The Dark Reaches (8 page)

By comparison to the ordered, deeply traditional Line, the new pilots he and Linnea had helped to train seemed less disciplined, raw. They could pilot, they could fight; but they had no binding tradition, no honor beyond the individual. It had comforted Iain to deal with the Line at Council meetings, or to work with former brothers as training instructors. He shared with them an unspoken language that he had learned in childhood and still loved, but that no one now close to him could understand. Not even Linnea. Soon he would be far from anyone who knew it.

At last Linnea’s voice spoke in his ear, giving her name and her ship’s call sign to Paradais Ground. “Checklist complete. We’re ready for scheduled launch. Destination radius plus ninety, down-orbit.”

“Acknowledged,” the deep voice of the duty controller said. “Launch when ready. Travel safely, Pilot Kiaho.”

“Thank you, Ground,” Linnea said. Her voice sounded steady. They had been careful to rest as much as they could, the past few days, and in that quiet time alone together the physical bond between them had deepened further. They had never been so close, she had never been so openly loving, as in those few days. And now it was all to be put at risk.

But he heard no doubt in Linnea’s voice. This was what she wanted. What she must have: to travel so far, he had thought in his bitterness, that her homelessness no longer mattered even to her.

Launch. They had chosen a conventional trajectory, conservative of fuel—not Linnea’s style at all, or even his own, but they must waste nothing. So it seemed to take forever to reach jump radius, time when Iain could do nothing, could not even speak to Linnea. Then she chose to make the first jump at once.

The initial jump was a short one, to a point just beyond the edge of the Paradais system; it took barely an instant in otherspace, the merest flicker of nothingness. Arrived, they floated in silence, surrounded by the pale, starry folds of the clouds of gas and dust that had concealed the Hidden Worlds for so long. Through their joint neural link to the ship, Iain felt Linnea’s presence clearly. In otherspace, this link would make it possible for him to communicate with her, if she allowed it; or at the least to let her sense his presence.

Finally, she spoke, through their connection. “I’m ready, Iain.”

He had to ask, once more: “You’re sure of this?”

“As sure as I can be.” He sensed no fear in her, saw no agitation in her physical readouts.

“I’ll be with you,” he said. On so long a jump they would both probably spend much of the time drugged into unconsciousness; even in the jump, where much less time passed than in the outer world, they would be helpless in otherspace for weeks, maybe months, and only drugs brought sleep to a mind there. “Reach out to me if you need me.”

“I will,” she said after a pause. Then, “Iain, I love you.”

The words she would never say. “And I love you,” he said, feeling tears sting his eyes. He took a last breath in normal space, feeling the air move into his lungs, feeling the softness of the shell around his body. Any second now—

First came the familiar time of blindness, deafness, isolation, when nothing could penetrate. It took longer, he remembered, to reach through to otherspace when one was flying as a passenger rather than as pilot. He had not jumped as Linnea’s passenger since the last of her training runs, more than three years earlier.

So, when otherspace found him, and he stretched out his distorted senses to touch it, he gasped. He had never experienced this sense of headlong flight. Flight under tight direction, masterful control. Flight toward . . . no destination he could sense or understand. He did not have the mark. That was in her mind, not his. He was flying blind.

But flying blind in the company of a pilot such as he had never known. He did not dare to reach out to her, not in these early moments of the jump; an error now would force her to abort the jump, shake her confidence for the next attempt.

And yet he felt oddly sure that her confidence never
could
be shaken. This, more than he had ever guessed or imagined, was Linnea’s rightful world. He hadn’t known. He had never known.

He abandoned himself to the flow of it, to the strange shape of a jump he had never made before, of a hyperdesic whose sharp line vanished beyond the horizon of his mind. He felt himself and Linnea sinking deeper into otherspace, beginning the long journey between all that he knew and Earth. Earth, the home of their enemies; the dark center of the system where, Linnea believed, a few humans lingered in concealment.

Humans who might have a weapon the Line lacked. Humans who deserved the hope of rescue.

Now, here, with nothing else to distract his mind, Iain knew that he was afraid. He had been afraid from the moment he agreed to this journey, afraid for Linnea even more than for himself.

What would they find? How human would they really be—people who had lived in hiding, so near to such danger, for centuries? And if Linnea’s certainty was false, if there was no weapon—would they survive the return?
Fear—

Then reassurance. Words formed in his mind—Linnea’s voice, her presence behind them: a sharp flame of intention and courage, hope warm as silk against his skin, a ghost-memory of her warm hand sliding down his back. The taste of her mouth in memory—in memory only. Perhaps never again.

Her words, her presence.
The way is open.

Go, then,
he urged. And sensed, in reply, a low laugh of delight.

Down and down. Faster and faster. But joy, all joy. Her exultation filled him. It was as if he could feel his physical body again, as if it tingled and shook.

He was in Linnea’s hands. He was in her governance. And there was nowhere, nowhere else he wished to be.

Heat, and dark, and a rhythmic whistling. Linnea tried to turn, to escape the sound, to sink back into unconsciousness. But she could not move. Strapped, tied, pierced, she could not move. She felt heat, and a stabbing ache in her chest, and the trickle of sweat between her breasts. Floating. No gravity. She could not see. She could hear only the whistling sound.

She held her breath to listen, and the sound stopped. She breathed again, heard the whistling of air into infected lungs. Felt the crackle as she breathed. Far from anywhere, and disoriented, and sick—

Dully, she understood. They had arrived. They had arrived somewhere.

But where?

