ARC: Under Nameless Stars (17 page)

EIGHTEEN

“With me,” Treth said. “Move.” She started off down the passage. Then another bang, metal on metal – a door thrown open? But this sound came from in front of them. They were boxed in.

“We cannot go in either way,” Jules said, weaving about uncertainly on his mech-legs. “Those Ghost-Spex will find us here. What will they do? Will they be mean and unpleasant?”

Zenn wanted to tell him it would be OK. But she didn’t really believe that. She saw Treth checking the remaining charge in Pokt’s plasma stick.

A husky voice called to them from the dark.

“This way, groomish.”

Charlie was gesturing from a gap in the bulkhead a dozen feet behind them. Zenn was surprised they hadn’t seen this passageway when they passed it. Then, once they’d all squeezed through the opening, Charlie slid a metal panel into place, sealing off the gap behind them.

“A secret and hidden passage,” Jules said to Zenn. “This is an element of paper-novel mysteries! Although generally there is a moving bookcase activated by a handle on the fireplace. It is very clever thinking, Mister Charlie.”

“Gotta be sharp, don’t we?” Charlie said. “Gotta keep the crab-heads guessing! And I know how. Oh yes, I go here and there.”

With Charlie leading them at a brisk trot, they continued down the narrow service passage, their path illuminated by one of the lights that Charlie wore.

“Charlie,” Treth said after they’d put some distance between them and their pursuers. “How have you avoided them, the Khurspex, all these years?”

“Hid, didn’t I? Down deep in the deeps. Down in the
Belle’s
nether-hold at first. Down in the hard, cold places. Not even the crab-heads could catch me there.”

“And you were by yourself, all that time?” Zenn asked.

“Years, by myself. No talking, no one listening, you see?” Zenn could tell the Loepith had paid a price for those solitary years of running and hiding. As they went, Charlie explained that the ship they were on, the
Nova Procyon
, was attached on one side to the
Prodigious
, a Vhulk starship taken some eight years ago. The
Prodigious
was a “crusher ship”, designed for inhabitants of planets with high atmospheric pressures and temperatures. Accordingly, surface pressures inside it were staggering, with interior temperatures kept at a searing level, just short of the boiling point of water.

Charlie didn’t seem to know much about the ship on the other side of the
Nova
. All he’d been able to learn was that it was an alien craft filled with a toxic cocktail of unbreathable gases.

Beyond the
Prodigious
and its hellish environment was another Earther-class ship, the
Symmetry Dancer
, which was in turn attached to the
Benthic Tson
, built for sea dwellers and filled stem to stern with vast reservoirs of fresh and salt water. Next in line after the
Tson
was the
Delphic Queen
. Beyond that, the
Ghestan Star
and then Charlie’s original ship, the
Belle Savage
. That was as far as the Loepith’s knowledge extended.

“But what about internal scans of the ships, and patrols?” Treth asked. “How did you escape detection?”

“I keep all my eyes on em. Keep outta their way,” Charlie said. Then he pulled open one side of the dirty vest he wore and glanced down at something that lit his face with a faint glow. Before Zenn could see what he was looking at, he closed the vest again. “Besides, Spex don’t use scans so much, don’t hardly need em. All the many-many are stuck in their own ships. Can’t move around. So the Spex don’t care about scans. Why should they?”

Like the
Nova Procyon
, Charlie said, each ship was connected on either side to ships with incompatible environments. As a result, no passengers from one ship could survive the conditions of the ships attached to it. This apparently negated the need for the Khurspex to keep close tabs on their prisoners.

“You talked of the
Benthic Tson
,” Jules said, quickening his pace to come up alongside Charlie. “Are there living ones aboard it?”

“There are. Some in the water still,” the Loepith told him. “Can’t say how many.”

“But why?” Zenn asked. “Why keep everyone here at all?”

“Need em, don’t they? Spex gotta keep every ship’s systems up and ready, and they need crews for that. That’s their plan. Keep the big chambers going, keep those stoneponies comfy. But not so comfy now, are we? Spex are getting sick. Can’t keep systems up with their skin coming off, with stumbling around half blind.”

They came to a steep set of stairs and Charlie led the way down.

“But this is like the Ghostly Shepherd story,” Jules said. “Maybe these ones
are
those Shepherds in the writings.”

“No. I think not,” the Groom said. “I clearly wounded one. The true Shepherds are immortal. Their flesh incorruptible. They cannot be harmed by such weapons as mortals possess.”

