Stars & Empire: 10 Galactic Tales

by Jay Allan

  “Warning. Decompression imminent.”

  She saw a steel cabinet off to one side. She ran to it, momentarily losing her balance as the room shook. When she opened the cabinet she found a pair of strange metallic suits inside. “Dad,” she said above the siren. “What are these?”

  Hoodwink glanced up distractedly. His eyes widened when he saw the suits, and he limped over immediately.

  “That’s my Ari!” He slid the first suit from the rack. It was a bulky, single-piece costume similar to the uniform she wore, complete with arm and leg holes, and a zipper on the back. But it was much roomier then her own suit, and all puffed up just as if someone was already inside.

  Hoodwink shoved the suit toward Ari. “Put it on.”

  The thing was heavy, at least for one with her withered strength. She managed to slide her feet into the leg holes, and once that was done it was easy enough to yank the bottom on like breeches. The fabric slid over the iron braces on her legs, but the fit was a little tight, and portions of the braces dug into her flesh. Nothing for it but to grin and bear it.

  She shoved her hands into the arm holes, and thrust her fingers into the extremities as if she were putting on long gloves.

  When that was done, Hoodwink zipped up the front of the suit, and then he lowered a glass globe over her head. The globe warped the edge of her vision, but also had the welcome effect of considerably muting the attack siren.

  Hoodwink twisted the globe sideways until it locked in place, and then he touched something near her neck. A mechanism whirred to life behind her ear, and fresh air brushed her cheek. A green light turned on near the top of her vision.

  “Tanner,” Hoodwink said. “Over here! Now!”

  Tanner abandoned the desk and rushed over. Hoodwink helped him into the second suit.

  “What about you?” Ari said. Her voice sounded odd in the tight environment of the suit. Distorted, and full of fear.

  “When the glass breaks,” Hoodwink said, his words sounding muted through the helmet. “All the air will be sucked out, along with anything that isn’t tied down. Depressurized, it’s called.” Hoodwink nodded toward the cabinet. “Hold on to the rack inside. The cabinet’s bolted to the wall. You’ll be safe.”

  “There has to be another suit in here.” She scanned the chamber, her heart pounding in sudden alarm. But there were no other cabinets. No other suits.

  “Warning,” the mechanical voice intoned. “Decompression imminent.”

  Hoodwink grabbed her by the shoulders. “Ari. You have to hold on.”

  “But what will happen to you? Will you survive without a suit?”

  Hoodwink smiled sadly. “I have to go Topside anyway. But I’ll be back. I promise. Tanner knows what to do.”

  “Can’t you hold on with us?” she pleaded.

  He shook his head. “Then you’d just get to watch me die up close.”

  “But I’ve only just found you.” Ari felt the tears coming. She held them back. She wanted her father to see how strong she was. “You can’t go.”

  “Ari, I have to.” He shoved her into the cabinet, and fetched a cord from the wall. He tied her and Tanner to the rack. “Look at that. Not even crying. You’re so strong, Ari.” He said it with such tenderness.

  She shook her head. “I’m not. Please don’t go. You’ve already died once for me.”

  “And I’ll die a thousand times more for you.”

  Her chin quivered uncontrollably. “I love you.”

  “I—” The chamber depressurized, and her father was sucked out into space.

  CHAPTER 28

  Ari felt the pull of the outside, and if it weren’t for the cord that fastened her to the rack, she would’ve joined her father. The pull soon subsided, and she remained there, motionless, staring into the void, watching her father and other debris spin away. When she could no longer pick out his distant form on the rocky landscape, she suppressed a fresh wave of tears.

  The siren abruptly stopped, and the red beacon turned off.

  The attack had ended.

  When she was sure she could speak without a quaver, she turned to Tanner and said, “I hate you.”

  “Why?”

  She was surprised to hear his voice come from inside the helmet, near her ear, but the astonishment barely registered against the backdrop of sorrow within her. “For seeing me at my weakest. For watching my father die, and doing nothing. I’ll never forgive you.”

