by Kathryn Hoff
“Deactivate cells!” I screamed. “Kojo! Deactivate cells!” With nowhere for the power to go, it could destroy the entire engine room.
No response from Kojo.
Archer. His limp body drifted near the console, his pale face whitening in the cold. Was he breathing? I couldn’t tell.
I slammed down his sun visor, meant to cover the now-missing faceplate. Grabbing the tube of Prestoseal from my suit’s utility belt, I smeared the thick goo all over the seams where the visor met the helmet, encasing him in darkness with whatever oxy was left in his suit.
Tugging him by one boot, I launched us out of the engine room.
Groans and questions filled the mics. Davo, respond…Cells deactivated. Patch, are you all right?…Hiram…scanners…Davo?…Archer?
Bang, bang. I ricocheted us down the dark passage, flinging us from one bulkhead to the next with no thought of gentleness or bruises. Bang, against the ceiling. Bang, between the survey equipment.
I tried not to count the seconds that Archer might be without breathable air.
“Patch?” Kojo’s voice, panting. “What happened? What’s that banging? Why didn’t the thrusters cut out on time?”
“Archer’s hurt. His helmet’s busted, I’m bringing him back.” I yanked open the hatch to the airlock.
“Zub’s pitchfork. I need you on Sparrow, now! Hiram’s unconscious. We overshot and have to come around. Mudpuppy’s not on scanners.” In the background, Charity wailed.
“To hell with Davo!”
“Patch, without Davo, none of us are getting out of here.”
Sobbing with fury, I overrode the depressurization sequence in Duchess’s airlock, letting the thin air explode outward. Cursing every moment of delay, I leaped across the empty chasm between ships, and thrust myself and limp Archer into Sparrow’s airlock. “Pressurizing.”
As soon as the compression cycle hit seventy-five percent, I pulled Archer’s helmet off—a thin atmosphere was probably better than whatever was left in his compromised suit.
His face was blue-gray. I pushed on his chest over and over, hoping to force the thin air through his lungs.
The interior hatch swung open. Charity reached in with an oxy feed. “I’ve got him.”
I pulled off my helmet, smearing my gloves over my face to wipe away tears. “Is he breathing?”
“Huffing like a bull,” Charity snapped. “I’ve got him! Kojo’s gone to the helm. You go to the engines. We’ve got to find Daddy!”
CHAPTER 16
Hugs
In the engine room, the unmanned consoles were pinging like temple bells on Jubilee Day. Without stopping to shed the enviro suit, I rushed to fire retros to slow us down, hustling between maneuvering rockets to keep the joined ships nose-forward in the current.
The scanner showed no sign of Davo’s skimmer or any other ship.
“Kojo?”
He answered from the wheelhouse. “We must have powered right past Davo with that thrust. Now we’re caught in that current he talked about—we need to slow down so he can catch up. How’s Archer?”
“Breathing. How’s Hiram?”
“Out cold and snoring.”
In slow, jerky steps, I slowed the linked ships. Kojo had me bouncing between consoles, firing retros and rockets to keep the ships, with their mass so out of balance, from tumbling as the current pushed us along.
Sparrowhawk hauling Duchess around was the tail trying to wag the dog—every maneuver I made was too little or too much; every course correction was an overcorrection. And at every move, our wonky grav gen took uncomfortable seconds to adjust.
I wondered if ancient seafarers had felt like this, trimming sails while clinging to rigging on a typhoon-tossed sea.
Archer limped in, leaning on the bulkhead. Right behind him, Charity clucked over him like a mother hen. “Now you go straight to your bunk, ya hear? Tell me where your med kit is, and I’ll get a compress.”
He waved a hand. “In the locker. Patch, move over. I can do this.”
Liar. He was still gray and shaky.
“Sit and rest,” I said. “You can take over when I have to go for mods.”
“Archer, what went wrong?” Even through the com I could hear Kojo’s frustration. “Sparrow’s thrusters cut out after five seconds but Duchess’s kept going.”
“The console fused. It kept routing power to the thrusters until the connection melted. I tried to disconnect the cables but I couldn’t manage it. Is Hiram all right?”
