowned out by the wail of a klaxon.
Ghost’s voice was in her head, and Chavez, too. “Commander, they’ve found us.”
Noa was already out the door before they finished. The ship shook, every air vent abruptly went silent, the lights flickered, and the ship went completely dark before she reached the lift.
* * *
The ethernet went down. James noticed the abrupt halt in the flow of electrons between his and Noa’s minds before he noticed the lights had gone out. He heard Wren’s footsteps stumbling toward the door, and Noa in the hallway. A map of the narrow cabin formed in his brain, and he leaped forward and grabbed the man by the back of his shirt. Wren swore in surprise. In the hallway, James heard the hinges of the door to the access stairwells open and knew Noa would be in them.
Heaving Wren up, James slammed him into the wall beside the porthole.
“Shit!” Wren said.
James blinked. Where he’d seen a bright star suddenly appear in the sky a few minutes before, now there was a vessel. He focused on it, his augments magnified it, and he hissed. The lights abruptly came back on, and air whooshed into the cabin. The sudden change in light made him blind.
Over the ether, Manuel’s voice came. “Charge burst!”
And then Noa’s thoughts rang out, “They don’t want to kill us, they want to board us.”
In the tiny cabin, James shook Wren, and aloud and over the ether he said, “That isn’t the Luddeccean ship!”
Noa’s mind flowed over the ether. “Show me what you see!”
James sent his view to her. A ship shaped like a teardrop, with a black pockmarked surface, and at the base, twelve sharp wings that almost looked like spikes.
Shaking Wren again, James said, “Did you send them?”
“No!” Wren screamed, chest still pressed against the wall, head facing the porthole. “That’s Captain Xo’s rig. I don’t want him here!”
James spun him around. “Why is he here?”
Wren’s eyes were wide, and he smelled like fear. “I don’t know! But he’s not a friend.”
James lifted him by the collar until his feet were off the floor.
Wren choked out, “I didn’t pay him for some parts before we left Adam’s Station.”
Setting Wren down, James said, “Are you saying he’s chasing you?”
Wren’s eyes got wide. “It wasn’t that many parts!”
The ship shook. The lights went out again. The ether died and the air vents stopped their steady hum. In the darkness, Wren said, “Please, let me help you! I don’t want to die!”
“How can you help?” James demanded, giving him a shake.
“I’m a pilot! A damn good one …” Wren panted. “... and I might not be as straight a shooter heroic bastard like you, Earther, but my neck is on the line.”
“Straight shooter?” said James, bemused and a bit confused. And then he remembered going back into the line of fire during their exit from Adam’s Station. He supposed that could be confused for heroism and being a “straight shooter.” But the hero straight shooter was Noa; he’d gone out into the line of fire knowing Noa would do it if he hadn’t. He looked out for his interests; it wasn’t the same as heroism.
Wren held up his arms. “I’m unarmed. You can put me down!”
The lights flickered on and Noa’s voice came over the ether. “Bo, on my signal you give me a cannon blast. Chavez, you after him. Manuel, keep the power flowing!”
Keeping his hands in the air, Wren said, “I hope you have two damn good pilots at the helm, because Xo is about to shoot drones directly into this boat’s path. They’ll collide with us, and at lightspeed, the tiniest nudge can send us barrel
ing into a rogue object or hell, a moon … not to mention the shorts we’re going to have in our time bands.”
James felt the ship shake—this time there was no accompanying power short. Over the ether, Bo said, “Commander, drones flying into the wake of the cannon blast!”
The ship shook again. This time the lights did go out.
* * *
Chavez, a dark shadow on the unlit bridge, leaped up from the pilot chair as soon as Noa raced up the stairs. The ensign dashed to the cannons’ position that was unoccupied without having to be asked. Bo, the trigger happy engineer, was in the other. With only Luddeccea’s distant sun for light, Noa strapped herself into the helm. For once, Ghost was on the bridge sitting in the copilot’s chair. He’d insisted on coming up during Chavez’s shift.
