by T. F. Grant
Kina stepped forward, bolstering Sara with her presence. Tai saw a real connection between the two and for a brief, selfish moment felt that same distancing that he experienced earlier with Tooize. They’d been his team for so long, but now with Sara and Bookworm and the others, his team were diluting, no longer orbiting around him.
Sara took a breath and looked at him. Her lips quivered as she spoke. “They… were all gone… dead. It’s all my fault. I should have got them out sooner. When we opened the pods, we didn’t find one of them alive.” Tears traced down her cheeks. “With no crew left, keeping the Venture made no sense. There’s so few of us left now. If I only acted sooner, I could have—”
“Wait. What? The stasis pods… you’re saying no one survived? Why?”
“Hollow Space, Tai. It affected the pods too,” Kina added.
Miriam sighed audibly and clapped Tai on his back. “So, my dearest son, you’re free to go, Sara’s debt is cleared, and we can all go about our business.” She placed a copy of the deal chit in his hand. “First payment is due in five cycles’ time, Tairon. Don’t make me assign Hela to your account, there’s a good lad.”
With the creaking of leather and clacking of heels, Miriam turned and left the cell. Haggard stomped off after her, no doubt to discuss the day’s deals.
Tai collapsed to his bed and placed his head in his hands. “How could it all go to shit so quickly? Seriously, in less than three cycles, everything’s changed and I’m back to square one.”
Kina stood over him. “Don’t be such a brat. Sara’s lost an entire crew, and the ones responsible are getting settled into the station because of your help, both of your help. She helped them, and now her people have died anyway. Sure, you’re back in the hole with your mother, but at least you’re alive to scam your way free again. Sara can’t do anything more for those people.”
“It’s okay,” Sara said. “Tai’s right. It has all gone to shit, and it’s my fault.”
Kina and Sara continued on, assigning and shifting blame until Tai couldn’t handle it anymore. He stood up. “Right, this shit ends here. We’re leaving.”
“We know,” Kina said. “It’s why we got you released.”
“I don’t mean the cell. I mean the station. I’ve had it here. It’s crazy. I can’t go back to running jobs for my mother. I can’t give up my independence, and I can’t stand here and watch you two feel sorry for yourself.”
Grabbing Sara’s arm, he added, “I know you feel responsible; you’re not the first. But you’ve got to realize this is Hollow Space. Shit like this happens all the time. It’s because of that damned planet and whatever particle field or whatever it gives off. It’s why everyone’s so damned scared to leave the station.”
With an exasperated tone, Kina asked, “So what exactly is it you’re suggesting?”
“I don’t know how just yet, but I’m getting out of here, going to the planet, and finding out exactly what’s down there.”
Sara and Kina shared a look. Some unspoken knowledge passed between them. Yet another indication of how out of the loop he was these days. “Are you two going to tell me what you’re thinking?” Tai asked.
After a while Kina nodded to Sara, who looked up at Tai. “I’ve got something that might help with that. But first, we need your help to get Telo up and running. The Drifts have kept him alive, at least powered on, but we need a way of booting him up and accessing his memory.”
“It’s an AI,” Tai added. “You talk as though it’s sentient.”
“It kinda is,” Sara said. “Besides, I’ve spent almost my entire adult life under his command. He’s as real to me as you are, but there’s one major difference between you two. He knows what’s on the planet’s surface.”
Tai stepped back and cocked his head, analyzing Sara, wondering if she were playing him. But to what ends? “He what?”
“This stays between us,” Sara said, lowering her voice. “But before we jumped here, we were stuck in a time bubble. Telo interacted with something on the planet… there’s something down there.”
A wave of excitement and adrenaline flooded Tai’s body. A million ideas and plans filled his mind. Finally, for the first time in a hundred generations, someone had proof that there was something on the dead planet.
“I’ve got an idea,” Tai said, grinning.
“What is it?” Sara asked, wincing as though she already knew what was coming.
