by Allen Wold
"He said he could carry only three or four of us," Denny said.
"Look at that wiring," Falyn said. "How can you run a star-ship with wiring?"
"We've got to find another ship," Sukiro said. She stared around the hangar in a futile effort to find one that looked familiar.
Behind them they could hear the sounds of the Tschagan trying to break through the sealed iris. It wouldn't hold for long, the Tschagan would have heavy equipment for repair work, and it was just a matter of time before it was brought and set to the task.
"The further we go," Rikard said, shocked at the sound of his voice, "the longer they'll have to look for us once they break in."
"Save your breath," Sukiro told him, but she and Raebuck started walking him away from the sound of the Tschagan.
"You can't judge the capacity by the size," Denny said as they passed ship after ship.
~I think I can,~ Droagn said, ~to an extent. That one is mostly hollow, but I'd bet it was a cargo ship.~
"It looks like one," Sukiro said. "I think. But mote important, we've got to find one that's functional." She turned to Droagn. "Can you tell that too?"
~Not very well,~ Droagn answered. ~But I can tell if a ship has residual power.~
They did not go in a straight line, but rather tacked off to the right and wove between ships, in order to put as many of them as possible between them and the iris. They passed by several ships that were obviously nonfunctional, or obviously too small, or that Droagn said had insufficient internal space in spite of their size. But at last they came to one that Droagn said seemed to have lots of room inside as well as residual power.
They had thought Droagn's ship was unusual, but this one was even stranger. There was a clearly defined flicker spike, but it had seven small rings around it. Above that was a bundle of vertical cylinders, probably six around a central seventh, in lieu of the inertial drive. Then there was a wasp-waist, with a thin disk at the narrowest part, and above that a half-sphere surmounted by a larger sphere, with another sphere the size of the first atop that.
"Is there anything better nearby?" Sukiro asked Droagn.
~I can't tell.~ The Ahmear reached up to adjust the crown on his head. ~I really don't know how this thing works.~
"If we can get inside," Iturba said, "the Tschagan will have a hard time finding us, and it sounds like they've almost broken through the iris."
"That's a good point," Sukiro said. "The trick is, where is the hatch, and how do we get to it?"
"I think I can help," Grayshard said. "Take me to the ship."
Droagn slithered over to the platform above which the ship was floating, and up onto it. ~What's holding the ship up?~ he asked, ~I thought the gravity would cut off here.~
"More likely a specific repulsion field," Falyn said as Gray-shard climbed down off Droagn's shoulders and over to the tip of the flicker spike.
The Vaashka reached up with a bundle of fibers and took hold of the spike, then crawled up it toward the first of its disks. They presented him no obstacle, he just flowed around them. And where he flowed the surface of the ship was stained a dark, thin, iridescent red.
Grayshard continued to climb, almost as quickly as he could move along the ground, spread out in a web of fibers so as to present as much of himself to the ship's surface as possible. He slowed a bit as he navigated the overhanging cylinders of what they assumed was the inertial drive, then went more quickly again up the first part of the wasp-waist. He had to spread himself very thin as he crawled along the underside of the disk above that, but there was never any question about the firmness of his hold. Where the way was more difficult, the trail of red corrosion he left behind just got darker and more iridescent. Even if he had fallen, the air resistance over his now greatly distributed surface area would have let him land unharmed, especially in the station's reduced gravity.
As he climbed, Sukiro issued commands to the goons, who spread out, facing in the direction they had come, prepared, to meet an attack.
"I've got a hatch," Grayshard called down from the equator of the largest, central sphere.
"Can you open it?" Sukiro called back. Back at the hangar entrance there was a rapid series of small explosions, then silence.
"I think so," Grayshard called down. Though the iris was not visible from here, the goons were ready, and the surviving pirates, now fewer than two hundred, took cover behind them.
From the iris came a strange ripping sound.
~They're inside,~ Droagn said.
