Hyvilma, p.5
Hyvilma, page 5
part #1 of Kitra: book 3 Series
“I can do a quick model,” Peter muttered, grasping for the sayar in his pocket.
Sirena was shaking her head, red tresses shimmering. “The damage is already done. We will need to… to…” She looked at me, dark eyes bleak. “With a human, we would give him a transfusion, culture new cells. But we don’t have sufficient facilities on board for that. And I have no idea what we should do for him…”
“We need to get to Hyvilma,” Marta said, not pausing in her work.
Fear was acid in my stomach. Would they even be able to treat him there? Hyvilma was the biggest Frontier colony, but it was still a backwater compared to Vatan, or even Punainnen, its counterpart on the Coreward side of the Rift. Pinky was the first of his people to set foot there, as far as I knew.
I wasn’t even convinced we could get out of Jump, Fareedh’s hopes notwithstanding.
Don’t borrow trouble, my mother’s words rang in my head, almost as clearly as if she were there in the room. I became conscious of my fingers rubbing together, and I balled them into fists. I scoffed slightly. I was pretty sure our trouble account was already overdrawn.
Marta was half done with Pinky’s sponge bath when he started to move. His eyespots migrated slowly from the top of his body to face me, and his bluish tinge purpled, then faded to lavender. Pseudopods struggled to expand from his spherical form. Both Sirena and Marta reached forward to stop him.
“Rest, my friend,” Sirena said calmly.
“Yeah,” said Peter in as light a tone as he could manage. “You don’t need to put on a show for us. We got you.” His last word ended in a swallowed choke.
Pinky wheezed, turning back into a ball. Then, all at once, his left side deflated with a loud raspberry. It was a matter of seconds before he was a hemisphere lying flat on the ground.
I opened my mouth to scream.
“Don’t worry,” Pinky gasped. “I’m all right.”
There was a moment of panic as we looked at him and then each other.
Pinky, in a stronger voice, said, “All right. Get it?”
Marta let out an odd, loud snort. A laugh, I realized. It took me a moment, then I understood. I shook my head, wiping tears from my eyes, unable to restrain a smile.
With Pinky, comedy was life. And where there was life, there was hope.
Chapter 7
Launch +69
The bridge was an empty place without Pinky to my right. Yes, Peter and Marta were behind me. I could sense Fareedh, just out of my peripheral vision, and Sirena too, the occasional hum of her chair audible over the faint but ever-present mechanical song of the ventilators and machinery.
But Pinky’s absence was like a hole in space. We were minutes from Jump-out without a navigator on hand, assuming we could even make the transition to normal space. And that was secondary to the idea that I might lose my best friend.
There was a jingling of bracelets, and thin fingers pressed lightly on my shoulder.
“I think he will be all right. He is no longer emitting radiation. I checked not twenty minutes ago.” Sirena must have been reading my thoughts.
“But, he’s still so blue.” I shuddered at the memory. It was a bruised color, no longer uniform and bright. It was how I imagined an old corpse might look.
“He is trying to heal,” she stressed. “I have seen the hospital on Hyvilma. It is extensive.” Another squeeze. “Just concentrate on getting us there.” The character of her voice changed as she turned to face Peter. “You, too, my engineer friend.”
“I’m on it,” he said tightly.
I gave Sirena’s hand a pat, then scanned my panel. The Tree was an unsettling range of colors: amidst the reassuring green of the power plant and the life systems, there was a dead brown for the comm laser, an insecure yellow for the antigrav, an ominous orange flickering for the drive. Above the readouts, the Window remained opaque. What secrets did it hide? If we really were in some strange not-hyperspace, what might it look like? For a wild moment, I considered activating the display. This might be our only chance, if Peter couldn’t replicate this Jump… or if we turned into atoms upon exiting.
My fingers halted halfway to the switch, as the memory of the last time I’d looked at hyperspace with the naked eye came back to me. The visions it had induced: a bizarre marriage of memory and fantasy that had put me in the seat of my glider in the middle of a hurricane, and then on the deck of my mother’s ship moments before it exploded. If Marta hadn’t turned off the Window then…
I shook my head. No. If we made it out of this Jump, then we could try it next time, under controlled circumstances, with safety measures. Like a scientific experiment should be. Not some half-cocked foolishness.
