Ascending (11 page)

“Oar’s right,” said Lajoolie, “there
is
an Outward Fleet ship. Calculating coordinates…”

“I don’t need numbers,” Uclod interrupted. “Just tell me who gets to us first.”

“Almost a dead heat,” Lajoolie answered. “The human ship is coming straight at us, and we’re aiming straight at them. The gap will close fast. But the Shaddill are right on our tails.”

Without thinking, I checked on the stick-ship. It was very most close indeed; in the minutes since I made up my mind not to look at them, they had crept steadily nearer. Now they loomed directly behind us—a great wall of bramble blocking our entire rear view.

“Beware,” I said to my companions. “This is the distance at which you were flashed unconscious.”

“Not true, toots,” Uclod replied. “You’re seeing through long-range scanners now—the Shaddill are still a million klicks away, and I’m hoping their weapon can’t shoot that far. Even so, I’ve decoupled the wife and me from Star-biter’s neural feedback. We can still see, but we aren’t feeling anything. Let’s hope that keeps us awake.”

I turned to the front once more and saw the navy ship had grown considerably since my last peek at them. If they possessed long-range scanners like Starbiter, they must see both us and the stick-ship…which meant the stick-ship could also see them. Any moment now, the Shaddill would flee like the cowards they were.

But they did not. They kept coming, lumbering up slowly; and one of the sticks began to reach for us, the same long mouth that had tried to swallow us before.

“They are attempting to snatch us!” I cried.

“They can’t,” Uclod said, “they’re still too far away. Long-range scanners, remember? Things appear closer than they really are. But,” he continued, “the Shaddill are getting ready for something. Maybe they think they can swoop in and gobble us before the navy ship can react.”

“Maybe they intend to seize the navy ship too,” Lajoolie said.

“Ooo, that’s an unpleasant thought,” Uclod said. “It’d mean they’re so desperate to keep us quiet, they don’t mind antagonizing the entire Technocracy.”

“The Technocracy would never find out,” Lajoolie told him. “The Shaddill are still jamming all signals in the region, so the navy can’t report what’s happening. If we both get grabbed, we’ll disappear without a peep.”

“Ouch,” Uclod said. “And by the time the fleet sends another ship to investigate what happened to this one, the Shaddill will be long gone—dragging us with them.”

“Is there nothing we can do?” I asked in outrage.

“If you’ve got ideas, I’d love to hear them.”

“Do we not have some means of attack? A weighty object we could hurl at the stick-ship?”

“Only ourselves,” Uclod replied dryly. “If you’re aching to be a martyr, we could ram the Shaddill at top speed. We might even take out something critical: their computers maybe, or their engines. That’d let the navy ship get away.”

I did not care for such a plan. Perhaps it could be reversed: the human vessel might volunteer to smash the Shaddill, thereby allowing Starbiter to escape. But with our transmissions jammed, there was no way to suggest this scheme to the navy ship…and I did not believe they would spontaneously choose to destroy themselves for our benefit.

“Husband,” Lajoolie said in a soft voice, “there
is
some potential in what you suggest.”

Uclod snorted. “I didn’t suggest anything. Do you think I want to splash ourselves all over space on the off-chance—”

She interrupted, “Starbiter has emergency ejection procedures. And the human ship is right here to pick us up afterward.”

“Aww, no, sweetheart…” The little man’s voice filled with horror. “We can’t.”

“We cannot what?” I asked.

“We can’t!” Uclod repeated.

Lajoolie said nothing.

I opened my mouth to demand an explanation; but before I could speak, Starbiter shuddered and everything went black.

A Noble Sacrifice

At first, I thought we were under attack—perhaps the stick-ship had assaulted us with a sinister Blinding Weapon, robbing us of our sight. I had seen no beam or missile shoot in our direction, but I had been listening to my companions rather than paying attention to the Shaddill. It would be just like those villains to commit an atrocity while I was distracted.

But moments later, the intestinal hood jerked off my face and I could see again. The ship’s bridge showed no sign of damage…though I noticed the mouth of the exit corridor had sealed itself. Beside me, the hoods came snapping off Uclod and Lajoolie too: a fierce yanking motion as if Star-biter were pulling the guts away with all her strength.

Uclod cried to his wife, “Did you do that? Did you disengage the controls?”

“It wasn’t Madame Lajoolie,” said a voice beside me. “Starbiter is taking independent action.”

I was still strapped tightly in my chair, but I could turn my head far enough to see who was speaking: Nimbus, the infuriating cloud man. His ghostly mist was clotted thick and murky around the chair to my right.

