Hollow Space Book 1: Venture (Xantoverse)

by T. F. Grant

  Sara began to hope.

  The hornets attacked when Tai and Tooize reached the halfway point across the gantry. They flew in from above and below, swooping down toward them and lashing up from under the gantry. They had been hanging there, waiting for them.

  Tooize blasted a clear space in front of the group with his two auto-shotguns. Tai fired above the big kronac’s head with his assault rifle. Dylan had two machine pistols and used them with surgical precision even as he ran. Whatever he shot at, he hit. Hornets fell around them, slamming into the gantry. Black slippery blood splashed everywhere. The gantry shuddered with each hit. Parts of the railings fell away; holes appeared in the metal beneath their feet.

  “They’ve sprayed acid on the gantry,” Kina yelled. “It’s weakening.”

  And still they ran on.

  Not far now, Sara told herself. She fired a burst from the hip. A hornet fell away just as it was about to strike Tai. Not far now. Not far…

  A talon lashed up from under the gantry and snagged her foot. She fell hard, the rifle falling from her hands. Only the strap stopped it skidding over the gantry and out into space.

  She screamed.

  Kina turned, lifted her rifle, and blasted the hornet away. Lofreal raced back, grabbed Sara, and yanked her to her feet, throwing her forward at a staggering run.

  An awful, cracking sound and the gantry snapped below Lofreal’s bulk, the half behind them tipping downward as the supports failed. Lofreal, with all the grace of an arboreal being, leapt across the gap. But two hornets lunged down, their stingers stabbing at the weak spots in the armor around her arms.

  Lofreal slammed into the remaining gantry, crushing one of the hornets with her bulk. Kina shot the other one. Sara turned, skidding on some of the black blood. She scrambled to her feet and threw herself at Lofreal.

  With a staggering amount of noise, half of the gantry behind them crashed down into the abyss, while the remaining half tipped downward as its supports started to weaken. Sara tumbled and fell down the steepening slope. She managed to grab a stanchion, which held her, and reached out to grip one of Lofreal’s hands.

  Lofreal’s grip was weak, and her eyes behind the visor wide with fear. Sara tried to hold her. Her legs locked around the stanchion, both her hands gripping one of Lofreal’s.

  The gantry tipped further, past forty-five degrees. The metal groaned.

  “No,” Lofreal whistled, her voice a whisper of notes. “No.”

  The kronac’s weight pulled at Sara, her grip on the stanchion weakening. She could feel the ancient metal cutting into her legs through the tough material of her spacesuit.

  The final supports under the gantry failed, and it fell, held only by the rapidly weakening thread of metal attaching it to the lip of the abyss. Sara gasped in pain when the full weight of Lofreal jerked at her shoulders. The kronac was so heavy, but she would not let go. She would not.

  “No.” Lofreal’s voice was almost nonexistent.

  “I won’t let you go,” Sara sobbed. “I won’t.”

  Lofreal reached up and grabbed hold of Sara’s hands. She should have been able to snap them off at the wrists, but her fingers were weak, almost out of her control, but still she pulled Sara’s hands away with a grimace of incredible effort on her face. “No.”

  And she fell.

  Tumbling, end over end, down into the void.

  ***

  Tai pulled the graphene rope from Kina’s pack while Tooize and Dylan kept the hornets away from Sara’s dangling form. The kronac had the minigun blazing in two hands and his auto-shotguns blasting away alongside it. A high-pitched screech issued from his mouth, ululating upward and downward as he fired. Tai knew that sound; it was the sound of kronac rage.

  Sara dangled from the end of the broken gantry by her legs. She seemed unable, or unwilling, to climb up. Tai lashed the rope around a heavy stanchion on the edge of the gantry, but kept hold of the end himself. He didn’t trust the metal. Kina ran the rope around her back and thighs.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  “Go,” Tai said.

  Kina turned and ran down the quivering remains of the gantry, the rope hissing across her palms and around her body. Sara turned her head, looking upward, trying to lift her arms, and then the stanchion between her legs snapped. She screamed, her voice echoing through the speakers.

