Jeffrey Carver - Eternity's End

The primary rigger crew consisted of Legroeder, Deutsch, Palagren, and Ker’sell—with Kyber riggers taking the secondary crew slots, a fact that did not sit well with the Kyber crew. Legroeder, per YZ/I’s orders, was the command rigger in the net; but the ship itself was under the authority of a rugged Kyber captain named Jaemes Glenswarg, a man in his forties, with only modest augmentation. He seemed to have a tough disposition, and likely a willingness to take some risks—but also a predisposition toward conservative flying. That last was some reassurance to Legroeder, who was torn between excitement and fear as he thought of what lay ahead. He was grateful for the trio of Kyber escort ships that had departed along with them. The escort had already dropped back out of visual contact, to a distant shadowing position; but Legroeder was glad they were there—the first time in his life he’d ever welcomed the presence of pirate ships.

Any hope had evaporated for anything like a return to “old times.” He and the Narseil and Deutsch worked well in the net together, as always—but it could never be quite the same, operating under a Kyber flag. If he wasn’t sure whom to trust, the Narseil were even more uncertain. He had vivid memories of going to Fre’geel with the proposed mission…

“Send my people to fly with the Kyber? I’d as gladly send them out the airlock. What did you tell them, anyway?”

“I didn’t have to tell them anything, Fre’geel. They knew all about us, the whole plan!”

It was hard to tell whether Fre’geel’s indignation was real or staged. “What do you mean, they knew—?”

“They were waiting for us. They knew who I was the whole time. They were the ones who sent the feelers to El’ken. The whole thing was a setup to get us here! Not just me; they wanted your people, too!”

The Narseil’s face was transformed by a series of expressions as he struggled to absorb this new information. “You’re saying they brought us here to help them look for Impris ?”

Legroeder appealed to Tracy-Ace, who nodded confirmation. “Don’t forget it’s one of the things we came here for, Fre’geel. We have a chance now to try to bring Impris in. Rescue her. Learn the truth.”

Fre’geel glanced back through the window into the holding cell, where a set of portable mist-showers had recently been installed. The Kyber had kept their word on that, at least. But Legroeder could imagine him thinking, how would his crew react if he sent his best riggers out on a Kyber-run operation?

“Perhaps,” Tracy-Ace said dryly, “you would like to hear the actual terms Ivan is offering.”

“Terms!” Fre’geel said, not quite snorting. “Since you have us as your prisoners, you may be able to dictate terms. But you cannot command our actions. Why do you want Impris , anyway?”

Legroeder threw up his hands. “Why don’t you listen to them and find out?”

Fre’geel looked stunned, but in the end he went along to discuss the matter with Yankee-Zulu/Ivan…

And in the end, if Fre’geel did not exactly trust Ivan, he did decide that the Narseil’s prospects for achieving their goals were better with the deal than without. Even if there was no guarantee that YZ/I would uphold the bargain if they rescued the ship, they were at least pursuing contacts and gaining information. Fre’geel argued for the inclusion of Cantha and Agamem as bridge specialists to help analyze the structure of the Deep Flux, and although YZ/I had not originally intended to send non-rigger Narseil, he agreed.

They’d gotten underway without delay, despite signs of considerable wariness between the Narseil team and the Kyber crew. Ker’sell, whom Legroeder suspected had never quite trusted him in the first place, seemed more guarded than ever. Legroeder couldn’t tell if Ker’sell regarded him as a traitor, or if he simply distrusted everyone. Agamem, whom the Narseil really had wanted along for security, rather than Flux analysis, seemed to accept Legroeder’s loyalty; but even so, Legroeder felt he was being watched. As far as he could tell, Palagren and Cantha still accepted him as a friend and crewmate.

Phoenix ’s heading was set for upper northeastern Golen Space, where Kyber tracking was last known to have followed Impris . The information at their command was scant; Kilo-Mike/Carlotta, whose ships were currently shadowing Impris , provided only the minimum tracking data required by the Kyber Republic commonality agreements. However, YZ/I’s people had purchased some additional information—they hoped more than just rumor—from a third outpost that had deeper sources than Ivan’s within KM/C.

While Cantha worked with the Kyber crew at the plotting computers, trying to project Impris ’s possible locations from the information they had, Legroeder and the rigger team flew on a course traversing the narrow waist of the so-called Golen Space Peninsula. They were aiming for an area not too far from several important routes that skirted Golen Space just a few light-years to the galactic south of the star-birthing region of the Akeides Nebula. The nebula, just outside Golen Space on the route between Karg-Elert 4 and Vedris IV, was a passage of tremendous beauty, but also an area of turbulence, where a number of Centrist ships had been lost over the years.

The nebula was well known to Kyber worlds, too—but for another reason. It was a boundary point of Impris ’s wanderings. The ship seemed to meander chaotically, appearing in ghostly fashion in one place and then another, at unpredictable intervals. Its movements seemed limited to a zone a few dozen light-years in length, and a dozen wide and high. The region of the Akeides Nebula marked one end point of that zone.

“Are you saying,” Legroeder heard Cantha asking a Kyber navigator named Derrek, “that there’s a force in the nebula that turns the ship back when it gets too close?”

Derrek’s return gaze seemed to deny all recognition of Cantha’s authority or position. His electronic eyes glanced at Captain Glenswarg, as if to ask, How much do you want me to say?

Legroeder watched in silence. When the captain didn’t speak, Cantha explained, “If we want to locate the ship, we need to understand its behavior. If you have knowledge that bears on our search…” He appealed with a gesture to the captain.

Glenswarg moved his chin up and down a centimeter, nodding.

The Kyber navigator’s mouth pursed as he struggled to accept this. “The answer is, we don’t know.”

Legroeder thought, Was that so hard to say?

“Don’t know what—whether or not the nebula turns Impris back?” Cantha asked.

Derrek shrugged. “For all we know, the nebula just happens to be there. Maybe there’s no connection.” He pressed his lips together, making clear there was nothing else he would offer willingly.

Cantha looked thoughtful as he turned back to the simulation console.

At the end of the fourth day of flying, Cantha and the riggers gathered in the plotting room just aft of the bridge. “I find it interesting,” Cantha said, “that even the Kyber—with all of their ships tracking Impris —cannot accurately predict her course, or even define its limits very precisely.” Cantha gestured to the holo-image floating in the center of the room, where he’d traced out his projections of their course aboard Phoenix . From the net, their course had seemed like a fairly straight line; but from Cantha’s plot of the Flux-layers, it looked more like a mangled corkscrew penetrating the Golen Space Peninsula.