Primary Inversion (46 page)

      
As I slid into the pilot’s seat, its exoskeleton folded around me and psiphons snicked into my body.

      
Medline attending,
the racer thought.

      
Linking into the Kyle-Mesh from Medline felt strained and overly formal. Blackstar, the EI on my Jag, would have boosted me into psiberspace immediately, but I had to walk Medline through the procedure, giving instructions at every junction. I entered the Mesh as a wavepacket cowled in black. The grid was alive with the cordon activity, its cords shining harshly, like rays of the too-bright Dieshan sun. Kurj’s presence was everywhere, omnipresent. Inescapable? I hid in my cloak.

      
Virtual reality psiber-simulation,
I thought.
High orbit.

      
The grid vanished—and I was in space. Diesha hung before me like a turquoise and amber ball swathed in dirty cotton. The psi-sim used data gathered by the ship’s sensors to create a “reality” so complete I felt as if I were
here,
far out from the planet, analyzing the cordon. It gave me a far better reading of the situation than the visual displays; better even than the mindscape of my Jag. Visual, mindscape, psi-sim: they were three different levels of sensor ability, each more effective than the previous, each more costly. A psi-sim drained its user’s mental and physical resources exorbitantly fast, which made it impractical in combat. But to get us out of here, I needed every advantage. If we didn’t escape—well, my condition wouldn’t much matter then.

      
A blip appeared over the rim of Diesha. I concentrated and rushed toward it, the sim supplying data faster than an actual ship could safely travel this close to the planet. The blip resolved into an ISC battle cruiser, a ponderous giant big enough to swallow a thousand racers and have room for more. Weapons mountings covered its surface like craters. Its cannon maws alone were big enough to swallow a Magrail train. A host of smaller ships attended it, and docking bays opened like huge jaws ringed with the grotesque metal teeth of jutting equipment. The scene was eerily silent; the atmosphere up here was too thin to carry sound waves.

      
I moved closer until the cruiser filled my field of view; closer still and I could see every dent and pockmark. The hull curved above and below me like a cliff of metal. Closer yet, and I brushed its hull. I was actually feeling the inside of my exoskeleton, with Medline using its data on the cruiser to recreate the tactile sensations of the ship. But that gritty surface looked and felt authentic.

      
Backing away, I plummeted to the planet. The view changed with dizzying speed: a ball in space, a curved landscape, a flat one. I plunged through clouds, came out below, and continued dropping until mountains rose around me. No lights showed anyplace except in the peaks where the Imperial palace sparkled like a jewel. I “landed” on the roof of the palace near the flyer I had used to bring Jaibriol here. Medline, the medical racer, sat next to it on a landing pad. I passed through its hull into the cabin, where I saw myself in the pilot’s seat with my eyes closed, my body encased in the exoskeleton. It felt bizarre, as if I were having an out-of-body experience. I shook my head—and the head of the pilot moved from side to side. My hair rustled, a noise I heard both with my ears and through the simulation.

      
“Ready to go?” I asked. It felt odd to speak; usually when I piloted a ship I was in a psilink, making verbal communication unnecessary.

      
“Ready.” O’Neill’s forehead creased as she watched me.

      
“Problem?” I asked.

      
“I’ve never seen a pilot make flight preparations with her eyes closed.”

      
“I’m in a psi-sim.”

      
“Can you actually see the cockpit?”

      
“Better than that.” I concentrated on her and a translucent display appeared, glowing red. “You’re sitting 48.32 centimeters away from me, turned at a 23 degree angle relative to a line drawn from your solar plexus to the holoscreen directly in front of you. A lock of hair came free of your braid and is hanging next your left eye.”

      
“That’s amazing.” O’Neill tucked the hair behind her ear.

      
I took hold of the flystick, seeing it in the sim and feeling it with my hand. As I shoved the stick forward, I withdrew from the ship and arrowed back into the night. The racers’s near-planet thrusters fired and exhaust billowed around me, white and hot. The roar of our takeoff vibrated in the landing pad. We rose for several meters and hung there, our thrust just balanced by gravity.

      
Sauscony…

      
I started.
Jaibriol?
He shouldn’t have been in psiberspace with me. He had no interactive connection to the ship. Hell, he had no biomech web in his body that could link him up.

      
Can’t dissociate from you.
His thought felt tired.

      
Can you pull back any?
With no preparation for this, his brain could end up fried when I boosted my interactions with the Mesh.
Think of yourself as a program on Medline. Try to run in the background.

      
A sense of laughter lightened his exhaustion.
I will be as quiet as a node-mouse.
He created an image of the glove on an old style virtual reality setup. A tail appeared on the glove, then two fuzzy ears, two eyes, and a mouth. The animal ran under the VR apparatus.

      
I smiled. Then I thought,
Medline, retrieve that flyer.

      
Our port thrusters fired, moving us over the flyer. Hot gases scorched the pad and shook the flyer, but its reinforced hull remained sound. With a grinding clank, Medline extended claws from its belly. They closed around the flyer like a hawk seizing its prey and drew it up against the racer, holding it firm in a cage of metal claws.

      
Flyer secured,
Medline thought.
However, the palace defense systems are preparing to fire on us.

      
What the hell?
Show me.

      
Numerous red blips appeared throughout the mountains, indicating the installations that guarded the palace. Some were isolated gleams of red and others glowed in huge clusters, like fire. As I magnified one cluster, it resolved into a line of laser cannons swiveling toward us, the rumble of their turning a deep growl in the night.