“Chavez, be ready to fire that cannon as soon as you have power,” she said. She silently willed the lights to come on. They did—the charges the strange ship was shooting only gave them momentary flickers—not even long enough for the auxiliary power to kick in. Which was probably the point. It kept the Ark’s systems destabilized.
“Ghost, get the ether routed through the auxiliary—”
“—so that it won’t go out with the main power systems,” Ghost responded from where he sat in the copilot’s seat. “Already on it.”
“And the ship’s navigation,” Noa said.
Ghost grunted.
“Time bands are all online, Commander,” Manuel said over the ether.
“Ghost, do you have a course for me?” Noa said.
A bright light flickered in her vision and her apps told her Ghost was transmitting fear.
“What’s wrong?” Noa asked.
“I set up the ether so that I could enter coordinates mentally, Commander,” Ghost whimpered. “... And have already routed the nav computer to the auxiliary power … but there must be a short circuit. I can’t enter the coordinates mentally anymore and—”
“Give me coordinates as you have them,” Noa said. Leaning forward over the extensive dash, she began entering the coordinates manually into the archaic system as they flashed behind her eyes.
“What are those?” Bo whispered.
For a moment, Noa thought he was talking about the ancient dials and buttons on the dash, but then she saw the lights on the read-out. “Drones,” said Chavez.
“What are they going to do?” Bo asked.
“Get in the way,” said Chavez.
Noa’s hands flew over the control. She had almost all the coordinates entered … just the millionth, tenth millionth, and hundred millionth place to go.
“Clear a path through those drones, Chavez,” Noa ordered.
“The cannon isn’t charged, Commander,” Chavez gasped.
“Are those more drones?” Bo asked.
The lights flickered, but the nav computer stayed lit. “Bless you, Ghost,” Noa whispered in the darkness. She wouldn’t have to re-enter the coordinates. Noa heard footsteps pounding up from the ladder access shaft. The lights came back on before her brain registered who it was.
Manuel’s voice rolled over the ether. “Commander, another hit like that and we’ll lose a time band.” Despite the chill of space radiating from the skylight above her chair, Noa felt sweat begin to prickle on her brow. She gritted her teeth, gripped the control wheel, and sent the ship to lightspeed, ignoring the first lesson every pilot learned in navigation school.
The stars blurred and the navigation computer screamed. The ship hadn’t even had a chance to re-orientate itself for Ghost’s plotted coordinates, and every light flashed orange in protest as they tore off in a direction thousandths of a degree off course.
“What are you doing?” Ghost shouted.
Beside her, Wren shouted, “Get up, man, unless you can fly this thing!”
“Ghost, new coordinates!” Noa said, holding onto the helm. Too busy to think about Wren being there.
“Get up!” James roared.
“I—”
“Can keep working on the coordinates standing,” James said. Ghost unclicked his safety harness and James bodily removed him from the seat.
Chavez said, “I’ll have the cannon charged in another—”
A sound like static or frantic hail tore through the bridge.
The nav computer’s light went red and the scream rose to a wail.
Manuel’s voice flooded her mind. “Space dust.” As though Noa needed to be told.
“We are off course!” Ghost said, “And it wasn’t on the charts!”
The time bubble created by their bands sucked in the tiny particles enough to keep them from turning into tiny projectiles against the ship’s hull, but the relatively denser pockets of dust warped the ship’s trajectory, like a stone skipping across the surface of a lake. Noa powered the time bands down before they were sent skipping into a thicker cloud, a rogue planet, or a comet.
Numbers flashed in her vision. “Working on a new course!” Ghost cried.
“It has to take into account the dust!” Wren said.
“Yes, Commander,” Ghost replied. “I have telemetry readings for the opposite side of the cloud …” His voice faded away, but numbers flickered in the periphery of her vision and the cloud hung in her visual cortex as a glowing three-dimensional map of light that’s edges became sharper and crisper by the millisecond. It was incredible that Ghost could coax a three-dimensional cloud map so quickly from the Ark’s ancient systems while simultaneously working on a new course.
“Start entering the coordinates,” Wren said.
The ship was trembling in the dust. Noa dared not let go of the controls.
