by P. K. Lentz
“I’ll disengage the three working clamps,” Kearn said. “The last should tear off.” He wasn’t sure why he bothered speaking aloud. Even were his voice not drowned out, Ren was in another world entirely.
Kearn went ahead with the plan. Upon release of the three functioning clamps, a force like an explosion rocked Halo--the final, malfunctioning clamp tearing loose. The abrupt onset of acceleration shoved Kearn into his couch. “Ren!” he cried. “Align us on Reissa!”
At the sound of her name Serenity shook off a mournful stare. Life flowed back into her limbs, her hands flew over the controls.
A few agonizing seconds passed before she looked up.
“I can’t,” she reported. “Two is still locked at thrust. Nothing else responds.” A few labored breaths preceded her nightmarish afterthought. “Containment failure in ten seconds.”
Still? Kearn shut his eyes and cursed. Now it had to be a hibe-dream, for in real life this many things simply could not go wrong at once. His hands fumbled through the scarcely recalled sequence to jettison Halo’s antimatter chamber. Rather than delegating the task, he thought, it should be his own hand that doomed his ship and all aboard.
With seconds to spare, Kearn executed the procedure. Instruments confirmed success. The trill of Halo’s engines faded and died, leaving the bridge in total silence but for Ren’s fast, shallow breathing.
The weight of acceleration yielded to zero gee. Kearn studied his displays. The engines, of course, were dead. A small backup plant would ensure life-support for a while, but beyond that there was no good news. Like Beshaan before it, Halo was adrift.
Ren swallowed audibly, face buried in her hands.
“At least we’re alive,” Kearn offered unconvincingly. “I need you, Ren. Stay with us.”
She nodded, even if her expression was far from hopeful.
“What are we aligned on?” Kearn asked her.
Serenity wiped watering eyes to focus on her displays. “Nothing,” she said at length, and choked back a sob. “Nothing at all.”
“We can adjust course by magsail.” Kearn knew the suggestion was desperate.
“That would take a century. We’re eighty degrees off alignment with Reissa.”
“Well, what can we align on?” Kearn’s growing exasperation stemmed almost as much from his navigator’s fatalism as from the unfolding catastrophe.
Composing herself somewhat, Ren went back to work. Meanwhile Kearn sent a shipwide request for crew to check in. One by one they reported: all present, no injuries.
So it could have been worse, Kearn told himself. At least he didn’t have any deaths on his conscience. Not yet. Not until they all perished of hibe failure like the poor icy souls on Beshaan.
No--he refused to give up. They still had a chance. Any spacer knew that nothing was easier than interstellar travel. Just point in the right direction and go.
Unfortunately, right now they were pointed in quite the wrong direction, with no apparent means of changing that.
“Well...” Ren began. “Good news, I guess. With sail deployed we can align on L155-0918. Unnamed, unexplored, non-life-supporting system.” She raised one wrist to stave off a fresh volley of tears. “ETA sixty-eight years.”
Good news, indeed. Yet Kearn’s heart sank upon hearing it.
Maybe Beshaan’s lucky sole survivor wasn’t so lucky after all, he thought. In any case, she had another very long voyage ahead of her.
***
PART ONE: MERADA
CHAPTER ONE
600 SHIP-YEARS LATER
286TH YEAR OF THE INTERIM (I.0286.7)
With the casual flick of a few fingers, Erick Fyat signaled the all-clear. The movements registered in the web of sensors that laced his flesh, and his brief message was beamed via discreet pulse to ISS Whisper of Death, in orbit high above the surface of Merada.
To any casual onlooker Fyat was a normal Meradi civilian enjoying a warm summer day in the park. Maybe his broad nose and dark skin were slightly out of place on this particular continent, but few were rude enough to stare.
Fyat sat on a bench pretending to watch a common handheld vid. What he actually watched from behind his shaded lenses was the storefront across the street, a known safehouse for one of Merada’s numerous anti-Interim factions. In concert with Meradi authorities, Social Engineering Service had initiated planetwide operations to crush the insurgency. If any rebels sought shelter here, Fyat and the three SES operatives under his command would move in to liquidate.
