Nearspace Trilogy

by Sherry D. Ramsey

  “Holding steady on one-hundred-eighty degree skip course,” Rei said, and her voice was the tiniest bit shaky. “Advancing Krasnikov matter generator to full power.”

  It was like going over the crest of a snowy hill on a sled, the slightest hesitation and then a quick drop as the ground fell away. We skidded along the wormhole like a skipping rock, one that ricocheted off the sides of a watery half-circle in a smooth defiance of gravity.

  “Drives at one hundred percent,” Viss reported. “No problems.”

  The colours were beautiful, but I couldn't keep my eyes away from that half-circle of grey that demarcated near-certain death. It looked almost soft, inviting. I wrenched my eyes away from it. My suicidal curiosity was kicking in again, but I had more lives to consider here than just my own.

  We hurtled along the wormhole at nearly full speed now, the colours blurring almost painfully. I heard Dr. Ndasa gasp but didn't turn to him.

  “Rei? How are you doing?” Her hands skittered over the touchscreen like frenzied spiders, making the numberless tiny adjustments that would keep us away from the deadly grey zone.

  “Okej.” It sounded like her teeth were clenched. “The ship wants to make the full circle skips. Hard to hold to one-eighty.”

  “Should we reduce speed?”

  She shook her head. “No, I think it would only make it worse. I don't know how the hole gravity would affect us.”

  A tremor shook the Tane Ikai, only a small one, but anyone who knew the ship felt it. Viss punched in adjustments. I glanced over and saw that Maja was holding Hirin's hand, her face ghostly in the bright bridge lights. My own fingers dug painfully into the armrests of my chair, and I deliberately disengaged them. We seemed to be swinging closer to the dangerous edges of the coloured walls with every skip, but it might have been my imagination and I didn't want to put any more pressure on Rei.

  “Time?” Rei asked. I looked over and saw that her skin, beneath her pridattii, had gone very pale.

  “Probably halfway through,” Baden said. The muscles were working in the side of his jaw. Inaction at a crucial time was a difficult thing for a man like Baden. He was a lot like Hirin in that respect, I thought with a pang.

  “Luta,” Hirin gasped suddenly, and I turned to look at him. His face was ashen, the same grey as the half-wall of the wormhole, and he clutched his chest with one hand and Maja's hand with the other. Maja stared at him, her mouth open. Heart attacks happen occasionally during skips. The words appeared with horrible clarity in my mind.

  “Hirin!” I dove out of my chair toward him. Dr. Ndasa and Yuskeya moved only seconds behind me.

  “Luta?” That was Rei, her voice tight.

  “Never mind us!” I yelled. “Keep the ship on course.”

  We eased Hirin out of his chair and onto the bridge's cool metal decking, and Dr. Ndasa loosened Hirin's shirt. Maja hadn't said anything, but she still gripped her father's hand. Yuskeya leapt up and staggered against the inexorable forces that pulled at her, heading for the First Aid station.

  “His pulse is jagged,” Dr. Ndasa said. The metallic scent of his worry belied the calmness of his voice.

  “Feel like . . . can't breathe,” Hirin managed to gasp. “Too tight . . .”

  “Dad . . .” Maja croaked.

  “It's all right, Hirin.” I took his other hand. It was ice cold. “We're going to help.” I looked at Dr. Ndasa hopefully, but his dark alien eyes were unreadable.

  Yuskeya hurtled back onto the bridge and dropped to her knees beside us. I hardly knew what she was doing as she and the doctor worked over Hirin. A datamed. A scanner. A pulse injector for meds. Other implements I couldn't name.

  Maja met my eyes for a second, hers dark with fear and something else I didn't want to name. I couldn't let go of Hirin's hand, although the weakness of his grip was frightening. I must have been crazy to think I could handle this. Then I looked back down at Hirin, and in his eyes was a look of finality, and love, and regret. He had been getting better! It isn't fair!

  “Luta!” Something was wrong. Rei was shouting.

  Then I felt it—the ship was shaking as if we were entering an atmosphere far too fast and at the wrong incline.

