Escape Velocity

by Jason M. Hough

  “I just have a bad feeling about this plan of Prumble’s.”

  “Why?”

  “Remember what that captain from Earth said? We have two things the Scipios desperately want.” He held up a finger. “Earth’s location.” Then another finger. “Immunes. And yet here we are, with both of those prizes in our possession, and we’re trying to make contact with them. We should be getting as far away from here as possible, Tania. Or are we really willing to sacrifice our own world just to save Eve’s?”

  The second thing the Scipios wanted was the ability to fold space, but Tania decided not to correct the man. The point still stood. She said, “Of course not. But it’s not like we’re seeking them out to have a chat. We’re doing this only to find out where they keep their spacecraft.”

  “We know where they keep them. In space. Not in some dusty, ugly tomb like this. Besides, and I mean no disrespect, but you and I both know that leaving is the last thing on your mind right now.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  Tim bit back a retort, weighed his words. “Sorry, you’re right.”

  Tania couldn’t leave it at that. “I stood beside Vanessa in Colorado as a friend of ours died. Skyler, as you well know, is a dear friend who has saved my life more than once, a favor I’ve been privileged enough to return and would do so again. So, fine, you all want to leave and I’m going along with that. But if you think for a second I’m not going to take any opportunity that might arise to find out the fate or whereabouts of our friends, you’re not the person I thought you were, Tim.”

  “Okay, okay. I said you’re right.”

  She caught her breath. “I didn’t mean that to sound harsh. I just—”

  Tim’s upheld hand stopped her. He came to a crouch, eyes cast upward, head tilted slightly. “Listen,” he whispered.

  Her suit, reacting to brain impulses, amplified the exterior sounds. Tim’s foot adjusting slightly on the smooth floor. Prumble, moving up from behind. Of Sam and Vaughn she heard nothing, but they’d scouted well ahead to the end of the corridor. She heard the low, constant hum of air circulation, and beneath that, the sounds of power and fluids and who knew what else being routed from one part of the vast space station to another. All of it came through with perfect fidelity.

  There, a new sound. Footfalls, she thought, and a lot of them. Tania tensed. Came to a crouch of her own, coiled and ready. This had to be it. The inevitable security response to this breach.

  The sound seeped through the wall to her left, giving only minimal indication of the source’s location.

  “Too many to fight,” Prumble whispered, moving up beside them.

  Tania nodded. “We should move. Catch up with Sam.”

  “I think they’re coming to us,” Tim noted, his gaze on the hall ahead.

  Two lights bounded toward them through the darkness. Sam came into view, Vaughn trailing a few seconds behind, burdened with the extra weight of the aura shard.

  “What is it?” Tania asked.

  “Scipios,” Sam replied. “A lot of them.”

  “Security?”

  She shook her head. “No idea. Considering we just blew up a crap ton of their ships, I’m guessing maybe?”

  “Did they see you?” Prumble asked.

  Again Sam shook her head. Vaughn spoke for her. “We’d only just cracked open a door. Scipios were pouring in from half a dozen different places.”

  “It was like they’d just arrived or something,” Sam added.

  A silence settled. Tania decided to ask the question. “Now what?”

  “Grab one,” Vaughn answered.

  Prumble nodded.

  “Just a second,” Tim said. “Before we add kidnapping to our list of transgressions, can we think about this?”

  “It was your fuckin’ idea, mate,” Vaughn said.

  “Actually it was Prumble’s. But let’s not point fingers. Look, they had to have come here from somewhere, right? What if a ship just docked?”

  “What if one did?”

  “I say we take it.”

  “Wait,” Prumble said. “Do you actually think some random alien police bus is going to be capable of getting us all the way back to Earth?”

  Tim shook his head, frustrated. “Of course not. But perhaps it could get us to a shipyard. And if it has a pilot, which seems likely, we might learn everything we need about what’s where, and get a ride as part of the bargain.”

