Cold Between Stars Read online

  Reading thoughts isn’t something I’m good at. I can’t actually reach out and grab them as most telepaths, or even Grea, can. I sort of open myself up like a big old net and hope they run into me. Organised thought has a sense, though, a vibration different from emotion. It’s sharp and hard, an oval riding through the storm of emotion, coloured and tossed and changed, but always its own self.

  There’s nothing organised in Aeotu’s mind, it’s a confused, messy stream of consciousness. Only the emote shines strongly, that and the image of Citlali.

  There has to be more. I dig deeper, spreading myself thin, riding the currents of emotion, ignoring the pain, the brightness that wants to turn me into a crisp. And there, behind the image of Citlali, behind the impression of home, is... is... I frown. It’s an ugly, brown tangle of emotions, sparking with the red of anger, the black of fear and the brilliant white of intent. I reach for it, stretching myself a little thinner. The tangle is huge, as big as the ship itself, dwarfing me. I touch it with the tips of psionic fingers.

  The scream rips out of my throat.

  I’m back in my body, scooting backwards on hands and bum, gaze glued to the trunk, to the bright pulses shooting up and down it in shades of blue and yellow.

  There’s only one thought in my head, ringing over and over and over.

  Protect. Images roll within the word, fragments. Giant tubes shooting out from her hull as she docked with Euvia, her sister ship. The aliens from the kins’ memories scurrying out of Euiva, flooding Aeotu’s corridors with the sick and dying as Euiva leaked atmosphere and her engines spluttered. The tubes disconnecting, the touch of Euiva’s mind becoming fainter as Aeotu’s engines fired, leaving her sister farther and farther behind, until she was nothing but a ghost on the sensors

  Then the same events repeating, except it wasn’t a sister this time, but Aeotu abandoned in the void, her crew gone. Limping through the black, repair nanites cannibalising systems. A hole in the hull. Bulkheads stripped. Gravity gone. And still, the inching coldness as the engines failed, and Sigrid still a distant star. Then, the last flicker of power and the endless cold.

  Alone. But no longer. Euiva was out there. Euiva/Citlali back from the dead. Together they would go home. The image is burned on my mind, not just the outline of Citlali but what Aeotu intends to do. The ship moving, readying itself to grab hold of Citlali. The grapples, the giant docking bay. Not big enough to swallow Citlali, but enough to pull her close to Aeotu’s hull, to initiate the link...

  The link. Everything within me turns to ice.

  I don’t know what the link is, there were no details in Aeotu’s thoughts, only the knowledge of what came next.

  Faster-than-light travel.

  I’m on my hands and knees, heading for the door before I have my feet under me.

  What’d I do? What’d I do?

  I have to get back to Citlali.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The shuttle’s landing gear has barely touched the deck before I’m out of the flight chair, blowing through the airlock and cycling the hatch open.

  I’m down the ramp, halfway across the shuttle bay, Dude fuzzing against the back of my neck and my HUD screaming vacuum warnings, all of my attention focused on one thing.

  Warn Core.

  The control panel beside the inner door is a solid red. Locked. Of course it is.

  A glance back over my shoulder, at the gapping rotten hole the fug has eaten in the bulkhead.

  The inner bulkheads will be all that’s stopping the last of Citlali’s atmosphere shooting into space.

  My brain is whirring, trying to recall Citlali’s layout, the small maintenance tubes as I punch up my bio-computer. If I go back through the ice hull, I can find the aquifer that supplies Med and—

  The inner doors open.

  The gale of escaping air pushes me off my feet.

  I scramble for purchase even as my mag boots activate and I steel myself to get blown into space.

  And then it stops.

  Citlali has more atmosphere than that. I glance up and into Core’s floating gold face.

  Her mouth doesn’t move but her voice plays through my helmet’s comms. ‘Hurry, Kuma, the emergency airlock will not hold for long.’

  Beyond her a sparkling blue energy field is strung between temporary pylons. I move.

