Shipstar (45 page)

The ship rumbled as she took it on a slow tipping angle. She was concentrating so didn’t notice the beeping of the comm.

Karl picked it up for her. His body went rigid and he glanced at his shocked face. “It’s … Tananareve, Cap’n. For you.”

He grabbed it. “Redwing here. How in—?” Redwing’s face showed nothing as he listened. Then his mouth slowly opened and he stared into space. “How did—?” More silence. “So they’ll let us go?”

Beth suddenly realized that this was a negotiation that could end all this madness. She kept
SunSeeker
in a tight helical turn, with a wary eye on the flier below, now approaching. Something told her that she should make some quick dodgy movements to make them a less predictable target. While hanging on Redwing’s every word, of course.

“Okay, details later. Right.” Redwing’s entire body was tense now, on his feet, spine ramrod straight. He gripped his chair so hard, she saw his hand turn pale. “What?” The silence seemed long and unbearable, but she noticed the seconds on her situation screen were going by slowly. “Roger. More later.”

Redwing turned to her and said, “That flier behind us, take all the evasion you can. They’re trying to shut down a weapon that’s in armed and aiming mode right now.”

She slammed the helm over hard and teased the fusion burn to its max. Then she released the bolus of searing plasma and wrenched the helm again, putting them into a flat spin, then a dive. Pops and creaks came echoing down the bridge from the connecting corridors. Karl’s tablet escaped from the ridged worktable and smacked into the bulkhead.

Redwing said, “There’s an electromagnetic precursor maybe two seconds before discharge. Look for that. Say again, Tananareve—”

Karl flicked their EM antennas into one overlay, frequencies color-coded. Beth could see the flier as a dark point among hills and valleys of Technicolor richness. “It’s buried in all this plasma emission,” Karl said.

“Integrate the whole spectral emission,” Beth said. “I don’t know what frequency it will come out in, but if we—”

“Got it.” A smooth topological surface appeared now in auburn colors, brown for valleys and nearly yellow at the peaks. The sky flexed like an ocean rolling with colliding wave fronts.

She fought the helm around again and let their speed drop a bit. This let her fill reserve chambers with incoming plasma and build to the max density they could carry. The jet wind was coming in at velocities over a thousand kilometers a second, and she could vary the inflow rate simply by moving the magscoop to angle it more fully into the stream.
SunSeeker
was working far from its optimal performance peak, which had been designed to run steady and smooth on interstellar plasma, orders of magnitude below the sleeting hail of knotty ionized matter rushing at them. Now she used, without thinking about it, the skills she had won from their flight up the jet when they arrived here. Through long hours she had fought violent currents, swimming upstream against conditions
SunSeeker
had never seen.

Now she just let her instincts rule. Her hands and eyes moved restlessly, shaping plasma and bunching it. When she saw the holding chambers were full, she began to trickle more into the fusion chambers. The boost took them up jetward and to starboard as she waited for something strange to come at them.

It wasn’t subtle. The maroon tones around the flier profile suddenly blossomed with a hard bright yellow peak. She fed the stored plasma into the chambers and goosed the drive. The helm slammed over, and she had time to shout “Incoming!”

The bridge shuddered and then
wrinkled
. She looked down the deck line and saw the bulwark ripple and flex. Pops and groans rose. Karl dove for the deck. She felt a tight pressure run through her like a slow, sinuous wave. Her stomach lurched. A deep bass tone rolled along the ship axis and—

—it was gone. The bridge snapped back into straight lines and firm walls. The hail of small stressed sounds fell away.

“They missed us,” Karl said.

Redwing nodded. “But
what
missed us? The deck got rubbery—”

“A space-time wrinkle, maybe,” Karl said. “I dunno how in hell anybody could make one, but—”

“Let me concentrate,” Beth said. “They could shoot at us again.”

She dodged and swerved and dove and soared and plunged, and time stretched the way space had moments before. She heard nothing, saw nothing but the feeds that told her what the flier was doing. It cut her off on a side curve and flared more exhaust to draw closer. She countered with her own moves. All this she did with hands incessantly moving as her eyes looked for another of the hard bright yellow peaks. But it didn’t come.