Tai slammed his palm against his leg. “The scuttler! Sara, we can use it to boot up Telo because of the superconductors—they shield from the effects of Hollow Space.”
“We best go pay the Drifts a visit and get Telo back,” Tai said. “Should be easy, right? You didn’t sign it away or anything, did you?”
“No,” Sara said. “Old-Leaf said he’d look after it and try to access its memory in the library. But I’m not sure they’ll be happy with us taking it from them.”
Tai stepped closer, cocking his head. “Why? You want to get out of here, right? You want to find the truth of this pocket universe and get out? Well, there’s only one way of doing that: unlocking the mystery of the dead planet. And if Telo knows something, that gives us a massive advantage.”
“I… suppose so.”
“Right then, let’s get the hell out of here and get going. We can grab a bite to eat on the way. I don’t know about you, ladies, but it’s been too damned long since I’ve enjoyed a good char-steak.”
Tai grinned at the two women and led them from the cell and headed toward the central elevator. They passed the front desk.
Haggard was slumped over some registration work. “Don’t do anything stupid now, Tai; your sentence is suspended.”
“Me? Do anything stupid? I don’t know what you’re talking about, Haggard old son.”
Tai flashed him a grin and led the women out of the clink. Just like that, things were looking up—if he could deal with those damned walking trees and recover Telo.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Sara followed Tai along the corridors and into the elevator, ignoring the inane chatter of the operator in his armored booth. Kina was always close by, always touching her. Trying to give her strength, to bolster her spirits.
But Sara could not turn off the memories.
The children were the worst. Their small bodies motionless, as if asleep, but no breath rising in their lungs, no flicker of their eyelids, no dreams, no life… nothing. They died in stasis without ever knowing the craziness that had happened to them.
Without ever knowing what Sara had done for them: the fight to retake the Venture; the death of Humphrey and Prescott, dying for nothing, and the deal with the hated Markesians. The…
The children were the worst. Sara could see the pain flooding through Margo as she checked body after body, desperate to find signs of life. Murlowe so close to his sister, adding his strength to hers as the Hentian healer tried to bring just one single body, one single tiny childish body, back to life. Murlowe, a Hentian calculator, giving what strength he could to his twin along the link forged in a test tube before they were born.
Tai led the way to the Drift library, exiting from the elevator car and heading down the wood-paneled hall to the entrance. Grease from his steak glistened on his chin. Sara had picked at a few kronac-grown vegetables in the busy diner, unable to stomach much more, her muscles cramping with the pain, both physical and mental.
Margo had slumped on the deck, weeping uncontrollably. DeLaney screamed at Sara, yelling hateful words. Words she deserved. She had let them all die. She had gone on adventures, been sucked into the madness of this place, fought a space dragon, had her brain opened by a weaver.
Worst of all—she had begun to feel at home.
And they had died, softly, without pain, while she played the adventuress. She deserved DeLaney’s bile, deserved the cold stare of Aleatra, but she did not deserve the pity in Kina’s eyes. She did not deserve the kindness shown to her by Haggard. She did not deserve anything but the revulsion of
decent human beings.
She had let them all die.
Eventually, they reached the entrance to the library. As before, half a dozen Drifts were in the pews, analysing and transcribing. She braced herself for an onslaught of low-toned voices, but all she heard was a low rumble of collective concentration.
She let her tensed shoulders drop, relieved at not hearing those voices all at once. Sweet-Sap and Old-Leaf shuffled out from a nook at the end of the library and turned toward her, Kina and Tai. Their leaves bristled and shook, but only slightly and too quick to catch the meaning. Kina and Tai were saying something, but Sara’s thoughts were somewhere else, and she couldn’t make out their whispers.
What did it matter now what anyone said, when the Venture crew was dead?
On the Venture, in the shower, while she washed the stink of Jhang’s tomb from her, Kina had come to her. Slipping into the shower beside her, reaching out a hand, wanting to give her solace. Sara had pushed her away. Screamed at her to get out. Get away. Leave her be. And then collapsed, naked on the deck, with the water running down her body, hiding her tears, her shuddering breaths, as Kina’s strong arms enfolded her with love not lust.