“How much longer?” I called out, my voice sharper than I’d intended. I could have looked it up myself. I just didn’t want to be alone in these last minutes.
“83 seconds,” Peter said after a pause. “I’m basically doing the same thing I did last time, powering up at the moment of egress.”
I turned to my left, looking over Peter’s broad shoulders to catch Marta’s eye. “I don’t know what traffic will be like. You’ll want to check the comms for nearby transponders, and let the port know we’ve got a sick passenger.”
Marta smiled at me softly, sympathetically, and nodded. I wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t know.
The odds of us running into other ships when we came out of Jump were vanishingly small, anyway. If Pinky had done his course plotting right, and there was no reason to believe he hadn’t, we would emerge into normal space a good hundred thousand kilometers from Hyvilma, in the zone designated for arrivals in that particular hour. That frontier world didn’t get too many arrivals, and in any event, space is really big.
I still worried about hitting something.
Nevertheless, I was already thinking past Jump-out to what would happen next. We had to get down on the surface as fast as possible, and any ships that got in our way, watch out! Our full tank of gas was actually a godsend. We could afford to be wasteful. I could zoom in at four gees, do a braking maneuver on the atmosphere, and screech to a thrusted stop in record time. Provided the antigrav held out.
My hands, already clammy with sweat, clutched at the sticks.
“Six seconds,” Peter called out. “Better brace yourself.”
Oh Lord. I’d forgotten to take pills. Did I have time? No, I did not. I gritted my teeth, girding myself for the transition. If it was anything like last time, it was going to hurt.
“Two. One. Egress.” The last came out a hiss.
Nothing. No gut-wrench. No cramps. Astonishment quickly gave way to fear. We must not have left Jump!
Panicked words formed in my mouth, cut off abruptly as the Window came on, revealing a brilliant starfield. A small, violet-and-white globe of a world lay just to the right of center. Hyvilma, I recognized.
Fareedh was out of his chair, clapping Peter on the back. “That was beautiful, man. I didn’t feel a thing!”
“I’m getting better at this,” he replied with a hint of pride.
Sirena said wistfully, “With Jumps that smooth, even Consuelo might tolerate travel.” I’d forgotten all about her, the princess’ lifelong aide who’d been left behind on Hyvilma. She hadn’t left much of an impression, though I remembered her being very efficient.
I turned to face Sirena. “Do you think she could help make plans? Maybe speed up Pinky’s getting into the hospital?”
She considered. “That’s not a bad idea. I’ll have to see if we’re in sayar range.” She tapped the rim of her chair, and a phantom interface floated before her. I watched as she began the comm, then realized I’d completely forgotten about my collision worries. I swiveled, clutching for the controls.
“Are we clear, Marta?”
“I’ve got nothing in the immediate vicinity,” her voice sang. “Picking up normal traff..ic.”
I caught her hesitation. “What’s up?”
“I thought traffic was normal. There are ships out there. Maybe more than usual. And there’s a… I don’t know… a hum. It’s suffusing the commercial comm bands.”
Sirena looked up at me from her sayar display. “I can’t make a signal,” she said.
Fareedh looked over her shoulder. “You mean we’re out of range?”
“No. It simply won’t send.”
Marta’s voice broke through. “I think we’re being jammed.”
“Us?” Peter yelped. “Specifically?”
“No, like I said, it’s all across the spectrum. I don’t think anyone can… hold it, there’s one strong signal coming through on the Navy band. Let me tune it in.”
I took a deep breath. If the Navy was involved, at least they might have a handle on what was going on. The Window lit up with a sensor display of the space around Hyvilma, the world fading into an outline. The planet didn’t have a moon, so anything besides the world itself had to be artificial. Even without turning on our scanners, the display was speckled with dozens of lights, each with a little alphanumeric code next to them. Transponder codes. There were definitely more than I’d seen when we’d left the system, weeks before. And there was something curious about the pattern they were in. I bit my lips, contemplating. That was it: there were none close to the planet proper. It was like they were in some kind of holding pattern.
I remembered then that we’d left our transponder off after running away from the pirate. If the Navy was actively involved right now, that could get us in trouble. I turned to face Peter, since he was the only one who could turn it back on.