  “What's wrong?”

  “The swing force is too much. I can't hold us to one-eighty!”

  “You've got to!”

  “Twenty seconds, Rei,” Baden shouted. “Just twenty seconds more!”

  “I can't do it! We'll be off the safe side in two more skips at this rate!”

  “Viss? Can you do anything?”

  He didn't answer me right away. “Viss!”

  His hands never stopped moving over the engineering console, but he shook his head. “I'm trying. Nothing's working.”

  Hirin whispered something. Yuskeya bent over him. “What?”

  “The main drive,” he rasped, a little louder. “Shut it down.”

  “We can't shut down the main drive,” Viss said calmly. “The drag would disrupt the skip. I don't know what it would do to the ship.”

  “Rei?”

  “I don't know.” Her voice was as panicked as I'd ever heard it. “We'd probably break apart.”

  “No.” Hirin's voice was stronger, but not much. “The plasma drive's started . . . a resonance flux with the skip drive. That's what's wrong. You have to . . . shut it down. Now.” He tried to smile, but it came out as a grimace. “Trust me.”

  I released Hirin's hand and stood up, swaying against the warring energies that clawed at the ship. “Viss, do what Hirin says.”

  “But Captain—”

  “Shut it down, dammit. Now!”

  He didn't argue again, and his hand didn't hesitate as he punched the command to shut down the drive. The shaking stilled immediately and the ship shot forward even faster than it had been travelling.

  “Hey!” Rei's hands still flew over the board, but I could tell from that one word that she was back in control—both of the ship and of her fear. The arc of the skips lessened perceptibly, and ten seconds later, we shot out of the terminal point of the wormhole into the starry, empty space of the Delta Pavonis System.

  “Help me get him to First Aid,” Yuskeya said, wrapping Hirin's arms across his chest so we could carry him.

  I was shaking so badly I knew I couldn't support his weight, and I let Baden push me gently aside so he could help. Maja held fast to Hirin's hand, and she hadn't looked at me again. Before I followed them, I laid a hand on Rei's shoulder. She was trembling, too.

  “Good work.”

  She shook her head. “I almost lost it.”

  “Not your fault. You got us through. We're here in one piece.”

  “What about Hirin?”

  “I don't know. He's still alive, and we're out of the wormhole.”

  She shuddered. “If anything—”

  “I know. But he wanted to come. Yuskeya and Dr. Ndasa will look after him. He wanted to come.”

  “Oh, Luta,” she said, and tears welled up in her golden eyes and flowed over the beautiful dark swirls on her cheeks.

  “I know, Rei,” I said, and my own tears came then, too. “I know.”

  A week later Hirin was still alive, but barely. He was extremely weak and short of breath, always feeling shaky and tired. Dr. Ndasa ordered complete bed rest, but it was unnecessary—Hirin couldn't have walked the length of himself. Maja nursed him almost ceaselessly, while Yuskeya and Dr. Ndasa took turns caring for his immediate medical needs and trying to figure out what had happened to him. It had been a heart attack of sorts, the result of some strange surge the virus had taken when we entered the Split. But there was no real explanation. Even Dr. Ndasa was, on the whole, mystified.

  I kept waiting for Maja's anger at me to explode, but this time it didn't. She wasn't saying much, her eyes burned when she looked at me sometimes, but we weren't fighting. It was eerie. Finally, I mentioned it to Hirin when I took some lunch into his room.

  “What's up with Maja?”

  “What do yo
u mean?” he asked, struggling to sit up.

  “I mean she hasn't tried to bite my head off for taking you through the Split.” I sat on the side of the bed and handed him the bowl. He took it shakily.

  “This time,” he told me with a characteristic grin, even though his voice was quavery, “I confess. I interfered.”

  The effort of talking exhausted him, though, and he motioned for me to take the bowl again. I filled a spoon with spicy, saffron-coloured broth and held it to his lips.

  “You told her not to get mad at me?”

  He slurped and nodded.

  “Even you haven't been able to manage that little miracle before,” I observed, spooning up some more. “How'd you talk her around this time?”