“I’ve got the helm,” said Wren, and Noa could hear him gritting his teeth.
For a moment Noa’s hands froze, but James’s voice slid across the ether. “His interests align with ours.” James’s hand came down on her shoulder … gently, and he squeezed softly. The simple gesture filled Noa with confidence—or at least reminded her she didn’t have time to second guess—she began to quickly enter Ghost’s new coordinates.
“Comp guy,” he said, “can you give me a three-dimensional map of this cloud—or at least access to your ether?”
There was the sound of more static as Wren angled the ship into the dust.
Bo’s voice filled the bridge. “That freighter … it followed us.”
The ship shook, and pieces of debris thudded against the hull. Noa kept her eyes on the dials for the nav computer. “Entering coordinates—but we need to get to the jump point on the other side of this cloud,” she said and spoke into the ship’s ether.
“I have the coordinates for the jump point,” Wren said. “But first …”
The cloud was irregularly shaped, with long fingers that protruded from it. Wren brought them out between a pair of ghostly fingers that smudged the stars on either side and turned the black to glowing orange.
“They’d set out charges,” James whispered.
“They were hoping to catch us in the cloud—the dust—it’s electrically conductive,” said Chavez, as the orange light flickered out.
“Yes,” said Wren, steering the Ark around a long glowing finger and to the jump point a second later.
“Coordinates entered,” Noa said, as they reached the point Ghost had calculated as an ideal location to enter lightspeed.
“All yours, Commander,” Wren said.
The nav computer flashed green, Noa pulled back on the steering bars, felt her body press against her seat, heard a squeal of metal as James braced himself on the chair’s frame, and the stars blurred. A collective sigh left everyone on the bridge.
Adrenaline seeping away from her system, Noa found her hands shaking on the steering bars.
James’s consciousness touched hers.
Manuel’s thoughts swept through the ether. “Commander, we’ve sustained some damage … the damn cooling system valve is leaking heat in here again. May I suggest, as soon as we reach a place that’s safe to hide, that we stop and run a full
diagnostic? We need to do it before the final stretch.”
Noa’s jaw ground. From the solar system to the Kanakah Cloud, they’d be in open space. Before they started that “final stretch,” they could hide behind the gas giant that Alantea orbited though … for a while. “Understood,” Noa replied.
Beside her, Wren said, “This course is taking us opposite of the direction of Libertas.”
For a moment there was absolute silence. Noa said, “You are dismissed from the bridge.”
James’s thoughts entered hers. In the Genji cipher he said, “You’re tired.”
“I’ll use stims,” Noa shot back.
The bridge went silent. It took Noa a moment to realize that she’d said that aloud.
“I’m not saying I’m against not going to Libertas,” Wren said. “I was merely surprised, Commander.”
“I’m not confident in your loyalty to give you our final destination,” Noa said.
“As long as the food doesn’t run out, and I get to eat, I don’t care about our final destination,” Wren snapped. He looked around. “We do have enough food, don’t we?”
“We have so much food!” Bo exclaimed. “We can make it all the way to System Seven’s time gate!”
“Is that where we’re going?” Wren said, his voice a little weaker.
“I’m not giving you control of my ship,” Noa said. A tremor shook her hands.
“No, of course not,” said Wren. “Straight-laced guy and the rest of your crew wouldn’t abide having me as their fearless leader.”
“Straight-laced guy?” said Noa. James, she realized, he meant James. But that wasn’t quite right … was it? It was an illusion created by the affluence obvious in his augments and his speech patterns. He looked and sounded like he was straight-laced.
Wren turned in his chair. He put a hand through his hair and said, “I’ll just watch the helm so you can sleep. This ship can maintain lightspeed, and Xo and whatever other enemies you’ve managed to pick up don’t catch us.” His voice rose in pitch at the end.
“We are not enemies of Xo, whoever that is,” Noa protested.
“Could have fooled me,” Wren grumbled.
James reached to her through the ether. “He’s afraid of them, too, Noa. He owes them money. You can trust him as long as our interests align.”
