by J. S. Morin
“I’ve heard stories about your past jobs…”
“Mostly from me. You think I don’t know how they turn out? Trust me, this one won’t go half as bad as most of the slap-tape jobs I’ve thrown together over the years.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Amy asked with a wry grin.
Slipping from the co-pilot’s seat, Carl gave her a quick kiss as he headed out of the cockpit. “No. But I’ll go check how Yomin is doing. You know, captainy stuff.” He caught a glimpse of a good-natured eye roll as he departed.
Carl found himself pausing when he reached Esper’s quarters, hand poised to knock at the door. But while Yomin might have inherited Chip’s old position as computer wrangler, she hadn’t inherited Chip’s old quarters. Doing a little mental mapping of the ship, he remembered that he’d assigned her to Tanny’s old bunk. Crossing the common room, he knocked on the proper door.
“Busy,” came the brusque reply, muffled through the door.
“Captain,” Carl replied, raising his voice to be heard.
“Shit! Sorry! Come on in.”
Carl opened the door and poked his head inside. “Didn’t mean to disrupt your waveform. Just wanted to check in.”
Yomin sat cross-legged on the bed, a computer core perched in her lap. Wires and fiber cables ran from that core to Yomin’s headset and several other pieces of equipment scattered around the room, as well as one of the wall access panels. She didn’t look up from her work. “I’m hooked to the ship’s comm, you know. I’ve got a laser feed direct to the hub’s computers. I’m on a maintenance frequency using manufacturer bypass codes. Lucky for us, ARGO mandates access to every legit manufacturer’s systems, and all my gear is scavenged from the Odysseus.”
“These idiots have a fifty-year-old transfer station and they haven’t wiped the factory presets? Even legit spacers do that as a matter of course.”
Yomin grinned, still not looking in Carl’s direction. “Well, let’s just say that there are certain hardware configs that make access easier for us. If these guys knew how to tear a system down to the quanta, they wouldn’t buy ancient shit. They don’t even realize there’s no cargo going to any ship but ours.”
“What about the shields?”
“I’m monitoring them, but once I access, it’ll alert the station. I won’t make the connection until we’re ready to go.”
Carl nodded. “Keep me posted.”
The door shut with a hollow clang. He couldn’t believe what was happening. Things were going according to plan.
# # #
The last crate settled onto the cargo bay floor. Niang hit the controls to close the bay door while Reebo began securing the crates for over-G maneuvering. When the door sealed shut, Niang hit the comm panel. “All stowed and accounted for. Time to do your thing.”
It was almost time for Esper’s “thing” as well. Without a word she left the two new crewmen to their tasks and headed up the metal grate stairs to the common room. Through the glassed-in dome overhead, she could see the translucent blue haze of the station’s shields enveloping them. It was an ugly, sciencey film that obscured God’s cosmos. The sooner they were away from it, the better.
Unlike Mort, Esper didn’t bide her time with beer or holovids as she awaited the call from the cockpit that it was time to drop into astral. Clasping her hands behind her back, she stood watching through the ceiling and waiting for signs that the ship had begun to move. Esper slowed her breathing to a calming rhythm, blocking distractions that might cloud her communion with the universe. In the silence around her, noises seeped from the cockpit—Carl’s voice, by timbre and cadence. It grew agitated, until finally intelligible words spilled forth.
“Get those fucking shields down!” Carl shouted.
Yomin burst from her quarters and blew past Esper en route to the cockpit. With a sigh, Esper followed, albeit at a more leisurely pace. She suspected that her role in the escape might just have expanded or was about to.
Esper was close enough to eavesdrop by the time Yomin delivered the news. “They’ve got the shields on manual override! Both the other two ships are reporting technical malfunctions with the transfer.”
Carl’s voice was artificially smooth, the tone he used over the comm. “This is the Mobius. What’s the hold up? We’re still waiting on our cargo. You having tech troubles over there?” A heartbeat later, his voice came over the intra-ship comm. “Battle stations, people. Man the turret. We’re taking out that shield the old-fashioned way.”
