Nearspace Trilogy

by Sherry D. Ramsey

  “Hello, Captain,” she said easily, continuing to move her arms, legs, and makeshift staff in the controlled, precise movements of the form. Her breathing came smooth and easy. “I hope you don’t mind my taking advantage of the peace and quiet down here. And the space. My room really isn’t big enough for a good workout.”

  “I get the feeling,” I said, stopping a short distance from her (well out of reach of the broom handle) and crossing my arms, “that it wouldn’t matter much if I did mind.”

  She laughed. “I’m not very good at taking orders from someone who isn’t paying me, I’ll admit.”

  “Was that a problem at the Protectorate akademio?”

  “Not really.” She studied me intently while her arms twisted the staff through a complicated block and stroke. “You checked up on me.”

  “Does that really surprise you?”

  “I suppose not. I’m almost finished, and then I’ll go back to my room like a good girl.”

  “You should spar with Maja some time,” I told her. “She has a silver crest in warrior chi.”

  “That would be an interesting engagement,” she said, not missing a beat. “But I think she might enjoy it too much.”

  I sat on a small empty cargo crate. “How much do you know about PrimeCorp’s activities?”

  “Interrogation time again, is it?”

  “Just a few questions.”

  She finished the form and clipped the broom handle into its holder on the bay wall. “You’re bound to be disappointed. I already told you, I’m nothing but a messenger—and a snoop, I suppose. Not in the confidences of the high and mighty.” She bent low, languidly stretching out the muscles in her legs and back. Her dark curls clung to her neck.

  “Would you be surprised if I told you that PrimeCorp appears to have interests outside of Nearspace?”

  She laughed and straightened. “Outside of Nearspace? What’s outside of Nearspace? All this, I suppose. Chron and crows. Not much here for PrimeCorp.”

  “The Corvids have tech that I’ll bet PrimeCorp would love to get its hands on.”

  “Well, sure. I’ve thought of that, myself. They’d pay well—more than well—for new tech. But the only way to get to it would be through the Protectorate, once a new wormhole opened up for trade. There’d be reams of treaty negotiations to go through before that happened.”

  “Unless someone could smuggle it into Nearspace.”

  She shrugged. “Sure. But no-one even knew where that second wormhole led before we went through it.” She started toward the hatchway ladder, but I didn’t get up yet.

  “Now, how do you know that? You weren’t in the system very long before that Chron ship came through and all hell broke loose.”

  She turned to face me, a smile twitching at the corners of her lips.

  I shook my head. “Never mind. You probably had a data miner on the Domtaw before it blew up.”

  Jahelia Sord laughed. “Very good, Captain. The data miner, sure, I launched that as soon as I entered the system. Protectorate wire block codes aren’t changed all that often. You might want to mention that to your dear brother when we get home.”

  I got up and walked toward the ladder, watching her. “So if I were to tell you that we’re still in the first Chron system, but we’ve spotted a PrimeCorp ship, you’d be as surprised as anyone?”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Surprised? It would shock the hell out of me if you found a PrimeCorp ship in this system. Is there? A PrimeCorp ship out there?”

  “There is,” I said, “and if you try and contact them or signal them in any way, all they’ll find of you is a dead body shot out the jettison tube.”

  “I think you mean that,” she said, staring at me with narrowed eyes.

  “Oh, be sure I do.”

  She gave me one more appraising survey, then said, “Captain, how are you feeling? Physically, I mean.”

  It was so unexpected I don’t know how much my face gave away before I answered. “Fine. Why do you ask?”

  She shrugged again. “I know you’re sick. I suspect your nanos are failing.”

  For the space of a few heartbeats, I stood dumbstruck. Questions fought for precedence in my mind, a new one scrambling to the top before I could ask the one before it. How could she know anything about that? How much did she know? Finally I realized that she could have listened in on any number of conversations on the ship before I knew she had the capability. She could be fishing for information. “You didn’t get that from Alin Sedmamin.”

