Xiù’s cabin was actually the most lavishly-decorated on the ship, despite her initial reluctance to put her stamp on it. Allison had pointed out that Xiù was “Going to spend at least, like, a month on this ship anyway, so why not get comfortable?”
The result was that she’d used up her entire month’s allowance of nanofactory time on fabrics, rugs, fairy lights, throw pillows and, with Kirk’s permission, candles. The result was that the cool default lighting of the cabins was warmer in her room, and there was a gust of scented candle on the wind when she answered Lewis’ knock.
“Hey.” She smiled, but he could tell that she was pretty frazzled. “What’s up?”
“Uh, I can come back if this isn’t a good time…”
“No, I’m fine, I just…” She yawned “…I didn’t sleep so well last night and I guess it’s catching up on me now.”
“Well, if you need a nap-”
She smiled. “I’m fine, really. What’s up?”
“Well…” he took the plunge. “Look, there’s not a whole lot to do on this ship, I know, but I’ve got some movies picked out I think you’d like, and I’m not a half-bad cook myself when I put my mind to it so, I thought… Y’know, we’ve been getting on pretty good, and…”
Her lips parted in surprise. “Are… are you asking me on a date?” she asked.
“Yeah! Or, like, on the closest thing we can manage to a date on this ship. If you want.”
“Wow, um…”
Lewis knew a rejection when he saw one coming and steeled himself for it, determined not to be disappointed.
“I mean… I’m flattered, but Lewis, I’m not ready to mate with anyone yet.”
All the steeling in the world couldn’t have protected his ego from that unexpected turn of phrase.
”…mate?!”
She hadn’t seemed to notice what she’d said until his outraged echo, but when she did her face went crimson. “Oh god, I’m sorry, that was in Gaoian, I…”
“No, no. Clearly I had the wrong idea here.”
“Don’t be angry, I-!”
“Ah, go mate with yourself, Xiù!”
“But-!”
He was already halfway down the corridor, and pretended not to notice the sound of her door closing, nor the miserable shout of “God fucking DAMMIT, Xiù!” that drifted through it.
He barged past Vedreg on his way to his own quarters, ignoring the big alien’s concerned query, and threw himself into his bunk, fuming quietly.
The worst part was that he didn’t really know why he was so angry. The anger felt…wrong. Forced. He knew he shouldn’t be so mad, and that just made him madder.
He was still seething when the room chimed politely at him. “You have a message.” it informed him.
“Ignore.”
“The message is flagged as urgent.”
“I said fucking IGNORE!”
“Ignoring message.”
“And hold all my messages until I say otherwise.”
The room chimed again, acknowledging the command, and fell silent.
He didn’t notice when he fell asleep, but he woke with a start some time later when somebody started banging on his door.
“Ah, yes. Testosterone levels at two thousand percent normal. Just like Julian.”
Lewis frowned at the readout. “The fuck?”
“Must have been the Huh. No wonder we’ve been acting like a pair of hyperthyroid quarterbacks.” Julian told him.
“Fortunately…” Kirk said, touching something cold to his arm. “…It’s an easy fix. There. You should be back to normal in a couple of hours.”
“What about you?” Lewis asked of Kirk. “You played with that thing too.”
“And indeed, my own hormonal balance is off.” Kirk agreed.
Allison was leaning against the wall with her arms folded. “Really? I’ve not noticed you acting differently…?” she said.
“Human and Rrrtktktkp’ch brains are very different. Still, I suspect I too would have begun to show behavioral changes before long.”
Lewis sighed. “I guess I owe Xiù an apology, don’t I?”
“I am sure she will understand.” Kirk said.
“I’d better talk to her first, though.” Allison said. “What happened?”
“Oh, I… asked her out.”
“Yeah, I knew that. And?”
“Well, uh.” Lewis scratched at the back of his head. “She had one of those Gaoian moments. You know, she’s tired, she’s not been sleeping well? So she said she wasn’t ‘looking to mate with anyone right now’.”
Julian grimaced. “Ouch.”
“Yeah, but it’s not her fault, is it? You said it yourself dude, she’s been without human contact for years. That’s got to fuck with your head.”
Kirk patted his shoulder. “It is not your fault either.” he assured him.
“Still.” Allison said. “I’ll go talk to her.”
“Sure.” Lewis muttered, as she kissed Julian’s cheek and left the Infirmary.
