Tobias Buckell - Ragamuffin

Etsudo nodded. The Toucan Too had initiated a killing acceleration burn ahead of Deng’s very nose and missiles, but they would still eventually catch up. There was nowhere for them to go.

Only Nashara could live through that. If anyone else was aboard that ship, they would be suffering cardiac arrest. He wanted to warn Deng about Nashara’s ability. But to do that would uncover his dark little secrets.

No, let Deng find that out himself, if ever. Chances were more likely that the new, fast attack ships crossing toward the downstream wormhole right now would fire missiles into the Toucan Too and take care of that.

“Be careful,” Etsudo said. “We don’t know the full extent of the Ragamuffin defenses. Keep your ship moving slow and your communications low-bandwidth.”

That would have to do.

Deng plunged through the wormhole, and the new might of the Hongguo continued to close in.

“Bahul.” Etsudo looked over at the gamma-shift captain. “Keep us near the habitat. Just in case anything else comes out.”

“Will do.” Bahul looked bored as he kept them floating nearby.

Brandon floated through the cockpit door. “Afternoon.”

Etsudo glanced up. “Afternoon. Change of shift?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll stay on,” Etsudo waved. “Grab an extra chair.”

Brandon hung for a second, something flitting through his face. Anger?

“Some of our ships are slowing down,” Bahul said. “Moving in towards the habitat.”

“Really?” Etsudo verified that and frowned.

“Oh,” Bahul said. “Etsudo?”

And Etsudo saw what Bahul was looking at. Explosions ripped down the sides of the habitat. Pinprick after pinprick of light, but with a zoom of the cameras Etsudo could see water and air jetting out from the breached areas.

“What is going on?” Etsudo breathed.

Larger explosions almost blinded him. The center of the habitat slowly cracked open, vomiting dirt, trees, air, water, chunks of the layered hull.

“Are there people aboard that?” Etsudo asked. “Or was it evacuated yet? What the hell is happening?”

With only a few thousand miles between the habitat and his ship, Etsudo considered trying to move closer. If someone survived, maybe he could save them.

More explosions rippled down the end of the habitat, splitting off one of the end caps from the rest of the dying structure. It looked like a giant metal cup losing its top, disgorging debris.

“How many people lived in there?” Etsudo asked, horrified.

“The last registry says a couple hundred thousand,” Brandon said.

Hongguo ships moved closer, five tiny chips of reflected light. But instead of moving to search for survivors, the five ships passed around the debris for the separated end cap.

“What are they doing?” Bahul asked.

Etsudo knew. He zoomed in on the end cap to where the ships cast out nets. Three of them were smaller merchant ships, like the Takara Bune . The other two Etsudo recognized. Large, heavily weaponed sister ships to the Shengfen Hao : Datang Hao and Wuxing Hao . Even closer. He froze the image for his crew to see. “They’re recovering the Satrap.”

“Is it dead?”

“No, they’re perfectly fine in the vacuum,” Etsudo said. His father had talked about once helping build a new upstream habitat for a Satrap.

“So that is a Satrap,” Brandon breathed. A lump of chitinous flesh almost a hundred feet long being pulled into the belly of the Datang Hao .

“Behold our masters,” Etsudo whispered to himself.

“Does it disturb you we aren’t included in any of this? We didn’t even know it was about to happen.” Brandon looked wounded.

“We proved our worth,” Etsudo said.

But Brandon didn’t look quite convinced. It’d be time to take him back to the room soon, Etsudo thought. Too much restlessness bubbled up from inside the man, restlessness that threatened Etsudo.

Etsudo looked over at Bahul. “Get us moving, head downstream.”

“We have business upstream,” Brandon said.

“I want to observe what comes next,” Etsudo said. Something important was happening. Something big. And Etsudo wanted the pieces to the puzzle, because he had a feeling it would be important to his future.

If the Satrapy had big changes in mind for humanity, Etsudo at least wanted enough warning to figure out what he wanted to do next.

And with a small chance that Nashara still lived, he needed to be sure his deceit didn’t get uncovered.

In the off chance she was captured alive or without unleashing her talent, Etsudo had been spending all his spare moments in his captain’s room, working hard to prepare his equipment in case it ever happened again.

The Toucan Too whipped around Chilo, a choking-hot and heavily clouded planet offering no traffic except a series of science satellites jostling between the two orbiting wormholes. Moving from the upstream wormhole to the downstream took a morning, and at noon Nashara faced herself. “You holding on?”

“Somewhat overwhelmed.” Cascabel rubbed her eyes and leaned back through a chair. “We have the lead. We’re almost there.”

“At a cost.” The pods had dragged everyone back to life after the last set of transits. Fast in, bump down the momentum, correct course, slam downstream. But the pods estimated they would fail the next time Cascabel pushed the Toucan Too that hard, and Cascabel bet the ship would shake itself apart at those speeds as well. Ijjy, Kara, and Jared slept under sedation, blissfully unaware of it all.

“They’re alive, right? We’re just a few wormholes upstream. We’ll try to take it easy now,” Cascabel said. “But better we save the thousands than the three.”

Nashara closed her eyes and agreed. “We should see a ship soon, though.” They were ever so close to old Ragamuffin haunts.

Though what the handful of aging ships Ijjy described out in the end of this run could do for her she wasn’t sure.

They continued on, each withdrawing into her own private space. Hours bled into each other as the Toucan Too drifted from wormhole to wormhole, each transit dangerously close to ripping the ship apart.

But under Cascabel’s quick guidance, they always pulled through. The hours bled into a day, then a second day, and on the third Cascabel appeared with a smile.

“Contact.” They had just two more transits to go; it made sense that they encountered a Ragamuffin ship.

“I’ll get Ijjy up.”

The Toucan Too shuddered as it slowed and the other ship paced them.

Nashara kicked her way down the central shaft to the medical room, giving the command for Ijjy’s pod to open as she opened the door.

He coughed, spitting up a tiny bit of blood. “My chest hurt something evil,” he complained.

“You’ve had three cardiac failures,” Nashara said, helping him wobble out of the pod. “But a Raga ship’s pacing us. We’re two transits upstream.”

“That go be the Starfunk Ayatollah , I bet you anything,” Ijjy said. “I know the captain.”

“Let’s get you strapped into the cockpit.”

They coasted back, and Nashara helped Ijjy secure himself. “Cascabel, let’s talk to the ship.”

Her other self appeared. “Is that a good idea?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do we want to be taking over Ragamuffin ships?” Cascabel asked.

“There are controls built in regarding Ragalamina,” Nashara muttered.

“But if they’re using Satrapic technology…”

Ijjy shook his head. “Nah, all homegrown, all the time. Just open the channel and make sure I visible.”

Cascabel shrugged. “Okay. And in one, two, three: the Starfunk Ayatollah ’s on.”