  Kina dived into space, the rope uncoiling behind her. She grabbed Sara around the waist and came to an abrupt halt, with only a bare few meters of rope left.

  “Tooize,” Tai snapped.

  The big kronac continued to fire, his whining rage unpleasant on the ears.

  “Tooize! It’s Sara.” Tai kicked him in the thigh.

  The sound of the minigun died away. Tooize blinked and seemed to come back to himself. The auto-shotguns clattered on the deck. He grabbed the rope and began to pull.

  But the hornets saw the drama unfolding at the end of the dangling rope and redoubled their attack. Without the minigun and with only a couple of assault rifles, Tai and Dylan were hard-pressed to keep the jinking insects away from Sara and Kina.

  Then Scaroze was there. The huge auto-cannon in his hands, loaded with canister rounds like huge shotgun cartridges, containing hundreds of individual pellets. He blasted twenty hornets from the air with a single discharge.

  Tai and Dylan shot individual hornets away from Sara and Kina as the two women soared upward on the end of a rope pulled with all the strength of a raging kronac, but it was Scaroze’s auto-cannon that drove back the main mass of the hornets.

  Sara and Kina flew up over the edge of the drop, and Tooize grabbed them out of the air.

  “Go,” Tai yelled.

  Tooize raced along the corridor, the two women keeping pace. Dylan stopped firing for a moment to pick up the fallen auto-shotguns and stuffed them into his pack. He followed after them, firing short bursts from his rifle. Tai shook his head; there was coolness under fire and then there was utterly crazy.

  With Scaroze holding the rear with blast after blast of canister shot, they fled along the corridor to the airlock and the safety of the Damnfine. Tai buckled himself into the pilot’s seat. Scaroze closed the inner doors of the airlock, with Dylan firing the last of the ammo and grenades through the gap as the door closed.

  Kina buckled Sara into a seat and then clambered up to sit beside Tai.

  “How is she?”

  “She’ll be fine. Wrenched her shoulders and her back. But she’ll live.”

  Scaroze and Dylan clambered up the ramp.

  “You need to open the outer door,” Tai yelled as the Damnfine’s hatch closed behind him.

  Scaroze held up a detonator connected to a cable that snaked through the closing hatch. He wound the handle rapidly and then pressed the trigger. The explosion rocked the Damnfine, and the outer doors of the airlock blasted away into space. The Damnfine’s hatch closed, cutting the cable.

  Tai spun the ship and blasted into space.

  “Look,” Kina said.

  Tai looked back. The whole side of the Old Station’s hull bulged outward around where the library had been. Then it popped like a bubble without a sound in the vacuum of space.

  “Somebody blew out the bulkheads to extinguish the fire,” Dylan said.

  “Someone?”

  “Do you think the hornets did that?”

  “No,” Tai said. “I think they’re busy.” He pointed at the dark cloud issuing from openings all over the lower half of the Old Station.

  “They can fly in space?” Dylan said in disbelief.

  “Yup.”

  “Freck.”

  ***

  Sara lolled in her seat, unable to move without pain flaring through her shoulders and back. Lofreal had pulled her hands away; she had fallen because Sara was not strong enough to hold her weight. Would Kina have let the kronac fall? Would Tai? Would Dylan?

  They would have found a way. They would have been strong enough. Quick enough. They would have saved Lofreal. />
  But not her, not Sara Lorelle, cosseted navigator of the Venture. In the deepest part of her soul, Sara made a promise to herself. She would learn, she would train, she would not fail again out of weakness and fear.

  If they survived.

  Scaroze removed his helmet and smiled at her. “Good,” he whistled. “Your mind is healing. Now let us see to your body.” Gently, conscious of her gasps of pain, he removed her spacesuit. The Damnfine was twisting, dodging through space, but he held his balance on his short thick legs.

  “I tried to hold her,” Sara said. “I tried, Scaroze. I… I’m so sorry.”