“And did you see their heads?” Jules said. “They had colorful lights moving inside them.”

“It’s how they talk, those crab-heads. Use skin colors.”

“Talking with colors,” Jules said. “Can this be true?”

“Well, yes, I suppose so,” Zenn said. “There are cephalopods on Earth, like cuttlefish, that use color to communicate. They have microscopic chromatophores under their skin – tiny sacs of pigment. They expand or contract the sacs to create patterns. The Khurspex could be doing something like that, only more complex.”

“Thank you, Doctor Knows-Way-Too-Much,” Liam said.

“But the Khurspex are getting sick?” Zenn said.

“Oh yes. Skin comes off. Thinking goes bad to worse. They gotta leave soon or they all go offline. Dead, that would be.”

Had the Khurspex evolved a reproductive behavior like Earther salmon, Zenn wondered, crossing vast ocean distances to return to their home stream to spawn… and die?

“But the other side of the galaxy – that must be at least a hundred thousand light years away,” Liam said. “Indra ships can’t tunnel near that far, can they?”

“No,” Treth said. “At least, not in our experience. The Indra in all our ships have proved unwilling to travel beyond the Outer Reaches of the Local Systems Accord. We assumed they were simply incapable of venturing farther. It is clear now that our understanding of stonehorse abilities is… incomplete.”

“And all those other Indra, they are still held within their ships, correct?” Jules asked. Charlie nodded. “So, where is the
Helen of Troy’s
Indra?”

“They put her in the big trip-ship. In the middle. All the other ships in a big ring around it.”

“So the ships surrounding the one in the center, those are all the disappeared Indra-drive starships, right?” Liam said. “But how did they all get here?”

“Wormy bio-mech,” Charlie said, undulating his hands in a wavy motion. “Part alive, part machine. They put em into the ponies’ heads. It makes em jump over here, then they hook em all together.”

“Bio-mech controllers, I would say,” Treth said. “The device that burned its way into my chamber and attacked my stonehorse. They must force the Indra to tunnel.”

“Bio-mech,” Liam said. “I didn’t think Skirni had that kind of tech.”

“They do not,” Treth said. “They must be in league with others, those with access to advanced capabilities. Or the funding to purchase it.”

“But who would team up with Skirni?” Liam asked.

“Is it not evident?” Treth said. “Those with a motive to take stonehorse ships. Those with a reason to stand against the Procyoni and the groom’s union.”

“You mean… the Cepheians?” Zenn said, resisting the idea, but unable to ignore the evidence: Ambassador Noom’s species had the motivation and the money to buy whatever tech they needed.

“The Drifters have made clear their intention to secure more Indra ships by any means.” Treth said.

“But would the Cepheians do that?” Zenn asked. “Make a deal with the Skirni to hijack Indra ships? Just to get control of the space lanes?”

“The trade routes are worth trillions. And why else would they be so secretive about their dealings with Earth? They obviously have something they wish to keep to themselves. The so-called negotiations with the Earth Authority could be a distraction to mislead us,” Treth said, dark eyes flashing, her anitats throbbing violently up and down her arms.

“It seems an incredible thing,” Jules said. “The Cepheians scheming with Skirni-types to steal Indra craft. This would be wild and reckless behavior. I am having difficulty believing it.”

“Oh? Are you? There is one thing more,” Treth said. “Just before the
Helen
was taken, the Drifter claimed she was recalled to Earth, correct?”

“Yes. Stav said Ambassador Noom told him she had new orders, at breakfast that morning,” Zenn said.

“This is an unlikely coincidence. To be summoned away just before the
Helen
and all aboard her were taken. The scheming Drifter merely employed this ruse as a convenient way off the ship. The timing cannot be happenstance.”
Zenn hadn’t really put the pieces together before. But she had to admit that, at this point, it seemed to fit. Noom herself said the Cepheians wanted to break the Procyon monopoly on Indra ship routes. Equally suspicious: at the costume party the ambassador seemed very interested in Zenn’s identity, that she was an exovet novice. And Noom appeared to know all about the Ciscan cloister on Mars. Of course, there could be other reasons she would know this. But when added to the other facts, it seemed to fill out the disturbing picture Treth was painting. Could Noom actually be working with Pokt? If so, Noom’s was the unidentified voice she’d heard at the party when she linked with the mudlark.