She reached out in her mind, trying to sense Iain’s presence. Nothing. No link at all, to anything.

A surge of panic sped her breathing, made her cough. “Ship,” she croaked.

Silence.

“Ship. Link in.”

A fragment of response flickered through the link from the shipmind, muttering of overloads, depletions, disaster.

“Eyes,” she said, and coughed again, pain ripping her chest.

And she saw.

At first only utter blackness sparked with stars—strange, cold stars, no soft veil of nebulae. She turned her vision. There: a star brighter than all the others, bright enough that it was masked. The primary. The sun—the sun of Earth? She swung the ship’s eyes farther.

A blue world swam into view—in half-phase, the bright side lit only wanly. Not the blue of a living world; the harsh cyanic blue of a cold gas giant.

The jump point.

They had made it.

She called again through the link to Iain, but again no answer came. He must be unconscious.

He
must
be unconscious.

And she was torn. Only her link to the ship gave her a clear view outside it and exact control over its systems. But the link kept her immobilized inside this shell. To check on Iain, to see him with her own eyes, know what had happened, would blind her to everything else and leave them powerless.

But she had to know. If he was still alive, she could think, she could plan. If he was not—

She pulled back, willed the neural connections to withdraw. Again the ship muttered, confused words about
necessary maintenance
and
warning
. She struggled with weak hands to finish disconnecting herself from the ship’s support.

Then—the ship lurched, and something heavy clanked against the hull.

No time to reestablish control connections. Linnea tore loose the last tubes, pushed the shell open, launched herself to the external control board. When she slapped it awake, most of its lights burned amber and red. The proximity-alarm light blinked purple, but there was no sound. Burned-out, broken, power too low. Her ship lurched again, and she pulled herself into the chair at the panel, strapped herself in. Through the fog of fever, she woke the viewscreens, tried to get a look at what had taken hold of her ship, but it was too near: Some views were blocked completely, others showed nothing but stars.

She heard the scrape of metal on metal, to the rear of the ship, in the passenger compartment. Panic clawed at her throat. Someone, or something, was trying to force the hatch.

She hit the release for the restraining straps, floated up to a locker, and fumbled inside for the stunrod she had hidden there. Then launched herself into the rear compartment, where Iain’s shell hung silent and sealed, its readout lights a wild mix of green, amber, red, no time to interpret them. She caught herself and looked at the air-lock hatch. The light above it glowed green, indicating pressure on the other side, outside the ship. There should not have been. Someone had attached a docking tube. Someone was trying to cycle her ship’s lock from outside, trying to come in. If they persisted, they might damage her ship, even disable it—

Gripping the stunrod, she slapped the control that dilated the outer hatch, then the inner one.

A bulky shape floated there in the lock, humanlike, encased in a black vacuum suit. A mirrored visor hid its face, its eyes. Through the fever a chill shook her as she understood, again, the risk they had taken: If this was an infested human, if these were the Cold Minds, then she and Iain were dead. She had killed them both.

A voice spoke, distorted and harsh, from a speaker on the suit. She could not quite understand the words—rapid, slurred, differently shaped. The voice spoke again. Then she realized there was another suited shape behind the first one, and each of them held a weapon, a gun, aimed at her.

She let go of the stunrod, let it float out of her hand. “I am Linnea Kiaho,” she said. “From the Hidden Worlds. You sent for me.”

An interrogative, one she almost understood. A suited hand swept a gesture including her from head to toe, and she realized how she must look: naked, filthy, hollow-eyed. “Yes,” she said firmly. “You sent for us. We came because you called.”

“ ‘We’?” the voice said. The mirrored visor turned toward Iain’s shell, lit and obviously in use.

She controlled nothing here; she could not protect Iain, she could not even protect herself. If these people would not help them, neither she nor Iain would live much longer.

She nudged herself toward Iain’s closed shell, took hold there, slowly lifted the lid.

The breath drained out of her. He lay there—breathing, alive. For a moment she forgot the suited figures behind her, forgot the danger in the overwhelming relief that he had survived. The black interface mask covered his face. Gently, she peeled it away, feeling the heat of fever beating from his skin.

A suited hand gripped the rim of the coffinlike shell, and the gleaming visor looked down at Iain. He lay with his eyes closed, his black braid floating gently just above his shoulder. His ribs showed clearly, but his breathing sounded normal. But still he was unconscious, even after the programmed dose of postjump stimulants—not a good sign.

Sick as Linnea was, she had to think, and fight, for both of them. She took a breath to speak again.

Armored hands gripped her arms, pulled her away. The other person took hold of the braid, jerked Iain into a sitting position, and she cried out, “No! The shiplinks, don’t pull them out, you’ll hurt him!”

“One of
them
,” the voice said, the tone deep, ugly. The other one said nothing, but the grip on Linnea’s arms tightened.

The reflective visor turned toward her. The voice spoke one more time, one finger jabbing at Iain. “Out,” it said clearly. “Now.”

With fumbling hands Linnea disconnected Iain from the linkages that had joined him to the ship, kept him alive. He seemed deeply unconscious, floating loosely as she tugged him around to reach the links and tubing. As soon as he was free, the suited man pushed her aside and bound Iain’s wrists, then his ankles with wire twisted tight. The helmeted head swung around to face her again. Spoke again, clearly and slowly. “This pilot will be sorry he came.”

“But we’re—” She fought to speak clearly. “We’re the ones you sent for.”

For the first time the figure holding her spoke, the voice deep and distorted. “We sent for no one.”