by Ken MacLeod
She flexed the muscles in her hand in sequence, powering on the suit’s systems. “Can you hear me?” she asked.
[Loud and clear,] Omi answered.
“I am,” Bari said, and she cycled herself out the airlock into space.
As part of its camouflage, the outside of the Space Turd had been given a rough, uneven surface. It had made adding covert handholds to it trivially easy, and Bari used these to move up and on top of the ship. Around her the Rooan shifted ever so slightly, giving her an unnerving vertigo. She wondered where among them her friends were hiding—nowhere easy to find, certainly.
No one who had not been explicitly invited there came intentionally within reach of Aurora. This inactivity made the pilots who flew along the border outposts bored, and bored pilots found any entertainment they could. On their last two passes a third of the Rooan herd had been lost; much more and they wouldn’t have the numbers they needed to survive.
The gigantic animals must have become aware of the approaching ships, because the flashing on their undersides became more intense. [The ships are on direct approach,] Omi said. [They should be in range in three point six minutes. The herd is getting nervous.]
At the apex of the ship, perched on the nose, she unclipped the large energy-cannon she’d tucked there just before the Turd left Glaszerstrom Station to intercept the Rooan. “I need a window,” she said.
[Working on it. These things are hard to nudge.]
The Rooan to Bari’s left began drifting upward, and Bari could make out four small pinpoints of light moving toward them. In the distance was the faint blue glow of Outpost One. Deep in space behind that was the heart of Aurora itself, with its implacable, invincible warlord, who took everything he could see, and owned everything he could touch. She gritted her teeth, raised the cannon, and took aim at the closest of the incoming ships.
The first one will be the easiest, she told herself, and fired. The pinpoint of light flared for an instant and went out, as immediately the other three veered away. Now the hunt would begin; they’d be scanning the area, but the Turd, powered almost fully down, would be virtually invisible. Her Dzenni suit, far more sophisticated than anything found in human space, was a total insulator: she would not radiate heat, she would not absorb it. She would not be easy to find.
One of the remaining ships moved nearer, slowly edging up on the herd as if scanning for something on the far side of it. She checked the cannon’s heat load—still only twelve percent, still cool enough—and then shouldered it again.
The second ship flashed and disintegrated.
“I don’t see the other ships. Omi?”
[One is circling around the Rooan. I don’t see the other.]
All of a sudden, around them, the Rooan began to shift and scatter, their light-patterns now oscillating wildly. Turquoise said.
“That works for me,” Bari said. She turned around, then threw herself backward in a panic, flat onto the surface of the ship as a Rooan barreled overhead, nearly knocking her off the ship. Big mistake, Bari, she told herself. No matter how big they are, they aren’t going to make any sound when they move. Pay more attention.
The passage of the creature had left a small gap, and she could just see the edges of the third ship behind them. She got the cannon up, took the shot, and missed. Swearing, she checked the heat load again—a little over forty percent now, starting to get warm. The ship banked, disappeared behind a cluster of Rooan, and briefly reappeared farther up than she had expected. Ship’s moving in an evasive pattern. “Can you see him?” she asked.
[No . . . yes. He’s banked low again, circling around.]
“Thanks,” Bari said. She lined up the sights on a gap ahead, and smiled when the ship appeared. Another flash, and then there was just one.
Don’t run home yet, she thought at it, I need you.
She ejected the power cartridge from the cannon and let go of both pieces, where they drifted along with the herd. The cartridge would cool off quickly in open space. Unencumbered, she looked around the herd to get a sense of their positions, stood up straight, and launched herself up and forward toward the bright yellow-orange underside of the ancient Rooan who had nearly knocked her down moments ago. A quick squeeze of one hand sent enough thrust from her pack to carry her forward, and she reached the big creature and got a grip on its craggy, pitted underside, oscillating from yellow to orange and back again under her gloves. Two more jumps brought her forward.
“Where’s my last fighter, Omi?”
[I still can’t see it. Turquoise?]
If only Cardin knew how thoroughly his Rooan-camouflage would be tested, she thought. The problem was, Cardin had only designed it to stand up to the scrutiny of dumb animals; as aggressive as Aurora’s fighters were, “dumb” they were not.
She moved hand over hand along the side of her Rooan until she was up near the pointed front, then flipped her faceshield to infrared. Even then the enemy fighter wasn’t immediately obvious. It was only as one of the Rooan directly ahead of her swung slightly out of line to avoid something that she spotted it. He’s playing the same trick I am, shedding his heat load to avoid detection while looking for his enemy. If she wasn’t wearing her Dzenni suit, she was sure she’d be lit up like a nova on his screens.
She had maybe a minute before he was close enough to the Turd to spot it for the fake it was. She smiled and reached into her pack. Not a problem.