"So am I," Grayshard called down. "Just a minute."
The people below waited. There were no further sounds from the iris. ~They're taking their time,~ Droagn said. ~Relatively speaking. ~
Then there was a whining from overhead, and Rikard looked up to see a hexagonal opening in the side of the largest sphere, from which a beaded cable was descending toward the deck.
"Let's not waste any time," Sukiro said. "Wounded first."
The end of the cable touched the edge of the platform. The wounded goons who were able to immediately started climbing. Those who could not were carried up by other goons using their armor's power assist. Raebuck picked up Rikard and lifted him up toward the hatch. Droagn followed immediately after, coiling tightly around the cable and using all four hands to good advantage. The cable creaked under his weight.
The chamber inside the hatch was of a peculiar shape, neither cubical nor spherical nor wedge shaped, but oddly angled with no clearly defined deck. Several of the inner surfaces had other hatches, now open as those who had come in first made way for those to follow. Beyond were other spaces, equally as irregular if larger.
Grayshard was pressed against the side of the external hatch, a bundle of his fibers disappeared into the crevices of a control panel. Rikard couldn't help but think how useful a talent like that would be in opening safes and other locked doors. Droagn's head appeared in the outer hatch, then the goons with Rikard carried him farther into the strange ship.
There were no features to this next chamber, but panels on most of the surfaces hinted that whatever equipment and furniture the original owner had used was kept out of sight. It was still crowded injiere, as the pirates began to come in through the hatch, so they moved farther in.
The next chamber was much as the first, somewhat larger, and longer. Here there were what looked like handles set into the walls, between the corners and panels, where there weren't other hatches. It didn't look like there were corridors here at all.
At last Rikard heard a thin whining sound coming from the area of the outer hatch, and a moment later a dull thud as it closed. A moment after that Sukiro came through the hexagonal inner hatch between chambers. "Which way's the damn bridge?"
"We're looking for it," Falyn said.
"This place has been stripped," Sukiro said. "Look at those brackets."
"I thought they were handles," Rikard said.
"Maybe this is a dead ship after all," Falyn said.
~There's power here,~ Droagn said, ~I can feel it.~
Then somebody called from another part of the ship, and word was relayed, they'd found the bridge—maybe.
"Find room for everybody," Sukiro told Iturba. Then she started toward the supposed bridge.
"I'm coming too," Rikard said.
"The hell you are," Sukiro told him, "you're bleeding all over the place."
Rikard looked down at the slanting surface on which he was sitting. There was more blood there than he liked to acknowledge was his. His shirt was soaked with it, and the front of his pants—and now his seat as well.
~I’ll carry him,~ Droagn said as Grayshard came into the chamber. The Ahmear reached down and picked Rikard up with all four arms, making him as comfortable as possible. Droagn felt as if he were made of iron.
They followed directions from other goons in other chambers, all polyhedral, of different sizes and shapes, until at last they came to one mat was very much larger, perhaps ten meters across. Its outer walls were
composed of so many facets that it might almost have been spherical.
And it did sort of look like a bridge. At least there were what could have been viewscreens, set into many of the faces of the chamber, though they were placed almost at random. And there were several clusters of instruments and possibly controls, projecting from some of the larger facets, but they too were positioned in nonsensical places. Except for one set, which composed a half-meter sphere held in the middle of the chamber by four finger-thin rods, tetrahedrally arranged, connecting it to the walls. The only thing wrong was that it was out of reach from any of the slanting surfaces that now served as the deck.
All the able goons present set the gravity-enhancers in their armor to reverse, so that they could float around the chamber and look over the equipment. There were signs that there might have been other furniture here, but it had long since been removed.
"At least the electronics seem undamaged," Jasime said. "None of the panels have been tampered with."
"Keep your hands off everything," Sukiro ordered.
And then Rikard felt a wave of dizziness. He was glad Droagn was holding him so securely. He lost interest in what was going on around him and just let himself relax.