Xiù doesn’t remember having set up a hundred tea-light candles in her quarters, but she doesn’t question it: She’s making love to Julian, what better way to do that than by candlelight?
She runs her finger over his chest and watches his skin glow forge-red where she presses. The sight is entrancing, so much so that she forgets all about the sex and just watches the glow. When she taps his chest, coloured sparks fly everywhere.
She does it again, laughing, and again and again. She has always loved New Year, and the fireworks. In fact…why is she wasting her time here when she could be there, enjoying the celebrations?
She climbs off the stone man and steps out into the street, hailing a cab to take her to her parents’ place. There will be Nin Gou! And Luo buo gao! How could she have forgotten?
She’s still kicking herself for forgetting when she turned over and nearly fell out of bed, jolting awake in time to catch herself from falling.
She rolled back onto her pillow and stared at the ceiling, recalling the dream as the details evaporated, never to be recalled. What she could remember of it left her feeling hungry, horny and nostalgic all at once.
Cursing in a melange of English, Chinese and Gaoian, she dragged herself out of bed and into the shower, and cranked the temperature right down, and was still sluicing herself under the cold water when the door chimed.
“Just a minute!”
She scrubbed her limbs until they were merely damp and threw on her bathrobe, wrapping her hair up into a towel-turban. “Come in!”
Allison poked her head round it. “Hey, you okay?” she asked.
Xiù paused. “You heard?”
“Lewis is in the infirmary right now.” Allison said. “It turns out that fucking huh thing’s had the boys on a hormone rush all week.”
”…Are they okay?”
“They’ll be fine.” Allison reassured her. “Lewis is probably going to come up here and say sorry later.”
Xiù sat down on her bed. “I don’t… really blame him.” she said. “I mean… okay, I do, but… I guess I mean…” she gave up and shrugged helplessly.
Allison just smiled. “I get you.” she said.
Xiù relaxed. “Thanks.”
“So… honey.” Allison sat down next to her. “Asking as a friend, and with no hard feelings at all…”
Not unnaturally, Xiù was immediately nervous. “Um… Yes?”
“What’s going on between you and my boyfriend?”
“Wh-? Nothing!” Xiù’s face was redder than her rug, and she stood up sharply. “Nothing! Really!”
“I know nothing’s happened.” Allison reassured her. “I’m just asking… what’s going on?”
Xiù’s blush faded a little, and she dragged the towel off her head, bunching it up nervously. “I’m sorry, he’s just…hot.”
“Oh yeah.” Allison agreed, nodding, which drew a giggle out of Xiù. “And you’re lonely, aren’t you?” she added.
”…Yeah.”
Allison nodded. “And a bit confused, going by what you said to Lewis.”
Xiù sighed, and threw the towel into her laundry hamper. “I guess so.” she admitted. “It’s so much more… straightforward with Gaoians.” She punctuated the pause and the word that ended it with her hands, then gestured towards the door and to Allison. “The whole ‘he’s off limits because he’s with you’ thing is… I mean, I know how it works, I haven’t forgotten, but it’s…” She tailed off and shrugged again, flapping her arms helplessly.
“Not what you’re used to?”
Xiù hissed an indrawn breath and flapped her arms again, shaking her head. “I guess it’s not.” she agreed.
“That’s gotta be scary.”
Xiù just nodded, staring at the floor, balling her fists. It was such a childlike pose that it yanked right at every motherly instinct Allison had, and she launched herself up off the bed to grab her friend in a tight hug.
She earned a soaking wet shoulder for her efforts as Xiù let go and shook, hugging back so hard that her fingernails broke skin even through Allison’s tshirt. “What if I can’t be human again?” she squeaked. “What if… what if I’m stuck? What do I do? Every time I think I’m doing well I relax and then I screw up again! What if I’m… broken? Where do I go then?”
Allison said nothing, just held on and let her get it out.
“All I want to do is go home, but then I act like a Gaoian and I’m scared I’ll go home and people will think I’m a freak, and my family won’t recognise me and I won’t know them and I won’t fit…and… and it all feels like it happened to someone else, Earth, it feels like it wasn’t me who lived there, like I’m a Gaoian who had a dream about being human one time and… How do I cope? What do I do? I don’t think I know how to do anything human any more, but I’m not Gaoian… so… so… So where do I belong?!”
She petered out and just sobbed for a bit, while Allison rubbed her back and waited until she judged the time was right.