  The airlock is barely big enough for me and I can’t help but suck my gut in as the bulkhead rolls closed. The energy field dissolves and I’m ripping off my helmet, turning to tell Core about Aeotu and Citlali and—

  She’s already halfway down the corridor, a disembodied head floating along in the wake of the drone. I stare at her for a second, mouth open.

  ‘Hurry, Kuma.’

  I hurry.

  Dude’s clinging to the neck of my envirosuit, fuzzing his fuzz off and I’m not merely hurrying, I’m jogging, boots THUMPING down the corridor.

  ‘I need to tell you—’

  ‘I know, Kuma.’

  I stop. ‘What?’

  Core/drone disappears around a corner.

  Shit. I run to catch up.

  As soon as I’m in sight, Core starts talking. ‘The fug stopped disassembling the ship. It now appears to be repairing it.’

  Confusion slows my steps; Core continuing hastens them again. ‘Outer hull breaches and structural deformities are being repaired, but sensors have detected several abnormalities.’

  ‘Your sensors are working?’

  ‘Yes, Kuma. The new critters are proving effective against the fug and I have been able to restore several systems, including drone control.’

  Grea. ‘Stasis?’ Hope lifts my heart even as exertion makes it pound.

  ‘Not yet.’

  And there it goes, crushed under the weight of fug. I stop dead, hands on my knees as I drag in air.

  Core/drone appears in my line of sight.

  ‘Kuma, we must hurr—’

  ‘Aeotu’s going to swallow Citlali.’

  It’s Core’s turn to look like a stunned qwan, mouth gaping open.

  ‘Aeotu’s the source of the fug. It believes Citlali is its sister ship and it’s coming to take us home.’ I pause. ‘Its home.’

  Core’s frozen, mouth still open.

  Three heartbeats. Four. Six. Ten.

  This is more than the pause when she’s trying to process telepathic impossibilities.

  My breathing’s back under control, sweat cooling on my forehead. I straighten.

  Core’s still frozen, but now there’s cubes of static shivering through her head.

  Alarm blooms in my chest.

  ‘Core? Core!’

  What if the fug got her? She said it was modifying things, what if—

  A blink and Core/drone zips to eye level.

  ‘Aeotu has appeared on short range sensors. I’ve analysed the modifications the fug is making and the other ship’s trajectory. It would appear you are correct. Come with me.’

  Core/drone led me to Engineering.

  Main engineering, where Jim Engineer pulls shuttles and workbees apart, is at the top of the ship – only the Atrium, a tiny pocket wedged in the ice hull, is above it – but there are small engineering sections on every deck, running the stern of the ship.

  The section Core/drone takes me to is one of those. A small, cramped space that resembles a closet more than a workspace.

  There’s fug damage all over the place, holes in the bulkheads, the benches, the floor. A whole section at the back is gone, opening onto a maintenance tunnel, and beyond that a freight tube and beyond that—

  I swallow and point through the fug-eaten ship to the almost-dead miniature sun beyond. ‘Are those the engines?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There’s a hole in the plating,’ are the words that come out of my mouth, but what I’m really wondering is how soon the engines are going to come on and fry my brain.

  ‘Emergency shielding continues to function. Kuma Darzi, I need you to focus here.’

&nb
sp; A light shoots from the drone, highlights another fug-eaten bulkhead, this one more like Mac’s favourite swiss cheese than steelcrete. Through the hole, platform gleams; snitches of red and vibrant blue, interspersed with white.

  A storage unit. The wall pops out, fragile bits of decayed steelcrete crumbling with the sudden movement.

  The gleaming colours and shapes are tools, three solid rounded bodies the length of my forearm, surrounded by a wall of silver attachments.

  ‘What am I meant to do with this?’

  Core/drone hovers at my side. ‘You’re going to make a Franken-laser.’

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The ship shudders, a violent heave that lifts me off my feet and throws me into the wall. Ahead of me, Core/drone barely avoids careening into the bulkhead, her stabilisers firing a moment before her plasform shell smashes into the steelcrete.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘I do not know, Kuma, exterior sensors are still offline.’

  ‘Can’t you guess?’