~He's passing out,~ he heard Droagn say, wondered for a moment who the Ahmear was talking about, then felt himself being put gently on the slanting deck.
"We need a medic here," Raebuck called. Her voice sounded very far away, but when Rikard looked for her, he saw she was kneeling over him. Almost at once another face came into view. It was Sameth, one of the goons who had been left on the gunship. How had he gotten here? His helmet was off, and he was trying to undo Rikard's jacket. Rikard fluttered his hands up to keep the goon away, but Raebuck undid the fastenings, and she and Sameth opened his jacket and his meshmail.
"He's been hit three times," Sameth said. He shook his head. "I don't have the equipment to deal with this." His face receded as he sat back.
"Oh, well," Rikard sighed, or thought he did. He wasn't feeling too much pain now, just a distant ache in his chest. The blood, the lack of pain, the feeling, of lethargy and dizziness. His wounds were fatal. Dammit, it wasn't fair, there was so much to be done.... They shouldn't be wasting time with him, they had to warn people about the Tschagan.
"Don't talk crazy," Raebuck said. "We're going to get out of here."
"I don't think so," Rikard said. His voice was a mere whisper.
"Be still. Save your strength."
"Do as she says," Sukiro said. Rikard could barely turn his head to see the Major kneeling beside him. Where had that other goon gone?
"Where's Darcy?" Rikard started to say, "I need to talk to Darcy."
"After we get you to a hospital," Sukiro told him.
Nearest one's only four days away, Rikard said, or thought he did, but the words sounded like coughing instead, and he saw drops of blood splattering on Raebuck's armor.
A creamy white tangle of coarse fibers, tipped in red, swam into his view. He heard a monotonous voice saying something, but it was a moment before the words made any sense. "Can you trust me?" Grayshard had asked.
Rikard tried to breathe, but he was strangling on something. He coughed again, deliberately, to clear his throat. "What have I got to lose," he said.
Then the tangle of fibers that was Grayshard descended on him, over his face, and he could feel the Vaashka's tendrils weaving a web around his head, along his upper spine. For an instant he felt utter panic, the Tathas were going to eat him, and then he felt a wonderful dark lethargy spread over him, not a nightmare, and he remembered that Grayshard wasn't a Tathas after all, and let himself sink down into a kind of trance.
He watched, unfeeling, uncaring, as goons crawled along the surfaces of the bridge, as Grayshard worked thick strands of tendrils into each of the wounds on his chest, as Denny, on the edges of his vision, moved here and there, as Raebuck at last stood up from his side and went to stand beside Sukiro. Where was Droagn?
The movements of the goons seemed to take on a symbolic significance. He felt strange movements inside his chest, a counterpoint to that movement, that also held mystic meaning somehow. He saw Droagn at last, looming up behind Sukiro and Raebuck, felt reassured by that somehow, saw a thin matting of white tendrils cover his face, woven into complex patterns he couldn't understand.
Though there was no pain, none at all anymore, it seemed as though there were thousands of tiny fires in his chest. He could almost see the light shining out of him, illuminating the basket-work writhing in front of him, underlighting the faces of his friends. His chest seemed to swell, then to shrink. There was a feeling of—departure?—then a pearly gray sense of distance and rest.
And then, as if he were just waking up, he came to his senses.
He looked up, through the network of Gray shard's tendrils, which dropped down out of sight as Sukiro knelt beside him. Endark Droagn was behind her.
"You're going to be all right," Sukiro said.
"I think he is," Grayshard said. The mechanical nature of his voice could not conceal his fatigue.
Filled with a sense of wonder and surprise mingled with relief, Rikard sat up. He had been convinced that he was going to die. He looked around the strange chamber and had to restrain himself from laughing. Thinking about the trouble they still had to deal with helped. Everybody was looking at him, with ill-concealed expressions of fascination. Beside him, Grayshard was a flaccid pile of fibers.