“Yeah, he’s coming around.”
I toggled this and wiggled that, trying to keep us slower than the current. The scanner, alight with gravity warnings and radiation readings, remained stubbornly empty of Davo’s skimmer.
Archer gingerly touched the bruise on his forehead.
“Thanks for pulling me out of there, Patch. But please, don’t ever do that again—I felt like the last grain in a salt shaker.” He rubbed his side. “My ribs hurt, too.”
“That was me,” I said, feeling guilty. “I wanted to make sure you were breathing.”
“Yeah, well, it worked. I haven’t been beat up this bad since grade school.”
I cringed, imagining Archer as a slight, jittery boy, easy prey for bullies. No wonder he preferred to spend his time with machines.
Kojo’s voice came over the com. “Charity, I’m sorry, but we’re wasting our mods like this. We have to stop fighting the current or we’ll end up power-starved like Duchess. I’m going to steer into the slow side of the current and coast. Davo knows the currents. He’ll know, better than us, where we’re headed.”
Charity’s lip came out in a pretty pout. “But he’s all alone, and him being so sick.”
I surprised myself and her by wrapping her in a hug. “Davo’s pretty good at taking care of himself. He’ll catch up. The question is, where do we go from here? He mentioned a signpost. Do you know what it is?”
Sniffing, Charity drew herself up tall. “’Course I know. My daddy told me clear. All we got to do is stick with the current till we get to the dark star. We can use that to boost velocity and peel out on heading four-four-two toward the Road.”
“A dark star?” I repeated stupidly. “You mean a neutron star?”
“That’s right. Not afraid of a little gravity, are you?”
Gravity. High on every list of ways that space can kill you.
Archer was utterly still for a moment, then hit the com. “Kojo? A burzing neutron star?”
Kojo’s chuckle answered from the wheelhouse. “Is that Davo’s idea of a landmark? I know it sounds crazy, but a neutron star’s gravity is one of the few things detectable from a distance in the Gloom. Slingshotting around it will give us the speed to get back to the Ribbon Road. We can calculate the angles for the ships’ combined mass and use a short thruster push.”
Archer grabbed his head as if it was bursting. “No, no, no. It’s not that easy. We’re not one big ship, we’re two ships, each with different mass. The gravitational forces will affect each ship differently, and now only Sparrow has propulsion. If we try to use our thrusters to drag Duchess out of orbit, the imbalance will tear the ships apart.”
“Mmm.” I could almost see Kojo rubbing his chin. “All right. No thrusters, then, just Sparrow’s propulsion. That will mean a long, slow push instead of a quick exit when it’s time to pull out from the gravity well.”
“That will take a lot of power,” I said. “We’re not fixed for mods as well as I’d like.”
“Go on skinny mode,” Kojo said. “Better cold than dead.”
Archer lapsed into an unnatural stillness, staring at the bulkhead. Maybe I’d jumped on him a little too hard, trying to get him to breathe. “Archer? You all right?”
He looked up with a goofy grin. “Gravity. Maybe we can use it to our advantage. We’ve got almost more of it than we can handle, right?”
“That’s kind of the definition of a neutron star.” Maybe he’d been deprived of oxygen too long.
“I mean the grav pellets. We can use them. If we move all the casks to the starboard side and line them up with Duchess, that will attract Duchess to Sparrow’s side and move the center of gravity for the two ships closer to the dimensional center.”
Kojo’s laugh tinkled through the com. “All this bumping around, and I’d forgotten about the pellets. But how in Zub’s name are we supposed to control the ships with grav concentrated on the starboard side?”
I knew the answer to that, though I didn’t like it. “With Duchess’s maneuvering rockets.”
Archer beamed. “That’s right. We’ll use Sparrow for propulsion and Duchess’s rockets to steer and to balance the load. If the control consoles aren’t fried, that is, and if I can hot-wire power mods to bypass any fused circuits.”
He glanced in my direction. “That means somebody will have to man Duchess.”
Somebody like me.
Four hours later, Sparrow’s temperature had dropped from pleasantly cool to damn cold as we conserved power.