Fifty meters away, Agents Coleridge and Viera lazed in the grass like any young couple taking lunch in the park. Elsewhere, out of sight but not far off, Agent Kosta maintained a similar cover. On the display inside Fyat’s dark glasses, which were in actuality a discreet model of SES visor designed to mimic local fashion, there shone a trio of status indicators, one corresponding to each of his subordinates. The three agents under Fyat’s command reported to him at regular intervals using the same coded language of seemingly innocuous hand and facial movements by which Fyat then signaled the orbiting Interim warship.
Right now all three agents’ indicators were solid blue: all systems nominal, negative enemy contact. Other colors corresponded to a range of pre-defined status codes, while an extinguished light meant an agent’s life functions had terminated.
In another corner of the display hovered the exact local time. Next check-in with Whisper was due in 319 seconds. Fyat’s squad had maintained its current position for nearly an hour and would soon have to redeploy to avoid suspicion.
The Interim voidship and its accompanying groundside forces were deployed at Merada in pursuit of a single individual, a runaway academic that Fleet had been hunting for well over a century. Some officers had spent the entirety of their unenviable careers trying and failing to dig her up on any of two dozen worlds. The exact reasons for Jilan Zerouali’s pursuit were a closely guarded secret, but judging from the time and resources invested in finding her, she could single-handedly topple the Commonwealth.
A skeptical mind might question whether Zerouali actually existed or was rather just a convenient excuse to unleash Social Engineering on non-Commonwealth worlds. But such skepticism was a luxury for the theorists who created policy, not the groundside agents who implemented it.
Intuition, on the other hand, was an attribute of any successful Social Engineer, and Fyat’s now began to tell him that his reports to Whisper would not remain all-clear for long.
Minutes later that instinct proved accurate when Agent Kosta’s indicator winked out in Fyat’s visor display. The accompanying datastream denoted a powerful energy discharge in his vicinity.
The display flashed warning of a second discharge, even closer. Fyat looked over just in time to see Viera’s head disintegrate.
Even as the headless torso slouched to the ground Fyat was vaulting backward over the stone bench upon which he’d sat. None too soon: two more rapid-fire blasts burned craters in the granite. Hostile contact, he signaled to Whisper.
Within fractions of a second, Fyat’s visor display pinpointed the incoming fire’s precise origin and superimposed two sets of crosshairs on his view of the structures across the street. Color-coding confirmed the targets were the enemy snipers themselves and not merely last known positions, acquired by residual energy in their weapons. Neurilace targeting routines assumed control of Fyat’s arm, and within three seconds of initial contact he was returning fire.
Two guided projectiles programmed to detonate only on contact with flesh plunged through the walls concealing the gunmen. Fyat’s visor display registered two hits, two hard kills, and the now-irrelevant targeting data faded from view. A second scan of the facade came up clean.
In the meantime, Fyat noticed, Coleridge’s status light had turned amber. That meant substantial damage. But she was on her own for now; the discharge that had downed Kosta could only have come from a third hostile, still at large. Fyat had the general origin and range of that first blast, but insuff
icient detail for target acquisition. He leaped back over the bench to put it between himself and the third assailant’s last known firing position.
If the politically-impaired thug was also a poor tactician, he might move in and try to finish off Coleridge, thus letting Fyat target his energy discharge. But it was a mistake to underestimate any enemy, especially one that had already cut a superior force in half. No, a worthy opponent would choose from three possible courses: maneuver for a clear shot, cut his losses and flee, or wait patiently for Fyat to run to the aid of his fallen comrade. The second was by far the attacker’s wisest option, while the last would leave him waiting in vain for a mistake no Social Engineer would ever make.
Fyat’s instinct said this foe would take the first path. Given that, and the fact that maintaining cover was no longer a necessity, Fyat’s own course was clear: anyone still in the vicinity was a potential enemy. Neurilace targeting routines took free rein, identifying thirteen heat sources within a hundred meters and assigning each a threat level.