Esper retreated to the center of the common room and waited as Carl jogged to meet her. “Any chance you can drop us to astral right here? We’re stationary.”
Reebo burst in from the cargo bay and hit the control panel that dropped the turret chair into the common room. “I ran simulations against the specs on this place. It’ll take about thirty seconds of continuous fire to overpower their shield.” He climbed into the seat and quickly harnessed himself in just a meter from where Carl and Esper stood. Thumbing a switch on the arm of his chair, Reebo was pulled up into the turret. “That’s if they don’t divert power from the other two docking bays.”
“Do what you can,” Carl called up to him. Then he leveled an urgent gaze that locked with Esper’s. He was one man who didn’t give a hoot about looking a wizard in the eye. “How far down can you take us?”
“How far into the astral do these shields reach?”
Carl spread his hands. “How would I know? Do I look like an astral theoretician to you? All I know is energy spans astral depths; otherwise astral relays and scanners wouldn’t work. Put us deep enough, and we can go around.”
There were complications that Carl was glossing over. Reebo firing plasma bursts while she tried to move them astrally wasn’t going to go over well with the universe. On top of that, there was the matter of a space station that they didn’t want to drag along with them, which meant getting rather specific about the confines of what was moving and what was staying. But most of all, Carl was overlooking the fact that Esper’s heart rate had just shot up to an alarming level.
Of course, Carl wouldn’t want to hear any of that. “I’ll do what I can.”
Carl clapped her on the shoulder as he strode past on his way to the cargo bay.
Overhead, lances of plasma shot from the ship’s turret. Mechanical creaks and whirs accompanied the turret’s adjustments.
Esper picked up Mort’s staff from where she’d left it on the couch. It was taller than her, smooth, and warm to the touch, not unpleasantly so, but enough to give the impression of being more than a mere object. It had come from a living tree, and some hint of that life essence lingered even centuries later. She ran a hand along the surface, allowing the comforting presence of its irascible old owner into the ship.
A tremor ran through the ship, but Esper tried to put curiosity from her mind as to its source.
Excuse me. I know this is sudden, but the Mobius needs to be in the astral plane quite urgently. I’ll try to give you fairer warning next time, but I believe that if you don’t humor us here, there might not be a next time. That would be a real shame, now wouldn’t—
“FUCK!” Carl shouted, slamming the cargo bay door. “I can’t believe this is fucking happening. Esper, why aren’t we astral yet?”
Esper didn’t open her eyes. “You’re not helping.”
I meant no disrespect. I just need a little understanding here.
When she didn’t feel more than a drifting sensation toward the astral plane, she switched up her tactics. Mort had given her a chant in the language of creation, one that he said never failed to produce results. It was long, and Esper didn’t understand the words as anything more than just sounds. She hoped the universe didn’t mind that she’d memorized it to the tune of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.”
“The hell?” Carl asked. He was within arm’s reach; she could tell without looking. Esper ignored him.
A sensation akin to vertigo came over her, and the ship swu
ng violently into astral space. Esper stumbled and used Mort’s staff for support to keep from falling. But the Mobius had nothing to catch itself against. The ship continued to plunge deeper into the astral. Through the domed ceiling, the blue haze of the station’s energy shield vanished, leaving a clear view of the flat, astral gray. Time passed weirdly, slowed to a syrupy mush in Esper’s brain. Tinges of purple swirled in what should have been a uniform monochrome. The last time this had happened, Mort had been the one holding the staff, and Esper hadn’t felt the headlong slide down a slope in a dimension she couldn’t properly describe. The purple hue deepened by the second—if that’s how quickly seconds were passing at the moment.
What had Mort done when the Black Ocean turned purple? Esper had no idea. But she was certain of one thing he hadn’t.
Excuse me! We’ve gone a bit too far. Stopping now would be much appreciated.