The implications seemed logical. The Authority on Earth was sincere about wanting to rejoin the planetary community of the Accord. It was the Cepheians and Skirni using Khurspex tech to take the Indra ships, and being used in turn, as they all schemed to advance their own ambitions.

NINETEEN

“…but I am wondering about all these Indra, all these ships, no matter who is doing the taking,” Jules said as they hustled down yet another dark stairwell. “Why take so many?”

“Spex have a tricky way,” Charlie said. “A trick to make one pony rope up all the space-jumping of the other ponies. Then – whoosh! – the big jump.”

“I don’t see how that’d work,” Liam said.

“Stonehorses are able to communicate over interstellar distances,” Treth said from the front of the group. “In theory, they could link all of their brains in some way. Combine their abilities and increase their range. But it would require some kind of… coordination. A connecting interface. A source-point to funnel the power into a single massive tunneling event.”

Treth’s words provoked a twinge of anxiety in Zenn.

“Something like a…” She actually had difficulty saying the word out loud. “…nexus?”

“Yes. Nexus would be accurate,” Treth said, giving her a brief look. “But there is no such nexus, not known to our science. Nothing could withstand the resulting forces.”

“Our science? No, not ours,” Charlie said. “Spex science.”

“If they had such a focusing device,” Treth said, “it’s possible they could concentrate the energy needed for a cross-galactic tunnel. But we don’t know what this race is capable of. We are blind here.”

“Blind? No, no.” Charlie said. “Not a bit blind, actually.”

“What do you mean?” Treth said, stopping at the foot of the stairs.

“Not blind. That’s the meaning.” Charlie pulled open his vest again and held one side open. Fixed to the inside was a glowing, flexible view screen of some sort. He peeled it away from the vest, held it up and pulled at its corners. It was made of a substance that allowed him to stretch it like a thin sheet of taffy until it was two feet square. Then he pushed the entire thing against the bulkhead, where it adhered, and ran one finger along its edge. It instantly lit up with an oddly distorted camera view of a corridor. The image was grainy, black-and-white and difficult to read, but it was sufficient to make out three Khurspex, walking away into the shadows.

“That’s the corridor we just came from,” Liam said, pointing at the screen. “How’d you rig that up so fast?”

Charlie dug into one of the bags hanging from his various belts and withdrew a transparent, cylindrical jar with a spigot-like mechanism sticking out from it. Floating inside the jar were what looked to Zenn like a clutch of tiny, pea-sized frog eggs. Charlie turned the spigot and one of the “eggs” dropped into his open palm.

“Spex tech,” he said, grinning his wide, brown-tooth grin. “For watching.”

Then, he looked up and threw the small, round thing against the ceiling, where it stuck with a wet splat. He ran his finger along the view screen again and suddenly they were all looking at a grainy, distorted image of themselves as seen from the ceiling above.

“They’re… little cameras?” Liam said.

“Bug eyes, I call em,” Charlie said, picking the object off the ceiling and dropping it into Liam’s hand.

Liam’s face filled the view screen attached to the wall as he brought his hand close to his face.

“Hey. He’s not kidding. It looks like a little eye! I mean, an actual, little eyeball.”

Zenn peered into Liam’s hand. He was right. It was a small, living, self-contained eye. Its narrow slit of a pupil hinted at a reptilian origin. Probably cloned. It had several very thin hairs rising from it. Transmitting antennae? A tiny, spiral-shaped growth like a nautilus shell sprouted from one side of it, looking very much like the semicircular canal inside an ear. So, it could hear as well as see? The little eye blinked at her, and she pulled away, startled.

“This is quite the invention,” Jules said, admiring the eyeball. “How is it achieved?”

“Who knows? Not me,” Charlie said, putting the jar of “eyes” back in his pocket. “I snagged em from a Spex supply room. Now I use em all over. Bug eyes to keep watch on crab-heads.”

“Have you placed other… bug eyes? In this ship?” Treth asked.

“Sure, sure. Lotsa places. Here and there.”

“Before, the Skirni said he wanted us taken to the
Nova’s
bridge,” Treth went on. “Do you have one placed there?”

Charlie smiled at her, danced his fingers on the view screen in a complicated pattern. The screen flickered, went dark, then faded up on a distorted image of a cramped starship bridge, as seen from high in one corner. The room was crowded with control consoles, readout panels and screens. There was only one crew person in the room, a Skirni, seated at a console, his back to them as he peered into a view screen.

