Элизабет Бир - Ancestral Night

“Yep,” I agreed. “They’re keeping us here. But if so, why did they give us a full load of fuel and consumables?”

“We’re not the only crew who could use those,” Connla said ominously. “Singer, give me a direct patch to wheelmind? And to Colonel Habren, if they’re available. But the AI is what I really want.”

“You have it.”

Connla had long legs, and it only took him a couple of bounds to make it into the command cabin. I was a little behind him, and dropped into my acceleration couch without anybody having to mention it. Singer’d stretched a film across the gangway. We both had to walk through it to get from the aft end of the tug, so I had a little bit of breath protection. I looked through it at my painted hands as I settled my harness, and wondered if it would be enough. Not being able to see the webwork of the Koregoi senso on my skin seemed abruptly wrong and worrying.

Connla took a deep breath and put his most professional voice on. “Wheelmind Downthehatch, this is Salvage Tug Terran Registration number 657-2929-04 requesting immediate leave to depart.”

“Request pending,” the station AI said.

Connla started the EM drive. “Can you give me a reason for the delay, wheelmind?”

“Stationmaster Habren would like to speak with you before you depart.”

“Our exit flight plan has been filed for five shifts, wheelmind. Please advise if there is an error in it that requires correction?”

“No error,” the wheelmind replied. It had a typically musical AI voice, in a higher register that would cut through noise. I wondered what pronouns it liked.

“Definitely,” Singer said, just for the three of us, “being stalled.”

“Please stand by for transmission from Stationmaster Habren.”

This is being designate [Colonel][Habren]. Salvage tug 657-2929-04, please stand down engines. You are not cleared to depart.

“Reason?” Connla said, shortly.

Singer’s hull resounded with unexpected impact like a steel drum. I jumped against the restraints, a moment of panic confusing my reactions before it came under control and I identified the sound. Someone was hammering with heavy fists or some other resilient object on the stationside door of the airlock.

The deep voice of the symbiote-infected pirate, sonorous and trying not to sound irritated, boomed through the intercom. “Just hold up a min! I only want to talk to you!”

Connla glanced over at me.

I shook my head. “There’s your reason.”

Wheelmind’s voice broke in again. “Salvage Tug designation 657-2929-04, please be aware that you are incurring resource obligation by refusing to stand down. The air you are breathing belongs to somebody else.”

“Void and Well,” Connla cursed. The tug shivered as Singer increased the power to the EM drive.

We could try to pull ourselves loose using that, but would probably just wind up screwing up Downthehatch’s orbit in a lot of annoying ways that would be time-consuming and irresponsibly resource-expensive to fix and which we would incur obligation for. While staying, ourselves, stuck right to it. We could try to blow the docking bolts, but that risked damaging Singer’s airlock—and spaceworthiness.

Connla snapped, “Wheelmind, this is Salvage Tug Terran space ship registration number 657-2929-04, advising that if you do not withdraw the docking bolts, we will have no choice but to engage our white drive.”

I gaped. We might survive it, being safe… ish… inside our AW bubble. The station—

The loss of life would be extreme, as whatever bits of the station extended into Singer’s white bubble were suddenly dropped into the universe next door. We’d be stuck with a big chunk of space station attached to our docking ring. The wheel… would be stuck with a great, gaping hole.

I was still reeling with the enormity when Singer’s hull vibrated gently with the scrape of withdrawing docking bolts, and we drifted free. Vibration doesn’t carry in a vacuum, so the pounding cut off instantaneously, and in the immediate silence that followed, Connla said, “Can’t follow our filed flight plan. I’m going to have to live-stick this. Haimey, if your passenger notices any obstacles before I do, I’m sure we’d all appreciate a heads-up.”

A patter of light impacts rang through the hull—not dangerous, not high mass and not high velocity. The shower of particles and debris shot past us, streaking by the windscreen, glittering as they turned. I whipped my head around reflexively, which was ridiculous, but the lizard brain has its own protocols.

Senso and Singer pivoted my vision to the rear of the ship. Senso showed me a big human or close analogue standing framed in the open airlock door. The human had dumped the lock, blowing out into space after us whatever small supplies and bits of things we hadn’t yet loaded and stowed.

I hoped we hadn’t just been pelted with anything important.

The human figure was Farweather.

I didn’t know how I knew, because she was anonymous in a heavy-duty vacuum suit, but I knew it like I knew the back of my hand. Better, my own hands having become fairly alien to me of late.

Behind Farweather, the glossy orange-red of the decomp door showed brilliantly. She was silhouetted against it in the pale decomp suit. How she’d held her position against the outrush of air I couldn’t imagine.

Or rather, I couldn’t imagine—but I knew. Because my parasite felt the shift in mass, the way Farweather linked herself to the structure of the wheel, and the way the station’s rotation faltered and its orbit began to adjust to compensate. She was suddenly massive enough that the wheel just… stuck to her.

Its rotation was whipping her out of sight. I breathed a sigh of relief, imagining Farweather glowering through her face screen.

I said, “Punch it.”

“Punching,” Connla replied.

Just as something much larger than our little pile of abandoned consumables launched itself away from the vanishing airlock, directly at Singer’s stern.

“I should probably tell you guys—”

“Brace for evasion,” Singer said.

I yowled like one of the cats as he twisted us to the left and down. The projectile should have slipped past us comfortably after the course correction, except—

“It’s her,” I said.

“Her.”

“The—it must be the pirate. Farweather. I can feel her.”

“She jumped after us? ” Connla yelped. “Of all the lunatic—”

Singer said, “Can you feel why I don’t detect any thrusters, even though her trajectory is altering to match ours?”

“Yes.” I could feel her bending space. Moving herself, by changing the shape of the universe. And in some peculiar way I could just… sense her presence. “She’s like me.”

“Like you.” Singer sounded dubious.

I scratched my wrist, leaving welts through the film. There was a dead sentient embedded under my skin. I couldn’t think about that now. Maybe I couldn’t think about it ever.

“She’s got the parasite, okay? She’s probably the person who was on the Marauder . The mass-murderer.” There was a moment of stunned silence. Connla looked over at me, and even Singer had no immediate response. If either of my shipmates had been about to speak after that, I cut them off by changing the subject. “She’s accelerating. Gaining on us… Transition?”

“There’s a lot of clutter this close to the station,” Connla said. “Don’t want to sweep up somebody’s lightsail in our bow wave and take them for a ride.” He wove us through a flotilla of tiny, glittering pleasure craft as he said it, then ducked us under the pushed-in muzzle of an insystem mining server towing a seemingly infinite strand of cargo pearls.