      
I paged the EI dedicated to the palace security systems.
Zos respond.

      
Here,
Zos answered.

      
Let us leave,
I thought.

      
I can’t do that.

      
Why not?

      
It violates my programming.

      
For flaming sakes.
I
had programmed it.
Verify my brain patterns. Then execute the command.

      
I know who you are. Land or I’ll blow up your racer.

      
I couldn’t believe it. How could Zos refuse my commands? I was its damned mother.

      
You programmed me to protect your family,
Zos thought.
Jaibriol Qox’s escape endangers them. So I am preventing his escape.

      
That was the problem with the EI knowing me so well; it had figured out my intent.
Look, if Jaibriol and I don’t get out of here, a lot of people may die, including me. If I’m executed, it may kill my father. So quit messing around and let us go.

      
No answer.

      
Damn! What was the confounded computer doing?
Zos, respond.

      
The rumbling of the canons ceased.

      
Zos?

      
You may leave.

      
I let out a breath.
Erase all record of this exchange.

      
Done.

      
Thank you.
I shifted my attention to the racer.
Medline, show me the cordon.

      
Medline showed me the grid of gold lines in the sky.
The intersections mark ships in the cordon.

      
The grid curved into a spherical surface enclosing Diesha. The pattern of squares was perfect, a tribute to the uncompromising order Kurj sought in the universe. Every intersection contained at least one red blip and some had so many they merged into a blaze. As I focused on one fiery blur, it resolved into the mammoth battle cruiser
Maxar
with its multitude of attendants. Medline flooded me with data, including intelligence reports only someone with my stratospheric clearance could access. But my knowledge of ISC was no help. It only emphasized the impossibility of escape. How would we get through? Those ships would shoot any craft that gave the slightest conceivable hint it was fleeing the cordon.

      
So do the inconceivable.

      
Medline,
I thought.
Invert.

      
Restate command.

      
Kick in the inversion engines and get us out of here.

      
That is impossible.

      
Never mind that. Just do it.

      
To invert, we must leave the planet and accelerate to relativistic speed. If we leave the planet, the cordon ships will destroy us.

      
I didn’t say speed up. I just said invert.

      
To invert, we must speed up.

      
I had no idea what would happen if we tried to invert while we were at rest. Popular wisdom held that we couldn’t complete the process and would cease to exist in a limbo between the real and imaginary universes. Since no one had ever returned from trying it, no one knew if that was true.

      
I’ve intercepted a message to command central,
Medline thought.
The ship waiting to escort us to the hospital wants to know why we’re sitting here, holding the flyer.

      
We had run out of time.
Medline, invert.

      
To invert, we must spee—

      
Forget that! Just invert, damn it. Now!

      
Engines engaged.

      
The twisting started.

      
As nausea swept over me, the stars and mountains blinked out of existence. No, the mountains disappeared, but the stars remained. They smeared across the sky like spots of paint in a black liquid. Then I realized the mountains were also still there, but smudged into the sky, black on black. We hadn’t inverted; we were caught between universes.

      
I leaked back into the racer and saw myself in the pilot’s seat, my hands clenched on its arms, my eyes shut. The sim linked me to reality, but I was barely holding onto it. If I lost that last link to the universe where we belonged, we would melt into this bizarre otherworld. But the sim had drained my resources. I couldn’t hold it. The cabin rippled around us and began to fade.

      
Then Jaibriol moved. He flowed off the bunk like paint dissolving in rain. The intravenous thread slid out of his arm with a drawn-out sucking noise. He crossed the cabin in slow motion, his face a smeared patch above the darker smears of his clothes. His body blurred and ran in dribbles onto the deck. The cabin was twisting, the fore section going to starboard, the aft section going to port. As it contorted, O’Neill and I poured out of our seats, our bodies dripping over the softened exoskeletons. The front of Jaibriol’s body ran to one side, the back to the other, spreading him out in the two directions. The cabin continued to twist, trying to close on itself like a Möbius strip.

      
As Jaibriol reached me, the front half of his body dribbled across the black runnels that were my arms. His hand melted onto the flystick and the flystick spilled forward, splashing over the controls. I felt the thrusters fire. Sort of. Acceleration pasted us into our seats, sloshing our bodies, and Jaibriol melted across my exoskeleton, seeping onto the deck like a surrealistic painter’s nightmare.

      
I couldn’t hold the psi-sim steady. I leaked out of the racer, passing through its hull as if it were a film. Only part of me slipped, but it was enough to see the nightmare outside. In this bizarre interstice between universes, the cordon had degenerated into a skyscape of oozing gold lines and red smears. Ships fired, but their missiles and beams pooling uselessly in space. Eerie vibrating noises echoed everywhere. The air slid past me like oil, smelling of exhaust.

      
We were moving into the cordon.
Meedliiinnnne,
I thought.
Ploooot cooourssssss…

      
The words trickled away. I tried to create an image in my mind of an open space I could see in the deformed grid. Medline responded by heading for the opening. As we approached, the gold lines smeared out wider and wider, filling the hole. By the time we reached it, the opening was gone, but we dribbled past the gold smears like oil soaking through a sponge.

      
I scraped back along the ship and soaked through the hull, my identity recollecting in the cabin. Jaibriol was lying in a pool on the deck, his body smeared across its surface. Everything was dark. Dim. So dim.

      
Fading out…