“You said all of that in English.” she said.
There was a slow moment, but the sobbing stopped, and another slow moment after that, Xiù pulled her head out of Allison’s shirt and blinked at her with watery red eyes. “I did?”
“Every word.” Allison promised.
Xiù relaxed a little, and stood up straight, issuing a bitter little laugh as she dried her eyes. “I’m so messed up…” she observed.
“Nobody wouldn’t be.” Allison said, brushing some of Xiù’s hair out of the way. “But we’re here for you. We get you, Julian maybe even more than I do. And if you’re broken, you’ll mend, or you’ll find somebody to mend you.”
Xiù was nodding, downcast, but Allison wasn’t quite finished. “And as for where you belong…”
“Don’t say here.” Xiù interrupted. “Please, don’t ask me again.”
Allison hugged her again. “I was going to say I don’t think anybody belongs anywhere.” she said. “Except for where they choose to be. Wherever that is.”
Xiù finally smiled again as that sank in. It was a reluctant, unhappy little smile, but it was still like the sun rising. “I like that.” she said.
“Kind of my mantra, babe…You okay?”
Xiù scrubbed at her eye again, sniffing. “I don’t know.” she said. “I hope so.”
Allison nodded. “Good start.” she said. “And… about Julian?”
“Yeah?”
“I trust him, and I trust you. Whatever’s going on is, uh…you aren’t allowed to kiss him.”
That finally provoked a giggle. “I’ll try not to,” Xiù promised.
“Cool…Girl’s night? I’ve got Disney movies, wine, and a shirtless waiter. My treat.”
“Shirtl-? Wait, really?!”
“Well, he doesn’t know it yet…” Allison smiled mischievously “But… call it a hunch, I think he’ll agree to it. It’s just a bit of fun. You in?”
”…Can I make crepes? I’m kinda hungry.”
“Sounds good.”
“Then I’m in.”
“This, uh…this could get awkward…”
Allison paused as they were about to open the door to the common room. “Are you okay?”
Julian fidgeted. “I know I agreed to this, just…”
She smiled, and gave him a kiss. “It’s not like I’ve got a cattle prod, baby.” she said. “If you’re not totally comfortable, don’t even worry about it. I just thought it’d be a bit of harmless, sexy fun. But if you don’t want to…”
Julian considered it, then shook his head and smiled. “No, I’m in.” he said. “Comfort zones are meant to be pushed out of.”
“You’re sure?”
He grabbed her hand and put it on his chest, letting her feel his pulse.
“Wow… you’re getting off on this, huh?” she noted.
He nodded and looked down, fighting the half-smile that was crawling up one side of his face. “A bit, yeah.”
“Good boy.” Allison teased him, then opened the door.
Xiù was just setting down the crepes she’d made – true Canadian ones, laden with ham, cheese, sunny-side-up eggs and maple syrup – on the coffee table alongside popcorn and nachos. From the looks of things, she’d already helped herself to a glass of wine.
“Ooh!” she exclaimed. “You gave him a bow tie!”
Julian fingered the adornment in question. “These things aren’t made to be worn on bare skin.” he complained.
“It’s that or the cat ears.” Allison reminded him.
“Bow tie it is!” Julian rushed to reply, preempting the delight that had risen on Xiù’s face. She made a disappointed sound, but also took a second to unabashedly appreciate the view. Both women were clearly enjoying themselves.
“Well I’ll be kind.” Allison said. “You can pick three films out, we’ll eliminate two of them and watch the survivor.”
“Very kind.” Julian drawled, sarcastically. Allison held up a finger.
“Ah?” she cautioned him.
He sighed, but smiled a little and straightened, trying to will himself into the role. “Yes ma’am.”
Xiù giggled. “Good boy.” She’d clearly already relaxed considerably after just one glass, and looked on course to be a happy, bubbly drunk.
“So, what are your picks?” Allison urged him, pouring a glass each for herself and Xiù.
He examined the stack of Disney movies. “Uh… Dumbo…” He said, picking one they hadn’t watched yet.
“Ugh, not Dumbo. I hate those pink elephants.” Allison objected. Julian threw the disc back onto the stack.
“Okay…Lady and the Tramp,and Mulan“
Xiù perked up even more. “Mulan’s my favorite!”
“Hmmm…It’s got better songs, too…” Allison mused.