I’d passed out blankets and coats and several of my hats to the crew and to Charity, who’d left her entire wardrobe on Mudpuppy. My Gavoran blood gave me a greater tolerance for cold, but once I’d finished shifting the casks of grav pellets to the starboard side, even I felt the chill.
Kojo had cocooned himself at the helm in a heat-reflecting blanket topped with a coat, gloves, scarf, and a hat lined with hyrax fur.
“You might as well get some rest,” he said. “Nothing for any of us to do until we reach the breakaway point.”
“I can rest as well here as anywhere.”
Sparrowhawk’s scanner buzzed with warnings that we’d entered the domain of a neutron star—the cold, dead remains of a star system that had collapsed into a core no bigger than a city. All the mass and gravity of its sun and all its planets and moons had imploded into that tiny chunk, too small to see until we were caught in its deadly grip.
Other than Sparrow, its gravity field was empty, even of ether—the star’s supernova death throes had absorbed or destroyed everything in its system. The only thing left was gravity strong enough to bend light. That gravity powered our awkward assembly of ships now, with Grand Duchess and Sparrowhawk falling together in a tight, fast parabolic orbit around the dead star.
If we’d entered that domain at the right angle and with the right speed, the dead star’s gravity would whip us around like a ball on a string and fling Sparrow back toward navigable space. If we’d miscalculated, that dead star would be the last thing any of us would see.
I’d replaced my usual beret with a wool cap that snuggled nicely over my braids. Drawing on a heavy coat left behind by a Gavoran passenger, I settled into the watch station.
Tinker snuggled in my lap, comforting me with her warmth.
Kojo raised an eyebrow. “Um, do you have to wear that coat? It gives me the willies.”
“I gave my cloak to Charity. This is the only thing left that’s big enough.”
Wearing the Gav coat did feel odd. It was the uniform of a sergeant in the Corridor Patrol, a class of person we usually avoided.
The sergeant wouldn’t miss it—he’d died a bloody death aboard Sparrowhawk during the awful voyage to Kriti.
“As if we don’t have enough ghosts around here,” Kojo muttered. “How are the others?”
“I gave Hiram a tranq—he wouldn’t stay in bed. Archer says he’s all right, but he looks like hell. Charity is worried about Davo—not about him being lost, says he can find his way out of a Thalian sandstorm, but about his health holding up.”
Kojo nodded tightly. “Hard to lose a dad. Even harder if she has to watch him go out slow.”
I was silent, remembering our own father’s last days, how he’d raged in fever while Sparrowhawk raced toward the nearest med center—not fast enough. Davo might not be a good man, but he must be a good father to Charity if he was willing to spend his last days trying to provide for her.
The gravimeter’s rising numbers were mesmerizing. If Kojo hadn’t silenced its audio alarm, it would have been screaming at us. Faster and faster we went, as the star’s gravity pulled us closer.
“Did realigning the grav pellets affect the nav?” I asked.
“The helm’s steadier, but towing Duchess is like pushing a handcart full of jump cells—once we’re going in one direction, it’s hard to turn. We’re going to need Duchess’s rockets when it’s time to break away.”
“I’ll head over there when it’s time.”
Kojo turned toward me. “You’ll be alone. I can’t spare anyone to go with you.”
I nodded—I’d already made that calculation. “Rules are made to be broken, right?”
His mouth tensed, but he didn’t say anything. What was there to say? He and Archer and Hiram would all be needed aboard Sparrowhawk.
Another hour went by. As the temperature aboard Sparrow dropped, Kojo dozed off. Even Tinker abandoned my lap for her snug sleeping cubby.
We drew closer to the tiny core of the dead star, and closer still. Even as we approached the lowest point in our trajectory, the neutron star was too small and too dark to see. The gravimeter readings reeled into the supercritical zone, and our speed into hypermetric ranges.
In my head, I knew we were in no danger—not yet—but still I held my breath, waiting for the gravity readings to level off.
Instead, the numbers increased.
I closed my eyes, my head pounding, asking the ancestors for courage.
Eyes shut, I waited.
We are owed. The stiff corpses of Duchess’s captain and first mate seemed to float before me. Fulfill the promise.