  Hirin swallowed carefully before he answered. “I told her that if I found out you two were fighting,” he said, and paused to draw a deep breath, “it would probably kill me.”

  I stared at him, mildly shocked. I'd never known Hirin to resort to any kind of emotional blackmail before.

  He shrugged. “I figured that if I only have a short time left, I might as well use it to get you two to be civil,” he said. He took a few breaths, gathering strength. “You can go back to sparring after I've gone.”

  I pressed my lips tight together, willing the tears away. “Well, I'm not saying I'm buying into the whole 'I'm a goner' thing, but thank you. At this point I don't care why she's doing it. I'm just too tired to worry about anything else.”

  Hirin took my hand, although his grip was very weak. “Luta, I do wish you two could learn to get along. You'll both be alone now once—”

  “I know, I know,” I interrupted him. “I don't have to hear it again.” I leaned over to kiss his wrinkled forehead. “As long as you feel up to it, keep saying nice things about me. Maja might actually listen to you one of these times.”

  “I'll do my best,” he whispered, and closed his eyes to nap again.

  I went in search of the doctor to ask for what seemed like the hundredth time if he'd discovered anything new. He and Yuskeya were drinking triple caff in the galley.

  He made the strange Vilisian waggle that was the equivalent of shaking his head. “I still don't understand it. The tests I ran just before our arrival at the Split showed that the virus had gone dormant, probably since Hirin left Earth. I was going to start running some theoretical data extrapolations to see if I could come up with an explanation.”

  “You really think that just being in space was causing the virus to back down?” I asked, my heart heavy. If that were the case I would have kept Hirin on the Tane Ikai years ago instead of letting him go into the nursing facility on Earth. But at that time he'd seemed to be getting steadily worse.

  He shrugged. “I was hoping to verify that theory. It could have been conditions in space, or it could have been conditions he left behind on Earth. Two sides of the same coin, but knowing the causal relationship could provide information that might be applied to other diseases, or to others suffering from this virus or ones like it. Since it's a synthetic virus—”

  “A synthetic virus?” I asked. I'd never heard of the doctors mention that before. “What does that mean?”

  “The virus that infected Hirin is a bio-engineered entity, not a naturally occurring organism,” he explained patiently. “Actually, it looks like a recombinant version of two originally separate viruses, with a synthetic element. This is the first chance I've actually had to look at it, treating Hirin since his . . . relapse,” he said. “I thought you would have known that.”

  Yuskeya said carefully, “I thought bio-engineering viruses was illegal.”

  “Well, it is,” Dr. Ndasa said. “Unless it's done as part of a project that doesn't have the creation of viruses as its ultimate goal, and everything is destroyed once you're finished with it. It's a fairly common practice, really, and sometimes—well, sometimes the protocols fail, and a virus does get out and flourish 'in the wild.'”

  “So, doesn't that mean it should be easier to treat?” I asked. “I mean, knowing what it's made of?”

  Dr. Ndasa smiled slightly. “If only it worked that way,” he said. “In truth, that's why bio-engineering viruses is illegal, except under highly controlled conditions for research purposes. Often synthetic ones are more resistant and difficult to treat.”

  “Was there much damage to his heart?” I'd been putting off asking that question.

  Yuskeya frowned. “That's the weird part. There doesn't seem to be much damage to the heart muscle itself, and yet he's not getting any better. It's like the virus is running rampant now, and everything in his body is affected.”

  “Even though we're back to the same conditions as when the virus was dormant,” I added. “It doesn't make sense.”

  “Ah, but we don't know if they're exactly the same conditions or not,” said Dr. Ndasa, “because we don't know what those conditions were. We're in a different part of the universe, don't forget, and although it all may look the same from the viewscreen of a starship, every system could have subtle differences we can't even detect. Particles, rays, who knows what? Maybe things we wouldn't see even if we ran extensive scans and readings in the system.”

  It sounded grim. “Can you think of anything that might help him?” I asked, hating the pleading sound in my voice. “We're almost at Rhea, and we've got a cargo dropdown for there. I could go planetside, find whatever you need . . .”

