Jeffrey Carver - Eternity's End

“You know what it is?” Tracy-Ace said.

He opened his mouth, but couldn’t speak. The Deep Flux . He knew it by name only. It was an underlying region of the Flux so unstable and unpredictable that riggers avoided it, always. He had never heard of anyone flying in it and returning, though the Narseil Institute had reportedly done some experimenting along the border regions. But the Kyber—? Was this just an impression-image, a work of art?

“Is it real—this view?” he murmured.

“Oh yes,” she said, gesturing to the lower part of the image, at the indistinct structures in the foreground.

He couldn’t quite make out what they were. Man-made, certainly. A station? Docking ports? Ships? He shivered at the thought of man-made structures hovering on the edge of such cosmic instability.

“Let me change that view a little,” said Tracy-Ace.

There was a shimmer as the perspective shifted, magnifying the foreground. His breath left him in a rush. It was a fleet of a hundred or more glittering starships, gathered around what looked like a cluster of asteroids. Long, curved limbs like sea-urchin spines arched out from the central bodies to the starships.

Legroeder felt as though his heart had stopped beating. “What is it?” he whispered.

“The colony fleet,” she said.

He swallowed. “Headed toward—?” Not the Centrist Worlds, surely.

“New hunting grounds,” she said softly, watching his reaction. “What do you think?”

His voice caught. I am a Kyber, unafraid of bold Kyber initiatives. Unafraid … “It’s—” he said, trying not to stammer “— impressive . We, uh—don’t have anything like this in—Barbados.”

Tracy-Ace stared at him for a moment, then laughed out loud. “No,” she said finally. “No, I guess you don’t.”

“Don’t have what in Barbados?” asked a familiar metallic voice.

Legroeder turned.

Freem’n Deutsch was floating toward them.

“Freem’n!” Legroeder cried. “Are you all right?”

Deutsch floated to the table. “As all right as ever. Mind if I join you?”

“Please do,” said Tracy-Ace.

“We’ve met before, I believe. Tracy-Ace/Alfa?” Deutsch said.

“Yes. Good to see you again.” To Legroeder she explained, “I asked him to meet us here. Since you were wondering about him.”

Legroeder opened his mouth and closed it. Finally he let a smile crack through. “How did you—the last time I saw you, you were frozen in some kind of—”

Deutsch waved a cybernetic hand. “Leghold trap. I saw the damn thing coming, but not in time to get out of its way.”

Legroeder winced at the memory. “It looked painful.”

“Infuriating as hell, I can tell you that,” Deutsch said. “When they finally killed the switch, it knocked me out cold. I woke up in the infirmary. That’s where I’ve been until about an hour ago.” He nodded to Tracy-Ace. “Thank you for bringing me out. I’m looking forward to getting back to work.”

Are you? Legroeder thought. This was a danger point, when Freem’n had to make his own reentry into the Kyber world. Just how closely would his interests coincide with Legroeder’s now?

Tracy-Ace was watching them both with obvious interest. Freem’n seemed to be doing an excellent job of acting. He had to persuade his superiors, presumably including Tracy-Ace, that his actions with the Narseil had been taken either under duress or in order to sabotage the Narseil mission. Had he already been debriefed? Legroeder could read nothing from Deutsch’s face.

“That’s what we were hoping to hear,” Tracy-Ace said. “In fact, there might be another job coming your way soon.” She glanced at Legroeder, who realized he was holding his breath. He let it out slowly, hoping that Deutsch wouldn’t decide to explain what really had happened.

Legroeder shifted his gaze back to the holo, momentarily forgotten in the excitement of seeing Deutsch again. The Deep Flux. The waiting Kyber fleet. “Weren’t you about to tell me about that?” he asked Tracy-Ace.

“The Free Kyber Republic Joint Fleet?” she said. “What would you like to know?”

“Well—for one thing, why do they appear to be poised at the edge of the Deep Flux?”

Tracy-Ace chuckled. “That’s right, you don’t know about this on Barbados. Well, they’re poised there because they have a long way to go. I’m not free to discuss the specific destination. But as I said, new hunting grounds. Away from the Centrist Worlds.”

Legroeder tried to think through the implications of a vast pirate fleet setting out to colonize new worlds. If the Kyber were going away from the Centrist Worlds…

Good riddance?

That seemed unlikely.

“But why the Deep Flux?”

Tracy-Ace’s gaze was steady. “That’s the shortcut our planners have chosen. Too slow, otherwise.”

“But…” Shortcut? To slow death? “…the Deep Flux is unnavigable. It’s unstable; it’s unmappable. I’ve never heard of anyone rigging it and coming back alive.” Or coming back at all. Where could they be going that it would be worth risking the Deep Flux? The very thought reminded him, with a shiver, of the way Impris had vanished.

Tracy-Ace cocked her head slightly. “All that used to be true.”

“ Used to be?” Legroeder blinked. “Are you telling me that you know how to navigate the Deep Flux? Go in and come back out again? Go where you’re supposed to go?” Not possible. Was it? Dear God.

Tracy-Ace gave the slightest of nods. “There are some problems, still. But it does work.”

Legroeder glanced at Deutsch. His cyborg friend was sitting silent and expressionless, easy enough to do with those damn silvered lenses for eyes. “ Problems?”

“Perhaps Rigger Deutsch could explain it better,” Tracy-Ace said. “Rigger Deutsch?”

Freem’n whirred for a moment. “You know some of it already, Legroeder. The differences in our rigging techniques—”

“You mean the augments?”

“Of course. In our experience, the main problem with navigating the Deep Flux is the huge range of complex sensory elements that have to be translated and decoded before they can be perceived clearly. For that, we think you need augments.”

Legroeder stroked his temple, trying to consider Deutsch’s words without seeming to be puzzled. He didn’t want to make Barbados seem like a complete backwater outpost. He was certainly aware that the augments changed the overall look of things in the Flux; it was one reason for his aversion to them. He didn’t want the look of the Flux changed from something he could understand intuitively.

Deutsch seemed to read his thoughts. “It is one area in which the use of augments is superior.” Deutsch paused. “I take it the Narseil, in your observation, haven’t made much headway in this regard?”

Legroeder shook his head slowly. He was supposed to have been a spy among the Narseil. He had better be ready to convey intelligence about them. “None that they mentioned to me.”

“But they do have their own areas of great strength, and versatility, when it comes to rigging, yes?” Deutsch said.

“Certainly,” Legroeder answered, wondering why Deutsch was making that particular point now.

Tracy-Ace interrupted the chain of thought. “So, yes, we do have the ability to go through the Deep Flux. It’s not been perfected. But it’s good enough… or nearly so…” She pressed her lips together with what seemed a flash of pain, looking at the holo.

Good enough to risk an entire colony fleet? Legroeder was stunned by the thought. He wasn’t sure which dismayed him more, the thought of risking a whole fleet of ships in the Deep Flux, or the thought of new colonies being started by a band—an armada—of pirates.