And held her quietly as she sobbed.
If only she could have… She would have… She might have…
It was the children that were the worst.
And then Miriam had come with her deal, and Sara had given up all that she had fought for, in memory of the small lifeless bodies piled up beside the pods.
Old-Leaf’s rasping voice cut through her grief.
“You want to take Telo now? Why is this?” His rheumy eyes focused solely on Sara.
She felt the orb within her inner jacket pocket, remembering the last time she and the Drift met, the revelation about Telo, the warnings about the knowledge, the prediction that she would know when to use it.
“It’s time, Old-Leaf. I need what’s inside Telo’s memory. Have you any luck in accessing it?”
“We have not,” Sweet-Sap interjected, cutting Old-Leaf off before he had a chance to reply. The two Drifts bristled at each other, and their voices murmured incoherent words, disguising their conversation from her, making her feel abandoned from them, distanced and estranged now that they knew what she could do, what she had been gifted.
“Then if you’d hand it over, we’ll be on our way,” Tai said with an edge to his words.
“Remember where you are, Tairon Cauder, and remember your crimes,” Old-Leaf said as two serpentine vines the thickness of a finger snaked out from his foliage.
Tai stepped back and stiffened.
“You hid paper from us, human, data; this won’t be forgotten.”
“Nothing is,” Tai added. “We haven’t come here for an argument. Sara wants her property back. We’ll be on our merry way and won’t darken your library again.”
Old-Leaf snatched back the vines and turned to Sara. “Are you sure this is what you want? You’d be safe here with us, doing good work.”
“No,” Sara said. She didn’t belong there, doing good work. She’d done enough ‘good’ work to last her a lifetime. She just wanted to get off the damned station and out of Hollow Space for good. “Telo, now, please.”
Old-Leaf didn’t move. Sweet-Sap’s branched limbs tensed as the two continued to argue, the tones like warring bass notes. Old-Leaf suddenly turned away and headed off into the depths of the library, his vines swirling around his trunk.
“It is your right,” Sweet-Sap said. “I’ll fetch it for you, but remember, Sara, what you find might not be what you’re looking for.” Before she could ask him what he meant, he shuffled off to the right into a separate wing of the library, passing Sharp-Thorn along the way. The two shook their leaves for a brief second as the rebudded Drift looked her way with what she felt was hate in his eyes.
Unable to hold his gaze, she looked beyond into the wing. The room was dark, lit by candlelight. Desks and bookshelves stretched off into the gloom. She saw the back of Bookworm hunched over a pile of books—his, no doubt. Sharp-Thorn joined him, stood behind him, his lithe limbs pressing down on Bookworm’s shoulders as the Drift leaned in and whispered something in his ear.
“The poor bastard looks broken,” Tai said.
“He wouldn’t be if you two hadn’t done something so damned reckless,” Kina added. “Honestly, Tai, what the hell were you thinking? Paper! Of all things to smuggle…”
Tai shrugged. “I was helping the lad out.”
For the first time since she met him, Sara knew him to be sincere.
Before Sara could go to Bookworm and tell him what happened, Sweet-Sap reappeared carrying a canvas sack, within which Telo was nestled. The blue crystals looked dull in the light of the library. She knew the backup battery wouldn’t have long left and Telo would be on emergency routines, powering down all but the most essential programs.
The Drift handed the sack to her. “I’m sorry about the stasis pods,” he said before heading off, leaving her there holding her captain, the last relic of the Venture, all the while trying not to collapse to her knees and burst into tears.
Kina placed a hand on her shoulder, sensing her pain. “Come on, girl. Let’s get to the scuttler and see what Telo knows.”