Nine sets of crosshairs faded when the subjects were confirmed unarmed. Normally Fyat would have eliminated those anyway, just to be safe, but current orders did include minimizing collateral damage. For better or worse, Command frowned upon high civilian body counts on worlds approaching Commonwealth candidacy.
That left four questionable but valid targets. Fyat’s arm moved of its own accord to aim and fire on the most distant. The human-shaped splash of colors plunged to the ground in a burst of white fire. In the space of as many seconds the remaining three fell, as well, all confirmed terminations.
Now to withdraw. With cover blown and seventy-five percent casualties sustained, this mission was over. Exchanging his projectile weapon for a palm-sized pulsecaster, Fyat sent a wide beam into a nearby grove of trees, setting it aflame. He turned and blasted three parked vehicles on the street, sparing extra fractions of a second to choose unoccupied ones in deference to mission parameters.
The resulting blaze gave thermal and visual cover while he crossed the open ground toward Coleridge. As he ran Fyat sent Command a new status report--Redeploying. They would already know of their two dead, since any fallen asset’s neurilace transmitted such data automatically prior to melting down to leave enemies and scavengers with no functional or even identifiable Interim technology.
When Fyat reached her, Coleridge was kneeling in the grass, wavering and staring blankly groundward. Beside her, tendrils of smoke rose from Viera’s headless remains as the agent’s augmented flesh turned to slag.
The reason for Coleridge’s amber light was clear enough: her left arm dangled uselessly from the shoulder socket by shreds of flesh and fabric. Above, on her face and neck, patches of raw and glistening flesh peeked from beneath a blackened shell. A thick swathe had been cut through her long blonde hair, exposing red scalp. Sheets of charred skin hung like dry paper from her jaw.
She felt no pain. Assuming it was still functional, Coleridge’s neurilace would have blocked pain receptors in the affected areas instantly. SES operatives could continue to function with any damage short of the catastrophic system failure of the sort Viera had sustained.
Despite this, there was something akin to pain in Coleridge’s eyes now as she gazed up at her superior. Confusion, maybe. Shock, fear? Any of them should have been impossible, unless--
Fyat had an idea what might have gone wrong, but this was no time for diagnosis. They had to leave, and fast.
Taking the woman’s now-useless arm in one hand, Fyat leveled his pulsecaster and vaporized the few ribbons of flesh holding it in place. As the limb fell into the grass where Fyat proceeded to incinerate it, Coleridge appeared unfazed. Neurilace inhibitors were working then.
Shrugging off his jacket, Fyat draped it over Coleridge with the aim of making her injury less conspicuous. To the same end he tore some loose skin from her jaw. She would still draw stares, but at least it was no longer so obvious that her trauma was far more than an unaugmented human could endure. Although the pair of them could likely handle any opposition they met en route to their concealed flyer, the ability to blend in could prevent the necessity of any more frowned-upon collateral damage.
By the time Fyat left the blazing park, half-dragging the wounded Coleridge behind him, all of two minutes had passed from the onset of hostilities.
***
“And here’s our last stop,” said William Gareth, yielding to his guest at the hatch and beckoning her to proceed. The pretty redhead, Mela, smiled wide-eyed as she sailed past him through the circular opening. Gareth followed close behind her into the bright simulated sunlight of his vessel’s small botanic garden.
The air within was more intensely fragrant than most actual groundside forests. The brilliant colors of the vegetation, mostly shades of green but splashed with a rainbow of others, arranged in solid banks with hardly a break between them, stood in striking contrast to the dull fibresteel bulkheads that dominated the rest of Lady of Chaos.
“It’s amazing,” Mela said breathlessly. “I still can’t believe you live this way. I mean, in a ship all the time.”
The young Meradi had expressed such awe for most of her tour of Lady, which was currently docked at her planets orbital spaceport. It wasn’t a spectacular ship by any legitimate measure, but it was more than enough to impress the average groundsider. Not unlike himself, Gareth sometimes thought. Even if he was no paragon of beauty, with his puffy spacer features, narrow grey eyes and pale skin, the sheer novelty of the life he lived made him plenty attractive. Not that he let that become an excuse for neglect of either self or ship.