As her Rooan ride neared the ship, she kicked off and tumbled, silently, across the intervening space as the Auroran unwittingly headed toward a rendezvous. Her timing was perfect; she reached out one hand and touched the side of the ship just aft of the pilot’s view, a silhouette in faint light just visible inside. With her other hand she slapped an EMP mine onto the hull. Then she pushed off again, breaking physical contact with the fighter as the mine flashed once, twice, and the ship went truly dead.
The herd continued to move around her, the Turd slipping silently past along with them. She squeezed her fist and moved forward to where she could grab onto the dead fighter again. Taking the second mine out of her pack, she placed it next to the first. This one she didn’t back away from, and she could feel the thrum even through the multilayered hull as the pressure-wave grenade activated.
The airlock had to be operated manually, of course.
The pilot was floating unconscious near the inside door, an energy pistol dangling from one hand. He’d known someone was coming for him the moment the EMP mine went off. Her mag boots kept her upright as she cycled the lock closed behind her and took his gun. Slipping off his helmet—damn, he’s young—she peeled back the collar of his uniform with its own, less intricate starburst embroidery and slapped a sleep patch on him as well. Then she dragged him to the back, found the single-occupant escape pod, stuffed him in, and melted the lock.
Climbing into the pilot’s seat, she buckled herself down and rebooted the systems. As the helm tried to bring itself back to life, she tapped her suit mic. “I’m in,” she said. “How far behind am I?”
[You’ve almost dropped out behind the herd,] Omi replied. [I see three more ships on intercept from the outpost on max burn, about six minutes out.]
The helm was flashing a long, thin red line. Bari slipped on the pilot’s helmet, then carefully ran her left forearm over the bar. For a long second she was afraid it wouldn’t work, that the chip under her skin was too old or obsolete, but the bar flashed green at last even as the rest of the console came back online.
“The ship’s mine. Light up the decoy can,” she said.
[Done,] he replied, just as a faint flare appeared on the screen of her own console, on the far side of the herd. From a distance, it would not be distinguishable from an imperfectly-dampened engine sig
nature. Close up, it wouldn’t matter.
Four ships down, counting this one, she thought, and three more on the way. Outpost One had, by her best estimates, twenty-six combat ships at the moment—a recent border skirmish with Glaszerstrom had cost them three others. The remaining pilots would be off-shift, but were probably now being roused and told to stand by. And at least half of those would be too drunk to fly. Or so she hoped. It was the largest of Aurora’s outposts, a cornerstone of its defense.
She plugged a line from her headset directly into the ship’s comm net. “Can you pick up traffic?”
[The signal is weak from here and it’s heavily encrypted.]
“So that’s a ‘no’?”
[No, that’s a “give me a minute or two.”]
“As long as they don’t scatter, we’re okay.” Bari had engaged the craft’s engines on minimum thrust and moved further into the herd, the ever-shifting rainbow of a Rooan’s belly above her like the landing lights of an insane, upside-down, psychedelic runway. Cardin’s translating machine would have choked on this much incoming data. She was surprised to realize she felt a tiny pang of guilt for having so thoroughly derailed his project. If the man hadn’t been such a puckered-up old assvalve, she might have considered leaving a few of his data-collectors on.
[Got it. You want a live feed?]
“Absolutely.”
. . . an ambush? See it now, on the far side of the stupid squids. . . . Can’t believe anyone got the drop on Mejef and Beck. Kirbenz, though . . . Is that Tonker, hiding in the middle? Tonker, is that you?
“Modulate my voice to middle-young adult human male, Auroran accent, add ten percent static when you encrypt,” she said.
[Ready.]
“Shut up, you idiots! Maintain silence,” she said, and heard it go over the comm network after a moment’s delay passing through Omi. It didn’t sound like her at all. Good.
The three incoming ships fell silent, and pulled more tightly together as they came in. They’re going for point-to-point, she realized. Direct light-based comms wouldn’t be able to be intercepted by any normal tech. It also meant they wouldn’t bother to encrypt it.
Luckily for me, I have some abnormal tech indeed, she thought.
That meant they most likely believed her to be Tonker, among other things. “I’m going to need an exit.”
[Passing it on.]
“Got it. Thanks,” Bari said. She watched as the Auroran fighters split just as predicted, and moments later saw a small shift in the herd nearby: Turquoise’s handiwork. “I’m glad I brought you along.”
[He’s laughing,] Omi said.
She edged her stolen craft toward the growing gap, and emerged just after one of the three Aurorans passed. A quick check showed another moving along the underside of the herd where it had cover from the decoy, but in her own clear sights.
Do it, she told herself, and powered up the weapons systems. She fell in behind the first fighter, and then, carefully sighting on it—she wouldn’t get any extra chances here—fired. The ship flared and died.
She sighted on the fighter below, which was just beginning an evasive maneuver away from her, and took it down too.
“Tonker! What the fuck?!” This from the remaining ship.
“Omi, jam him!”
[Doing what I can.]