“Bug eye up in the vent shaft, in the bridge room,” Charlie said proudly. “Spex never knew we were there, did they?”

“We need to know what they’re planning,” Treth said. “Charlie, do you save a record of your… bug eye pictures?”

Charlie patted his sleeve screen. “Right here. Memory shards getting full, I can tell you.”

“Can you search back? To the last time there was a meeting on the bridge?”

“I can,” he said. He poked a long black finger at his sleeve, and the screen blurred into a fast-motion montage of images.

“Look,” Jules said, pointing at the screen. “A Skirni coming in.”

“Yes,” Treth said. “Slow it down, Charlie.”

There was no mistaking the little alien’s identity.

“It’s Pokt,” Zenn said.

The Skirni crossed the cabin, shuffling to where a squat figure leaned over a holo-table. Another Skirni. Above the table hovered a ghostly green 3D image of the giant Spex ring of ships.

“Can you magnify the image?” Treth said.

Charlie swiped a finger across the flexible screen, and the view zoomed in on the pair.

“Master Felik,” Pokt said. “You summoned me?” The audio quality was terrible but just barely clear enough to make out words.

The Skirni at the table spoke without turning to face him. “I am told you let the human girl escape. Again.”

“They resisted,” Pokt protested. “They had weapons.”

The one called Felik turned to glare at Pokt. “They had
your
weapon. Is this not true?” The Skirni named Felik was missing his right ear, and the wound from its loss ran in a dull, gray scar down his neck. Over the customary Skirni robes he wore a wide bandolier, loaded with what looked like long, slender cartridges. At his waist hung a T-shaped sort of pistol Zenn had never seen before.

“That’s twice you allowed a child to outwit you.”

“I could not have anticipated such behavior,” Pokt whined. “It is not Pokt’s fault.”

“And what of Thrott and his slime creature? The thing could have injured her severely, killed her. All would have been lost.”

“The fighting slug? You put this also on Pokt’s head? No. How was I to know–”

Felik grabbed Pokt’s robes in both hands, drew him close.

“You brought the human aboard the
Helen of Troy.
You wanted the glory of her capture, but you then failed to safeguard the thing once it was aboard ship.” He pushed Pokt away from him, smoothed his own robes. “Now, our allies begin to wonder if the Skirni are competent in this affair. I too begin to have doubts where you are concerned.” He leaned forward into Pokt’s face. “Are you, Pokt-son-of-Mahg? To be doubted?”

“I have said what occurred.” Pokt stepped back. “The human’s fleeing could not be prevented. The girl and the others cannot leave the
Nova
and hope to survive. The search parties will find them.”

Charlie snorted at this. “They have not found me yet, skirnish.”

On the screen, Felik ran his bejeweled fingers over his face.

“Search parties?” He almost spat the words at Pokt. “That will not do.
You
must find them, if you hope to redeem Skirni honor in this affair.” He jabbed one hand at the holo projection. “Very soon the Spex expect to tunnel to their homeworld. They expect the delivery of the girl to make that possible.”

“Yes, and she shall be delivered. But I fail to understand one thing, Master Felik.” Pokt’s tone said he hoped to divert the conversation from his own shortcomings. “At first, the human girl’s parent was to be the nexus, was she not? And this plan failed. Catastrophically.”

Zenn’s heart rate accelerated at the mention of her mother.

“I am told the parent was a weak vessel,” Felik said, turning back to the holo image, speaking more to himself than to Pokt. “An accident was engineered in the animal healer’s lab on Mars. This much was successful. The stonehorse brain cells took root in her brain and grew.”

“Then why was she not brought to the Spex at once? Why did the human woman not become their nexus?”

“A test run was performed, in the
Retic Crown
orbiting Mars. The healer’s in-soma pod was altered. It was taking her into the Indra’s brain. But the insertion was… premature. The implanted tissue was imperfect. The Indra detected the pod. The creature’s response was unexpected. It was a setback. Our allies admit as much.”

“Still,” Pokt went on, “this failure… Our almighty allies too have their complications.”

Felik held up two fingers to Pokt.

“Letting the girl escape? Twice? Then the encounter with the slime creature? These are more than complications, Pokt.”

“I have said the escaping could not be foreseen. And we have the female’s father, in the sickbay on the
Queen.
” Zenn’s breath caught in her throat.
“Why do we not use him?” Pokt went on. “As bait? She would come to him, would she not?”