“What do you mean,” Uclod asked, “independent action?”

“Starbiter was linked with your mind,” Nimbus said. “She saw the idea that flashed through your head…and she knew you’d never go through with it on your own. She informed me she was taking the initiative herself.”

“Aww, no,” Uclod groaned. “Aww, baby, no.”

The bridge shuddered again. From beyond the closest wall came a fierce ripping noise, wet and gooey. Uclod covered his face with his hands.

“What is happening?” I asked.

“When a Zarett is in mortal danger,” Nimbus said, “she can eject her passengers to save their lives.”

Another ripping sound tore across the room, this time from the opposite wall.

“But the passengers are housed in the Zarett’s lungs,” Nimbus said. “For us to escape, Starbiter has to expel a sizable wad of pulmonary tissue. She can’t survive such an injury.”

“You mean she will…” I did not finish my sentence. Starbiter would die? My fine bouncy Starbiter? But I did not
want
her to die.

“She thinks she can save us,” Uclod said, tears trickling down his cheeks. “Rip herself apart. Send us shooting to safety, then ram the main mass of her body into the Shaddill like a cannonball.” He caught his breath. “Oh, my crazy little girl…”

The entire bridge chamber jerked twice to the right, as if there was some stubborn attachment on the left that refused to pull free. One more lurch, and I heard something snap. Then we were moving, pushed off sideways by muscles that must exist for this purpose alone—to let my friend Starbiter commit suicide.

O Starbiter! You foolish one!

Rips And Tears

Our journey outward was not smooth, but a series of jerky jumps: ramming against a blockage of tissue, bouncing back, then bashing through the barrier. Things squished and popped all around us. I did not wish to imagine what internal organs were being crushed by our passage, what long strands of meat were left bloodily behind…but never once did Starbiter falter. Though she was ripping a portion of lung from her body, she did it with all her strength.

In addition to the terrible rending and gurgling, the light had begun to fade. The great fuzzy beds of fungus on the wall were dimming their phosphorescence like a grass fire burning itself out. Uclod had said the fungus derived sustenance from Starbiter’s own tissues; now, as my friend disemboweled herself, perhaps the fungus’s nutrition supply had been cut off. Either the icky fuzz was dying of starvation, or it had some instinct to go dark as a way to conserve energy when its food supply was interrupted.

Meanwhile, the banging and bumping of our trip was loosening the fungus’s grip on the wall. Off to my right, a sheet of the stuff peeled away with a whispering sigh, its yellow glow snuffed in an instant as it toppled heavily to the floor. The bare wall behind was nothing but a clear membrane, transparent except for three big splotches of pinkish fluid: Starbiter’s blood. As we jerked forward again, I could see fierce shivers beyond the membrane, unknown organs shuddering with pain as we passed.

Another patch of fungus slumped off, this one from the ceiling over Lajoolie’s head. The big woman batted it away with one arm; it hit the floor beside her with a thud. More thuds sounded all over the room, as other clumps of fungus fell…until the floor was heaped with crumples of buttercup yellow, and the walls and ceilings were nothing but bare membrane. Any patch of wall I looked at, I could see straight through into Starbiter’s guts. Gouts of fluid slapped against the outer tissues; strands of connecting fiber snapped as we barreled forward, bashing our way through. Closing my eyes I could shut out the sight, but I still heard the splashing and splitting of gristle…

…then it all went silent. A deep deep quiet. And I felt myself shift under the straps that bound me to my chair, as if my own weight no longer held me down.

“Artificial gravity’s gone,” Uclod said in a whisper. “We just passed the edge of the field.”

I opened my eyes. Through the clear membrane, I saw we were not quite separate from Starbiter: we poised half-in, half-out of a great rupture in her side, as if we were an egg she was trying to lay. In one direction was the blackness of space, with stars smearily visible through vacuum-dried smudges of Zarett blood. In the other direction was noble Starbiter herself, her damaged body straining for one last push to shove us free. I could see muscles bunch and contract…then with a great heave, we were hurled tumbling away.

My friend Starbiter vanished in a heartbeat—an FTL cannonball shooting through the night. Seeing with my naked eyes rather than long-range scanners, I could barely make out the stick-ship…but there was no way to miss the flash of blazing light that reached us thirty seconds later. For a moment, I feared the Shaddill had fired their unconsciousness ray again; then I realized I had just seen Starbiter’s death as she bravely struck our enemies.

Whatever she had hit, it made a fine explosion.

Grief And New Burdens

The stick-ship was not obliterated, but it did not come any closer—it simply remained hanging in space, an image no bigger than my thumbnail.
⁶
From this range, there was no way to guess the extent of the damage…but I had faith Starbiter would have aimed for the most vulnerable spot she could find.

