Cold Between Stars Read online

  The alien ship is built like Citlali, the same concentric rings intersected by spokes running from a central hub. I guess that’s how the fug knew to go for Citlali’s core first.

  The deeper I get into the ship, the more of it is familiar. Like a strange, grownup version of my home with a tattoo fetish. It’s unsettling and I don’t want to dwell on it too much. So far, I’ve studiously avoided it as I trek through the ship, going around and around for what might as well have been days but is just an hour. Every time I get close to the presence, I take another step and it seems to fade. It’s taken me a few minutes to realise I’m on the wrong deck.

  Turns out, aliens use stairs. Really big stairs.

  My thighs ache from climbing the giant risers. The extra two percent of gravity makes all the difference. By the time I reach the top, my breath’s coming in deep, ragged gasps from the pit of my lungs. The level on my oxygen pack has taken a nose-dive.

  The stairs dump me on a deck like the last one. The presence is closer now, a buzz instead of a hum, pushing me forward while the itch at the nape of my neck rolls over my scalp.

  The closer I get to the presence, the stronger the itch grows until it seems like it’s in my bones.

  I’m standing before a solid stretch of wall, indistinguishable from the rest. The presence is through there. I know it because if this were Citlali, this is where the door to Core would be.

  That thought is disturbing.

  I touch the wall.

  Like the airlock, the wall shivers and a section wide enough for four of me to pass through becomes translucent before snapping open.

  I don’t want to step through. The picture of the thin membrane disappearing into the wall like a piece of freaky skin, is stuck in my brain. I can’t quite help wondering what else around here is freaky skin-like. Am I going to run into consoles made of bone or workbenches made out of hair? Are there teeth in the cyclers? Oh my Terra, is the ship alive? Is the stuff following through its command circuits blood? What about the fug? What was that? Snot?

  I shudder. Yuck. I had alien ship snot in my mouth.

  I kinda want to heave, but that’d make a mess of my helmet so I roll the urge back down my throat.

  A living ship would explain the presence. Never mind how much the idea makes my brain go gaga. It’s possible, right? But still. Yuck.

  I leap through the hatch, one of the doe-oc-like jumps that would have made Grea roll her eyes and stomp through after me to prove how much of wimp I was. The thought brings back the memory of Grea curled in tight ball in her pod, and makes my heart squeeze. I shove the memory back, because I know what comes after that and I’m not going to think about that, about the fug eating Grea’s insides. Except I did and—

  No. Just, no.

  The hatch leads to another corridor, smaller than the main one, the curve of the walls steeper, but still wider than it is tall and I wonder again at the people who built it, and why it’s so like Citlali. There’s another hatch on my left, a few strides in, but it doesn’t snap open at my approach. Instead the corridor continues, to another hatch nestled at the end. The presence is stronger now, a cold weight against my forehead, and it’s pulling me toward the end hatch like a magnet. My feet move of their own accord.

  I’m at the hatch without any memory of the steps between there and here, my hand on the strange skin-like material. It doesn’t snap aside like the others, but it glows, like it’s sucking the warmth from my hand. The glow spreads outwards, soft at first and then brighter and brighter. My faceplate polarises but I still have to close my eyes and even then, I can see the outline of my hand – a small shadow against the light of a sun. Then the light dies. I stare at the back of my eyelids a second before blinking them open.

  It takes another second to dislodge the sunspots and for my eyes to focus, then another to figure out what I’m staring at.

  The hatch is transparent, I can see the veins in it. Intricate, dark grey whorls and twists running around the edges of the skin, framing the room beyond.

  It’s like the rest of the ship, with curved bulkheads that merge with the deck, but unlike the rest of the ship it’s round – a drop of water before it splashes on your nose. Unlike the rest of the ship, it’s bursting with colour.

  Purple and blue and lime and mawberry. So much colour it makes my eyes hurt. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. It’s a jungle, a really colourful, really bright jungle choked with vines and branches, around a single tree. I’m not sure how a single tree can make a jungle, but this does. In the centre of the room is a knotted trunk, off which everything grows. It’s silver and shiny, with veins of mawberry and lime twining around it. I narrow my eyes and my HUD zooms in. The veins are pulsing; little muscles contracting and releasing, pushing light around the tree.

