Tobias Buckell - Ragamuffin

“Yes, I know.” Nashara sat on the curved floor.

“The wormhole leading there got cut off. Hundreds of years ago.”

Nashara turned on Danielle, the sinking, tired feeling in her stomach having nothing to do with the thump and shudder of the ship’s engines. “I’m well aware of it. I just need to get close.”

Danielle looked at her as if seeing her for the first time. “Why?”

“It’s none of your damn business.”

“You’re out of your mind.” Danielle shook her head. “Clean out. Near New Anegada is where the Ragamuffin ships prowl. They’re liable to board and shoot up any ship you take out there. Only good thing I see the Hongguo do is patrol against them.”

Nashara rubbed the side of her temple. “The Ragamuffins, you sure they’re pirates, or do you just hear that they’re pirates?”

“Seen video of their attacks.” Danielle folded her arms.

“Sure you have. Ever seen an attack in person, Danielle?”

“No,” the Daystar captain conceded.

“Probably because they’re silently docked next to you at habitats, keeping as low a profile as possible. Just a bunch of merchant ships left on the wrong side of the wormhole when Chimson, and then New Anegada, got cut off.” The Black Starliner Corporation had settled both Chimson and New Anegada with islanders and other refugees from Earth, and the Ragamuffins had formed out of necessity. When alien aggression started up, they needed a more militant arm for protection. Humans cheered the Ragamuffins on, until they lost. Then suddenly they were “pirates.”

“You know a lot about them?”

Nashara shifted. “Known a few. They used to route between Chimson, Earth, and New Anegada until the Satrapy declared that human ships weren’t allowed to use the wormhole routes or fuel up without licenses. Licenses they refused to grant to New Anegada or Chimson.”

“You sound annoyed.”

The Gahe and Nesaru had found humanity through the wormholes and used them. The Satraps dragged the Gahe and Nesaru off their homeworlds into space hundreds of years ago. Humanity was only the latest addition to the benevolent Satrapy. “The aliens don’t know how to make wormholes. But they get to say who uses the wormholes and who doesn’t?”

“You think the Satrapy doesn’t know how the wormholes work?” Danielle looked sharp and interested, with a half smile.

“If the Satrapy were that powerful, would they be that scared of human beings running around without supervision?” They could shut down the wormholes to human-occupied worlds that scared them, such as Earth, in agreement for Emancipation. They could do it to stop the nuclear suicide bombers, or to Chimson for trying to gain independence. And Nashara bet that they had also shut down New Anegada for some reason. But Nashara, and many back on Chimson, believed that all the Satrapy could do was shut the wormholes down.

Danielle shrugged. “Who knows? Look, Nashara, how long are you going to remain in my cockpit? We’re approaching the first wormhole on our little journey downstream towards Yomi. We have a lot of wormholes and miles to cross before we get there. You going to camp out in here for three weeks?”

“If need be.”

Danielle laughed. “Nashara, if I’m going to kill you, or dump you out the air lock, or whatever you think I’m going to do, there isn’t much you can do about it unless you plan on having all your meals in here.”

Nashara did not laugh. She had found a spare set of acceleration webbing and pulled the retractable ribbons from their recessed spots. She wove the fabric around herself. “That offer sounds good. You have a jump seat here. I’m happy to ride with you. Where’s the catheter?”

“My best dinner story… ,” Danielle muttered. She turned and got into the soft chair hanging dead center in the cockpit and strapped herself in. “The League will be waiting for you on Yomi. They’ll kill you there.”

“Of course.”

Danielle raised a finger and closed her eyes. She settled into her chair, and the thump of the engines changed. By now the Daystar had climbed high out of Astragalai’s gravity well, almost enough to break free of the planet. The Gahe choose to keep their wormholes far out from the clustered near-planet orbits.

On the screens Danielle provided, Nashara saw a cloud of communications buoys as large as their own ship. They pulsed a riot of laser light at the blank piece of inky dark in front of them. Buoys on the other side would snag the light, parse it, then pass it on. Forty-eight worlds ruled by the secretive alien Satraps, connected through thousands of wormholes strung throughout almost random parts of the galaxy, held together by threads of light. It sounded tenuous, but the Satrapy ruled strongly enough through its surrogates.

It took attention to thread this needle. Anything less than true center and the ship risked tearing itself into debris against the sides of the wormhole. Meanwhile, Nashara was sure Danielle had to listen to the chatter of traffic control, contending with other ships in line to transit.

Nashara stared into the round plate of nothingness on the screens until it swallowed them and the lines of flickering laser light all along their sides. A tunnel of light illuminated by stellar dust. Her stomach flip-flopped, her brain trying to process something that it couldn’t understand.

Now the screens showed more buoys and the remains of a half-processed chunk of rock. Girders and docking tubes thrust out from the side.

“Transit number one,” Danielle said, and reopened her eyes. “Of many more to go.”

The Daystar coasted toward the debris. No planets existed out here. A light-year away from Astragalai, the planet’s sun just a pinprick from here. The next wormhole lay on the other side of the rock, a few thousand miles away. A smart captain such as Danielle wouldn’t waste much fuel speeding up to it but coast toward it with a few adjustments.

Nashara’s wrist screen chirped. She looked down. A simple text message from Steven: “You are now a wanted criminal in all forty-eight worlds of the Satrapy for the detonation of a nuclear bomb in the Gahe section of Villach. Happy travels.”

Nashara deleted it.

“Congratulations,” Danielle said, revealing that she’d gotten a copy of the message. “My best story yet. And a wonderful move on their part, pointing the finger your way.”

“They’re insane,” Nashara said, and Danielle frowned. “A nuke?” They probably killed more humans at Villach than aliens.

“They said the Hongguo will be hunting you,” Danielle said. “Your name and DNA profile will be on every ship of theirs. Now you’ve made enemies of both the League and the Hongguo. Dangerous.”

Nashara sighed. “Every move I dig myself in deeper.”

“You hungry?” Danielle asked. “I can have one of my guys bring something over before the next transit here. It’s squeezy stuff, right, but I’m hungry, for one.”

Nashara stared at her. “And then when I use the bathroom in a couple hours, you have the ship lock me in, suck the air out, turn me into a mummy?”

“You’re paranoid.” Danielle shook her head.

“Everyone has been out to get me of late,” Nashara snorted. “I feel it’s justified.”

Danielle laughed. “If you have to use the shitter, I’ll come with you, I swear.”

Nashara wanted to like her. Wondered if she’d have to kill her eventually. It would be a waste to get cornered into a losing situation like that.

Besides, the Daystar would stand no chance of outrunning any Hongguo ship if they decided she was worth the trouble of looking for. And now that the League assholes had sicced them on her, she only had to worry about them. The League would stand clear and just watch.