Marta distracted me. She had her hands over her ears, disbelief on her face. I caught her eye and looked the question at her. She set the comms from private to public. A strident voice filled the room:
“…say again, in the name of the Trans-Frontier People’s Front, the volume of space within 30,000 kilometers of Hyvilma is controlled space. Any vessels who enter this zone will be fired upon. Further instructions will be provided within the next twelve hours. I say again, in the name of…”
Marta turned off the comms and spread out her hands in an expression of confusion. “It just repeats.”
“Who are these people?” Sirena asked.
“No clue,” I said. “No, wait.” I cast my mind back. There was a dim memory from… fifth grade? Mom meeting with a representative from a group. It wasn’t a planetary leader. “Yeah, the FPTF. I remember a friend and I thought it was the funniest name ever, like the sound of people spitting at each other. They shouldn’t be here, though. The FPTF was on Sennet and Talvi.”
“And now,” Sirena said matter-of-factly, “they are here.”
I looked at Fareedh. “That doesn’t make any sense. There’s a giant cruiser standing guard over the planet making sure no one messes with the Trans-Rift ferry. The Faucon. Your brother’s on board, you said.”
His eyebrow rose. “He is at that.”
“Folks,” Marta said. “You’re not going to like this.”
“As opposed to all the other things we have to like at this moment,” Peter said.
“What is it, darling?”
Marta looked bleakly at Sirena. “The message is coming from the Faucon.”
“We’re dead,” Fareedh said, his voice so low as to be almost inaudible.
“Are you sure, Marta?” the princess asked. “Maybe it’s coming from behind the cruiser? On the surface, perhaps?”
Marta’s lip quirked, and she put a hand on her hip. “A sphere’s only got one center, and this was a broadband comm. Here, I’ll show you.” She turned to her panel, and a red circle enclosed one of the dots. All the other dots had given it a wide berth. We were actually the closest ship to it.
“So we’ve got about 20,000 tons of cruiser calling the shots out there,” Peter observed.
Fareedh added, “Making sure no one gets in or out of the Frontier.”
“This end of it, anyway,” Marta noted. “With Hyvilma blockaded, no one can get fuel to Jump out and warn someone.”
“Hey!” Peter cried. “Except us! We’ve got plenty of fuel. We don’t even need the ferry. We can make it all the way across the Rift back to Punnainen on our own. They’ll never even know we were here.”
I didn’t say anything. “What?” he said, flushing under my glare. Then his grin faded as quickly as it had grown. “Oh, right.”
“Yeah, right.” I said. “Pinky might not last the trip back. And anyway, he’s the only one who could plot that course.”
“So we’ve got to get down to the planet, one way or another.” Sirena eyed the screen, contemplating. “Perhaps we could sneak past him. The Faucon, I mean.”
I thought about it. If I could trust the thrusters, and if the cruiser hadn’t seen us pop in, we could maybe slide in without a burn. Especially if we planned our orbit so the big ship was always on the other side of the world. Except that we’d come out of hyperspace right next to the thing, comparatively. There was no real way to use Hyvilma as a shield. And even without using our drive, we wouldn’t be invisible. Just less obvious than a ship with its fusion flame going.
“It’d be tricky,” I said. “And if the rebels have taken the planet, or even just the capital, it won’t do us any good.”
Marta said, “There’s nothing on the city bands. No broadcasts, nothing on the sayar relay channels. I can’t tell what’s going on down there except that it’s not business as usual.”
“That’s because it’s being blocked by the jamming, yeah?” Fareedh asked.
She frowned, shaking her head. “I’d still know if there were transmissions even if I couldn’t decipher them. Anyway, the jamming is just on normal space frequencies. It wouldn’t interfere with the ones in use on the planet.”
Peter folded his arms. “I think we gotta assume they’ve taken the city.”
“We can’t even ask the rebels for help, what with them jamming our comms,” I said. It came out almost as a whine. My fingers twitched. Pinky needed help now.
Fareedh sat back in his chair deliberately, crossing one leg over the other. He had a faraway look on his face. “You said they’re not jamming all of the frequencies, right, Marta?”
“That’s right. Just the standard space ones.”
“And we’re how far from the Faucon?”