  But it’s not a tree. I know that like I know the atmosphere in the ship is a little too high in nitrogen and low on oxygen. Electro-magnetic waves pour off it, not strong enough to interfere with the HUD but enough to tell it’s not sap running through those veins, but power. Enough power to stop my heart and start it again a million times over. But not enough to jumpstart an FTL engine.

  I think I’m looking at the ship’s AI. If aliens have AIs, I mean. What else could it be? And there’s that presence. It’s strong here, so strong that there’s no doubt in my mind that this is where it’s coming from.

  I knock on the hatch. ‘Hey. Computer?’

  Silence answers me. I’m not really sure that I expected it to answer, I mean, why would an alien speak Jøran?

  It was worth a shot, particular since the next step makes my heart pound with equal parts excitement and fear.

  I open myself up to the presence, dragging it into my eter, the physical world dropping away. In the eter, the presence is smoke; grey and formless, static except for a faint shiver. It looks like the fug did when I first chased it through the eter, which means, if I focus on the shiver…

  The smoke explodes.

  There.

  The shiver turns to reality-ripping lightning. I slide through one of the holes and—

  Wow.

  I didn’t know those colours existed.

  The psyche is exploding. What I thought was the dark, motionless lump of a comatose mind, was a shadow for the kaleidoscope taking up my vision. I can’t describe it, but it’s beautiful, as mesmerising as the bulkheads. I still can’t sense any emotions or thoughts. It’s like there’s a plasglas wall between me and the presence. I can see it, but I can’t sense it.

  I press face and hands against the mental barrier, feeling my body doing the same against the hatch, and reach around. There’s something, a croon against the sides of my mind, almost lost in the hum of my own thoughts. It’s higher than I was expecting, like the AI is talking on a different bandwidth out of sight. Seeing it is like squinting while standing on my head, but once I do...

  It’s sleeping. The same death-sleep I noticed before, but there’s more to it now, a tickle of hunger, a thrum of awareness, the sense of another there in the eter. I concentrate on that, pick at the threads, dragging it out of the sleeping mind until I recognise the creeping chill of the beacon.

  There’s more, a purpose and intent, but I can’t touch it, can’t follow it back to its source and unravel the mystery.

  I need to get closer.

  I return to my body and emote. There’s no emotion for “let me in”. The wave I push toward the trunk is a mixture of need and the bright, happy feeling of meeting old friends, of open doors and welcome.

  For a moment there’s no response. I’m gathering myself to emote again but… something’s happening, a shift in the AI’s colours. I wait, holding my breath.

  SNAP and I’m catching myself before I fall through the now-open hatch.

  A vine curls around the opening, a delicate pink tendril seeking my gloved hands.

  I jerk back while Dude hums against my neck, except instead of menace rolling off his fur there’s… joy?

  ‘Dude?’
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  The little critter continues to hum, but louder, the vibration becoming a sound and the vine responds.

  Re. Sponds.

  Half of my brain is flipping out, while the other is saying, ‘Well, shit.’

  Of course, it’s more of a shit-I’m-standing-on-the-threshold-of-an-alien-brain-and-my-critter-is-talking-to-it kind of shit than the regular kind of shit. It’s also about the only thing holding me in place as I try to figure out how Dude’s able to talk to fug, and how long he’s been able to do it. The urge to run, to forget about reasoning with the AI and curling up in my stasis pod is strong, so strong my entire body vibrates with effort to resist.

  At about the same moment the rational part of me gains the upper hand, the jungle parts. Fug slides across the deck, vines and tendrils retreat until there’s a clear path to the trunk at its centre. A deep breath, and I step away from the hatch.

  It SNAPS shut behind me.

  My heart is pounding and I’m counting my breaths, not so much to slow them, but because I’ll forget the need for oxygen otherwise. Dude’s still humming, the warm happy gold of his presence butting up hard against the nerves running down my spine.

