Copernican, Albo's ship, was a long-retired freighter – another charity wreck stripped of its Corporation brands and salable, unnecessary technology. Its thin-skinned hull was a haze of blossoming rust spots and painted-over logos. The bulk of it ballooned, zeppelin-like, over the gathering arms hung underneath, giving it the nervous look of a wallflower at party's edge.
An ancient gantry pulled Figurer close, opening the ship's belly to tuck us deep inside. On board, Snow busied himself packing and tidying the cabin as I watched the needle of our grav meter wind down.
Still in shock, I drew my knees onto the seat and hugged them close to my chest.
"Another squint."
It isn't an ambush. He said behind my eyes.
'I warned you about that." I grunted, shaking my head to clear the echo of him from my mind.
"Aye Aye, captain." he chirped, his back to me as he straightened loose possessions.
I would have called him a smartass if my voice was strong enough to carry over the grav meter's whine.
Outside, the ship's doors sealed in a fanfare of spinning lights and whooping alarms. Pipes hissed with pressure and atmosphere and instantly our small space became heavier, crisper.
An access panel blinked on, piping video of the docking bay to my command-screen. A older man, bent over a makeshift cane and trailed by a strange dog, shuffled into the bay and palmed an access panel. His face looked every inch as old as his ship in close-up on screen. He squinted into the display before showing a warm, lopsided grin.
"Must be her captain. All's welcome aboard if you're packed."
I sighed deeply before flicking the microphone on. "Hoy sir."
Already dialling our doors open, Snow hitched his rucksack over a shoulder and hummed softly.
"You'll like it here, it's quiet."
I bet. I thought bitterly. I'd heard too much talk on the colony of those few strange ships full of readers. Word was most of the squints had forgotten how to speak – being a few generations deep in nothing but squinting mind to mind had left them strange and silent. Hollow.
One rail-thin girl who'd hunched in the bunk below mine claimed to have been on board a squint vessel before.
She'd been slow to talk at first, that scrap of a child pale as dry earth and sky. I'd already been in the colony a few months when her group arrived. At first she'd sucked her fingers, staring faraway with watery grey eyes.
"They got a wind around 'em."
In the cold still of late night, her voice – soft, leaf dry– floated through my pillow:
"No one talks, just stares... once you ent payin' heed they jump into your brain with crazy things..."
I held my breath, thinking at first she'd fallen asleep. But then:
Animals walking upright, big blobs of colour, fireworks, anything. They try 'n make normal people crazy since they're jealous of us not being tracked and killed."
She could have been lying, making up a fantasy like the rest of us to scar over the abandonment that landed us in those cots.
But as Albo's cataract-blue eye filled the lens and my screen, I found myself wondering if that girl had been speaking the truth all along.
I found myself frozen in place, gripped with fear
Pistons screeched as the port slid back, the back of my chair danced back as someone behind swung it around, brought me face to face with a blanched, withered face alight with bright blue eyes.
"She's naught a pup, Snow. I thought you was transportin' a tiger or a tri-planet killer."
My body was my own again, hands flying out in panic first for this old crow in front of me, then for the buckles that held me to the seat.