She was an excellent Zarett.

Beside me, Uclod snuffled into his hands. Lajoolie did not weep; but she rested her fingers on her husband’s shoulder and stared at him with sympathy. At last, the little man took a shuddering breath. “She died alone.”

“She did it for us,” Lajoolie told him. “She did it gladly.”

“But she died alone!” He pounded one hand on his chair, then turned around sharply to glare at Nimbus. “She was your mate, for God’s sake. Why didn’t you go with her?”

A ripple passed through the cloud man’s body. “I offered to,” Nimbus replied, “but she wouldn’t permit it. She said I had a higher responsibility.”

All this time, the cloud man had been clotted around the chair beside me. Now he oozed away from it, revealing what he had shielded with his body during our bouncing passage through Starbiter’s guts.

Nestled on the seat was a tiny ball half the size of my fist. Its exterior had the same stringy gray texture as Starbiter herself…but very delicate, the strings as thin as hairs and the gray more fragile than frost.

“She’s very young to be separated from her mother,” Nimbus said. “But Starbiter insisted; and I swear I will take good care of our daughter.”

The fog of his body billowed back around the chair, swaddling the baby Zarett like a protective blanket.

Snared

One second, there was only blackness in front of us; then there was the slim white baton of a Technocracy vessel, stretched across the stars. Its FTL field wagged out behind it in a long milky tail, like a well-fed eel drifting lazily in a starry river’s currents.

“We should speak greetings to the humans,” I said. “We should assure them we are sentient citizens.”

“Can’t,” Uclod answered, wiping his nose with his bare wrist.

“Without Starbiter,” Lajoolie told me, “we have no communication system. We can’t transmit or receive.”

Uclod gave a snort that threatened to degenerate once again into weeping…so I said nothing more.

Slowly, the navy ship came about—the knobby ball on its nose swung away from us, until all we could see was the round cross-section of the ship’s hind end. The FTL field swished its tail in our faces like an ill-mannered cat. Then a bright red beam shot toward us, shining pinkish light through the clear membranes that served as our “windows.”

“That’s it then,” Uclod said in a hoarse voice. “They’ve grabbed us.”

“Better them than the Shaddill,” I told him—hoping my words were true.

“Yeah, well…I won’t be the first Unorr sent to a prison planet.”

“We can survive it,” Lajoolie said. “And thanks to Admiral York, your family knows all the places the High Council hides political prisoners. Your cousins will rescue us eventually.”

Uclod’s lips tilted up in the ghost of a smile. “There is that.” Then he turned his gaze back to the ship outside.

Coming Aboard

The red beam worked like a rope, reeling us toward the navy ship. I wondered if we would feel anything as we passed through the edge of the milky FTL field…but there was only the softest jerk forward, and a tiny bit of dizziness wherein my toes felt momentarily tingly.

Ahead of us, a great round door opened in the rear of the ship—almost big enough to have swallowed Starbiter whole, so our single section of lung slipped inside easily. The instant we crossed the threshold, gravity returned; we slammed down hard onto a metal floor, bounced once, and juddered forward until we jolted to a stop against the far wall.
Hmmph
, I thought,
these navy humans are clumsy. Either that, or they are intentionally treating us coarsely because they are great arrogant bullies
.

Uclod let out his breath. “Okay…okay…okay…” He was talking to himself more than the rest of us. “Okay, we’re here.” He glanced at me. “And we’re going to mind our P’s and Q’s, right, missy?”

“I am always most courteous. Except to fools and crazed people.”

“Damn it, toots, you aren’t filling me with confidence.”

He reached behind himself and did something to the back of his chair. The straps holding him went slack, but did not withdraw into the chair as they had done before; I suppose the retraction mechanisms would not work now that we had been disconnected from Starbiter. With straps sagging around him, Uclod leaned toward my seat and loosened my bonds too. He said, “You’re on your own, sweet-knees,” then turned to untie Lajoolie.

While I worked to free myself, the navy ship closed its hatch behind us, sealing us in completely. My view through the membrane walls was smudged with pinkish Zarett blood; but I could see we had been deposited in a large chamber with multicolored trees painted on the walls. The walls themselves appeared to be white plastic with a glossy sheen…all except a section high up on the back, which was rose-tinted glass. I assumed there were important navy people on the other side of that window, staring down and discussing our fates. From my current angle, however, I could see nothing up there but a bank of metal machines.

