Tobias Buckell - Ragamuffin

It was a workable model for what they were doing, a metaphor Cascabel had whipped up as the process began. It was, Nashara thought, helpful. Or else the process would have been mysterious, scary, somewhat uncontrolled.

The final buoy played laser light across the hulls of the ships.

“I can’t get into this Shengfen Hao at all,” Cascabel muttered.

They flicked over to the other ship, Wuxing Hao . Nashara smiled, and shivered. She began to split down the middle, a ghostly image of herself moving down the laser light toward the moving ship.

And then it firmed up. “They don’t know it yet,” the newest Nashara said, “but I’m in.”

“And?” Cascabel and Nashara asked.

“Call me Piper.”

“Piper?”

“It works with the damn theme. What now?”

Cascabel shivered, shook, and split into two. The second one smiled. “Got the Takara Bune . Two out of three, not bad.”

“Snag all the drones and let’s talk,” Piper said. “ Takara Bune , what’s your handle?”

“Please don’t ever call me by the ship’s name, it feels crass, don’t you think?” the newest iteration of herself said.

“We’re making this shit up as we go along,” Nashara said, getting impatient with herself.

“Cayenne, call me Cayenne. Etsudo’s ship seems to have the most drones, I’m getting it.”

A moment later they had it. Everything but the Shengfen Hao .

Now Nashara could focus on the strange new craft. She found its signal a few seconds later.

A man’s face appeared looping a message. A familiar face.

“It’s Pepper,” Nashara said, shocked. Cascabel, Piper, and Cayenne repeated the same thing with her.

Cascabel passed it on, and a window to Monifa appeared in the air between them. “It’s Raga, they’re Raga on that.”

Monifa looked at the four copies. “You spreading?”

“Get down there,” Nashara snapped.

“Of course.” Monifa shook herself.

Nashara checked another window in her lamina to see the Xamayca Pride dropping down in orbit, several missiles already streaking their way toward the downstream wormhole.

“Piper, Cayenne, see what you can do about the Shengfen Hao .”

Far above them all, the Cudjo and Duppy Conqueror struggled to drop down fast enough. Pepper, the very founder of the Ragamuffins, was aboard that alien ship. It was no surprise, Nashara thought, that Raga made all possible haste to save him.

“Tell her to watch out for the Wuxing Hao and Takara Bune now,” Nashara warned them.

“On it.”

“Give them hell.” Nashara smiled. She felt unleashed. And it was a good feeling.

Etsudo felt it: the ghostlike presence of something else flitting throughout his ship’s lamina. Something had smashed through their security and several of Etsudo’s purposefully flimsy firewalls.

And then all the lamina fell away in shards, leaving Etsudo strapped in, blinking, and staring around at the gunmetal gray of the cockpit.

His world, usually carefully laid out to the patterns of feng shui, now looked like the inside of an industrial spaceship.

“Hello, Nashara,” he said.

Bahul blinked and looked around, probably also confused about his lack of lamina.

“Etsudo? You figured out what I was very quickly. And you are no simple trader, you are Hongguo, aren’t you?” Nashara appeared before him in the cockpit. Both Bahul and Fabiyan stared. Etsudo had not warned them in the least, they’d just been stuck wondering why he’d spent so much time in his quarters with so little sleep.

“Yes, I am Hongguo,” Etsudo said. Nashara’s projection wore military-gray slacks and had her hair shaved down the sides in streaks. She looked annoyed. “I was part of an arm that sought to control human activities through less violent methods.”

“Looks like that’s all falling apart,” Nashara said.

“You’re an emulated mind. This is remarkable,” Etsudo said, changing the subject.

“And very illegal,” Bahul said.

“Look, I know this is all new and interesting, but I’m taking over your ship,” Nashara said. “Any attempts to mess with me and I turn you all into toothpaste. See where I’m coming from?”

“All the experiments we’ve seen, all the patents I’ve helped purchase and freeze, with all these the experiments in taking the human mind and digitizing it fail spectacularly. We are more than just brains locked away in mechanical bodies.” Etsudo waved at the ship. “We are influenced by our environment, our reactions, our physicalities.”

“Lamina,” Nashara said.

“I’m sorry?”

“Lamina. If you can emulate a human body within lamina, it can pretend it is still a physical organism in the physical environment the lamina sits overtop and maps to. Don’t get me wrong, it’s fuzzy here, but just real enough I’m happy.”

“Okay, Nashara.” Etsudo bowed his head. “What now?”

“Well.” The lamina Nashara closed her eyes. “We’re going to bump your craft a little bit closer to this big, big thing that apparently reopens wormholes. We have some friends on it that would like us not to bomb them. I’d also like to go home, Etsudo. It’s been a long time since I’ve been home, when you bastards cut it off.”

Etsudo nodded. “I apologize.”

“The Shengfen Hao is attacking the alien craft my friends are aboard. The thing is spewing atmosphere, breaches all over the place. The hull looks like the far side of a moon, cratered everywhere. How long do you think they can keep that up?”

“What are you hoping to get from all this?” he asked.

“At first? Just wanted to get back to Chimson.” Nashara sat down in an empty chair between him and Bahul as if it were real. “Now, the Satrapy is attempting to rub our race out, and I wonder if reopening Chimson is a good idea. I might be endangering them.”

“The Satrapy is not trying to commit genocide,” Etsudo said.

“Really?” Nashara tilted her head at him. “You that sure, Etsudo? Because there’s starting to be quite a bit of evidence stacked against you. Lots of dead ships and dead habitats lying around lately.”

“They have engaged in illegal activities.”

Nashara leaned close. “Some of them. But all of them? There’s a girl aboard the ship I flew in here that says her habitat’s Satrap said it was over for the species, we’re being exterminated.”

Etsudo licked his lips. “That’s a child speaking.”

“Maybe. But then again, the Raga are being exterminated, and they’re just a motley bunch of creaky old ships. They’re harmless.”

“Well-armed creaky old ships.”

“But not engaged in vastly advanced technological research, my friend. They’re only crime is arming themselves for defense. Why doesn’t the Satrapy like that?”

“You can’t arm yourself and say you are harmless at the same time,” Etsudo said.

“When it comes to genocide, the unarmed are always at a disadvantage,”Nashara said. “I’ll fight here and now rather than suffer a peaceful death later.”

“You’re a hostile individual.”

“Yes.” She smiled. “You know, I liked you Etsudo. Now… not so much. Sit tight, I’ll be doing my best not to harm any of you.”

“Nashara, please try to move the ship.” Etsudo vibrated with excitement.

Nashara frowned. “Oh, shit.” She was trapped in what felt like a bubble. A tiny artificial lamina deep in the ship. She’d been too fast, too cocky, too confident in her unique new form.

“You rage on as if it were a simple thing, Nashara. But who will pay for the fuel for my spaceship? Who will maintain it? If we toss out the Satrapy, it all collapses. For all your rhetoric, you can’t just get rid of them. There is an entire civilization that revolves around them, and they around us.” The Satrapy cracked antimatter in its habitats to support the entire ecosytem of ships and travel, at levels humans could not gain access to.