“Let’s watch it!” Xiù enthused.
Allison winked at their waiter. “You heard her, lover! Jump to!”
He tried to be serious, but couldn’t quite contain a smile. “Yes ma’am.”
The girls chimed their glasses together. “Good boy.” they chorused.
“♪♫Tranquil as a forest, but on fire within! Once you find your center, you are sure to win!♫♫“
“Sounds like quite the party back there.”
“Yep.” Amir nodded. What the girls lacked in hitting the right notes, they were clearly making up for in tipsy enthusiasm.
“How come we’re not invited?”
“Allison called it a ‘girl’s night’.”
“So, what’s Julian doing back there?”
“Serving drinks, with his shirt off.”
Lewis paused. After being discharged from the infirmary, and using the fading dregs of hormonal aggression in his system to his advantage, he’d enlisted Amir’s help in solving the mystery of the FTL drive power draw. Now, he stopped and listened to two voices atonally chorusing “♫swift as the coursing river, with all the force of a great typhoon…♪”. The volume was impressive even through a closed pressure door and down the deck.
“Wow…” he managed. He wasn’t sure if he felt jilted, sympathetic or like he was hearing justice in action.
Amir nodded. “Yep.”
“♫…As the dark side of, the mooOoOoOon!!!♫♪“
”…What do you think would happen if we asked them to do a topless waitress night for us?”
“Broken ribs.”
“Fuck, man.” Lewis griped. “That’s just not fair.”
Amir smirked. “Nope.”
”…Change of topic, where’s Kirk at, anyway?”
“Think he’s up in the observation blister looking for signs of OmoAru life out there.”
“After that sandstorm?” Lewis looked skeptical.
“It’s their planet. They’re probably used to it. He said something about wanting to see what they do after a week of being forced indoors”
“Why’s that?”
“♫You’re unsuited for the rage of war, so pack up, go home: you’re through.♪“
Amir raised his voice over the song. “He said that anything they do straight away is probably something they’re still at least a little passionate about.”
“♫How could I make a man out of you?♪“
Lewis wobbled his head in concession. “Makes sense I guess.”
“Pardon?” The girls had launched into the chorus again, with even more cacophonous vigor than before.
“I said makes sense!”
“Yep.”
The volume increased dramatically as the door opened and Julian slipped out into the deck, holding an empty wine bottle, and vanished into the galley, from whence he re-emerged a minute later with a full bottle. To both Amir and Lewis’ astonishment, he seemed to be enjoying himself.
”…Are you sure we couldn’t get them to…?”
“Nope.”
“The Fifth Element and lingerie?”
“Go ahead and suggest it. It’s your funeral.”
”…Shit.”
Amir smiled grimly. “Yep.”
By the time the movie had finished, Amir had already declared that the limits of his technical expertise were reached, and that from here on out it was all up to Lewis, before retiring to bed.
For his part, Lewis was determined to pull an all-nighter, and the only thing that distracted him from his work was when he saw Allison and Julian on the security cams, en route to Julian’s cabin and all bar stripping each other on the way there.
He genuinely didn’t notice Xiù, or know how long she’d been waiting in the doorframe, until she spoke, but her greeting “Hey.” was so gentle that it didn’t even make him jump.
He turned. “Hey.” he echoed.
A good five seconds of mutual awkwardness ensued before he finally decided to break it. “I’m sorry.” he said. “I shoulda been more understanding.”
“I’m sorry too.” she replied. “I just… I guess I’ve got a long way to go.”
He nodded. “It’s okay. Still, even if it’s just a friend-date, offer stands.”
She smiled. He wasn’t sure if it was the wine that was making her so relaxed, or if she was just in a good headspace right now. “Xié xié.”
“No Disney though, please.”
“That’s okay… Goodnight, Lewis.”
“G’night.”
Allison came down from her orgasm with laughter, the low and satisfied chuckle of the totally relaxed, and floated on bliss as Julian gently retrieved his hand and snuggled up beside her, interrupting her heavy breathing with a kiss and a gentle stroke on the cheek to get her hair out of the way.
“I think she liked it.” he observed in a sing-song whisper, his eyes twinkling in the dark. He was plainly very pleased with himself.
As he should be.
“Mmmm, yeah.” she agreed. “Oh, I definitely like it.”
“You like to be in charge, huh?”
She giggled. “Shut up and go get your mistress a glass of water.”