  ‘That is not within my programming, however...’ She’s silent a moment as she rights herself and continues bobbing along the corridor. I rush after her. ‘Interior sensors are picking up a change in atmosphere not in line with Citlali’s usual operation.’

  ‘And that means?’

  ‘We have been boarded, Kuma.’ Core’s avatar appears in the corridor in front of me, the drone passing through her head like it wasn’t there. ‘We are now attached to the Aeotu.’

  I run faster, Core splintering around me as I sprint through her avatar.

  I have to get to the Atrium.

  ‘Interior sensors are showing an influx of fug.’ Core keeps pace with me, her avatar now bobbing along behind the drone. ‘It appears to be concentrated around the grappling lines. I cannot determine what it is doing.’

  The new Franken-laser bounces against my back. There’s no air to talk. Oxygen is burning up in my lungs, my heart pumping it out to my muscles, every step vibrating up my shins, through my knees with the thought ‘Go.’

  The freight shaft is there, the hatch a patchwork of holes and critter fuzz. I’m through it, ready to run again, when Core/drone flashes red and stops.

  I skid to a halt, nose millimetres from her shell.

  ‘What—?’

  The WHOOSH of rushing air and the bright pulse of the mag lines stops me. I turn.

  The sled is on us before I can blink.

  There’s time enough to jump, a blind leap that throws me against the crumbling tunnel wall before the sled shudders to a halt where my knees used to be.

  ‘Climb on, Kuma.’ Core/drone hovers over my head.

  ‘What?’ I’m still staring at the sled, imagining it ploughing into my knees.

  ‘The sled. Get on.’

  ‘Oh.’ I swallow. ‘Right.’

  No sooner am I on the sled, it takes off. There are no wind shields on a freight sled, nothing to cut the howling gale that screams past my ears or the pressure that brings tears to my eyes. There also doesn’t appear to be any speed control, because I’m plastered against the thin lip that runs all the way around the sled, unable to move. Soon enough I’m forced to close my eyes against the pressure, and then I’m struggling to lift my arm, to turn my head to escape the pressure of the blasting wind against my lids. I can’t tell if we’re going up or down, and Core must have turned the gravity off, because the Atrium is at the top of the ship and surely, we have to go up.

  I hope we get there soon, because it’s getting hard to breathe now, hard to hear my heart past the rush of air.

  And then the pressure lets up, my lungs no longer fighting the press of my ribs, and I can move my arm.

  The sled stops.

  I tumble off. Stars bursting in my vision.

  I should name them, I mean, I’ve seen them often enough, and the Kuma Hit His Head constellation has a nice ring to it. Grea will laugh.

  Core/drone is already darting forward, through the door before I finish blinking the lights from my eyes.

  I stumble to my feet, the Franken bouncing against my back.

  There’s no corridor beyond. We’ve reached the Atrium, Citlali’s top deck, a huge open space to rival the three Ag decks, and the only place on the ship with an actual view of the void. Except now, instead of a million pinpricks of light, all I see is the sleek lines of Aeotu’s hull.

  ‘Vacuum!’

  Vacuum, the warning cry that parents yell in the night instead of “fire”. My hands are moving, a lifetime of midnight drills taking over, activating my helmet before the rest of me catches up.

  And that’s when I see the crack in the hull.

  A giant cable has pierced the steelcrete and plasteel, punching a hole all the way through the hull and into the deck. The steelcrete is deformed inwards, the deck the same. The bright blue of an emergency shield plays in the space around the shattered hull, sparking white around the invading cable as it tries to stop our atmosphere from escaping into the nothing of space.

  Behind me, more bulkheads snap closed, protecting the rest of the ship and leaving me alone with Core/drone and Aeotu.

  I swing the Franken around, holding it with both hands.

  The grappling cable is thicker than a shuttle, a giant silver-black column in the middle of the Atrium. I heft the Franken, my finger on the trigger, and stalk toward it.

  It gets bigger, seeming to grow in size in the two dozen steps it takes me to reach the edge of the rip it’s made in the deck. I ignore the doubt in my gut, the whisper asking if the Franken will even scratch its surface, and press the trigger. Light blazes, a thin, focused beam that cuts through the air and slices into the cable.

