Lawrence Watt-Evans: In the Empire of Shadow

She shivered slightly; the air of the flight deck felt thin and chilly. She knew that had to be an illusion, though; the door they had entered through had been wide open to the rest of Base One, so the air would have equalized. It was just the knowledge that the flight deck itself was an air lock that was bothering her, she was sure-that, and the general stress and uneasiness she had been living with since arriving at Base One. She glanced up at the immense outer door; that mass of steel girders and panels was all that stood between them and outer space, and in a few minutes it would be opened.

She quickly looked away, back at Christopher.

The entire party trooped inside and found seats in the main cabin, which was starkly utilitarian-gray steel ribs overhead, gray steel plates underfoot, and eight rows of four seats apiece, gray steel seats upholstered in worn maroon leatherette, arranged in pairs on either side of a central aisle, like some military imitation of an airliner. Three bare lightbulbs, in a line down the center of the curving ceiling, provided light.

Amy thought that Ruthless, from what little she had seen of it, had been far more luxurious. But then, Ruthless was a long-range craft, Captain Cahn had told her, and had been on a diplomatic mission.

Furthermore, they hadn’t known they were throwing it away. This time they presumably did, so naturally they’d picked a less valuable ship.

There were no seat belts-Amy had noticed long ago that the Galactic Empire wasn’t much on safety equipment. Personal belongings were stowed under the seats; anything large or awkward was taken to the back of the cabin, where one of Colonel Carson’s men heaved it through a door and onto a shelf in the storage area astern, where the soldiers’ packs and various other supplies were already stowed. The soldiers retained their helmets and sidearms, but not much else; the Earthpeople generally kept whatever they had.

Two more of Colonel Carson’s men split off from the main group and trooped forward, into the cockpit; Carson himself stayed until everyone else was sorted out and seated, and then he, too, vanished through the forward door.

There were half a dozen portholes, small ones with opaque covers dogged down over them; Amy found herself seated beside one, and immediately set about uncovering it.

Susan, seated beside her, watched with interest.

As Amy had suspected, the ship was already off the deck and moving slowly toward the air lock door. Anti-gravity was quick and silent, and the Empire, once it finally started something, didn’t waste time.

The space-warp machine was out on the surface of Base One, halfway around the asteroid. They would be out in empty space for a few minutes. Amy had traveled through space before, on Emerald Princess and Emperor Edward VII, but those were big, comfortable ships, and appeared far safer than Christopher. She felt a twinge of uneasiness.

They stopped moving; there was no change in sensation, any more than there had been when they lifted off, but Amy could see that the flight deck wall was no longer sliding past. For a long moment they hung suspended as air was pumped out of the chamber, the ship no longer moving forward, but swaying gently in the air currents. The process began with a distant boom that was audible even through the thick steel of the ship, and then a dull roaring that gradually faded as the air thinned.

At last silence fell; the ship was floating in vacuum, with nothing to carry vibration. Then, finally, the outer door swung open before them-Amy had to press her face against the after edge of the porthole to see it clearly, but she managed it. There was no sound, of course; the immense steel barrier moved in utter silence, swinging slowly aside and revealing the white blaze of stars beyond.

The ship began moving forward again-as always with anti-gravity, there was no sensation of motion, but Amy could see the air lock walls sliding by again.

Then they turned about. Amy’s inner ear still registered nothing, but she saw the universe wheel vertiginously past the porthole. The open door of the air lock was replaced by an infinity of stars and blackness; then the gray steel of Base One’s artificial walls appeared along one side, followed by a rough, dark stretch of the original asteroid, then by more steel.

She had hoped to have a good look at the space-warp generator, but she realized quickly she was on the wrong side of the ship to see it clearly. Still, by repeating her edge-of-the-port maneuver, she was able to see it ahead.

It was ablaze with light. The gargantuan ring of equipment was glowing violet-white, so bright Amy found she couldn’t look at it directly even when she found the right angle. Everything else vanished into the blackness of space in contrast.

The airless void gave the whole scene an impossible sharpness, a clarity that perversely made it seem dreamlike and unreal. The waking world as Amy knew it was never so stark and clean-edged.

Then the ship surged forward-still with no sensation of acceleration-and that intense light surrounded the vessel, spilling in through the port so intensely that Amy turned away, momentarily blinded. Others exclaimed in pain and surprise at the unexpected brilliance as she groped for the porthole cover and slammed it shut.

Her eyesight was almost back to normal when, abruptly, there was a feeling of motion.

The ship was falling. Amy could feel it. Her stomach surged uncomfortably; she clutched at her seat, wondering why the hell the Empire didn’t use seat belts and shoulder harnesses.

Everyone else felt it, as well; Elani screamed, Prossie Thorpe shrieked something that might have been, “Here we go again!,” and several of Carson’s men swore.

To add to the confusion, the cabin lights went out, plunging them into utter darkness.

They struck something, hard; the ship rocked wildly, and Amy heard crunching and snapping. They fell again, and then, again, struck something and broke through it.

Then, with a sudden hard bump, they were down. Amy’s head rocked back and forth, but she kept her seat and was undamaged. Judging by the sounds she heard in the stygian gloom not everyone was equally fortunate.

She waited for a few seconds, to be sure the ship was not going to move again; she realized that it lay at a slight angle, the artificial gravity that made it always seem level gone. It wasn’t much of an angle; she didn’t hear anything rolling or sliding down the slope after the first second or two.

At first it felt as if they had bounced, as if the ship were now rising, but then Amy realized that was just higher gravity. Base One had artificial gravity set at one Imperial gee-which was less than Earth’s gravity. Earth, she had been told, had a gravitational field approximating 1.15 gees, by Imperial measurements.

And Shadow’s conquered world was 1.3, which, she was sure, was what they were now experiencing. That heavy feeling, as if they were in an ascending elevator, was not going to go away.

Once she was convinced they weren’t going anywhere, she groped her way up the wall and found the porthole. Carefully, she lifted the porthole cover slightly; light spilled in. This was not the incredible eye-scorching glare of the space-warp, however; the light that now shone around the rim seemed quite manageable. In fact, it looked like ordinary daylight-perhaps a bit thin and watery, but daylight.

Amy swung the cover aside and looked out at Shadow’s world.

She couldn’t see much. The trunk of a huge tree, standing no more than two yards away, blocked most of her view. Turning slightly, she could see that broken branches and foliage were scattered across the ship’s fin, a few feet aft of the port. The fin itself was bent and battered, its pink paint scratched and scraped, revealing black primer and shining steel. Yellow sunlight slanted down, glittering coolly on the pink paint and green spring leaves-the sun here in Shadow’s realm, in what she and some of the others had taken to calling Faerie, was paler than Earth’s, its light not the warmer hue Amy would have expected back home.