Rebirth
The Future is Now
Chapter 4
Kylier woke up and shook her head. She'd slept soundly, and mercifully hadn't dreamed of anything that reminded her of home. Remembering the gravity, she sat up slowly and planted her feet before standing upright. After smoothing her clothes and getting a drink, she reached for the red button on her wall, but stopped.
Why call someone? She was pretty sure she was going to be living on this… whatever exactly the Novastar was. She might as well find her own way around. How hard could it be?
Two minutes later, she didn't have a clue where she was.
Five minutes after that, the monotonous grey walls were driving her nuts, she had even less of an idea where she was, and she couldn't find that corridor Lethanial promised she couldn't miss.
Using colourful adjectives for everything she didn't recognize from her old life, she trooped down some stairs she found, then barged through a gene-screen at the bottom.
She staggered a half-step as the rumbling noise hit her ears, oppressive heat adding a slap to her face. Gathering her senses, she approached the railing of the catwalk that was the sole path across the room and looked over.
"Ye Gods… what the fuck are those?"
Below her were four obscenely complicated contraptions, mostly metal thinly coated in some greasy-looking orange stuff. Tubes and pipes snaked their way around their length in an impossibly complex mess. In the clear ones, she could see liquids of several colours either rushing along, or staying in place with the occasional lazy surge. Near the end opposite where she'd walked in was a section of purple twists that was rotating quickly, clearly the source of the rumbling she heard. Beneath that noise were hisses, groans, clanking, and any number of minor pings and taps.
She leaned over to see just how far they went. Each of them was easily half a kilometre long, disappearing under the floor beyond the stairwell. The rotating sections alone were ten times her height.
"I see you found the engine room."
Kylier jumped.
And lurched over the railing.
Trak had always had a jinx. His luck never seemed to change. From the exodus in his homeworld, to that… incident with that royal. The day he'd decided just to follow orders.
Now the new girl was falling towards the engines. A certain and quick, if painful, death.
This, at least, he could do something about.
He threw himself over the railing after her.
Kylier didn't even get a scream out before she was winded by her belt catching on something. She looked up. Trak, the mercenary she hadn't talked to, had one hand under the hem of her pants and the other on the side of the catwalk… just. As she watched, he slipped, barely managing to get a decent grip on support beams below the catwalk.
Kylier could feel urine seeping into her leggings. The rumbling had turned into an evil roar, each hiss and clunk a vile plea for her blood. It was even hotter this close, making sweat from heat mix in with that of fear. She could feel herself trembling at the prospect of falling into those… machines down there, being scorched and bludgeoned into an unrecognizable pulp.
"HELP!"
"I'm trying!" Trak growled through gritted teeth. With a guttural roar of effort, he managed to lift her up to near the support bar he was gripping. Kylier wrapped her arms and legs around it, praying for Al to swoop in to pick her up.
"You're going to be fine," Trak yelled over the noise. "I'm going to lift myself onto the catwalk to get something to get you up. Do not panic."
Kylier gulped and nodded, screwing her eyes shut. She felt him climb past the bar she was on, then vibrations as he ran down the catwalk.
Looking back, it was maybe two minutes until Trak returned. At the time, it felt like two centuries. Sweat poured from her every pore, loosening her grip. Her body pulled heavily in the gravity, adding more strain to her tenuous hold. Her clothes were sticking, the noise was deafening, the heat was unbearable. Tears slid down her face as her life flashed before her eyes.
"Not like this!" she screamed. "I don't want to die!"
Vibrations – several sets. Two loud clanks, something uncoiling, then a hand on her shoulder.
"I'm back," Trak's cool, clear voice said. "I'm going to wrap two bands around your midsection. They'll form a harness so I can lift you up safely."
Kylier nodded again, then felt the promised straps tightening around her, then Trak's arms looking just under hers.
"Let go." Trak said.
"I can't!" Kylier shrieked. "I can't!"
"Let go," he whispered. "I promise I won't."
"Let go," Milanor yelled from where her abseiling ropes were tied. "I won't. Promise."
Taking a deep breath, Kylier released the bar.
She was sweating, overheated, covered in first-degree burns, thirsty, literally reeking of evidence she had wet herself, and still shaking like a leaf in a hurricane, but Kylier was mercifully seated on solid ground in a cooler room.
Trak, true to his promise, still hadn't let go of her. He'd shifted her for a better carry once they'd gotten onto the catwalk and arranged himself into something approaching a hug when they reached this room, his comfortingly solid body seeming to be in just the position to shield her.