Sara just wanted to turn and hug her, feel Kina’s warmth seep into her, melt away the stabbing ice of pain inside her berg of a heart. “Thanks,” Sara said, choking back a sob. She took one last look toward the wing, hoping to catch Bookworm’s attention, but the hateful Sharp-Thorn stood in the way and stared at them before closing the sliding door, shutting Bookworm off from them.
Damn them, she thought, looking at the Drifts, who were uncaring about anything other than their precious frecking books and paper. Damn the whole frecking place. “We’re getting out of here,” Sara said, leading Tai and Kina out of the library. “This entire place can frecking burn for all I care.”
***
Tai closed the hatch on the ex-Markesian scuttler he’d lovingly labeled the Damnfine. Sara and Kina headed off down the short white-walled corridor to the central bridge area, which took up the majority of the ship. The round auditorium functioned as the main control center as well as the living quarters with fold-down bunks hinged into the white walls.
He couldn’t stop grinning as he ran his hand along the spotless control surfaces that arced around the outside of the bridge. There wasn’t a speck of dust or dirt anywhere to be found. He’d give the Markesians one thing; they knew how to keep a place clean.
As Sara and Kina set up Telo on top of a glass control panel, connecting its crystal cores to the ship’s ports and power supply, Tai admired the ship. It took him right back to when he’d first bought the Mary-May.
Just nineteen, he was fresh-faced and barely out from under his mother’s control—though he still owed her money, even then—when he picked up that old junker from a shady chyros. It took him and his hired goons—all dead now—to fix her up into a condition where she could be flown in Hollow Space.
He nearly totaled her on the maiden voyage. A damned Crown cruiser jumped barely half a click from his position. That was when he realized he had them. Reactions. Without even realizing what he’d done, he near ruptured the Mary-May’s hull with a maneuver that he never thought would have been possible.
But the thing that stayed with him from that lucky escape wasn’t relief or fear, but the buzz of excitement, the flood of adrenaline. For the first time in his adult life he felt alive. And with that were ideas that perhaps there was more to existence than what he’d experienced on Haven. Throughout his years, under his mother’s guidance, he’d worked cons, short and long, carried out reconnaissance and negotiated deals—all in the shadow of the dead planet.
No one would really speak about it, as though they would jinx themselves. A lot of that came from the Drifts and their research. The dead planet had become a great evil, a great unknowable thing, whose dark, dead appearance reminded all those in Hollow Space that there was once something
advanced and glorious there, but somewhere in the past a terrible event happened.
In their private time, Havenites would sometimes speculate on what happened, but it was frowned upon, like never speaking about the deals that failed or the beings killed on the quiet to wipe out a debt, like when Tai killed Felek.
Planet frecking taboo.
But all the time it was there, below them like a black marble, while they orbited around its darkness. He wouldn’t be happy until he knew what had happened down there. Because if he knew that, then he’d find a way out of Hollow Space and truly know what it was like to live.
Telo’s crystals flickered brightly like strobe lights. A hum electrified the atmosphere of the ship as the control panels also came on, routing power to the AI, overriding the limiting effects of Hollow Space. Tai rushed over to Sara and Kina, who leaned in close to it.
“Telo, it’s Sara. Can you hear me?”
Nothing.
The crystals pulsed slowly like a heartbeat.
Sara turned to the control panel and gestured her fingers across the holographic display written in the strange Markesian script.
“You understand that?” Tai asked.
“A little. We learned it in the Crown before we—” Sara broke off as her eyes became glossy. “Sorry, it’s just… I mean, before we set off for Bauron B, we’d already been warring with those damned bugs for decades. It was common training for copilots and navigators to study their language.”
Sara’s hands gestured faster as she decoded the instructions and meaning. A deep note came from all around them. Tai spun around, trying to work out where it was coming from, but this wave, this undulating sound smothered him from all directions like a blanket. “What the hell’s happening,” he asked.
“It’s Telo,” Sara said, turning her attentions to the AI. “I’m accessing his temporary Q-MEM. The scuttler doesn’t have enough power to boot up his main crystal drives.”