The comm beeped. Redwing answered. “Oh. Good. What? Say again. Good. Great. You’re sure. Okay. Terms come later, sure. Soon, yes.”

He hung up and turned to Beth. She allowed her eyes to stray to him and she was shocked at how old he looked.

“They’re standing down. No more pulses like that. Something called the Lambda Gun.”

She opened her mouth to say something, and the comm beeped again.

Redwing answered. “What? Look at the star?”

“Got it,” Karl said. He and Fred, who had come onto the bridge, peered at the big screen.

Geysers. The curve of the red star worked with furious energies. Flares and huge arches broke into space. Currents swept across the troubled crescent. Beth saw there was a dent in the perfect circle. Something had chewed it.

Karl said, “Look at these vectors.” He had told the Kinematic Artilect to project an acceptance cone on the thing that had missed them. He had set the basic width to be a few times the jittering pattern Beth had followed to evade whatever the flier threw at them. Within the error bars, the cone snipped a bit off the star.

Redwing frowned. “Tananareve says the Folk call it a Lambda Gun. It does something with space-time, so if it just projected on—” He stopped. Facts trump words.

They watched the star adjust gravity against its internal pressures. Huge fissures opened and closed like snapping mouths. Fountains of restless plasma worked up in slender, vibrant yellow tendrils before curving and dying. The star flooded simmering masses into the gap, and waves spread from that. Fluids shaped by strong magnetic fields moved in complex eddies. Storms peeled off this and spread, tornadoes the size of planets.

Beth let out a long slow breath, trying to get herself back into somewhat normal condition. She was tired and worn and completely confused. Coffee no longer helped. She needed a bath, too.

She stood, wobbling a little. “Tananareve said more, Cap’n. I could tell. What?”

“We’ve got a deal. They’ll resupply us.”

Gasps. Redwing shrugged and smiled, bobbing his head when the entire bridge burst into applause. “Uh, yes. There’s more. They want some of us, maybe enough to avoid inbreeding, to stay on the Bowl. The ones who actually run this place aren’t those Folk at all. Those are like the local police on the beat, or middle managers in a bureaucracy. This thing is so old, something needs to live long enough to run it.”

“Some aliens we didn’t see down there?” Beth asked, her vision bleary, bones aching now. “Some kind of—”

Redwing shrugged, as though he should have known all along. “Ice Minds move slowly because they’re cold. They keep the memories and experience, Tananareve said. They work with something called the Diaphanous, who manage the jet and the star.”

“Plasma stuff?” Karl said. “Those were what made those sounds, that created those discharge arcs, that—”

“Killed Clare,” Beth said. “Trying to stop us from kinking the jet.”

“The cold works with the hot, then,” Karl said. “The Folk are just local managers.”

“They sure don’t think so. They imagine they’re the whole show,” Beth said. “Funny, really.”

“So why did the Ice Minds, or whatever, let us live at all?” Fred said. He had been silent the whole time but now seemed happy, smiling, eyes dancing.

“They need help with Glory,” Redwing said. “We can get there first, going full blast. We can reconnoiter. And talk to the Glorians, who think we humans are running the Bowl. They got our radio and TV, and since they were along the same line of sight, thought the Bowl was ours.”

Beth frowned. “We have to?”

“Part of the deal.” Redwing smiled. “Tananareve said it’s pretty much take it or leave it.”

Karl laughed. “No question, I’d say. We take it.”

“They do want us to straighten out that standing kink. It’s rubbing against the Knothole and it’s gonna stay that way. But if we fly through it the right way, maybe we can bust it loose.”

Karl said dryly, “There are better ways to put that, more precise. But I think with the fluences we have, and Beth as pilot, we can.”

Beth laughed, a bit dry. “Beth the perfect pilot thinks she needs sleep. Lots of it. Then more coffee.”

Redwing smiled and finally sat down in his deck chair, more relaxed than she had seen him in a long while. He looked at the walls showing their situation and said, “If we run down the jet, fix the Knothole plasma stall, then out—well, we can loop around and come back into simple orbit.”