“No, Pokt. I told you. This has been settled.”

“But why not?”

“The use of the human male is not your concern,” Felik waved away Pokt’s protest. “Listen and heed: we and our allies have bargained with the Spex. We assist in taking the Indra ships, the Spex return home, the Indra fleet remains behind.”

“The fleet. Yes. Our valued allies, they still do not suspect?”

“No. They preen and prattle and issue orders as always. They continue to believe we are cowed and gullible, that we believe their lies. But we must be vigilant and bide our time. And you, Pokt, must remember, the girl is the key. She is the only one who can pilot the in-soma pod into the primary Indra.”

“So you say. But you have never said why this must be. Do not these devices operate with automatic steering? Place her in the pod and let it take the nexus into the beast! Do this and be done.”

“Pokt, you know all you need to know. And your duty now is clear. Are you too simple to fulfill it?”

Pokt huffed, slapped his arms against his sides, seemed on the verge of arguing.

“Pokt is no simpleton…” he muttered, the words squeezed out through his clenched teeth. “The human girl will be captured and delivered.”

“Yes,” Felik said, turning again to the holo image. “She had better be.”

Pokt’s fists clenched at his sides.

Felik said quietly, “Tick, tick, tick, Pokt-son-of-Mahg.”

Pokt grimaced at Felik’s back, swiveled on his short legs and stalked out of the bug eye screen’s picture, his tail lashing angrily behind him. Charlie paused the screen’s image.

Treth turned to Zenn, eyes narrowing. “What
are
you?”

The Groom’s cold stare made Zenn flinch.

“She is Novice Zenn Scarlett and my good friend,” Jules said, coming to Zenn and resting one mech-hand on her shoulder. “And we must now stand with her and be faithful, as friends do.”

“The dolphin’s right,” Liam said. He pointed to the view screen. “We’ve gotta keep them from getting their hands on her. I mean, who knows what they’ll do?”

“Yes. Of course,” Treth agreed. “But we need to know what we are dealing with. Novice?”

“I… I’m not sure what they mean by nexus,” Zenn said, not being entirely truthful; she was beginning to have a strong suspicion. “But Treth, he said they have my father. On the
Delphic Queen
.”

“That is possible,” the Groom said. “The
Queen
is among the taken ships. Just beyond the
Benthic Tson
.”

“And does the sickbay there look like the one on the
Helen of Troy
?” Zenn said, hope rising.

“Yes, the
Helen
and the
Queen
are sister ships. The sickbays are identical. I have seen no facilities like them on other ships.” But then Treth held up a hand to silence Zenn. “First, we must determine what they want with you.”

Zenn wanted to argue, wanted to scream that they had to go and find her father. But she knew the Groom was right. She made herself stop, took a breath. “They… talked about Mom’s accident in her lab,” she said, struggling to keep her voice calm, to keep her thoughts from racing out of control. “She was working with Indra neural tissue. There was an accident, what we thought then was an accident… Some of the cells were aerosolized, became airborne. After that happened, they ran tests, to make sure she wasn’t contaminated by Indra brain tissue. But it sounds like she was.”

“But how could that affect you?” Treth asked.

“When the lab accident happened, my mother was pregnant. With me. It sounds like they engineered the Indra tissue or forced a mutation. She could have passed the mutation on to me.”

“Your thought-sharing,” Jules said. “Could these Indra brain-bits from your mother also explain how you link with the minds of others?”

“Maybe. Probably.” It seemed obvious now. She was surprised and angry with herself for not seeing the truth. “If it is, that’s why it’s been getting stronger every time it happens. It’s the Indra neurons. Growing. Forming new synapses. Making new connections.”

It’s me. It’s inside me. It’s all my fault…

Treth’s stare grew even more intense.

“Charlie,” Zenn said then, turning to the Loepith. “Do you have any of your bug eyes on the
Delphic Queen
? In the sickbay?”

“Could be. Not sure,” he said. He touched the view screen. The images rapidly cut from shot to shot – a large cargo hold of some kind, an empty dining saloon, a small storage closet, a rusting airlock. And then a sickbay. And on a gurney in the dark at the far corner of the room, a figure. It was human, male, lying on his back. He was motionless. Charlie zoomed in on the figure. It was immobile. Held in a force field? It was impossible to tell. But there was just enough light to see the man’s face, his beard…

“It’s him…” Zenn breathed the words softly, almost unable to speak.