Элизабет Бир - Ancestral Night

I didn’t stand and watch for long. There’s only so much ox in a suit pack, and we were burning time even faster than I was burning atmosphere.

Singer kept Cheeirilaq patched into my com, so I knew where it was and vice-versa, and that was helpful. We quartered, moving around the hull, spiraling in on Farweather’s presumed location while keeping her—we hoped—flanked and ignorant of our whereabouts. Singer was feeding us what he got from his drone eyes, but to be honest I was pretty disappointed with my work. The maneuverability and stealth were all right, but the resolution on their images was terrible.

Too terrible to be excused by me being in a hurry, or using repurposed tech. Some things you just can’t really get away with. But at least Singer wasn’t complaining.

Perfectionist, Singer snorted in my ear.

“Is there an echo out here?” I looked around in mock bewilderment. Then I dropped to my belly, because I was starting to crest the horizon on the curve of the hull from Farweather’s position. I didn’t want to be silhouetted. Being silhouetted results in getting shot.

The hull vibrated against my body. I tried not to think of enemy ships gaining on us, and just crawled forward. One of the smooth, sculptural, curved projections of the Prize’s hull rose up before me like a sand dune. I sheltered in its concavity. It was high enough that I could crouch there.

I’m in position, I said.

I too, Friend Haimey.

Under these conditions of flickering dim light that shaded into the infrared, the drones just weren’t giving me a useful feed. I gritted my teeth and took a deep breath and poked my eyes over the rise.

I yanked my head back down again quickly. Farweather was definitely there. She was sitting on the hull outside a little geodesic barnacle shelter, propped up on her elbows, watching the light show as if she hadn’t a care in the world.

It must be very restful to be like Farweather, I imagined. Pity her behaviors were so terrible for everyone around her.

I could just run up and grab her, Cheeirilaq said.

She’s got a gun.

So you get her attention and then I’ll run up and grab her from behind.

While she’s shooting me.

You have a gun, too. Shoot at her back. It paused briefly. Just don’t shoot me while I’m running up behind her.

Cheeirilaq, this is a terrible—

Two clusters of Baomind mirrors, one aft and one forward of the Prize, disintegrated into chaff and glittering shards. They coruscated outward with the force of an explosion, streaking clusters of firework chrysanthemum petals whose trajectory missed us by no more than a hundred meters, passing between our hull and our white coils.

We swept through the forward debris field almost immediately. I huddled behind my hull projection and covered my visor with my suited arms. The shrapnel exploded off the hull to every side, disintegrating into glitter.

Beam weapon.

Well, wasn’t that just peachy.

Suddenly I was standing on stars.

The Prize was still there. I was still magnetized to its hull. But the colors and patterning vanished abruptly, replaced by endless depth of field and moving swirls of light.

I boggled as I realized that the entire curvaceous surface of the Prize had just… gone reflective. I was standing on an enormous curved mirror, and I was reflected and multiplied in it myself, in a twisting novelty-show fashion.

The Prize might not be armed, but it had beam weapon countermeasures.

Stand by for evasive maneuvers! Singer yelled.

“ Singer, we’re on the hull! ”

The whole ship yanked sideways under my afthands. Somehow, I stayed attached. My magnets held, and something else was holding me. “Singer?”

I’m getting the hang of the gravity , he said. We’re gaining on the pirates again too. No time to explain, just go get Farweather and make her stop playing space anchor!

“Well, if you’ve got a handle on the gravity, pin her down !”

I can do that, can’t I?

There was a vibration through the hull.

I poked my head up again. Farweather lay supine, struggling against the weight of her own body. She didn’t seem to be holed, more was the pity. Maybe she’d bent space-time to deflect the stuff.

As I watched, she rolled on her side, then onto her belly. With a tremendous effort, she pushed herself to her hands and knees.

Waste, she was impressive.

Get her, Cheeirilaq said. So it was alive also. The Goodlaw’s senso informed mine of its change in position as it began to move.

I lunged up the rise in the hull—and it suddenly was up, because Singer was using gravitational forces to hang on to me. My boots rang vibrations through the vessel as if it were an enormous, silent bell. As I crested the rise, I saw Farweather turn her head to see me. I dragged the projectile weapon I’d confiscated from her out of its holster— confiscated sounds so much better than stole —and fumbled with my gloved hands for the actuator.

Cheeirilaq appeared behind her, the mirrored hull under its feet reflecting its forest of legs like a pattern generator run wild. It was seconds away from Farweather as the Prize twisted and spiraled beneath us, jinking in erratic helixes and randomly generated drunken lurches.

They’ll try a white torpedo next, Connla said through senso. A white torpedo is always faster than we are.

I’m trying to work out a gravity field weapon, Singer said. I can probably do it. I’m not sure I can do it in time. I’ve asked the Baomind…

And the Baomind would get back to him in three hundred minutes or more.

Check.

There was enough powdered Baomind in our wake that we saw the next beam coming, which is something I never expected to see in this life and never care to see again. Or more precisely, we saw its afterimage, as it seared itself into our retinas.

It scorched through the darkness. It didn’t harm us because the Baomind dodged into its path, though I didn’t see how it managed to intercept a lightspeed weapon. Koregoi tech, I tell you what. It’s something.

What was also something was the light show. This time, the drones did not disintegrate. They sparkled . The weapon beam reflected off their freshly mirror-perfect surfaces and scattered in disarray, glittering in a webwork of light before it dissipated.

Friend Haimey, pay attention, please!

Unbelievably, Farweather began pushing herself to her feet. She was clad in an old-style bubble suit with a wide visor for peripheral vision. The gold impregnated in the helmet made her look like she was wearing a halo. I felt Singer’s control on the forces holding us to him slip a little as she loosened his grip on her.

She balanced wide-legged, as if she were bracing under a load. Her gun came up. It seemed like her arm shook with the effort of holding it. Cheeirilaq galloped toward her like an emerald Sleipnir, all legs and spiky raptorial forelimbs.

I had to stop looking at it before she noticed.

I tried to sight down the gun, but it was shaking. No, I was shaking.

Pointing a live weapon at another human being is hard if you have any awareness of consequences. Your brain insists on telling you, over and over, what that projectile can do to flesh.

Farweather’s face changed. She took her eyes off me, though the gun in her hand never wavered.

“Those fuckers,” she said.

My skin began to burn. Something big was coming in fast.

Superluminal.

I could feel it out there. I didn’t know what it was or where it was coming from, but it was aimed right where we were.