  He had nothing to say to that. Smart.

  She closed her eyes. Pull yourself together Ari. Tanner was the only one she had left. She didn’t hate him, not really. She was more mad at herself than at him. Besides, she had to work with him to get out of this. Pull yourself together girl.

  She looked at Tanner. “So what now? Can we open the door to the hall?” It was hard to keep the tremble from her voice, but she had to fight the sorrow. Had to move forward and find a way out of this.

  Tanner met her eye. There was sadness there. And pity, she saw. The latter only angered her.

  “The safety protocols won’t let the door open,” Tanner said. His voice had a strange, tinny quality. “Not when the room’s depressurized like this. And we can’t restore the pressure because the mechanism that operates the blast shield is fused.”

  She stared at him blankly. “English.”

  Tanner raised his voice. “We’re fucked, okay?”

  Ari felt like swatting him. She’d heard enough patronizing for one lifetime. “Would you mind not swearing?”

  He didn’t answer.

  She gazed beyond the broken window. “I say we go out there, then. Look for another way back in.”

  Tanner shook his head, though the globe around his face remained still. “Won’t matter. All the compromised areas will be the same, the doors sealed by safety locks.”

  “Override the damn locks.”

  “Can’t.”

  Ari couldn’t believe his closed-mindedness. “I’m sure we’ll find a hallway that’s been torn open, or something.”

  “There are doors in the hallways, and they seal too when there’s a breach. Otherwise the whole place would depressurize.”

  Ari wasn’t going to let him off the hook so easily. “Aren’t there hatches or something?”

  “There are, but we won’t be able to open them. Only Hoodwink knew the access codes. And he kept them to himself. For our protection.”

  Ari raised her voice incredulously. “Our protection?”

  “He was worried that some of the children would kill themselves. Either accidentally, or intentionally.”

  “Oh.” She remembered the haunted looks in those eyes.

  “Besides, we can’t go out on the moon. There’s iron golems outside, fixing damaged sections of the hull. If they spot us…”

  She stared at the jagged pieces of glass along the windowsill. One fragment in particular caught her eye. The tip was smeared red. She quickly looked away.

  “I thought the ship was self-repairing?” She spoke fast, trying get her mind off that jagged shard. The tears threatened to come all over again. Focus Ari.

  “It is self-repairing,” Tanner said. “To a degree. But hit a certain section too many times, and the iron golems have to send the repair units.”

  “So what can we do then? I need options Tanner!”

  “As I said, we’re fuh—” He cut himself off.

  “Once you hit a snowdrift in your path, you don’t give up right away and turn back,” she said. “You look closer. You test the snow, see where it holds your weight. You find a path.”

  Tanner frowned. “If you say so.”

  “You’re a pessimist, that’s what you are.”

  Tanner shrugged. Inside that suit it looked more like he bobbed up on his toes. “I’m a realist.”

  “There’s always a way. Always. Hoodwink put his trust in you.” Ari bit her lip. The pain distracted her from the sorrow. “Said you knew what to do. Guess he was wrong.”

  She untied herself from t
he rack, and approached the shattered window, intending to go out there on her own. Even with the leg clamps aiding her, that bulky suit made it seem like she waded through deep snow.

  Most of the desks had been sucked outside, and a couple of them lay smashed beneath the window. She avoided the thick cords that protruded from the floor where the desks had been. The cord ends were severed, and some sparked visibly. Interesting. Did that mean vitra flowed through the lifeless veins of this place?

  When she neared the windowsill, she climbed the debris, and just stared out across the landscape. It looked as barren and lifeless as she felt inside. Going out there didn’t seem like such a good idea just then.

  Tanner’s voice spoke in her ear. “When Hoodwink said I knew what to do, he meant the mission Inside. Not this.” Tanner was on the other side of the room, still at the cabinet. “And I haven’t given up, you know. There’s a chance Stanson and the others will find a way to reach us.”