  “She was a warrior. We always knew it might end like this. When two warriors mate…” His voice died away. “She was a warrior.” He pulled back her tunic, soaked through with her sweat, and touched her shoulders. “Tooize told me what you tried to do. It was a brave thing, an impossible thing for humans to try to hold the weight of a kronac by themselves. The clans will be told of what you tried to do, Sara Lorelle. They will be told of Lofreal’s sacrifice, but your bravery will make her sacrifice the greater.” He lifted a jar of evil-smelling salve and began rubbing it into her injured shoulders.

  “I’m sorry,” Sara repeated.

  “As am I, but she will be remembered. We will celebrate her life and remember her, and her death will be honored. Our children will know how their mother died.”

  “Oh God.” Children, motherless children. Sara had barely known Lofreal. She had not even known that she and Scaroze were mated until a few hours ago, yet the kronac had given her life for Sara’s. How could she ever repay such a debt? She couldn’t. Closing her eyes, she let the warmth of the salve seep into her flesh. She let it calm her and then asked, “What’s happening?”

  “The hornets are chasing us. We must fly through the debris field and hope we do not hit a time bubble. For then they will catch us, and then we will die.”

  The heat from the salve worked its way into Sara’s shoulders, relieving the pain of the damaged muscles and ligaments.

  “This salve will heal your injuries. It is made from the bark of a Bosam Tree. Very powerful. But you must be careful for a while. You must not strain the flesh while it is healing.” With great care, Scaroze turned her onto her front and rubbed more of the salve into her lower back.

  The heat soaked into Sara’s back. “Get me to Tai,” she said.

  “You must lie still, it—”

  Sara cut across the kronac’s words. “I know where the time bubbles are.”

  “Impossible.”

  “I always know where things are.” Sara did not have time to explain. “It… it is a skill. Please. Get me to Tai.”

  Scaroze lifted her and carried her to the cockpit.

  ***

  “Time bubble,” Kina yelled. “Straight ahead.”

  Tai spotted the halted fragments in the debris field. He stamped on the pedals, jerked the stick to the left, and closed down the throttle to let the Damnfine turn; then he slammed the throttle wide open. The ship skewed on a tangent from its previous course, skimming through the gravel-sized fragments around the time bubble.

  That was too damn close. Going at this speed, if only half the ship entered the time bubble, the hull would be torn in half. It would happen. He knew it would happen. Even his reflexes were not up to this challenge.

  The asteroids, the hulks, the rocks large and small were not a problem. He could see those. He could fly through those at max velocity for fun, and he had done so in other parts of Hollow Space. But the time bubbles were invisible; they could only be seen by the effect they had on the rubble and wreckage passing through them. Sooner or later they would hit empty ones, as they did on the way in.

  And then there were the hornets.

  They could not use the guns, not when they were in the debris field. The recoil could throw off Tai’s piloting at just the wrong time and throw them into a time bubble. So they just had to try to avoid the hornets, which flashed by the nose of the ship, their wings furled in tight around their bodies, flying through space by some sort of Xantonian effect that Tai could not understand. They were not as fast as the Damnfine, not in a straight line, but in the debris their smaller more maneuverable bodies allowed them to keep up with the ship.

  Tai heard Kina say, “I’m busy, Scaroze.” She, like him, could not take her eyes from the view outside the viewport.

  He jinked to avoid a cluster of rocks and heard a banging sound from the hull behind him.

  “Hornets on the hull,” Tooize whistled. “They’ll get through with their acid.”

  “That button,” Sara said. “The yellow one, with the symbol like an inverted V. Hit it.”

  “What?”

  “Kina, hit it.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Tai saw Kina hit something on her console. Instantly the Damnfine became more sluggish at the controls. Tai fought to get her around the huge bulk of a broken-open freighter.

  Tooize whistled, “They disintegrated.”

  “Hit it again,” Sara said.

  Kina hit the button again, and the controls returned.

  “What the freck was that?” Tai asked.

  “Electromagnetic shields, part of the tiles on the outside of the ship,” Sara said. “They draw power from the resistance wheels because their gennies failed in Hollow Space.” Sara’s hand pointed through the viewport. “There’s a time bubble there, about ten klicks and closing. It’s a big one. We skim it and we might get a few of the hornets trapped.”