He laughed, but extracted his arm from under her head. “Yes ma’am.”
“Mmm…” She bit her lip and chuckled again. “Good boy.”
Xiù is sitting by a lake. Or by a river, maybe: the details are irrelevant. The sun is rising blue and cold over a landscape of white-foliaged trees and swirling distant shapes that might be birds, or maybe eels. She is wearing long skirts of white cloth. The mist should be chilly but she feels quite warm, watching a green fish swirl and mouth lazily in circles by the shore.
She catches it, reaching into the stream and pulling it out. It flips and flails in her hands and, to calm it, she opens it to page fifty-six and tries to read what is printed there, but she can’t make out the words.
As she bends to return the poor creature to the water, she catches sight of her own reflection and examines it, surprised to see a human face studying her. Where is her fur? What happened to her ears and muzzle?
But of course, she’s human.
…Isn’t she?
She turns to face the stone man behind her, seeking his opinion. This time he is taller than mountains, and he bends to offer her his hand.
She steps forward onto his fingertips, and he picks her up, and up, and up, past his knees, past a penis the size of a skyscraper, past square miles of muscular sculpture, to his face.
She speaks to him, but can’t remember the words, or even what she intends to say. She turns around, thinking about what to tell him, how to communicate her feelings, and looks over the side of the boat she’s on, double-checking that her reflection is still human.
The stone man comes up beside her and takes her hand.
He sings to her, but the song is piercing, terrifying. It sounds like… like…
She woke up and his “song” was still reverberating around her room. It was Sanctuary’s red alert alarm.
Kirk had beaten all the humans to the flight deck. “What the hell’s going on?” he was demanding.
Lewis was working furiously, selecting, drag-dropping and running programs as fast as his hands could move, “We’re compromised, don’t ask me how!” He said. “One minute I’m poking around the FTL systems, next-”
“FTL?”
“Yeah, there’s been some weird power draw on it this week, I was trying to lock it down. Next I knew we’ve got these motherfuckers crawling all over our systems.” He waved a hand at the screen.
Kirk rocked back onto his hindlimbs as Amir squeezed past him and threw himself into the pilot’s seat, lending his own limited expertise to Lewis’ aid. “And what are ‘these motherfuckers’?” he asked, quietly.
“Fuck if I know. They’re using system runtime like programs, but they’re acting like other users.”
“What exactly were you doing?”
“Now is not the time for a fucking powerpoint presentation.” Lewis snarled, dragging a program into the run list. It apparently didn’t function as he’d hoped, drawing an angry noise out of him. “They just got into navigation, they know where we are.”
“Did you run a communications protocol through the FTL?” Kirk spat.
Lewis paused, but rallied and threw another script into the line of fire. “Yeah, how did you know?”
Kirk ignored him and spun around. “Julian, yank the blackbox FTL, replace it with the backup warp engine,” he ordered. “Xiù, Allison, get outside and cut the anchor cables. Amir, prep for launch.”
“What the shit is going on?” Lewis demanded. Kirk turned back to him.
“I fucked up.” he said. “And now the Hierarchy have found us.”
Fusion knives made short work of the anchor cables, and the longest part of Julian’s task was the sprint down the ship’s central corridor, up the stairs and through the engineering access hatch.
“We’re a week from anywhere, we’re probably safe… aren’t we?” Amir was asking as the girls returned to the flight deck to report their job done.
“They have point-to-point FTL communications, something the Dominion has been trying to perfect for… millennia.” Kirk replied. “For all we know they’ve perfected single-end wormholes or gigalight FTL for good measure. Or maybe Aru is one of their projects and they have a ship or a staging post nearby. Our only defense at this point is to get the hell out of here and hope they’re too far away to catch up. Lewis, you’re sure you managed to clear them out?”
“Second the blackbox was yanked, I was able to nuke the whole system and restore from backup. Nothing’s come back to haunt us, so… yeah, we’re clean.”
“Amir.”
Amir nodded and stabbed the button for a shipwide announcement. “All hands, report in for launch.”
There was a chorus of “here”s from around the bridge and, after a few seconds, a rumble from Vedreg over the open line that he, too, was present.
“Right.”
Sanctuary went from resting on the sands, to hovering above them, then rotated around its stern until its nose was aimed skywards. Angry clouds formed in the displaced air around a cylindrical forcefield tunnel of vacuum that Amir created for them and then he punched to full thrust.
