Elizabeth Bear - Worldwired

“Where's the captain?” Papa said, looking up only long enough to chase Genie into an observer's seat with his eyes.

“In her cabin, Mr. Castaign.” That was Alan's voice, cooler and less inflected than Richard's, almost chilly. “And the first officer is in conference with Dr. Kirkpatrick and Dr. Dunsany, as arranged. We should have at least a fifty-minute window, unless he catches on too fast.”

“Finally,” Aunt Jenny said, glancing up, catching Papa's eyes across the open floor space between them. “An advantage to the skeleton crew we've been running on since December.”

“We had to find one some time, chérie. Has it occurred to you that you're making a career of hijacking starships?”

Aunt Jenny snorted, looking down at her hands. The smile that crinkled the corners of Papa's eyes made Genie feel weird inside, and she looked at Patty instead. That didn't help any; Patty was so still she was barely breathing. Jenny reached down and smoothed the braid over Patty's shoulder, stroking it one extra time as if to be sure it was going to lay flat. “Okay, Patty,” she said, and looked at Min-xue, who was standing by the main hatch to the bridge. “Hit it, girl.”

Giving up, Genie looked at the big holoscreen front and center in the bridge displays, instead. And swallowed hard.

Because the Montreal was moving, her sails unfurling like wind-taut kites to catch sunlight — and laser light from the antimeteor protocols of the orbital platforms — gliding toward the birdcage ship, a shark cutting water without a ripple or a flicker of fin.

Patty let the Montreal 's solar sails unfold, light striking their golden mesh surfaces with a sensation remarkably like a stiff breeze tugging her sleeves, if she held her arms like a tall ship's bowsprit and leaned into the wind. The birdcage grew in perspective slowly; her enhanced reflexes triggered when she linked to the Montreal 's VR systems, and she was thinking nearly as fast as Alan now. It made the unwired world drag .

“Perhaps a slight exaggeration, Patricia,” he said in her ear, in cool tones that went with the swirl of blues and greens that comprised his icon.

She conjured her own avatar to stand beside him in the virtual space of the Montreal 's core. Her icon was the golden robot-girl, like a suit of armor with softly glowing blue-green eyes, perfectly invulnerable. “Maybe just a little.”

Alan didn't laugh the way Richard did, or have a face to crinkle up in delighted lines, but his colors shifted in the manner she'd learned meant amusement. She felt more comfortable with his inhuman icon, in any case. Richard's semblance of being a real person made her as jittery as she would have been in the presence of any older, smarter man.

The coolest thing about being the Montreal 's pilot was the way the ship became her body, long and smooth and powerful. She could worry about support and angle of thrust and oxygen ratios and carbon cycles and the balance of nutrients needed to keep the nanomachines functioning throughout the big ship's systems, and the fact that Alan was only half-done rewiring the ship's systems and it made things a little funky, working through the worldwire rather than over the hardlines as she'd been trained. She could worry about those things, and not whether she was too tall or too fat or her hair was too frizzy or if the zit beside her nose was as big as it felt, or—

She focused down, orchestrating the Montreal 's motion with the same kinetic sense she used to control her own body leaping or twisting. She shoved the thought of Genie's giant bright lost eyes into the same box where she kept the memories of Leah, Carver, her mother and father, and Papa Georges. Her mother would have said it wasn't good to dwell. Her mother would have said—

Her mother would have said to concentrate on her work, and on the important thing, which was saving Charlie and Dr. Tjakamarra. And Papa Fred would have grinned at her sideways, in that way he had of grinning without moving his mouth, and winked, and she would have known that he thought she could do it.

Well, Jenny thought she could do it. And Mr. Castaign did, too. And if Papa Fred were here…

Well, if Papa Fred were here, he'd probably have a gun out and be arresting everybody on the bridge. “Mr. Castaign?” she asked, careful to key the loudspeakers only on the bridge. “We'll be reaching the birdcage in approximately fifteen minutes. I'm using the solar sails to brake us; the Benefactor ship's own orbital momentum will carry it ‘under' us, and we can dump our relative vee and sort of… hang just ‘behind' it. Is that cool?”

She flinched inwardly. Way to sound like a kid, Patty. And when she'd been doing so well.

“That's perfect, Patty. Stand by to flash the Benefactor nanites — Alan? Or Dick?”

“We're both here, Gabriel. On your signal.”

Jenny Casey and Min-xue had already left the bridge; they hustled through the Montreal 's passages. Alan and Patty tracked them through security motes and information relayed to the worldwire by their own bodies. Patty unlocked the air lock to the shuttlecraft Ashley MacIsaac a few meters in advance of them. They shinnied into the shuttle, Casey manually uncoupling her from the Montreal while Min-xue ran for the controls. The Montreal was still braking; the Ashley MacIsaac drifted forward, free of the starship. The mote sensors networking the Montreal 's hull reported a flush of heat when the Ashley MacIsaac began her burn, still meters inside the recommended safety envelope. Patty flicked the Montreal 's sails out of harm's way, braking harder, the gawky dragonfly vanes furiously unlikely for their task.

Neither Casey nor Min-xue was suited yet, which worried Patty, but there was nothing she could do about it from inside the Montreal . And she wasn't going to think about that nothing she could do . Wasn't going to think about Carver or Mom…

The pilots had another ten minutes before they reached the birdcage. Drill was to be suited and sealed in three.

Drill was also to suit before you took a shuttlecraft out of dock, but this was an emergency.

Patty was grateful that she couldn't feel her body. She couldn't feel her heart tighten in her chest when she refused to think about how Min-xue might get hurt either. That's what Leah would do. Leah would do the job and she would do it well and she'd protect everybody else while she was doing it. And if Leah could do it, Patty could do it, too. She imagined herself clothed in the armor of the ship, a golden robot-girl and not a flesh and blood girl at all, and didn't worry about whether her heart was racing. She picked up Mr. Castaign's voice through the bridge ears, and spared him a little attention. It was just keeping the Montreal pointed, now. “Dick, how are we doing?”

Alan's avatar winked green-purple, and Richard's voice rang from the speakers. “Your window in five, Gabe — four, three—”

Patty giggled inside her head, where nobody but she and Alan could hear it and it didn't matter if she sounded hysterical.

There's nothing quite as much fun as squirming into a space suit while fighting gees from an erratic maneuvering burn, but I've got the damned thing up to my waist, and I'm struggling with the seals across the chest when Richard starts counting.

“—two, one—” Richard counts in my ear, with that flatness of tone that tells me he's half-Alan, currently. Always weird to be reminded that a good friend isn't human.

“We're not in position to catch yet, Dick.” I say it out loud, for Gabe's benefit. Patty and Min-xue don't need to be told; they're on the worldwire with me, tight as sharing a skin.