  “Relying on others is a bad business,” Ari said. “Especially when your life is in their hands. They probably think we’re dead already.” She was becoming hopeless now, too. The sorrow was spreading inside her like a poison, and it threatened to overwhelm her.

  “Maybe I can send the children a message from one of the terminals.” Tanner waded across the room, toward one of the few surviving desks. The legs of the desk had shifted so that the black cord anchoring it to the floor was visible.

  Ari gazed out across the moonscape one last time. Hoodwink was out there, somewhere. I’ll find you again, dad. I promise.

  Ari hopped down the debris pile. It was slow-going in that suit. When she reached him, Tanner was already swiping his fingers across the desk pad, causing words and images to come and go in rapid succession.

  “Mm,” he said. “No answer. I guess they haven’t reached Beta Station yet. I’ll set it on ping, and they’ll get the message when they arrive.” He pressed more buttons below the pad. “Don’t worry. They’ll save us.”

  “Assuming the iron golems don’t reach us first.”

  “Who’s the pessimist now?” Tanner said.

  “Well, you did say the ship dispatches ‘repair units,’ didn’t you?”

  “Yes.” He glanced at her from inside his helmet. “But this isn’t a critical section, and the inside door’s already sealed off. Repair units won’t swing by here for a long time, if ever.”

  “How did you learn all this?” Ari said.

  Tanner returned his attention to the pad, apparently eager to show off his knowledge. “There are manuals in the system. Here, I’ll show you.”

  He pressed a button labeled Help on the pad. New words appeared.

  Hercules XIXV System Guide.

  A sudden, more urgent thought occurred to her. “How much air do we have in these things?”

  “About two days I think,” Tanner said.

  But she knew the answer just as Tanner spoke it, because her words had triggered something in the suit, and a sentence now overlaid her vision.

  Estimated Oxygen: 48 Hours.

  The green letters faded, leaving only clear glass once more.

  Tanner was still playing with that pad. “Guess I have time to teach you a few things.”

  “Later,” she said. She wanted to give up. Wanted to lie down and just cry. But she couldn’t. Focus, Ari. “So. Can we get back to the Inside from here? And complete the mission father planned?”

  “Back to the simulation?” Tanner considered this. “There should be an input on the suit.” He examined his belly, and found a small aperture in the fabric. “There.” Hers had a similar opening.

  “Good,” Ari said. “Then that’s what we’ll do. Forty-eight hours of air? Is that enough time to complete father’s plan?”

  Tanner studied her a moment, then he nodded slowly. “Forty-eight hours is about three weeks on the Inside, so yes, that should be more than enough time.” He reached behind the terminal and unraveled a cord with a pronged end. “I’m not sure if Hoodwink told you, but the only way to go back Inside is as a gol. Going in as A.I.s lets us bypass the whole human birthing mechanism. You won’t have any actual nutrients when you descend this way though, so you’ll be starving on the Inside after about three days of simulation time, no matter how much you think you’re eating.”

  She stopped him before he plugged the cord into her suit. “What about you?”

  He glanced across the room, toward the other remaining desk. “I’ll use the tether on that terminal.”

  She nodded, and let him continue. When the cord connected with her suit, she heard an audible beep. Tanner pressed something on the desk pad, and a spoken message played inside her helmet.

  “External Connect Initiated.” She recognized the female voice that had droned on about imminent decompression. “Simulator Access Requested. Allow?”

  Two options appeared on the inside of the helmet, yes and no. She focused on yes.

  The word flashed.

  “Access Granted,” the female voice said.

  Inside the suit, she felt a metal prong extend from the navel region, and she winced as it pressed into the fabric of her clothing. The metal fastened painfully onto her umbilical cord, and a sudden current flowed through her—for a moment she thought she’d found vitra again.

  And then a jab of incredible, body-wide pain blocked out all thought.

  Her head fell forward on the globe, and darkness consumed her vision.

  CHAPTER 29

  Ari lay on a wooden floor. Above her, a lone beam of sunlight lanced through a frosty window. The ray touched her forehead, but held no warmth. She sat up groggily.