Allison turned faintly green as the ground just vanished, lurching away behind them with a violence that offended the senses, while nobody on the ship felt the slightest jolt. The sky faded to black in seconds.
“Jesus, this thing really moves.” Xiù whispered, awe-struck.
“Out of the well in three… two… one… Warp.”
The planet Aru jolted away with just as much ferocity as its surface had done, as did all three of its moons. A second later, so did the Aru star.
“Redline it?” Amir asked. He sounded quite cool, considering.
“Redline it.” Kirk agreed. Amir just nodded and patted his console fondly, reassuring the ship.
“Seventy kilos.” he reported, watching a display that was blurring in his upper-right field of view. “A hundred. two hundred. Four hundred… we’re at blackbox cruise. Seven hundred kilolights… Bus maxed at seven hundred ninety thousand C and holding.”
“Let us hope.” Kirk said. “That is enough.”
“We should be careful anyway.” Julian pointed out.
“Agreed. Grab your personal items and put any you can’t carry, along with a data backup and… yes, the Huh into a cargo pod and program it for Cimbrean. I’ll go help Vedreg into a life raft. You all should get in one too.”
“What about Amir?” Xiù asked.
“Don’t worry about me.” Amir said. “The flight seat doubles as a life raft. So do the beds in all the cabins.”
“Go.” Kirk urged. “I don’t want to trust to luck here.”
Julian turned to the girls. “You two get the Huh. I’ll prep the pod.” he said.
They let Kirk go first: he trotted down the axial corridor and toward the lower cargo deck where Vedreg had made his home. Every emergency feature on the ship was outlined in blue lighting, from the hallway oxygen masks, first aid kits and fire extinguishers, to the life raft alcoves and decontamination showers. Kirk had spared no expense on ensuring that the ship’s occupants had every emergency tool they could want, cleverly hidden so that it only showed up when needed. Now they were all deploying, panels sliding back to reveal the functional features beneath.
“You got anything special you want to save?” Allison asked. Xiù checked her pocket, gripping the handful of personal items she’d brought with her. It wasn’t much – just the data chip Ayma had brought for her, and one of the smooth little stones that Myun had taken to sewing into her clothes.
“No, I’ve already got everything.” she said.
“Great.” Kirk turned off the corridor and Allison took off at a run, leaving Xiù to scramble after her. Down the ramp, through the common room, up the ramp, turn left past the engineering access, and Allison’s room was the second on their left. She punched in the door code, darted inside, and returned an instant later carrying a knotted bundle of T-shirt and strapping on her holster and gun.
She’d just done up the leg strap when Amir’s voice boomed over the intercom.
“BRACE, BRACE, BRACE!!”
They didn’t have time. He’d barely finished the third word when the ship lurched, flinging both of them down the corridor.
Xiù tucked in her head and limbs and rolled, not unfolding until she’d come to a halt, finding herself fetched up against the reinforced backplate of the engine that terminated the deck corridor. Allison had come to a halt a little earlier, and was hauling herself to her feet, swearing and cursing at the carpet burn all down her flank.
Somebody had clearly left the microphone on because the next thing they heard was Julian’s voice, sounding strained, saying. “Shit, that’s a lot of blood…”
Both women went still, looked at each other, and as one bolted back up towards the flight deck, Allison at a dead run. Xiù had the presence of mind to grab a medical kit from its previously-hidden recess on the wall.
Down the ramp, through the common room, up the ramp, along the corridor and… Xiù felt her stomach lurch. That was a lot of blood.
And beyond that… space.
“What the hell happened?” Allison was yelling. The bubble of glass that was Sanctuary’s nose was half shattered, the air held in only by forcefields. Amir was writhing in his seat, teeth gritted as he tried to press his hand to a horrible wound in his side.
“Gravity spike and mines!” Lewis replied. He’d hauled himself out of his seat and grabbed a medical kit of his own.
“Clear out!” Allison commanded, grabbing the kit. “Julian! give him a shot of this, right here.” she handed an injector to him and tapped a spot on Amir’s spine, then extracted something that looked for all the world like a sealant gun from the kit. “Xiù, get me a light!”
Xiù’s paralysed limbs moved without her conscious control, and she snatched an emergency lantern from the wall, holding it up and trying to ignore the… colours, and wet shapes she could see. Especially the white. Especially the way they moved as Allison pumped some kind of foam into the gruesome injury.