  “A lot of ‘buts’ and ‘mights’ in that plan,” Sam observed. “But you make a good point. For now I say we get out of this hallway. We’re not going anywhere with a force of that size milling about.”

  “Agreed,” Prumble said. “I’ve been checking the rooms we pass. Two doors back, a big…machine room, or something. Plenty of space, and places to hide. Defensible, if it comes to that.”

  “Lead on,” Sam said.

  —

  They hunkered down in Prumble’s machine room, though to Tania it looked rather worryingly like a fuel depot. Rows of huge metal silos, along with a maze of pipes and tubing that snaked across walls, floor, and ceiling alike.

  Sounds that could all be lumped into a general “life support” category drowned out all else, and within minutes Tania could see the shifting unease of Sam’s and Vaughn’s demeanors. This was equal parts a hiding place and a cell. Not exactly the style of the warrior couple. Prumble, meanwhile, had parked himself near the back of the room and lay down, arms around his belly, fingers laced together. Tim just paced. For a while Tania watched him, wondering what had changed. Assertive had never been a word she, or anyone else they’d worked together with, might use to describe him, but he’d certainly become that.

  She could just ask him. Talk it over. That’s what friends do, after all. The thought saddened her, because just now she wanted only to find the others.

  Aura shard tucked under one arm, Tania wandered between the silos, wondering what they stored or if that was even their purpose. How easy it was to immediately lay her own preconceptions on what she saw.

  At the back corner, her gaze ran up the side of one container, looking for markings her visor might translate. It was a dark, hulking thing, something she would have presumed abandoned if not for the faint sounds it emitted. The Scipios were not big fans of lighting and status indicators, it seemed, though she had to remind herself she’d looked upon only a tiny, tiny fraction of their vast infrastructure. And there was still the planet below. The great unknown.

  She saw nothing that might indicate what function the silo served, but she did find something else. “Sam?” she called. Not close enough for the short range, apparently, she moved back toward the doors and tried again. “Sam, come look at this.”

  It took a moment for Sam to find her in the maze. “What’s up?”

  “I’m not sure, but I think it might be another way out of here. That might be useful, right?”

  Tania led her to the back, and pointed. At the very top of the high wall, some ten meters above, was a large round depression, covered by some kind of grate or netting, total darkness beyond.

  “Huh,” Sam said, and began to climb and jump her way up to the grate, using the dozens of pipes and support trusses on both wall and adjacent silo to support her. At the top she stood on the roof of the silo and switched on her headlamp, leaning to peer through the slats of the grate.

  After a moment she turned and looked down. “Come on up, let’s see what’s inside.”

  By now Vaughn had wandered over. Tim, Tania noted, stood several meters away, watching from a distance. Prumble still dozed, presumably.

  “I’ll go,” Vaughn said.

  “No,” Sam replied with patience. “Tania spotted it, she goes. Besides, if anything goes wrong we’ll need some gallant knight to come save us.”

  “All right, piss off.”

  “Love you, too. C’mon, Tania.”

  She climbed, mimicking Samantha’s path as best she could, which wasn’t nearly as graceful due to having to maneuver t
he aura shard as well. It was light, almost weightless, but damn if it wasn’t awkward to move about. Every little push against it sent it floating away with no sign of slowing down.

  At the top, Sam helped her onto the roof of the massive silo. To Tania’s surprise, the grate had been opened. Sam must have seen her expression. She said, “Gave it a little push, just to test the strength, and it rotated back.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that.” Without anther word, Sam leapt across the two-meter gap between silo and wall.

  When she stopped and turned, Tania held the small aura shard before her like some offered gift, then propelled it across. The device floated as if on a cushion of air. Sam adjusted her position, caught it, then waited.

  Tania made the jump. Not as hard as it looked in the reduced gravity. She landed beside Sam and took her shard back, holding it aloft in the cupped palm of her hand, a position that made her feel like some kind of sorceress from a fairy tale.