Which was very comforting, because the commander was going spare.
"Would someone please tell me which FUCKWIT left the engine room screen on fucking CLIMATE MODE?"
"Actually… that would be me." The speaker had been with Trak when he returned to pull Kylier up, but she hadn't caught his name yet.
"And why the FUCK would you do something like that, Roderick?"
'Roderick' looked at his feet. "I, uh… I hack it myself. The green light on the status panel reminds me the engines need a service."
Lin groaned. Roderick took a step back.
"Roderick, some days I wonder why I sleep with you. Do the words PASSENGER SAFETY CODE EIGHT-FIVE-FOUR-OH-THREE ring any bells?"
"Kinda, but I'm not sure it…"
A calmer voice interrupted. "Section three, clause seventeen, paragraph nine. 'Access to all shipboard areas containing working engines of Turbojet class or above must be protected by gene-screen and hydraulic doors, with access granted only to crew and trained personnel. Failure to comply constitutes a passenger safety risk under code four-point-five-three-A.'."
"Thank you, Catleia," Roderick said. "Now can you do one more thing? PULL THAT KNIFE OUT OF MY BACK?"
Catleia took a step back, snivelling. Lin sighed.
"It'd have to be fucking now, wouldn't it?" she demanded of nobody. "Middle of the fucking night…" That explained why everyone was wearing untidy, loose garments, if anything that didn't look like it had been thrown on in a careless hurry for the sake of modesty alone. Apparently even aliens had preferences in sleepwear. Lin sighed again. "Fine. Roderick, fix that damn door and I want EVERY bit of paperwork we have read, signed, sorted and filed before breakfast. AM I UNDERSTOOD, LIEUTENANT?"
"Yes, commander." Well that explained why she was so pissed off, at least. Durant had gone into similar states of apoplexy when a lieutenant screwed up. Roderick dashed out quickly, followed by Lin kicking up a storm in her wake. Larissa, Catleia, and someone else she hadn't met filed out, mumbling between themselves. Zadia exhaled.
"Thank Aegis he didn't call her Sweet," she said. "I think she would have blown an artery."
"And thrown him off the edge as well," Lethanal added. He leaned over to meet Kylier's eyes around Trak's body. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," she muttered.
"Sure you are," Zadia said. "Fucked-up, Insecure, Neurotic and Emotional. You're shaking so hard you're making him shiver, and that ain't easy, take it from me."
Kylier blinked at her.
"Best friends. With benefits."
That little revelation didn't make Kylier feel any less comfortable where she was. She realized she'd even managed to have a thought about home without feeling too pained. In a way that Zadia couldn't see it, Kylier curled a little closer to Trak.
"Do you want a drink?" Lethanial asked.
"Please." Kylier croaked. He nodded and walked out. Kylier looked from Zadia to Trak and back again.
"What were those things?"
"Engines," Zadia said, figuring out what she meant. "Specifically, our Impalerjet array. Basically they're what we use to move this thing around in space."
"They fly?" Kylier asked.
"Not really. There's no gravity in space, so we just have to worry about moving forward, not up," Zadia said, gesturing abstractly. "If you want to die of boredom you can ask Lethanial for the specifics, but in short they produce massive amounts of energy and push it out the back, which drives us forward."
"You've been practising that speech." Trak noted dryly. Kylier noticed he had an accent – quite a nice one to listen to.
"Yeah, I'm really going to know how to explain this to somebody with no background with researching it first," Zadia said, shrugging. "All I know is I up the throttle and we move faster. We badly need our own engineer."
"Engineer?" Kylier repeated.
"Someone who knows how to tune up the guts of a machine," Lethanial answered as he walked back into the room. "Here's your water – another does of stimulant in it. And I brought you something to… I'm not sure eat would be the right word, but it's nourishing."
Trak shifted away to free up her arms, but stayed comfortingly close. Kylier spilled a little of her rose-coloured water at first, but calmed down as she drank. Her hands were close to steady as she accepted the small bowl and spoon from Lethanial.
The bowl was full of what initially looked like water, but a stir turned up a gooey consistency. She glared accusingly at Lethanial.
"This is food?" she demanded. She caught herself and opened her mouth to apologize.
"Don't bother," Zadia said. "I'd bitch if I was subjected to that, but you probably have a tender stomach right now, and Catleia's pretty much the only one among us who can really cook."
"And we're completely out of decent supplies," Lethanial added. "We were on our way to Starcity Lrida to restock when we happened across you."
Kylier nodded and gingerly lifted a spoonful of the glop from the bowl.