  One foot in front of the other. Just. One foot in front of. The. Other.

  I’m at the trunk before I have a chance to hyperventilate. Then I’m reaching out to touch it, ignoring the fug as it lifts and parts, forming a little tunnel big enough for my hand to fit through.

  The trunk is firm. It undulates and wriggles against my palm, moving in and out like the lungs of some great beast while the fug writhes over my hand and up to my elbow.

  It stops and squeezes, gently like the tendril at the door did, and again I get the sense it’s shaking my hand… Or, rather, my forearm.

  I grit my teeth and try not to flip out.

  Dude’s hum hasn’t missed a beat.

  I know it’s nanotech, not snot or phlegm but microscopic bots controlled by the AI, but it still weirds me out. That doesn’t matter now. I don’t have time for it to matter.

  The AI is right there, its presence a quiet hum against my palm. My eyes close of their own accord as I focus on the colours beyond my mind’s eye. They’re smooth, peaceful. I reach out, twisting my psyche a little to the right and upside-down and then I’m in.

  Slipping into the AI is strange, but not like the maelstrom of before. It’s just... different, a little uncomfortable, like doing the splits for the first time. My psionic muscles ache at the unfamiliar position. There’s still a little ball of panic in my gut, but I’m able to hold it there, squish it before it blooms into something else. I can’t afford any distractions, not this time. This time I have to do it right, whatever it is I’m doing. If it’s even possible.

  A deep breath and I plunge into the rainbow.

  I’m a little Jørgen-coloured ball in the stream. For a second I’m caught in the current, the strange colours of the AI ripping at the thin shell of my shields. The panic slips my grip, exploding out from my middle in a puke-yellow wave. I catch it at the last second before it breaches my shields and spills into the stream. It takes another few heartbeats to bring it back under control, to stabilise myself in the stream and shore up my defences and then concentrate on navigating the swirls and eddies.

  I stick to the main flow of the AI’s mind, pushing away from the tributaries, from the whirlpools that want to suck me deeper. I’ve never seen a mind like this.

  It’s vast, complex, with different thoughts tugging at me from every direction. No, not thoughts – consciousnesses, fragments of the AI, split from the core like Citlali’s sub AIs. Each of them demanding my attention.

  Staying in the main flow takes all my concentration and yet…

  Am I headed in the right direction? Does this mind even have a core? How much of it is AI and how much is… not?

  The journey seems to go on forever and as the stream flows faster, the call of the other tributaries grows. One in particular is calling to me, a ribbon of bronze twisting in my skin, wrapping me in warmth and the promise of home. My concentration wavers—

  The core explodes before me and I’m jolted back to my mission.

  The AI shines with the brilliance of a faded star, not quite enough to blind me but bright enough to make it difficult to look at. This is it. The moment where I discover if I’m right or if I’ve fucked shit up. I emote a complex wave, the emotions shiny pink and green, the image of Citlali and safety riding on its crest. The stream ripples in its wake, the colours shifting. And then the wave hits the centre of it.

  Everything stops. Right down to the molecule. I’m not sure how I can sense that, but I can. It’s the only explanation for the fly caught in amber sensation that grips my entire being. Not just my psyche. Beyond the psionic plane my toes and fingers have frozen too, perhaps even the blood in my veins. The trunk is caught up in the freeze as well. The only thing that doesn’t seem to stop is the fug. It contracts around my arm, turning hard, all the warmth draining out of it along with whatever colour it had, leaving a smooth grey sleeve. Cracks appear in it, fine lines running from my wrist all the way around the trunk, before the fug’s smooth surface turns rough and powdery, the edges starting to crumble.

  A pulse shoots through the AI, a surge of power that knocks me back, almost flinging me back into my body.

  The core bursts to life. No longer glowing with the barely-watchable light of a fading star but the white-hot, socket-burning brilliance of a sun.

  I made a mistake.

  I’m in too deep.