  The space appeared to be one end of an umbilical tube, or something like it. The undulating surface curved away from her, bending upward ninety degrees and running off out of sight. Sam wasted no time. She squirmed up into it and then paused to let Tania join her, catching the aura shard, as if Tania had floated her a balloon. When Tania caught up again, Sam gave the device back and continued up into the next elbow of the tube. This continued for four lengths until, finally, they reached a flat section that spanned about five meters, ending at another grated hatch like that through which they’d entered. Shifting light poured in through the horizontal slats, illuminating a fine particulate that drifted lazily in the air. Tania set her aura shard on the floor, and together she and Sam approached the end of the tunnel. Bent at the waist, Tania moved up to the narrow openings and looked through.

  A wide hallway ran from her left to right, the far edge of it a railing rather than a wall, though what it looked out on she could not tell. The air was absolutely choked with the thick powdery substance the aliens so loved.

  Scipios ambled past, oblivious to the thick haze. Some walked alone, some in quiet conversation with one or two others. They wore a variety of colored bodysuits and headgear.

  Across the hall, in the murk beyond the railing, Tania thought she saw shapes flowing downward. The shapes were vague, though the mystery did not take long to resolve itself. As she watched, a Scipio walking in the hallway before her moved to the railing, mounted it like a bird perching on a fence, then leaned forward and fell. Her breath caught in her throat until the creature spread its arms and let the long flaps of skin that connected forearm to calf fill with wind. The creature glided gracefully from view. Those shapes falling through the haze now registered as Scipios, floating downward. A simple and natural mode of transportation for a creature so equipped.

  “So many of them,” Tania whispered.

  “I know.”

  “They don’t look like a security force at all.”

  “Yeah,” Sam said, sounding more than a little embarrassed at her earlier assessment. “You know what they remind me of? Students shuffling around campus between classes.”

  Tania had little experience with that style of education, but she’d seen enough old sensories to appreciate the analogy. “What do we do? Go back?”

  Sam hesitated. “Any idea what’s gotten into Tim?” she asked.

  Tania glanced at her. “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean. The bloke kills a few swarmers and suddenly he’s trying to tell everyone what to do.”

  Tania considered the other woman. “I think maybe you just answered your own question. Anyway, what’s the problem? If I recall, you agreed with his suggestion that we leave without Skyler or Vanessa.”

  “I do agree.”

  “Then what are you concerned about?”

  “Just because I agree doesn’t mean I think the idea came from a sound mind.”

  Tania said nothing.

  “My fear,” Sam explained, “is that if he’s willing to leave some of us behind, perhaps he’s willing to leave all of us behind. He seems…I don’t know, agitated.”

  The words left Tania speechless. Sam turned back to the vents, studying the Scipios that wandered back and forth, or floated down and out of view.

  “You really think we should just leave?” Tania asked, finally. “After everything you and Skyler have been through together?”

  Sam shrugged. “The wanker left me for dead on Gateway Station once. Fair’s fair, isn’t it?”

  “You don’t really mean that.”

  “Nah, ’course not.” Sam offered a sympathetic smile. “But Tim’s got a point. Our commitment to Eve ended when she did. None of us agreed to a suicide mission. So I figure sure, we find a way out of here and in the meantime, we keep our eyes open for our missing friends. Keep our eyes on the friends we’ve got with us, too. We don’t owe that fancy computer bitch or her kind anything now. Yeah?”

  “Computer,” Tania whispered, Sam’s choice of word knocking something loose in her mind.

  “Huh?”

  Tania turned to Sam. “When Blackfield took over Anchor Station, he started with the computers.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “We don’t need to talk to the Scipios, we need to talk to their systems.”

  For a split second Sam just stared at her, brow furrowed. Slowly she started to nod. “That’s not a bad idea,” she said, finally. Then added, thoughtfully, “Seems even less plausible than speaking their language, though.”

  Tania frowned.

  A second later Sam straightened. “So we do both.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The woman grinned. “I bet one of these blokes can show us how to use their tech.” She turned to the ventilation grate and settled in to wait.