Lights on the navy ship’s ceiling suddenly grew brighter, and the membrane walls around us made ominous crinkling sounds. “Our hosts are pressurizing the transport bay,” Uclod said. “Any second now, the place’ll be swarming with Security mooks.”

Apparently, a mook was a humorless person wearing olive body armor and brandishing a truncheon or stun-pistol with great officiousness. A troop of such persons clattered into the chamber with bustling self-importance, racing to take up positions around our little chunk of Starbiter and training their weapons upon us in a most aggressive manner.

Their leader (of a gender I could not identify, thanks to the armor and a voice more howl than human) shouted something that did not sound like words. One of the others jumped forward, pistol at the ready; the mook fired directly at our outer wall, and a splooge of noxious green splatted from the gun barrel. The substance must have been some Chemical—the instant it struck our chamber’s membrane, the tissue began hissing and spitting, bubbling up clouds of vile smoke. In less than ten seconds, a ragged hole had burned itself open, letting air from the human ship gust into our little chamber. The air smelled most foul indeed, tainted with a piercing coppery odor that must have been vaporized Zarett flesh.

“Harout!” cried the mookish leader. “How, how, how!”

“What language is that person speaking?” I whispered to Uclod.

“Soldierese,” he replied. “Start with English, then skip any consonants that sound too effeminate.”

“Hout!” shouted the mook. “How!”

“Yeah, yeah,” Uclod said. “We’re coming.”

He took a step toward the gash in the wall. I put my hand on his shoulder to stop him. “Wait—we must do this correctly.”

I glanced around the room and saw what I wanted, lying against one wall: the black Explorer jacket I had brought from Melaquin. Snatching it up, I pushed my arms into it, discovering the fit was very fine indeed. The coat was not so heavy, and not at all tight; it also hung down to the middle of my thighs, quite long enough to cover my digestive bits if and when I finally forced myself to eat opaque foods. I took another moment to straighten the garment and fasten the strip down the front, just as I had seen Explorers do. Then I stepped out through the hole and historically made First Contact.

“Greetings,” I said in a loud clear voice. “I am a sentient citizen of the League of Peoples. I beg your Hospitality.”

For a long moment, nobody spoke. I could see the mooks’ faces through their clear visors; several appeared disconcerted to be confronted by someone dressed as one of their own Explorers. “I come in peace,” I said. “My name is Oar. An oar is an implement used to propel boats.”

Someone gasped at the far end of the room. I turned and saw an unarmored person standing in the doorway.

“Oar?
Oar?
”

Festina Ramos hurled herself across the floor and wrapped her arms around me.

A Fervent Reunion

I myself am not given to spontaneous displays of emotion (at least not the happy hugging emotions), but I embraced her gladly with all my strength. When you think you have been captured by dire navy villains, then are unexpectedly reunited with your very best friend…well, of course, you are filled with boundless joy. You want to enfold her and squeeze her and say foolish things, thinking all the while what a mistake it was to don a jacket that is now just a stuffy barrier between the two of you.

But it is odd how quickly boundless joy acquires bounds again: suddenly you remember you are being watched by little orange criminals and large-muscled women, by hard-eyed mooks and a cloud shaped like a man. In a single heartbeat, you become most clumsy and feigned—you find yourself wondering how you look in the spectators’ eyes, and you worry it is not quite
proper
to be all happy and hugging and open, for fear they will think you are an ignorant simple-head. Your body stance feels all wrong: your friend is so short and you are so tall that perhaps you look ungainly bending over her, like a great oafish giant stooping over a delicate flower. You tell yourself,
No, I will not push away my friend just because I have grown self-conscious
…but you
are
self-conscious, and whether you choose to back off mumbling or to continue clinging with stubborn determination, it has now become a show for other people.

Which makes you feel an unworthy friend for letting such thoughts enter your mind. You become most angry with yourself; and the next thing you know, you have stepped back abruptly, and you fear you might even be scowling.

Why does one behave like that? It is a great infuriating mystery. But perhaps I should blame the Shaddill who created my race. They gave us defective brains, not only prone to becoming Tired, but also subject to floods of embarrassment at times we should not be embarrassed at all. I am sure persons of natural origin do not turn shy and standoffish during hugs with old friends.

But I did. Perhaps I had even upset poor Festina by pulling abruptly out of her arms…so I forced myself to squeeze close again, then lowered my lips to the top of her head and kissed her hair. “I told you,” I said in a voice that sounded overloud, “I am not such a one as can die. You were very most foolish to believe I could be killed by a silly little fall.”