Whatever she’d said in Mort’s age-worn syllables, she wanted to take back. He’d talked her around in circles when she asked for a translation. Esper made a point to broach the subject again once they were back on Ithaca—if they survived to make the return trip. As the sky outside darkened in the violet spectrum, those prospects looked speculative at best.
Stop it this instant! I won’t stand for getting squooshed out the wrong side of astral space. Stop this ship, NOW!
The Mobius slowed to an astral halt. Esper slumped onto the couch with a sigh.
“We good?” Carl asked. With his jaw set and his arms crossed, he looked anything but worried that the ship had nearly been sucked into an unknowable void.
Amy’s voice came over the comm. “Holy hell! Where are we? Astral depth sensors are coughing up blood over here. Also, I’ve done a lot of interstellar travel, and astral space isn’t supposed to be this color.”
Carl sauntered over to the comm panel. He gave Esper a weary glance before hitting the button to reply. “Get used to it. Wizards happen from time to time around here.”
Reebo called down from the turret. “Yo, boss. Any chance we can put some gray back in the sky?”
Carl raised an eyebrow at Esper. Then his brow furrowed. Then he scratched at his chin. “Nah, leave us here for now. I need time to think.”
# # #
Kubu thrashed through the underbrush with the subtlety of a wildfire. He bounded onto the trail ahead of the search party, tail wagging and tongue lolling. “I found them! I found them!”
Parker and Doherty had their spears leveled in an instant, as if someone had kept up with the energetic canid to follow him. There were times when the two seemed like sages of old, with knowledge inscrutable and insight beyond the ken of alien visitors to this moon. Their years of patrolling the jungles had proved invaluable. However, they jumped at shadows and sniffs of predators on the wind.
Mriy hissed. “Put those away. I smell nothing.”
Kubu bounded from front legs to back in rocking-horse fashion. “Come see. Not far. Hurry, hurry, hurry!” He dove into the jungle overgrowth, tearing through the clinging vines and cracking the trunks of grass-bladed trees.
Shaking her head, Mriy followed Kubu’s raggedly blazed trail. Parker fell in behind her, and after looking askance of Mort, Doherty headed out as well. Who was Mort to gainsay the beast? He considered Tanny to be his mommy and knew her scent as well as his own. Other than killing things and eating them, sniffing out trails was Kubu’s finest skill.
“I could have been head of the Convocation one day,” Mort muttered. “I could have a nice office with real wood furniture and a secretary, drink the finest coffee known to Earthmen, given lectures to Oxford’s brightest young minds. But no, I’m following a giant talking dog in search of the minions of an alien deity so I can wring his location out of them. I hadn’t believed I could sink lower than impersonating a star-drive, but here I am.”
Doherty popped out from behind one of the grass-like trees. “You coming?”
An irascible impulse nearly had Mort snap back that no, he wasn’t. What would they do about it, anyway? The four of them working in concert had no hope of compelling his cooperation. But Mort had made a promise to Carl that he would look for Tanny, and he wanted Devraa dead as badly as anyone on Ithaca. The idea of an alien creature convincing humans to worship it as a god offended him in ways he couldn’t convey without fire—and lots of it. There was no way to vent those flames without this distasteful expedition.
“Ever get the feeling the universe has it in for you?” Mort asked.
Doherty grinned. “Every time I wake up after a night of drinking.”
Kubu’s definition of “not far” was not far different from Mort’s definition of “not near.” The oversized puppy doubled back often, and always with exuberance and barely contained joy, always with words of encouragement and assurances that they were almost there. The trek took the bipeds two hours, give or take some variance for the ridiculous planetary/lunar interactions that made solar timekeeping problematic. Mort didn’t ask Parker to check his chrono.
“Right here!” Kubu shouted. He bounded in circles around the periphery of a small clearing.
Parker knelt in the center where a circle of fist-sized rocks enclosed a circle of dirt. “Camp site. Couple days old.”
“Mommy was here,” Kubu insisted. “She peed in these bushes.”
Mort shot Mriy a sidelong glance, wondering if the azrin picked up on those sorts of clues and was just too civilized to mention it. But it was clear that someone had camped here. The underbrush was cut back, and the smaller plants matted down, probably by blankets or tents.