  “No, I didn’t.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “Unfortunately, I’ve seen something like this before.”

  She was bluffing—had to be. I crossed my arms. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Sord, but I wish you’d stop playing games.”

  “Oh, this is no game,” she said. “If you don’t want to talk about it, fine. But tell me one thing—have the nosebleeds started yet?” She didn’t wait for my answer, but turned and started to climb the ladder to the upper decks.

  A chill of fear froze me in place. I wanted to reach up and grab her, haul her down, and demand she tell me what she meant. What could she possibly know about what was happening to me?

  Hirin’s voice over the ship’s comm stopped me. “Luta, where are you? Everything okej?”

  I thumbed my implant. “Coming.” I pressed my lips together, stifling what I wanted to ask Jahelia Sord. We had bigger problems than her games and my headaches and nosebleeds. Whatever I wanted to know from Jahelia Sord would have to wait.

  Wordlessly I followed her up the ladder. I almost laughed aloud at the startled frown Viss gave us when we climbed past the engineering deck. For a few seconds, I felt better, but it didn’t last.

  Chapter 27 – Jahelia

  What Pita Knew

  LUTA PAIXON DOES not like being made to look a fool. But she has a certain dignity about it that I was grudgingly coming to appreciate. She saw me inside my quarters and shut the door on me, but she didn’t even bother to put the plasma bar back in place. I knew she’d send one of the crew to try and find out how I’d bypassed it, but she wouldn’t replace it herself, knowing it was useless. That had a certain class.

  As soon as her footsteps faded away down the corridor, I snatched up the throat mic and earbuds. “Pita? You’ll never guess what Paixon told me!”

  “That they found a PrimeCorp ship?” she said in a bored voice.

  Oh, right. I’d left her monitoring the ship’s comm, so she’d heard everything from the bridge already.

  “What the hell is it doing here? How did it get here?”

  “Through a wormhole?”

  “Ha, ha. Come on, Pita. This is big! If I could get a message to them—”

  “If you try to get a message to them, you’ll be dead,” Pita told me flatly. “I heard what Paixon said, didn’t you? You think she was bluffing?”

  I pursed my lips. “No, I get the impression that she doesn’t bluff.”

  “Anyway, whoever’s on that ship probably doesn’t even know who you are. It’s not like you and Alin Sedmamin are best pals or anything.”

  “Good point.” I collapsed onto the bed. “But what are they doing here?”

  “That’s what everyone wants to know.”

  I got up and paced the room. Ideas and plans flashed through my brain, each one replaced by the next as quickly as it bloomed. What would PrimeCorp pay to make sure their presence in Chron space stayed secret? Would they still be interested in Corvid tech, assuming I could get my hands on some, or the specs? Did I have any other information that might be even more useful to them now? The secret to the Corvid asteroids? The Corvid revelations about the nature of wormholes?

  At that point in my musings I bumped up against the realization that had hit me when Paixon came and found me in the cargo pod. The only way I could capitalize on any of this was if I—and necessarily, the Tane Ikai—reached Nearspace in one piece. Which meant keeping Luta Paixon from doing something stupid and noble like trying t
o confront PrimeCorp here. I sighed. I might have to put my dislike for the woman aside and actually pretend to work with her.

  And then it struck me that Pita had said something important. She thought she didn’t know what PrimeCorp could be doing here, but there was actually a good chance that she did know. She just didn’t realize it.

  “Pita, how many of those classified files from the PrimeCorp main hub system have you actually cracked?”

  A pause. “About half, why?”

  “I’m wondering if there could be something that might explain why PrimeCorp is in Chron space?”

  “Hmmm. Good idea. I’ll start checking.”

  “Put a list of the decrypted ones on the screen, and I’ll go through them, too.”