“You get used to it,” Gareth said glibly, overtaking the girl and twisting midair to face Mela.
The Meradi girl’s tolerance for zero gee had improved considerably over the last day. Her initial excursions outside the simulated gravity of Lady’s habitation module had ended in spinning globules of vomit. Mortified, she had taken heart when Gareth assured her it happened to almost everyone. Now, as they drifted lazily past flowers native to four-dozen worlds, the contents of Mela’s stomach remained obligingly hidden from view. She didn’t even reach for a rail.
“Actually,” Gareth said, “all told, we don’t spend much conscious time shipboard. A few weeks of each voyage at most. We still live most of our lives on the ground, like you. What makes spacer life worthwhile is seeing new places. Meeting new people.” This last Gareth added with an appreciative smile which Mela coyly returned.
“Have you ever been to my world before now?” she asked.
“Once. Maybe sixty of our ship-years ago. I don’t know offhand how many of your own cycles that is, or what the local date was.”
In reality even the sixty was a guess. He’d have had to consult Lady’s logs for a sense of exactly how much absolute time had passed since his last visit to Merada. It just wasn’t a very useful thing to know.
Mela slowed her forward motion on a grab rail, while the extended fingers of her other hand casually brushed leaves of alien greenery. She observed thoughtfully, “My parents weren’t even born yet the last time you came.”
Gareth swung about to face the girl. He smiled and shrugged, eager to change the subject. Dwelling upon the vastness of space and time tended to make groundsiders uneasy, or at least contemplative, neither of which were moods he much desired in Mela at the moment.
“Spacing isn’t for everyone,” Gareth said hastily. “Sometimes I think I’d rather settle down somewhere.” This was an outright lie, of course. “Besides, I don’t actually live any longer than you. A few hundred years. The rest is spent in a hibe capsule.”
“I know,” Mela said distantly. “It’s just strange, that’s all.” Then she perked up just a little and asked, “How do you speak my language? From your visit before?”
Gareth smiled warmly, aiming to infect her with good cheer. “Not exactly,” he said. “Whatever languages we need are imprinted on our brains during hibernation. We’ll do the same for you.”
&n
bsp; Mela’s elfin features, a little swollen in the zero gee, showed mild interest. “You must know every language there is by now.”
Gareth detected a hint of intimidation in the girl’s remark. “Not at all,” he reassured her. “Maybe half a dozen at any given time. Others retain them better than I do. But I like to think I make up for the deficiency with other qualities.” Drawing closer to Mela, Gareth placed a hand on her arm.
When she shied away, he knew his efforts to lighten her mood were failing. She was beginning to view him as something alien, far from anything she’d known before. It was not an uncommon reaction among groundsiders. Some were drawn to a spacer’s otherness, some repelled. Maybe Mela was somewhere in between. Strange, he’d pegged her for a sure thing.
One more try, Gareth resolved. He scratched unruly brown hair that was overdue for a trim--he’d let it grow out groundside--and heaved a defeated, if theatrical, sigh. “I was wrong to do this, Mela,” he said with false contrition. “I should have put you into hibe with your parents. They would be furious if they knew.”
“No!” Mela blurted. “No, Captain...William...I can’t thank you enough for this.” Her gaze, suddenly aimless, fell on some alien blooms. “It’s all just so new to me.” After a brief while she looked up and with all the courage she could muster reached out one slim hand to touch Gareth’s sleeve.
“You said I could spend the first week awake,” she said. “I’ll never get the chance again.” A tear formed and hung perched on Mela’s eyelash, threatening to break loose and float away.
Gareth couldn’t help but pity the poor girl, who would soon leave behind the only home she’d ever known to settle on a distant, unfamiliar world with her extended family. It was a regular enough occurrence: some groundsider’s life wasn’t going well enough so he packed up his belongings, booked hibe capsules on a passing freighter and set off to some other world he’d only ever seen in a vid, if that. Sometimes the emigrants were entire families, like Mela’s, sometimes they were loners, fed up or bored or just looking for a change. Lady’s passenger holds were always full of both kinds, some bound for the next port, others in for a longer haul.