  Dr. Ndasa nodded slowly, the folds of skin around his eyes puckering as he thought. “There might be a few things,” he said, “if you could find them. I'll make a list tonight.”

  Tears pricked at my eyes. “Thank you.”

  He reached over and patted my hand. “I can't make any promises,” he said seriously. “There might not be any improvement at all.”

  “I know,” I said, blinking. “But it's worth a try.”

  Maja insisted on going planetside with me on Rhea, to try and fill Dr. Ndasa's wish list. I was surprised.

  “I thought you'd want to stay here with your father.”

  Strangely, she flushed. “I do, but I want to feel like I'm doing something, too,” she said. “Do you mind if I come?”

  There was no trace of the old belligerence in her voice. She was just asking a favour.

  “No, I don't mind at all,” I said. “I'd be glad of the company.”

  Once we'd berthed at the spacedock outside Undola Mines and the steves had started to unload the cargo, we took the slideway into the city proper. We could have rented a flitter but Maja suggested that since the day was fine we might as well get all the fresh air we could. After being cooped up in the ship for so long, I had to agree with her. As we walked, I felt some of the stresses of the last few days dissipating in the cool air.

  The city was an old one, the first one to spring up after humanity had discovered the wormhole to Delta Pavonis and explored the two planetary jewels of Renata and Rhea. Rhea's crust was riddled with rich deposits of uranium, and most of the settlements had grown up around mining colonies. Undola Mines, though, had transformed itself over the decades from a simple mining station to a large, cosmopolitan city, and I wouldn't have known where to start looking for Dr. Ndasa's supplies if it hadn't been for the handy data kiosks peppered around the streets. I touched my datapad to the screen and the whole of the city lay in my hand, mapped and ready for us to explore.

  Maja wasn't quite as impressed with it as I was, but she was busy taking in the sights. There was a considerable Lobor population on both Rhea and Renata, and Maja was watching the wolf-like aliens with covert interest. There were Lobors on Earth, but they were uncommon.

  “Stop staring,” I whispered.

  She turned to me impatiently, then saw my grin and chuckled. “I guess I was, a little. I didn't realize what I was missing, staying on Earth this long.”

  I consulted the datapad and we set out down a wide street lined with shops. Electric cars hummed past in both directions, and the walkways were crowded.

  “That's one
thing your father and I always enjoyed,” I said, “just being in a place completely unlike anything you'd ever seen before.”

  It was the wrong thing to say. At the mention of Hirin, the air seemed to pick up a chill that permeated both of us.

  “This way.” We turned down a side street that was less busy, but still humming with activity. We found the shop we sought easily. The Lobor behind the counter was brisk and professional, consulting our list without questions or comments. I caught Maja staring at the pale umber skin on his hands and the line of dense russet fur that showed when the hem of his sleeve pulled back from his wrist, and nudged her foot. He had all but two of Dr. Ndasa's items in stock.

  Back on the street, I consulted the datapad again. We might find what we needed at another of the smaller shops listed. It was on the other side of the city and too far to walk, but slideway routes arched over the busy streets, and we climbed a set of steps up to the nearest one. They moved much slower than the traffic, but twice as fast as we could have walked.

  Maja seemed relaxed again, so it seemed an opportune time to have another talk with her. “You seem to be adjusting well to space travel after all. Is it not as bad as you'd remembered?”

  “It's fine.” She stared over the rail at the traffic below us.

  I tried again. “You do seem a little distracted though, and worried. Anything you want to talk about?”

  This time she turned. “I'm worried about Dad, of course,” she snapped.

  My mercurial daughter. “I know that,” I said gently. “But he thought you had something on your mind earlier, before we went through the Split and he got worse. I wondered if Taso—”

  She shook her head, blonde hair wafting around her face in the breeze. “No, I told you, I'm fine with that. After the first little while it was—actually sort of a relief. We were together, but not in any way that really mattered.” She looked as if she might say something more, but stayed silent.

  “Okej.” I turned away lightly. “I was just asking.”