  The process took a while, since many of the file names weren’t terribly descriptive of their contents, and Pita hadn’t been discriminating about the files she’d grabbed. I couldn’t blame her, though, since I hadn’t told her to search for anything in particular. I’d really only wanted to see if she’d do it. If something came in handy later, great, but I didn’t have any high expectations that she’d find anything she could crack, anyway. She’d surprised me on that one.

  So I sorted through financial reports (obviously a second set of books), employee records, dossiers on other corporations, product specs (some for illegal tech), manufacturing records, inventory sheets, shipping manifests, and archived press releases until my eyes burned and a tight knot of pain had settled behind my eyes. I had a fistful of leverage if I ever wanted to blackmail Alin Sedmamin, but nothing about the Chron.

  And then suddenly, there it was. Something that made me consider that I might want to start distancing myself from PrimeCorp as soon as I possibly could.

  Chapter 28 – Luta

  The Enemy of my Enemy

  I LEFT SORD in her quarters, not deigning to reactivate the useless plasma bar. I didn’t know how she’d turned it off, but someone else could worry about that. As I entered the bridge, I got a close-up view of the asteroid we were hiding behind. The massive grey rock was shaped like a long potato, its surface pocked with the craters of hundreds of impacts. It tumbled in a slow, balletic dance through the vacuum. Baden turned to tell me something, but I held up a hand.

  “As soon as the current crisis has passed, would someone come up with something better for keeping Ms. Sord in her quarters? I had to hunt her down on the cargo deck and interrupt her workout.”

  Viss made an inarticulate noise over the ship’s comm and swore under his breath. “Could I tie her into a skimchair here on engineering?”

  “I don’t think we’re quite there yet, Viss, but I’ll keep the suggestion in mind. Also, she’s probably listening in to every word we say, so let’s remember that, too. Baden, you can try to cut off her access, but I think it’s a lost cause. If you can figure out how she’s doing what she’s doing—I’d love to hear it.”

  I sat in an empty skimchair, motioning to Hirin to stay where he was in the big chair. “What’s happening now?”

  “PrimeCorp ship is stationary. She appears to be live, not derelict, no drift that I can detect. But not going anywhere, either,” Yuskeya said.

  “Scanning? Running data? Collecting samples?”

  “Well, they could be running data. No one seems to be EVA. It’s like they’re waiting for something.”

  “Or someone. Us?”

  Yuskeya shrugged. “How could they even know we were coming?”

  I chewed my lower lip. I didn’t trust Sord, but I couldn’t truly imagine she could have anything to do with it. “We can try to sneak around them, but I’m damned curious about what—”

  “New ship has entered scan range,” Yuskeya announced.

  “Toward us?” I held my breath.

  Yuskeya’s fingers tapped across her console. “They appear to be on a course for the PrimeCorp ship. And the new one—” she paused.

  “What?”

  “It’s Chron.”

  My heartbeat felt suddenly fluttery, and my chest tightened, as if a band had drawn around it, too tight. I took a few deep breaths, calming the sensation. A clinical part of my brain added heart palpitations, shortness of breath to my growing list of symptoms. I’d have quite a litany to report to Mother, if we made it home to Nearspace in time.

  “Stay with the asteroid,” I said, as Hirin said, “Hold course.” Our eyes met, and we smiled weakly at each other.

  Rei said, “Aye,” and nothing more, keeping her eyes studiously on the board.

  We still didn’t have a good visual on the ships, but the bridge was silent as we watched the two dots draw closer together. Were they about to engage in battle? Trade? Talk? But very simply, the Chron ship met up with the PrimeCorp ship and stopped.

  “Tell me what I’m seeing here, somebody,” I said finally.

  “It is what it looks like,” Yuskeya said, her voice tight. “PrimeCorp is apparently in contact with the Chron. The Protectorate will bury them when they find out about this.” She almost whispered the last sentence, but we all heard it.

  “Well, we’d better make sure we get out of this system in one piece so that there’s evidence of it,” Baden said. “I’ll bet the last thing they want is a ship full of witnesses.”

