“Lock her out of all the places I have gear stored, too, if you can.” I thought about role reversal for a moment, and how we’d swapped places since we came on board. Now I had her stuff, and she was hiding out and would probably be eating algae as soon as she found the algae tanks.
I wasn’t going to go pursuing her through the blind alleys of this very large ship, however. I had her weapons . . . but she had a wrench. And was, pretty obviously, the much more skilled fighter of the two of us, for all I’d gotten the drop on her the first time.
“Just get us moving back toward the Core as soon as you can, please? I want to make contact with the Interceptor, also. I’m available for wrench and blowtorch work whenever you need it. Assuming we can find another wrench, I mean.”
I went back to stretching.
A few moments passed while I mused on security and how to keep Farweather from repirating the ship Singer and I—with help from the Ativahikas—had just depirated.
“Haimey,” Singer said, somewhat hesitantly.
“Deep time, what is it now?” I had lain down on my face and was trying a few cobra stretches to loosen my spasming, brutalized muscles.
“I hate to break this to you now. But apparently, we have company.”
As I levered myself upright, I groaned. My first few steps were stumbling torture. By the time I reached the windows, though, I was loosening up just a little. I used the frame to push myself up straight and heard my spine pop.
Where the Ativahika had vanished, we could see the outline of the Synarche Interceptor that had been stopped inside our white rings. There was a sparkling bubble of a shuttlecraft detaching itself from the Interceptor and moving toward us.
“If we’re lucky, that might be the cavalry. I’ve still got questions about how they found us and matched our bubble in white space, though. How’d they know when to stop?”
“They must have been following our white space scar.”
“At speed? Is that possible?”
“Well, you sensed them back there. So I’d say it’s possible and probable both, since the hypothesis fits the facts as we’re aware of them,” Singer said. “I mean, based on the part where we’re here. And so are they.”
It was probably time to admit he had me beat. “All right. Possibly Justice has tech they don’t share,” I agreed. “Singer, do you have any idea what the remaining range of this vessel is? How are we doing for food and stores?”
“There’s a lot of room in here,” he said. “In this ship’s computing core, I mean. And plenty of supplies, if I’m reading this manifest right. But I’m afraid I can’t support making a run for it to elude a duly appointed governmental representative of the Synarche authority, Haimey,” Singer said.
His tone was dry. I snorted in appreciation. “Actually, I was wondering how much help we need to ask for in order to get home.”
“That’s an interesting question,” he responded. “Because this ship seems to be violating the laws of physics as currently conceived, at least where it comes to energy consumption. It’s impossibly efficient, and we seem to have enough left for a few laps around the Milky Way.”
“I guess we can still learn a few things from the Koregoi engineers.”
“We’re in quite good shape, unless I’m missing something.”
“Can you figure out how to hail that Synarche ship?”
“Hailing,” he answered. Whatever he was saying must have been working, because they weren’t training their fairly impressive suite of weapons on us.
Because Singer multitasked pretty well even back in his old, smaller digs, I didn’t scruple to ask, “I had a paper book, on your old hull.”
“Wilson,” he said. “Was it important?”
I told him about the numbers. The possibility that it might have been a book code.
He asked, “Do you remember the numbers? Your fox—”
“I know,” I said. He’d rebooted it, but the old machine memories were gone, wiped. It was as smooth and clean and new as an infant right out of the tank farms. “I remember them.”
“How?”
I grinned. “Koregoi senso. They seemed like they might be important, so I encoded them in a microgravitic function in the structure of the Prize’s hull.”
If he were a human, I think he would have been gawping at me. “That’s brilliant.”
I shrugged. “If I didn’t live, I figured my corpse had very little chance of making it to a download station, so—”
I sighed.
“But we don’t have the book.”
“Oh, that,” Singer said. “Um.”
“Singer?”
“I scanned it,” he admitted.
“You what?”
“I couldn’t help myself,” he said. “It was novel data!”
I stopped.
He stopped.
“Gautama and nine little bodhisattvas on a tricycle,” I said. “Who taught you to pun like that?”
“Welcome home, Haimey,” he said.
? ? ?
I made sure I hadn’t left anything interesting lying around, and started back toward the cabin where Farweather had been bunking. All the food and tools where there, and I didn’t really want to leave it unguarded. With luck, though, maybe I could use some of the constables who were likely to be staffing that Interceptor to help me quarter the ship, and take Farweather into custody.
That would be great! Promise to the Ativahika kept!
Except they were likely to take me into custody too. Well, you couldn’t have everything.
In the meantime, I could get started cracking that book code.
“Haimey,” Singer said cautiously, as I was trying to figure out some means of dogging the hatch behind me. If it were a normal, Synarche metal door, I would even have considered spot-welding it to keep Farweather out, on the theory that I could always break the weld later. Or maybe settled for just barring it with a piece of alien equipment of questionable provenance.
Since it was—best guess—a nanotech utility fog, I just asked Singer to lock it out from any override control except for mine.
Having done that, he said, “I’ve got a response from the Interceptor.”
His tone and careful delivery made me cautious, too. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he said. “I have some good news for you.”
A flare of hope went off in my chest, so bright and terrible I almost tuned to ignore it. “It’s Connla, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” he said. “It is. And that launch is on its way over to collect you.”
? ? ?
Whatever the internal vibrational frequency of my body was, I had reached it. I was as profoundly wired as it is possible for a human to be without the assistance of introduced chemicals, and that was after tuning it back a little. My hands didn’t shake only because the seat ahead of me on the launch had padded grab rails and I was clutching them. The acceleration that pressed me back into my chair was gentle enough so that I didn’t have to let go.
We docked, and I was floating inside the restraints. I felt like I was holding a breath, and had taken another breath on top of it. I fumbled my restraints when I went to unfasten them, which was a pretty magical accomplishment, considering that they had a quick release and I’d spent literally my entire life opening restraints and I was finally back in the comfort of zero g again. And that was with my nerves tuned way down. If I’d been trying to do this without my fox, I think I would have been catatonic in the corner.
Except I had done it without my fox. I had done all sorts of things without my fox, and while I’d been labile, weepy, angry, and generally deregulated with a head that was a no-fun place to live inside of, I had still done them. I had. Me. Or whoever I’d convinced myself to pretend to be while the person I’d been programmed to be was offline temporarily.
Who the hell was I, anyway?
You know, I had no idea.
I still dialed it back a little more since I had the option. When I had finished, I was as far as I felt I could safely go without making myself groggy. I didn’t want to be dulled, unpresent. But taking the edge off could only help my focus.
Two constables—one human and one Vanlian, and both officers rather than full Goodlaws—met me at the airlock and escorted me into the Interceptor. They were kind enough not to attempt small talk beyond a few soothing pleasantries that let me know where the head was and that I wasn’t in immediate trouble. I also introduced myself to the shipmind, as was polite, and SJV I’ll Explain It To You Slowly was pleasant and personable. The crew called her Splain.
It was strange, moving freely without gravity again after so long. It was stranger being around people who weren’t my enemy and only company all rolled into one.
They took me to the bridge—a ship this size, with a reasonably big crew, had something a little more formal than a command cabin.
And there was Connla.
He was wearing the pilot’s dusty-blacks we’d never bothered with on Singer, and he looked dashing as hell. He had a cat in his arms. A spotted orange, white, and black cat. Shedding all over his crisp uniform. He was looking at me. The cat was Bushyasta.
“You lucky son of a tramper captain,” I said. “I should have known that flying.”
I started to cry. I kicked over to him and held out my arms.
He gave me my cat.