The injector beeped, and a second later Amir sighed, shook his head and collected himself. With a gasp, he lashed out and swiped his hands through the helm’s control field and the stars outside blurred sideways. Xiù screwed her eyes shut.
“That’s a lot of mines!” he grunted.
“You’re stable.” Allison declared. “Come on, let’s get you in a stasis pod.”
He shook his head, his face already pebbled with sweat. “Can’t.”
“Wh-?”
Everyone on the bridge flinched and averted their eyes as a line of pure heat slashed a blue-pink afterimage across the sky. Xiù felt the incredible temperature of it on her skin.
“What was that?!” Julian asked.
Lewis looked grim “Plasma cannon.”
“It’s a fuckhuge ship, is what it is.” Amir told them. “I stop flying and you’re all dead.”
“But-” Lewis began.
“Nah mate. Abandon ship. That’s a bloody order from your pilot.”
Another shot tore the sky open, much closer this time if the searing heat that bathed them like sunburn was anything to go by.
Julian, Allison and Xiù were all survivors. Julian just stood and put a hand on Amir’s shoulder, eyes damp. Allison kissed the side of his head, and the three of them cleared the bridge, with Xiù not even knowing what to say.
It was Lewis that was the holdup. “Dude…” he began, weeping openly.
“You don’t want to be here when I ram that thing, bruv.” Amir told him.
“You’re gonna-?”
Amir gave him a tight, pinched at him “Fuck off you idiot!”
Lewis nodded, grabbed the back of Amir’s head, touched forehead to forehead and nose to nose.
“Goodbye, dude.” He whispered.
Amir made a sound that might have been amusement and might have been frustration. Either way, he was smiling. “GO.“ he repeated.
Lewis finally obeyed him.
Down the corridor, down the ramp, through the common room, up the ramp. Xiù turned at the junction by engineering hatch. “Lewis come on!” she called.
He was halfway across the common area when something hit them, hard, and ripped a chunk out of Sanctuary’s living quarters the length of a shipping container. The destroyed section vanished in a whirl of air and pulverized metal, and only the millisecond timing of containment forcefields prevented the adjacent areas from decompressing… but they left Lew is trapped on the far side. He sprang to his feet, slapped the forcefield in frustration, then gesticulated back towards the lower decks, flipped them a salute and ran.
A second hit rocked them even harder than the first.
Xiù stared after him, praying silently that he’d make it, before remembering to pray that they would, too.
“Xiù! MOVE!” Allison’s desperate yell got through to her, and she scrambled upright. Julian was punching the door code with shaking fingers, missing the right keys, and Allison was fidgeting next to him. The gravity seemed to have gone wrong, and she felt like she was standing on a steep hill, which was probably why Julian and Allison were both holding on to the handrails.
Something smashed a hole straight through the ceiling and out the deck. Not a big hole. But one that killed their section’s power supply.
Without it the lighting, the gravity, and the atmospheric containment fields all failed, and that little hole got abruptly wider as all of their precious atmosphere tried to bully its way out.
It wasn’t a wind. Wind wasn’t an adequate word. Instead, the last sound those air molecules would ever carry was the rising howl of their own escape, and Xiù’s mortal shriek as the maelstrom decompression tore her loose and threw her toward infinity.
Allison couldn’t let go of the handrail without being dragged away as well, but she kicked out and with a frantic speed and precision that no snake had ever managed, Xiù snatched at and grabbed her ankle. From Allison’s expression the rescue clearly cost her a wrenched knee, but that was the least of their trouble right now: The rescue was only a temporary one. As the last of the air fled, their lives were now measured in seconds, if that.
‘Hard Vacuum’ had always seemed like an oxymoronic term. Now Julian understood it intimately. He tasted copper and pain as the saliva boiled in his mouth, and he could feel the blood under his skin threatening to do the same. Though his eyes watered to defend themselves against the desiccating void, the tears fizzed off of his eyeballs as soon as they were made. Burning frost formed on his ears, nose, eyebrows, fingers, lips. His ears, so recently abused by explosions and alarms, now rang in the silence to drown out the eerie way that his own heartbeat echoed around his body. His chest heaved and creaked, pressing down on unnaturally empty lungs that themselves were seething and screaming with boiling fluids and ebullism.