  “I’d give a good bit to listen in,” I said. “But how are they managing to talk at all? Cerevare? What do you make of it?”

  The Lobor historian shook her head. “It doesn’t make any sense to me. That was one of the reasons I was so excited about discovering the Chron artifact moon—it might shed some light on the language.”

  “And I didn’t think the Chron were any too interested in learning to speak Esper, when they were trying to kill off everyone who spoke it,” Rei added.

  “Can we try to pick up any of the communication that’s passing between them?” Maja asked.

  “You’re beginning to sound like Baden,” I told her. She smiled weakly.

  “That’s my girl,” Baden said, but shook his head. “We’re too far out, and if we go closer, we risk being noticed.”

  “Come on, folks, you’re not thinking this through,” came a voice from the rear of the bridge.

  I didn’t even turn around. “I wondered how long it would take you to get here, Sord. You might as well come in and sit down where I can see you.”

  She sauntered onto the bridge like she owned it, datapad in hand, sliding into one of the empty skimchairs at a research console.

  “I thought you said you’d be surprised to find a PrimeCorp ship out here,” I said.

  She grinned, mischief evident in her brown eyes. “What I actually said was that it would shock me if you found one. I didn’t think, if they were here, that they’d be that careless, hanging around in plain sight for anyone who happened to pop through a wormhole.”

  I felt my hands clench into fists, and forced them to relax. Absolutely the most annoying person I’d ever met. “So, what do you think they’re talking about?”

  Jahelia Sord shrugged. “I can’t guess specifics, but knowing PrimeCorp, I’d have to guess they’re making some kind of deal. That’s what PrimeCorp does.”

  I thought about it. “So if PrimeCorp is carrying out a secret wormhole exploration project—”

  Hirin nodded. “Like I said, it’s what they started out doing. That’s how they came to control so many planets in Nearspace; they funded the explorers, and got to the planets first.”

  “And if they keep some of their discoveries secret—what if they’ve always done that? They can afford to pay the explorers to keep their mouths shut—”

  “Or get rid of them if they won’t,” Jahelia Sord noted.

  “I don’t doubt it,” Hirin said.

  “Then they can explore those new systems themselves, and mine them for resources without conforming to Nearspace regulations,” I continued. “Maybe even make contact with species that live there.”

  “Yeah, and get tech ideas or specs, or the complete technology from them,” Baden sai
d. “Turn around and manufacture it in Nearspace as their own invention or discovery, instead of setting up trade with the real developers.”

  “Captain,” Cerevare said. She’d been quiet through most of the discussion, but her eyes now were very dark and very serious. “PrimeCorp developed the first burst drive prototype not long after the Chron war. Supposedly it was in response to the fact that the Chron ships were so much faster than our own, and it was a significant factor in our vulnerability to them.”

  “And Fha said something—about our burst drive—” her words echoed back to me. “It is very similar to Chron technology,” I said slowly.

  “So you’re thinking that PrimeCorp got the specs for a burst drive from the Chron?” Maja asked.

  I nodded. “And then developed it and sold it to the Protectorate—at a high price, of course—as their own invention. And no doubt got applauded for helping the war effort and made mountains of cash.”

  “You think PrimeCorp collaborated with the enemy?” Cerevare asked doubtfully.

  Hirin chewed his lip thoughtfully. “I don’t know if the Chron would have been amenable to that, would they? According to everything we know, their only goal was to eradicate us.”

  “True, I cannot see them cooperating with humans, especially to the point of sharing technology or information with them,” Cerevare agreed.

  “You might want to rethink that.” Jahelia Sord held up her datapad, screen turned around to face us. “You don’t want to know how I have this, but it’s a classified file from the PrimeCorp main hub. I didn’t even know I had it until a short time ago.”

  “What is it?” I asked, trying to make out the strange symbols on the screen.

  “I think,” she said with a wry glance at it, “that it’s a Chron-Esper dictionary. From about a hundred years ago.”