Beth scowled. “Back into the cold sleep vaults?”

“Some stay here,” Redwing said. “The Ice Minds want some new species to give the Bowl some stability. The Folk couldn’t handle us, so they’re out of the policing business. We get that.”

Beth nodded, knowing her piloting days were very nearly over.

FORTY
-
EIGHT

Tananareve was tired when the incessant images and thoughts finally started to taper away. The Ice Minds had much to convey in their cool, gliding manner, but it was all so big and strange, she could not really think what to say. Mostly she just digested. Which was exhausting in itself. But one thing did puzzle her, and she asked about it.

“Why was your jet open to attack? I mean, it and the star and the Bowl—it’s an unstable system, has to be adjusted all the time or it falls apart. Anybody wants to do you harm, the jet is an open target, the heart of the system.”

Some confusion and delay. Soft pictures floated into her mind. The jet’s filmy twisting strands working out from the star. Sometimes it snarled a bit, but the plasma clots called the Diaphanous adjusted that. They made the jet smooth out and glide tight and sure through the Knothole. All was well. Nominally.

“What’s the idea of letting it be so vulnerable? I mean, we just came alongside you and slipped in, rode up the jet. We could’ve damaged it then, even by accident. But other kinds, other aliens, they might want to bring you down.”

Some did.

“What was your strategy then?” She was tired, but what she learned could be useful. Redwing would want to know every damn detail.

Imagine a simple army’s task, under imminent attack. They must find the part of their landscape best suited to strengthen their position when fighting in open battle. The answer is to fight on the edge of a sharp cliff. This gives their soldiers just two choices—to fight or retreat, and in retreating to go over the cliff and die. Their enemy has different options—to fight or flee. That option to flee makes the enemy’s attack less likely to persevere. Placing yourself in peril makes you appear fearless. It gives your opponent cause to consider breaking off the battle.

She found this strange. “So you put your backs to the wall and that’s a defense?”

We prefer to dissuade. We regret that the Folk, or rather one of them, used our final defense. Our Lambda Gun is immensely powerful. Luckily it was ineptly used. We have stopped its use and will punish those who erred so grievously.

Tananareve said nothing. She felt a rising, apprehensive note strike through her mind, and realized it was coming from the Ice Minds. They said,
The Diaphanous now speak to those who caused this deep error. You should hear as well.
A somber, rolling voice came then, not so much spoken as unfurled.

Who is this that wrecks our province without knowledge?

Do you know the sliding laws of blithe fluids?

Were you here when the great curve of the Bowl shaped true?

Can you raise your voice to the clouds of stars?

Do fields unseen report to you?

Can your bodies shape the fires of thrusting suns?

Have you ever given orders to the passing stars or shown the dawn its place?

Can you seize the Bowl by the edges to shake the wicked out of it?

Have you journeyed to the springs of fusion or walked in the recesses of the brittle night?

Have you entered the storehouses of the Ice Minds and found there tales of your long past?

Can you father events in times beyond all seeing?

Your answer to all these cannot justify your brute hands upon machines of black wonder.

Nor shall you ever chance to be so able again, for you shall be no more.

The space and time you sought to dissolve shall reckon without you hence.

Tananareve knew somehow this came from the invisible ones who dwelled in the jet. She did not understand any of this. She just sighed and put such troubles away as she gratefully slipped into sleep.

FORTY
-
NINE

Memor watched the great floods sweep across lands that had held towns and forests and would now be swamps. Great constructions from far antiquity were undermined and slumped. Under great magnification, from this satellite view, she studied the rooftops of homes and city centers. There were no survivors awaiting rescue. A few boats bobbed here and there, but not many.

“It is a tragedy, indeed,” Bemor said. He looked tired, surely from the work of keeping the Ice Minds in touch with the primates, funneled through the mind of the poor Tananareve. “But we are demanded at the leaving ceremony. Come.”

“Who demands this? I do not wish to witness such.”

“The Ice Minds command. Their attitude has changed substantially. I do not sense their goodwill toward us any longer.”