  Heat roars over me, a torrent of awareness pounding my shields. Of emotion and memory. Strange, incompressible tangles of colour that jar my eyeballs and snarl in my ears. It hurts, rips into my skull, grinds against my bones.

  It’s too bright, too alien. Too much.

  I’m dissolving, turning to mush within the shelter of my own shields.

  I close myself, huddle into a tight ball and concentrate on my skin, the way it wraps around bone and muscle, containing the thing that is me.

  Kuma. A boy with golden skin and void-dark hair. Using my empathy to stop a fight and then start one. Running down a deserted corridor. Hands covered in the dust of a dozen broken pry bars. Burning fug. Saving Dude.

  I am Kuma.

  Aeotu. The thought slams into me, almost knocking me out of my new shell, an echo of my own name.

  Aeotu. The name reverberated through the AI, saturating every particle, every strong colour and emotion, and I know, deep in the pit of myself, that it belongs to the AI.

  My shields are dissolving, wearing away under the pressure of the AI’s emotions. I hold them together as long as I can, but it’s not enough.

  The hunger slams into me first. A deep, gnawing sensation that eats at my bones and makes my skin hurt.

  Behind the hunger there’s something else, something that takes the panic in my gut and turns it to ice. I always thought fear was the worst emotion, but it’s not. Loneliness is and it’s got me in its grip. Spiky fingers digging into my heart, piercing the muscle and taking over my spine. I want to cry and scream and curl inside my stasis pod, clutching the memories of my family to me like Mum’s hug.

  It’s not the loneliness I’ve felt the past days or weeks, one lightened by purpose and hope. It’s deeper than that. Colder, deadlier, weighed down with centuries of hanging in the empty void of interstellar space. It’s crushing me, squeezing me into a little ball of nothingness, except nothingness wouldn’t hurt.

  A familiar wave of emotion washes over me next, loosening the deadly chill of loneliness. Warmth gives me enough strength to uncurl, to reach for the promise of safety wrapped in the alien-but-not image of Citlali. Those are my own emotions, my own memory of home.

  And I realise then, in that moment of emotion, that the emote worked.

  Relief and joy wash over me. Those too are my emotions, but they’re echoed by something stronger and bigger, something that doesn’t match the ordered patterns of a mind built on logic. Something
that’s almost human, if humans were made of metal and nanites.

  There’s only one thing that it can be, and yet…

  I can’t quite twist my mind around it, can’t quite grasp the significance. I try, honestly, I do, but it’s so…

  Sister. It’s not a thought, it’s more and less. An identification that slams into my gut and holds my heart hostage. It’s me standing with my face pressed to the canopy of Grea’s pod and the deep, instinctual knowledge that I’m going to get her out. It’s hope and loneliness and love, and—

  That’s when it hits me.

  Oh shit.

  The Aeotu isn’t an AI, it’s alive. Not powered on and running at full capacity, but alive like I’m alive. Like a rucnart is alive. And it’s got all the power of a hundred Regans.

  I woke up a Regan ship. A sad, lonely, hungry ship. Really woke it up and told it that Citlali was home.

  That takes another second to sink in. And in that second, through the veil of the eter, I feel the shudder as Aeotu’s engines come to life.

  Oh shit.

  Ohshitohshitohshit.

  We’re screwed.

  I rip myself out of the eter and away from the trunk, stumbling over roots and smacking into vines in my haste to get out of the core. Around me, everything has changed. The room is brighter, the walls pulsing and there’s a hum now, almost too low to register. Not from the Aeotu’s mind but something I can actually hear.

  The engines.

  I have to get back to Citlali. I don’t know what I’m going to do when I get there, but I’ve got the whole shuttle ride back to figure it out. Somehow, someway I have to… I halt a few steps from the hatch and glance back at the trunk. What do I have to do? I don’t even know what the newly awakened Aeotu is going to do, only that it sees Citlali as home and safe.

  I reach back out to the AI, seeking it on the place beyond the eter. It’s not hard. The hum in my ears is nothing to the vibration in my psyche – I can feel that in my chest, echoing through my ribs – and the colours are bright enough to blind my physical eyes.