  She recognized her shack of a house. The make-up desk. The table. The bookshelf. The mirror. Everything was as she remembered. Only an hour had passed on the Outside. That was what, a day or two on the Inside?

  She noted that no collar, fake or otherwise, burdened her neck. Even so, the spark of vitra was completely gone inside her.

  She clambered upright, blinked the stars from her vision, and stumbled to the mirror.

  She gasped.

  She had no reflection.

  She looked down at herself. Her body was very much there. Odd.

  She noticed that her arms and legs were no longer bone thin, and the backs of her hands were free of wrinkles and liver spots. So she was still young at least. And well-nourished this time.

  Looking down at herself, she thought her skin-tight blue shirt accentuated her breasts a little more than she was comfortable with. Damn that Tanner. The sleeves reached to her wrists, where the cuffs seemed to meld into her flesh just as if the fabric were tattooed into it. She tried to lift the too-tight shirt off, but she found no collar to grip. She slid her arms across her chest, scrabbling at the thin cloth, but she succeeded only in pinching and folding her own skin.

  She glanced at the vacant mirror once more. It reminded her that she wasn’t really here in this world, but resided in another.

  Though it sure felt like she existed here.

  “What am I?” She stumbled over to the chair beside the window, and sat down heavily. The same chair she’d used countless times as an old woman, waiting for her life to end. Waiting for her father.

  “So what do you think, Nine?” Tanner said from behind her.

  She started. “Don’t ever do that again.” She forced herself to be mad, when all she wanted to do was bawl her eyes out. She had to remain focused. In charge. “Why did you call me Nine?”

  Tanner was wearing a goatee now, matched to a flourishing mustache. It didn’t really suit him. “It’s written on your chest in binary. 1001. Supposed to mark you as one of the main A.I.s of the system. In theory the gols will give us more respect because of it.” He touched his own chest, which had the number 1010 embossed into the tight fabric. “Ten.”

  “Tell me father’s plan,” she said. “He wants a utopia, does he?” It was hard not to sound bitter. He’d died for this utopia of his. And right now, Ari didn’t care if this false world
stayed a cold pit of ice for all eternity. In fact, she almost preferred it that way.

  “First of all,” Tanner said. “We have to seize the Control Room from the mayor.”

  Tanner went on to detail the plan, but she was scarcely listening.

  Seize the Control Room from the mayor.

  Hoodwink had mentioned that before, but the words hadn’t registered. They did now, however, and stirred something deep inside Ari, the memory of payback long ago given up.

  She momentarily forgot her grief.

  Jeremy. Good old Mayor Jeremy. She had a score to settle with that one.

  More than a score.

  She smiled inside.

  Her ex-husband would certainly be in for a little shock when he saw her.

  CHAPTER 30

  Ari marched across the snowpack, ermine cloak worn high to conceal the numbers written into her chest. At her neck was a fake bronze bitch, taken from the headquarters of the New Users. Though her breath misted, she didn’t feel cold. She was a gol now, after all.

  She made for Jeremy’s estate. Tanner accompanied her on the right, and gray-haired Marks, one of the New Users, took her left. Jeremy owned the largest estate in the city, nestled near the heart of Highbrow District. As a rule, the elected mayor always ran the city out of his or her home. Men and women of high office were expected to live and breathe their jobs, eating and sleeping and defecating in the same building where they made the big decisions. He’d bought out three portal traders to secure the land, and blackmailed a fourth. The son of a portal trader himself, Jeremy had grown his wealth by taking advantage of the price spreads between cities. They say absolute power corrupts absolutely. The same can be said about wealth. So what did it mean then, when Jeremy had both?

  The latest rumor among the New Users was that Jeremy had found a way to replicate gols, and that he was surrounding himself with a new type that fed on the fears of the common people. He was building an army, according to the New User scouts, though for what purpose no one knew. Ari was looking forward to having Jeremy at the tip of her sword, begging to reveal all his secrets.