She banked up and around, resisting the urge to use the Rooan as shielding. The fighter broke off and fled. They raced away from the herd, Bari on his tail as he wove a pattern through space, staying always one tic and jump just out of her sights. “Oh, Hell,” she swore. Her hands flew over the console, overriding the safeties and dumping energy from life support, gravity-gen, and radiation shielding into the engines. She was suddenly light in her seat, held in place only by inertia, seat straps, and her safety tether. The burst of extra speed was less than she’d expected, but she began to close.
[Bari . . . ]
“I know,” she said. She could already feel it, the cabin growing colder. She closed her eyes for a second, let long practice at mind-body control kick in, and slowed her heart rate and her breathing. Then she opened calm eyes on the enemy, closer now, and brought him down with a fast double-hit. She hadn’t even reached the debris halo before she was already diverting the ship’s systems back to normal.
[That was dangerous.]
“So would be letting him get away.”
Outpost One lay dead ahead. It sat in space like some giant’s toy, the sunlight of Beserai’s distant star gleaming off it only adding to the impression of a scaled-up, metal wasp’s nest. Around it floated smaller objects: waste processors, chemical weapons storage, trash. As she watched, four more ships appeared, heading her way at full burn.
She got out of her seat, careful to keep the safety tether clipped, and pulled another small device out of her pack. It took her a long minute to wire it into the console, while the ship closed the distance to the outpost’s remaining defenders. “Omi, did you get a good look at that last fighter’s evasion patterns?”
[I did.]
“Then I’m putting you in charge of the helm,” she said, clicking the device on. “You should have remote now.”
A pause. [Got it. Any change in plans?]
“No, we’re going in the hard way. Get as close as you can. If you can, blow the escape pod just before they take us out.”
Bari pulled her face shield back down, checked her suit seals by reflexive gesture, then disengaged the safety tether and cycled herself back out the airlock. Pulling herself along the ship’s hull, she reached one of the purely aesthetic wings and clambered out until she was perched comfortably about halfway down its length. Here, she was well out of the way of the furiously burning engines slung on the underside. She traced her fingers along the thin ribbon of silver laid into the black wing, the very familiar starburst pattern, and let an old anticipation, and a newfound guilt, wash over her.
“You should be safe. I think Aurora is going to be too busy dealing with me to think about anything else for a while.” At the moment, the stolen fighter beneath her feet was heading straight for the outpost. “Omi, course change in five,” she said. “Four, three, two, one . . . ”
She let go of the ship even as it banked away underneath her, now on a collision course for the chemical weapons bunker. In her suit she was invisible to the intercepting ships; by eye they might spot her, but now they all changed course as well, pursuing the visible threat. She put her arms out from her sides in a parody of a swan dive as she fell/flew toward the outpost. Sailing through space in nothing but the Dzenni suit gave her a sense of being both infinitely powerful and infinitely insignificant at the same time. Which is exactly as it should be, her teachers would have told her.
Far away from her now, the Auroran fighters drew close enough to her stolen ship to obliterate it; she caught the small flash of the escape pod ejecting, but the fighters closed in on that, too, and turned it into just so much more space debris. “Sorry, Tonker,” she murmured.
From there the fighters spread out, cautiously edging forward away from the base and each other, looking for the next threat. She was already well inside their slowly expanding perimeter, the outpost looming large dead ahead. She smiled; she was on target, no need to risk a burst from her pack to change course.
She curled herself up and around until she was foot-first, trying not to think about how long she’d had to practice the maneuver to keep from sending herself into a hopeless spin, and hit the side of the stat
ion near the pinnacle well above the central mass. It was a hard landing, but she’d prepared for that as well, and turned it into a short tumble up the sloped surface before she managed to catch a grip and stop. Then she activated the light mag fields in her boots, stood up in what felt, even absent any meaningful input from her inner ear, like a cartoonishly horizontal direction, and ran down and across the surface of the station.
The maintenance hatch was exactly where she expected it to be.
Bari spun the outer wheel, pulled the hatch open, and tucked herself into the small crawlspace backward so she could close it again. Once the hatch was sealed, she tried to turn around and discovered that, with the pack on her back, she couldn’t. “Oh, great,” she muttered.
[Everything okay?]
“It’s just smaller than I expected.”
[Or you’re bigger than it expected.]
“Thanks,” she said, then under her breath, “you bit-fried hunk of space flotsam.”
[I heard that.]
She scooted backward through the tight space until she came up hard against the inner lock. Now what? she thought. As best as she could, she laid down flat, her pack an uncomfortable wedge under her back, and studied the upside-down lock controls. Then she pried open the security panel, pulled out two leads, and shorted them. The hatch slid open with a whoosh as air filled the small crawlspace, and she scrambled out and into the maintenance space on the far side.
This area was only marginally bigger, but it was enough that she could turn around and, squatting, pull herself upright. Also, it had atmosphere. Her suit’s supply was down to fifty-two percent so she set it to recharge automatically from the surrounding air.