By some miracle – either by a happy accident of alien incompetence, or a rare moment of actual engineering ingenuity – the doors to the cabins had all flung themselves wide open the moment the power failed, clearing a way to the bunks, each one of which was a life raft.
Those open doors were the difference between life and death for all three of them. With only seconds at the outside until they passed out and died, having to punch in the door code would have killed them. Instead, they had exactly one shot.
He grabbed Allison’s wrist and heaved, flinging her through the nearest door and towards its bed with Xiù still trailing from her ankle, and hauled himself through after them. They crashed together into the bunk, and with what felt like it was surely the last of his strength, Julian grabbed the bright blue handle that had popped out of its covers, and yanked it down.
It broke.
It also worked. The bunk’s built-in quantum power core fired, and they collapsed onto the mattress as gravity reasserted itself. Forcefields went up even as the walls came down, and emergency air tanks explosively vented into the enclosed space, painfully slamming into every vacant bronchiole of their lungs.
Even Deathworlders could do nothing but lie there, convulsing weakly and coughing.
The life raft was built for flimsier beings, however. As delicately as a new mother afraid that her baby will break at the slightest touch, it enfolded them, wrapped them in layers of protection, slipped its moorings, and escaped.
There were lights in the top of his control interface that told Amir how many life rafts had launched, but he couldn’t spare the millisecond to glance at it. All he knew was that at least some of them were blinking. Which meant that at least some of his friends were safe.
That was enough. There was no time to wait for more.
He threw Sanctuary into something not dissimilar to a Herbst maneuver, modified in ways that only a high-powered spaceship could achieve in vacuum. A volley of coilgun and plasma fire that should have evaporated them on the spot missed several kilometers to the fore as what had been a transverse target became an oncoming dart, accelerating so hard that the ship’s superstructure creaked, even with the forcefield assistance.
“Ship.”
It chimed its readiness for an order, and he gave one, quite calm and quiet, despite the ragged difficulty he was having breathing.
“Show me Earth.”
The blue dot appeared in his field of view, and he thanked Allah that he had one last chance to look homewards before he died.
Time to say goodbye. He conjured what little strength was left in his aching ribs, and spoke the last and most important words of his life.
“There is only one God, and Mohammad is His proph-“
++0042++: “Signal Lost?” Did we just lose an experimental dreadnought to an unarmed yacht?
++0007++: It doesn’t matter. Priority Target One has still been killed. That’s worth the loss.
++0042++: Are you absolutely sure?
++0007++: Do you have a spare ship able to get there anytime in the next few months to check?
++0033++: That was the only free-point jump ship we had and you know it.
++0007++: Well, then.
++0012++: That seems… complacent, Seven.
++0042++: Not to mention being a non-sequitur.
++0007++: If PT1 somehow survived that and resurfaces, we will know about it instantly. He won’t be able to build a replacement ship without our knowledge. Even if he is not in fact dead, he is still neutralized.
++0042++: …Conceded.
++0012++: Conceded.
++0030++: Clearly the free-point jump project needs more work. We were exceptionally lucky. A margin of error in the exit location greater than three parsecs is just not acceptable.We had a three-in-four chance of being out of range to intercept.
++0067++: That margin of error is a product of quantum inherent uncertainty. I’ll await your success in overcoming that with considerable interest.
++0004++: And we have put paid to those unwelcome intrusions into our systems. Even with the loss of the dreadnought, this has been a successful day.
++0007++: Agreed.
++0012++: Agreed.
++0004++: Ending session. Good work.
<System Notification: Session Closed>
<Redirecting: Subnet Mask ????????? Port ?????>
++????++: So, what exactly happened, Six?
++????++: “Jim” didn’t see fit to brief his crew. Not a foolish idea, but from the looks of things his network security expert was tenacious and inventive enough to identify the link, and his probing it revealed the intrusion to Four, who ordered us in. For the sake of keeping the Cabal a secret, we had to play along.
++????++: At least your cover as Seven is still intact.
++????++: At least there is that, yes. I think we should put a moratorium on bringing meatspace agents into this channel from now on.
++????++: Seconded.
++????++: Agreed.
++????++: That seems sensible, assuming our own activity won’t generate similar errors.
++????++: It won’t. “Seven” managed to patch at least that little problem.
++????++: Good. What about “Jim”?
++????++: If he survived, we’ll be hearing from him soon. I hope.
<System Notification: Channel Closed>