  And for a moment I have hope. Watching it slice into the metal, the beam slicing into the silver-black, a centimetre gone with every beat of my heart, and another and another. This might work. This might actually work!

  There is something under the silver-black, a glimpse of red like blood, squeezing and pulsing and—

  The scream knocks me off my feet.

  It rings in my head, louder than anything, than the fug, than the Citlali’s engines than, than...

  My bones are vibrating, my skull exploding, my ears...

  The sound’s not in my ears. My hands are on my helmet, gripping the plasform like they can squeeze the sound out of my head, and the HUD’s flashing, all systems normal. I see that, somehow, through the pain. The scream is in my head, it’s psionic, carried on the multicoloured, fractured light of Aeotu.

  Core/drone is bobbing in front of my face, and I know she’s trying to tell me something, can hear the words, actual words, through the scream in my head but they don’t make sense. I can’t... I can’t—

  The world goes black.

  I’m in the Atrium, staring up through the plasteel roof, the thin bubble that punches through the ice hull, except that instead of stars, I’m seeing intricate shadows, whorls and lines shifting under yellow lights. Those aren’t the shields that normally protect the Atrium and I wonder at that a minute, and why the sight of it makes my gut cramp and cold slither through my bones.

  And then I remember.

  ‘Shit.’

  I’m rolling to my feet, or trying. My head swims, and getting to my knees is enough to make me stagger, to fall forward on my hands. Dizziness swamps my vision, and for a second I’m staring at the deck, trying to remember what I’m doing. There’s something pulling at my chest and shoulder. I reach for it, touch the strap and I remember. This time I make it to my feet, using the Franken as a crutch.

  The grappling cable’s still there, an ugly scar through it but now it’s pulsing. The scar is pulsing, not simply with movement but with colour. So many colours I can’t name them all.

  I hobble closer, lifting the Franken, finger on the ignition and… stop.

  The pulse is changing. No longer the rhythmic thump thump thump of a heart but a flutter, a th-th-th-th pause THUMP.

  Th-th-th-th.

  Pause.

 
; THUMP.

  Th-th-th-th.

  Pause.

  There’s something in there. In the pause. It’s staring at me from the maelstrom of colour, reaching into my anima and pulling me toward it.

  I know you. Know that storm, the lightning, the vast, complicated pathways. The socket-melting brilliance of its core.

  ‘Aeotu.’ The name is a whisper, trapped within the confines of my helmet and vacuum, and yet…

  And yet the pause smiles.

  Beckoning. Beckoning.

  SISTER.

  I’d leap a kilometre if I could, but a kilometre wouldn’t be far enough. ’Holy Terra.’

  That voice, that voice came through my comms.

  My. Comms.

  But how?

  ‘Core? Core!’

  Static, a golden face that flickers and spits on my HUD.

  ‘Core? What’s happening? Aeotu’s hacked my comms.’

  ‘Evacuate, Kuma Darzi. All systems compromised. Stasis separation initialised.

  Stasis separation.

  Every microjoule of warmth leaves my body.

  Run.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  I run until my lungs ache. I run until I taste blood and there’s not enough oxygen left in my suit to take a full breath. I run until my legs are jelly and spots fill the edge of my vision.

  I run and I run and I run.

  Emergency bulkheads open before me and snap shut on my heels. I stop only when the map on the HUD tells me. All the while trying to get Core’s not-voice out of my head.

  Stasis separation.

  It echoes through my bones, burrowing deeper with every jarring stride. The speedway’s up ahead, a waiting palette illuminated in the spitting lights. I jump on. It takes off.

  Stasis separation.

  The grappling cable took out the section of speedway I’d arrived on, obliterated it like the steelcrete were Old Terran paper, or tissue or skin… or… or….

  Stasis separation.

  I run and jump and tumble down maintenance ladders half-eaten by fug, all the very long way to Lab One, at first following Core’s voice and then the map after the AI froze on my HUD, brows raised and her eyes wide in an expression of surprise real enough to send bolts of alarm through my gut.