“1000 kilometers. Well, 987. We’re getting closer, but we’re not heading right toward them.”
I looked hopefully at Fareedh. “You’ve got an idea.”
His eyes widened ever so slightly in reply. “We’ll want to be closer, though.”
“I don’t like this idea,” Peter said.
Sirena laughed softly. “I imagine he can shoot us at considerably greater ranges than where we are now. What is the plan, my friend?”
“Iskender’s on that ship. If we can get close enough, I can use my sayar to contact him.”
“Won’t that give us away?” I asked. “They’ll hear us.”
He smiled enigmatically. “Not with our setup.” His mirth faded away. “Of course, I don’t know if he’s around to answer. Or what he can do if he is.”
“Don’t borrow trouble,” Sirena and I said at the same time. She gave me a quick flash of a grin.
Marta spoke up, “How close do you need to get? Sayar range is a few kilometers, at best, without a relay network.”
The idea of getting that close to the Faucon made my scalp itch.
“Can’t you just use normal ship’s comms?” I asked. “Plug your sayar into the ship’s sayar?”
“Oh. Duh.”
I exhaled a little laugh. “You just left that there for me to figure out so I’d look like the smart one.”
“That’s right. Well, it will be a bit of a pain. I’ll have to transfer the program and I’ll need help calibrating to Majera’s power and gain. But I could get it done in… half an hour? With Marta’s help?”
A half an hour sounded like a very long time. We’d Jumped into the area of space reserved for that time’s arrivals. The Faucon had to be watching the area. It was only a matter of time before they spotted us, even without the transponder. A new, unwinking star in the sky, drifting against a black background.
That gave me an idea.
“I’m going to tumble the ship,” I said. “Maybe they’ll think we’re a stray meteor or something.” I nodded to Fareedh. “Go ahead and do what you have to do. I don’t have any other ideas, so we might as well do the one thing we can.”
Fareedh nodded to me, then looked over at Marta. “Let’s do it in the wardroom. We can spread out on the table.” They left, leaving the door open. Before I’d swiveled back toward the Window, they’d already tossed out a half dozen displays and begun an animated conversation.
A quick bit of thrust sent Majera spinning on all three axes. The stars began drifting in lazy, irregular spirals. Our ship, just two hundred tons in mass, was about the smallest an interstellar vessel could be. I could only hope we were too little to be noticed. If not, I hoped the rebels would at least have the courtesy to comm us before shooting. I didn’t even want to think about the kind of ways such a huge ship could destroy us before we even knew we were being shot at.
I rubbed my eyes. “We were gone, what, 40 days?” I asked no one in particular.
“It does seem that events have moved rather quickly,” Sirena said. I reached over to Pinky’s panel and collapsed his seat. The memory plastic flattened into the deck, making room for Sirena to drift next to me. She nodded at the courtesy, rotated to face me, and laced delicate fingers in her lap.
“What else do you know about the, ah, FPTF?”
My shrug went all the way up to my eyebrows. “Nothing, really. I was just a kid when mom was doing her thing. Politics was a bunch of boring ceremonies and waiting for her to get out of meetings that went on for days.”
“I think I’ve got something. There was a thing about them in the news before we left Vatan,” Peter said. He moved over to Fareedh’s seat, swapping displays. This way, he wasn’t behind me. He went through his sayar a moment, then called up an article with some embedded holo of about a dozen dressed-up people around a table. Peter started to read in an untrained monotone, “‘Talvi Conference outlines new goals, touts new members. Meeting for an unprecedented third time, the Frontier Rights Group, the political arm of the separatist Trans-Frontier People’s Front, announced that they had opened up offices on Syr Darya and Hyvilma with the ultimate goal of increasing the number of delegates in the Sennetian parliament. Their stated hope was to establish a kingmaking minority such that the ensuing ruling coalition would send a more autonomy-minded representative to the Core.’ His eyes flicked further down the piece. “Stuff, stuff, stuff. Conference chancellor Fatime Berisha enthusiastic about upcoming elections. Stuff and stuff. Famine relief sub-agency created. Stuff. Stuff. ‘Important that the Empire not repeat the needless mistakes that characterized its annexation of the Midworlds,’ Berisha said…”