  Tai adjusted the controls.

  “Are you crazy?” Kina asked, pausing briefly. “Don’t bother answering that.” She unstrapped and got out of the chair. “This is your seat, my girl. And if you cause me to be blown into a fine mist across Hollow Space, you will never know what downtime with me is like.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t want to miss that.” Sara kissed her.

  “Hey,” Tai snapped. “Flying here. Flying frecking blind here.”

  Sara gingerly sat down. Scaroze leaned across and strapped her in. “Thank you.”

  “Sara, where is the bloody time bubble?”

  “Do you know Crown orientation code?” Sara asked.

  Tai took his left hand from the throttle. He held it out flat. “Pitch.” He bent it up and down at the wrist. “Angle.” He waggled it from side to side. “Yaw.” He turned it from the wrist.

  In space a ship had no real frame of reference for directions, so they used the ship itself. Drawing three imaginary lines through the center of the ship’s hull to represent the three dimensions.

  “Good. Set course pitch minus-ten, angle zero, yaw forty-five. I’ll adjust as we get closer.”

  Tai pitched the nose of the Damnfine down below the imaginary line drawn from her bow to her stern, left the horizontal angle of the wings level, and yawed the ship around the imaginary line that rose directly through the center of the ship.

  Even while Tai threw the ship around debris in their way, Sara kept adjusting the course, quietly and calmly. Tai followed her instructions to the letter. He had to trust her; he had no choice.

  “Angle two-seventy, now,” she snapped.

  Tai tipped the Damnfine over to the left. Looking through the viewport, he could see the gravel trapped in the time bubble. It looked so close it was almost as if he could reach out and touch it.

  “Hornets trapped, about forty of the buggers,” Kina yelled from the rear viewports. “Oh, here it comes, here it comes. Hah, got squished by a big old asteroid.”

  Tai laughed. “Glad to have you aboard, Sara Lorelle.”

  “Glad to be here, Tairon Cauder.” Sara continued giving him instructions. They skimmed time bubbles all the way through the field, and the hornets had to pull back and not follow so closely.

  But they kept following.

  And they didn’t stop when they left the debris field and its time bubbles behind.

  “Shit,” Tai said. “They’re going to follow us all the way to Haven.”

  “W
ell, we did set fire to their home,” Sara said.

  “Yeah, there is that.”

  ***

  It was a stern chase now. A long chase. In open space, the Damnfine could outpace the hornets, but Tai could not keep the throttle open the whole way. He would use up too much fuel. So they coasted at high velocity to the next junkyard of floating hulks, and the hornets used their greater maneuverability to close the gap.

  Scaroze massaged more of the salve into Sara’s injuries from time to time, but she was still in no fit state to pilot the ship. So she sat in the right-hand seat, studying the controls. Something about some of the symbols intrigued her.

  Kina or Tooize flew the Damnfine, only calling on Tai when there was a need for his extreme skills. They were still twenty hours out from Haven, no pilot could hope to maintain concentration for so long.

  Finally, Scaroze managed to persuade Sara to sleep. She stretched out in one of the bunks and closed her eyes. It didn’t seem possible that she could sleep after all she had seen, the monstrosities, the death of Lofreal, the… exhaustion sagged into her, dragging her, finally, off to sleep.

  ***

  Sara woke up and tried to move. Her back muscles protested as she attempted to sit up quickly. She waited a second until the pain subsided and got gingerly to her feet.

  Sara visited the bathroom and then made her way up to the cockpit.

  Kina was in the pilot’s seat. “Hey, beautiful, you’re awake, then?”

  “How long did I sleep for?”

  “About fourteen hours. It’s the kronac salve. Surprised you managed to fight it off for as long as you did.”

  “Oh, right, no wonder I feel so refreshed.”

  “How’s the back?”

  “Still sore.”

  “The shoulders?”

  Sara moved them experimentally. “They feel fine.”

  “Good stuff that kronac salve.”

  “Are the hornets still following?”