“We’re trying,” I told them. “We’re taking you home.”
Hiram chuckled. “Sorry, missy. We’re a long way from Palermo.”
“What?” I blinked myself awake.
“You musta been dreaming. You said you wanted to go home.” Hiram’s breath clouded in the cold air. He shivered despite his full-length thermal coat, battered fur hat, and the purple scarf he’d wrapped around his neck.
I scanned Hiram’s haggard face. “Are you feeling better?”
“I’m all right now, missy. A little nap was all I needed.”
I checked the scanners. Although still in the danger zone, the gravimeter’s numbers had begun to fall. Sparrow was drawing farther from the dead sun.
“Three hours to breakaway,” Hiram said. “We can relax a bit longer.”
Three hours. If Kojo had chosen the course right, our angle of orbit would widen, and the dead sun would sling Sparrow out of orbit and into space. If not, our engines would lose the battle to reach escape velocity. The dark star’s gravity would claw us back into a slow spiral of death. We would freeze solid long before Sparrowhawk became just another bit of mass added to the dead star’s surface.
My dream bothered me. Spirits were supposed to be helpful, not threatening. But Duchess’s crew were Terran. According to Charity’s granny, Terran ghosts could be vengeful.
“What are the Barony people like, Hiram?”
He frowned. “Some good, some bad, I guess, like anybody else. But they don’t like Troy and not much of anybody else. That time we got caught in the crossfire—maybe it was just bad luck, but we were a civilian ship and the Barony militia weren’t too careful where they were pointing their weapons. From what I’ve heard, that’s not too unusual for them. They tend to assume any passing stranger is an enemy. Since they’re so unfriendly, they’re usually right.”
Maybe that explained it. If Barony culture taught that outsiders were a threat, then members of the militia would react with hostility to anyone different from them—and I was more different than most.
Hiram stifled a cough.
I turned to him, concerned. “Maybe you need to rest a little longer? I can watch the helm until it’s time to go to Duchess.” Damn, but I hated the crew being stretched so thin.
“I’m fine. Everybody makes a fuss—I passed out at full bore, so what? Archer
did, too. I’m fine now.” But he looked pinched and pale.
I took a deep breath. This was as good a time as any to have a conversation I’d been dreading.
“You know, seeing Charity as Davo’s apprentice got me thinking…apprentice pilots come cheap. It might give you and Kojo some relief to have another set of hands to take the helm.”
Hiram scowled. “You’re daft, missy. Apprentices come cheap ’cause they’re more trouble than help. Got to be taught, don’t they? And supervised whenever they’re at the helm. That’s the law.”
“Crap. There were plenty of times when I was training…”
He sliced a hand down. “That’s different. Grew up in the watch seat, you did, and Kojo, too. You knew everything about piloting before you ever set foot in flight school. Most apprentices know nothin’. Less than nothin’, ’cause you got to unlearn ’em all their daft ideas. Like that Charity. Nice girl, mind you, but no sense.” His voice raised to falsetto. “What’s this? How’s that? Why’d you do such-and-such? Distracting, she is. No, thank you. No apprentice in my wheelhouse, thank you very much.”
That was not the response I’d hoped for.
“At least an apprentice would provide some company,” I said. “Since Papa passed on, you’re alone too much.”
“I got Tinker, don’t I? She’s all the company I need and she don’t waste my time asking foolish questions.”
A whispery voice came over the com. “Hullo? Hiram, is Patch with you? Tell her to get her ass down to the engine room—Kojo and Archer are fixin’ to fight.”
I raced down the aft steps, cursing the stubbornness and idiocy of all males.
In the passage outside the engine room, Kojo stood with shoulders defensively hunched, bear-like in his heavy jacket and hyrax fur hat.
Archer faced him in a long coat, belted around his thin frame like a bathrobe. His raised fists looked puny even clothed in crimson gloves. “Absolutely not. I’m not letting my wife work alone on Grand Duchess.” He was trembling, maybe with anger, but more likely because he was still shaky from his stint on low oxy.
From the cargo hold door, Charity turned to me, eyes wide, and whispered loud enough to be heard in the next sector, “Wife? You’re married? To him?”