Festina made a noise that might have been either laughter or weeping—I could not tell because she had buried her face in my coat. A moment later she stepped back, wiped her sleeve across her eyes, and gave a beaming smile. “You’re right. I should have known better.”

It was pleasant to see her smile so happily, though Festina was exceedingly ugly, even for an opaque person. She had a large violet blemish on her right cheek: what she called a port-wine birthmark. When last I saw her, she had concealed the blemish under a patch of artificial skin…but now the great blotch was open to the world again, exposed for all to see. Perhaps she had removed the patch in mourning for me—which made me feel proud and
throbby
inside, though it also brought tears to my eyes.

She was such a good friend.

See No Evil

“So, Oar,” Festina said with a laugh, “you’re alive and causing trouble again. Do you mind explaining what you’re doing in the middle of nowhere? And why your Zarett self-destructed a few minutes ago?”

“We were fleeing the evil stick-people,” I said, hurriedly wiping my tears. “Starbiter died with great heroism, striking the enemy vessel and rendering it impotent.”

“Enemy vessel? We haven’t seen any other ships.” Festina raised her eyes to the window at the rear of the room. “Lieutenant, did we register anything like that?”

A disembodied voice answered, “Negative, Admiral.”
⁷

Behind me, Uclod snorted. “It’s time to repair your scanner, folks. The damned ship was hard to miss. Just before you showed, it was close enough to see with the naked eye.”

“There’s the problem,” Festina said. “Our navy ships can’t see
anything
with the naked eye—we’re limited to cameras and sensor arrays. I once asked a navy construction contractor if it would really be impossible to build a nice simple porthole into every ship. She nearly had a stroke, laughing at the dimwit Explorer who knew nothing about preserving hull integrity.”

“So you didn’t see the Shaddill ship?” Uclod asked.

“We saw your Zarett whizzing along at the most godawful speed ever clocked. The bridge crew couldn’t believe their readings; they decided your beast must be suffering some cataclysmic flame-out, burning energy way beyond safety limits. They predicted she’d explode any second…and sure enough, she expelled your escape pod, then zipped away and blew herself to space dust.”

“You didn’t see her hit anything?”

“She exploded in empty space,” Festina said. “I was watching the vidscreen myself.”

Uclod rolled his eyes. “We are so fucked.” He looked to Lajoolie as if waiting for her to agree, but she barely responded. The big Tye-Tye woman was attempting to hide behind foggy Nimbus, as timidly fearful as when she first met
me
.

Apparently, Lajoolie was poor at dealing with strangers.

“What’s wrong?” Festina asked.

I did not know if she was asking why Lajoolie was frightened or why Uclod looked dubious about Starbiter exploding on her own. Since Lajoolie would not enjoy a discussion of her cowardice, I decided to take charge of the conversation. “Your Science devices are blind,” I told Festina. “The evil stick-people can obviously deceive your machines…and if Starbiter did not completely incapacitate the villains, they may be creeping up on us even now.”

My friend called to the back window, “Still nothing on the sensors?”

The unseen lieutenant answered, “Negative, Admiral.”

“What about communications?” Uclod said. “The Shad-dill were jamming all signals in the neighborhood. Did you detect that?”

Festina’s eyes narrowed. “We
are
having problems—we lost contact with the Admiralty navigation grid a few minutes ago. The techies are looking into it.” She glanced at the window. “Do we have communications back, Lieutenant?”

The voice from above answered, “Not yet, Admiral. Still running diagnostics.”

“Shit.” Festina peered sidelong at Uclod and Lajoolie. “You’re saying there’s a ship our scanners can’t pick up, and your Zarett smashed into it at some outrageous speed. We don’t know how much damage the impact did…but since our communications are still being jammed, the enemy wasn’t completely annihilated. Just fucking wonderful.” She turned back to the window. “Lieutenant—my compliments to the captain, and could we get the hell out of here at maximum speed?”

“What heading, Admiral?”

Festina glanced at me. “No point in going to Melaquin now,” she said, “and it’s a long way back to New Earth.” She turned to the window. “Aim for the closest inhabited planet—doesn’t have to be human. If we end up facing an invisible ship, let’s surround ourselves with witnesses.”

A Christening

We left the receiving bay with the horde of mooks clattering behind us. Festina apologized, but said it was now official fleet policy for outsiders to be watched at all times.

“And I’m afraid,” she added, “the ship has dispatched nanotech defense clouds to keep an eye on your Zarett.” She turned toward Nimbus. “If any of your component cells go wandering, they’ll be imprisoned immediately.” She gave an apologetic shrug. “The High Council has recently developed a phobia about unsanctioned microbes aboard navy vessels.”