"This one needs help too," a strange voice said. Rikard turned and saw the one surviving Vaashka administrator "standing" in the doorway. Private Colder accompanied him, her face both frightened and angry.
"This thing," Colder said, "I couldn't stop it."
"What do you want here?" Sukiro demanded. She started to draw her blaster though she didn't dare fire it in here.
"This one," the Vaashka said—it had a voicebox like Gray-shard's—"puts shame on me. S'he has expended much. I can fix."
"You just stay where you are," Denny said. She had drawn her jolter. It couldn't damage the ship but it would shock the Vaashka.
"Let s'hem come," Grayshard said. "I need help."
The Vaashka came forward a bit. Denny backed away but kept her jolter aimed. Then the Vaashka flowed toward Grayshard, and when it got to him, entwined its tendrils in his. "This one is a hero," the Vaashka said. "S'he deserves to live."
There was a moment of silence, then Grayshard used his vocalizer so the others could hear, "You still must pay for your crimes."
"If I must then I shall," the Vaashka said.
After another moment Grayshard began to bunch himself up. "I will need rest," he vocalized, "but I thank you." The other Vaashka squashed down flat on the deck. "And you need rest too," Grayshard said to Rikard. "The healing has begun, but it is not finished. I have done all I can."
Rikard stared at the figure of Grayshard, which reminded him so much of the terror of the Tathas. Then he reached out and put his ungloved right hand in among Grayshard's tendrils. It was a token handshake. "I owe you my life," he said, "and I won't waste it. But if we don't get out of here, more than one life will be wasted."
He started to stand, and Raebuck and Sukiro helped him. "Does anybody know how this ship works?" he asked as he got to his feet.
"We haven't figured it out yet," Falyn said. "I don't know if we ever will." She looked up at the central sphere of controls and screens, where five goons were using hand-held sensing devices.
"That's not the right place," Rikard said. He looked around until he saw a small panel on one surface within reach of what now served as the deck. "That's it," he said.
"How do you know?" Sukiro asked.
"Call it instinct," Rikard said. "Now help me get over to it."
4
Sukiro and Raebuck helped Rikard to his feet, then, with Droagn following and with Grayshard again on the Ahmear's shoulders, helped him to the small console he had pointed out.
The whole of the console was mayb
e a meter across. The main feature was a set of seven hexagonal viewscreens clustered in the center, and from each screen but the central one was a radiating line of toggles and blank circular readouts, and at the end of each line an arc of five push buttons.
The surface on which the console was located was slanted at a rather large angle, and it was easier for Rikard to lie on his stomach on the sloping deck than to try to stand in front of the console and lean forward. He made himself as comfortable as he could and looked over the array. Even as he did so, the central screen came to life, though it remained blank.
"Who did that?" he asked. He rolled onto his side so he could look around the chamber. There were goons at every other console except the one suspended in the middle of the room.
"Did what?" Dyson asked.
"I touched the middle screen here," Yansen said, halfway around the nearly spherical wall.
"That makes sense," Rikard said. "Now everybody, hands off, and keep your eyes on the screens."
He touched the middle one in front of him. There were murmurs from around the place. "It's gone off again," Yansen said.
"This one was on too," Lisobria said, "and now it's off."
Rikard touched the central screen again. At each workstation, the central screen of a group, or the only screen if there was just one, came on. He touched each of the other screens in turn. They lit up, as did the corresponding screens, where they existed, at each of the other workstations.
There were other features besides the screens, toggles, readouts, and push buttons. One was a slightly raised shape, reminiscent of that of the ship, between the bottom line of controls and the next one left. Rikard touched it, and one of his outside screens cleared to show a portion of the hangar deck.
"Anybody else get a picture?" he called out.
The response was about half affirmative, and each scene was different, though all were of the outside of the ship.
"Wait a minute," Fresno said. "There's something moving out there."
"What is it?" Sukiro asked.