  —

  It didn’t take long for their moment to come. A brief sound rolled through the space station, signaling something. An end to rush hour traffic, evidently, and that was all Sam cared about.

  After the booming noise finished echoing through the vast hallway and the…“fallway,” Tania supposed, beyond…the foot traffic died out almost completely. It really did have the feel of university. Or maybe it had been a call to the start of their workday. She shook her head. These were aliens. They had their own culture, much of which would be derived from the specifics of their original home system, no doubt. Did they even observe a day-night cycle, physically? Did they educate themselves in the same nonoptimized, tradition-steeped way that humans used to?

  Again I project myself onto what I observe, she thought. A trap, in truth, and she vowed then and there to not fall into it. The wrong assumption here could mean the end of everything.

  Vaughn joined them, his sudden presence at Tania’s shoulder almost giving her a heart attack.

  “Don’t sneak up on me like that,” she whispered.

  “Right,” Vaughn replied. “Next time I should shout my presence for all to hear?”

  “Next time use the suit,” Tania snapped. Her pulse began to abate. “Sorry, I’m just—”

  “It’s all right,” he said. He looked to Sam. “Sit-rep?”

  Sam rolled her eyes at his clipped military tone. She filled him in on the plan all the same.

  “What are we waiting for?” he asked.

  Tania shushed them both, her suit picking up a faint sound, reminding her of the noise her parachute had made in Hawaii when Skyler had let it drift away. That soft rustling. The noise grew and, a few seconds later, a Scipio came gliding in through the haze of the fallway. It landed on the railing and deftly hopped down onto the tiled floor of the hall, just a few meters away from Tania. She looked at Sam, who nodded.

  “Get ready,” Sam whispered.

  When the Scipio had done its oddly elegant walk and gone a few steps away, Tania opened the grating and slipped out into the hall. She glanced left, then right. Nobody around save the lone creature. There was always one, wasn’t there? Late to class, late
to work, late to whatever business the Scipios had here. Tania moved toward it, stepping diagonally to give herself a quick look up into the fallway shaft that the hallway ran alongside. Nothing, just the hazy air. For the first time she welcomed the low visibility, though part of her wondered if the Scipios had a way of seeing through it.

  She walked on, rolling her feet. In one smooth motion she lowered her aura shard to the floor and gave it a little shove. The black shape drifted easily along the hall, perfectly aimed toward the lone Scipio’s left.

  Tania found she had no urge to glance back. Sam would do her part, and do it perfectly, of that there was no doubt in her mind, a fact that flooded her with a sudden cool confidence.

  Arms held slightly out so they wouldn’t brush against her torso, she did her best to channel Skyler. Don’t think, just act. Let instinct take over. Tania stood at least twenty centimeters taller than the Scipio, and her legs made up most of that advantage.

  The shard caught up to the Scipio. It turned, glanced down. Something like a gasp escaped its lips and it stepped to the right, back now turned perfectly toward the circling Tania.

  She closed the distance in three quick steps, threw one arm over the being’s shoulder to grab it by the torso, another up under its arm to slap a hand across what she hoped was its mouth, confident the armored suit would protect her against a bite.

  The creature thrashed. She hadn’t accounted for the parachute-like skin flap, and her hand became tangled in it before she could cover the mouth. The Scipio let out a mewling cry, not terribly loud to her ears. Finally Tania’s hand came free. She slapped it across the wide mouth and heaved the alien off its feet. It weighed almost nothing; it was like lifting a child.

  Tania sidestepped and turned, urging the aura shard back toward Sam with one knee, then jogging after it. She felt the fear coursing through the alien as its flailing limbs and muffled cries became more and more urgent. The very air around them seemed to react to this. As Tania moved, the particulate all around began to turn and dart toward her, like a school of microscopic fish trying to feed. The pale little flecks sped in and then, in a sphere roughly ten meters in diameter, began to drift again. Limp and wandering. She could see it easily, and part of her savored this small victory. She’d learned the protective radius of the aura shards, an incredibly useful bit of knowledge.