Walking the camp in a low crouch, Mriy sniffed around. “Eight. And Kubu is correct; Tanny was with them.”
“Which way did they go?” Parker asked.
Mriy sniffed again, and after a moment, flashed her fangs. “Bah! They scouted. They patrolled. They set sentries. Whatever the reason, the followers of Devraa departed this clearing many times, in many directions. It will take a wider search to discover their eventual departure path.”
Mort scratched his chin. “I may have a quicker way. Everyone out of the clearing.”
“What’re you gonna do?” Parker and Doherty were still accustoming themselves to the idea that wizards weren’t just petty shipboard mechanics and card-trick aficionados. Nothing wrong with showing them some of the finer points of the art.
Without a word of explanation, Mort had a chat with the tress, the rocks, and the elemental earth beneath their feet. It was, by necessity, a one-sided debate, but there wasn’t a wizard worth his sleeves that couldn’t hold up both ends of a conversation. What had they seen? Mort didn’t need words, just images.
Ghostly beings coalesced in the clearing, eight in total. They wore primitive, homemade clothing of leather and bone, mixed with a few pieces of modern military attire. All went barefoot. Spears and daggers were their weapons, and someone had built a campfire for them to gather round to share a meal. Spitted meat roasted over an open flame—a carnivore’s marshmallows.
“Which one is she?” Parker asked in a whisper. Three of the eight marines were women.
Mriy pointed, but Kubu was already making a beeline for the one she indicated. “That’s her. The smallest of the females but not the weakest.”
“Mommy, mommy, mommy!” Kubu shouted.
Mort rolled his eyes. “They can’t hear you. So you can quit whispering and shouting and generally acting as if they’re real people. They’re not.”
“This some sort of holo?” Doherty asked, reaching out to touch one. His fingers passed through, disturbing the image like a fog before it reformed.
“It’s a memory.”
Doherty frumpled his brow in that unique way known only to the congenitally confused. “Whose? Are we seeing the past?”
“Everything in this place has a memory: rocks, trees, wind—though the wind’s memory is terrible. This is the past as remembered, not necessarily exactly as it was. I don’t muck with time magic. That’s on a very short list of things
I steer clear of. Good way to end up spending your life going a fractionally different speed through life than everyone around you, or aging yourself to an early grave, or obliterating your own existence via paradox, or—”
“I get the picture.”
Mort shrugged. He jogged the trees’ memories and asked to see the gathering depart. The image shifted and showed the eight marines packed up and marching single file away from the clearing. Tanny was in the lead. “This way.”
# # #
The holo-projector was dark. This wasn’t a social gathering. Everyone aboard the Mobius sat in the common room, waiting for him to say something. Carl was just as curious as they were as to what it would be.
“Well, for starters, let’s go over what just happened. I don’t think a lot of finger-pointing is going to help, but we can’t fix what we don’t know is wrong. Who wants to start?” Carl jammed his hands into the pockets of his battered leather jacket and looked from one to the next, daring someone to go first.
Reebo held out a finger at Yomin. “Little Miss Quantum over here thought she was the next Solaria Masterson but couldn’t even hack the station’s shields.”
“Hey,” Yomin snapped. “None of you scanned out to notice they had a manual override modification. That’s not standard issue. Besides, if Jean hadn’t dumped the cargo we’d have still gotten out of there with a messy win.”
“Fuck you,” Niang snapped. “I got those bastards off our trail. At least now they won’t be coming after us together. Maybe we won’t get any referrals from them, but it’s better than being hunted.”
Carl shook his head. “You both fucked up. Yomin needed to override comms if they found out something was wrong. Them having a shield override is on me. I should have planned for that.”
“I thought blasting was the backup plan,” Reebo said.
“Blasting is always the last plan.”
“Look on the bright side,” Amy said with a smile. “At least we’ve got a wizard who can take us the long way around a defensive shield.”