"Careful. It's bitter," Zadia added.
"I dumped a cup of sugar into it," Lethanial countered. "Just eat it and try not to think."
Kylier quickly stuck the spoon in her mouth. She wasn't sure Lethanial's addition had helped – the sickly-sweetness did little to disguise the incredibly sharp bitterness, and it felt more horrible in her mouth than it had looked. With a struggle, she swallowed it.
"Your face says it all," Zadia said, sniggering. Kylier held up her cup and tried to ask, but gagged.
"More water, right?" Lethanial guessed, taking the cup and disappearing again.
"You get used to it," Trak said. "It's only reserve rations."
Kylier realized that was second time he'd spoken since he'd gotten her back onto the safe side of the railing. She swallowed and managed to speak. "You don't say much, do you?"
He just shrugged. Zadia laughed.
"He says plenty. He just doesn't waste words," she said. "But then, he has…" She stopped, clearly having been about to say too much.
"I have a… troubled past," Trak finished. He paused before speaking again. "I don't like to talk about it."
"Well, apart from nearly getting up close and personal with the Impalerjets, you keeping up with everything?" Zadia asked.
"How did Catleia remember what she spouted before?" Kylier asked, picking a random bit of curiosity to let Zadia change the subject. Trak saved her life, his privacy was the very least she could give him. Besides, this mundane chitchat was helping her calm down further.
"Ardanian," Zadia said. "She's got a photographic memory. It's not that she doesn't forget anything – she can't."
"As mach a curse as a blessing, as Will would tell you," Lethanial said, returning and handing Kylier a fresh cup of water. "Will's the one who she hangs around with – brown hair…"
"I saw him," Kylier said. "The one who's friendly with Miss Bitch?"
"She used that line on you too?" Zadia guessed. "Don't take it personal. She's like that to everybody."
"So I've heard." Kylier decided to stop putting off eating her 'food' and shovelled as much as she could into her mouth, swallowing rapidly and draining her water when she was done.
"Now you're getting the idea," Zadia said. "Anything else you want to get out of this information session?"
"This 'engineer'. Isn't that Lethanial's job?"
"No. I'm the Technician. I deal with the electrical, not the mechanical."
"Electrical?" Kylier asked quizzically.
"Yeah, you know, comp… Oh sweet Aegis. How do I explain a computer to you?" He rubbed his eyes, clearly thinking. "Alright… imagine a library, with everything categorized and sub-categorized by subject matter. You're sitting at your desk in the library, with a bunch of switches in front of you, one for every letter in the alphabet. You want to look up a topic. Pick one."
"Griffonology."
"Okay. So you press the switches for G-R-I-F-F-O-N-O-L-O-G-Y. A book flies off the shelves and opens up in front of you, on the right page for the subject you asked for. That, in theory, is what a computer does."
"Seriously?"
"Yup. They can do literally billions of things besides, but it's all based on the same process – look up data – what you typed in, run it through a logic filter – find the right book, then return the processed information and act on it – bring to book over to you.
"Anyway, it's all pretty complicated, and the computing is what I deal with. I know why things work; we need someone who knows how things work."
"Isn't this kind of lesson what the Lexicon is for?" Zadia asked. Lethanial rolled his eyes.
"Gee Zadia, I hadn't thought of that!" He shook his head. "You need a datacore and legal identity to access the Lexicon, and if we get caught logging in for her is too much trouble to be worth it," he shook his head again. "Now is not the time for lessons. It's still, what, oh-dark-thirty? Let's get some more sleep."
Kylier stood. "Could someone take me back? I got lost trying to find my way out in the first place."
"Of course."
That had been two voices – Trak and Lethanial. They looked at each other a moment, then Zadia broke the deadlock.
"Oh no. As long as we're both awake, we're taking advantage of the downtime." She grabbed Trak's arm and more or less hauled him away.
"Guess it's just you and me," Lethanial observed. "Come on. Let's find you something clean to sleep in."
When Kylier woke up again, it was to an annoyingly cheerful whistle. The source was sitting on the other side of the door, leaning against the gene-screen.
"Are you okay there?" Kylier snapped. The person stood and looked over his shoulder.
"Sorry, did I wake you? Morning. Name's Will."
Finally, someone around her who looked completely normal. Shirt, slacks, gloves, chestnut hair, brown eyes, a silver-and-black datacore like an elongated shield shape, and a casual expression on his face.
"Your clothes are clean. Here." He threw a package through the screen, managing to land it neatly on her bed. Kylier picked it up and went into her en suite to change.
"What the… Whose underwear is this?" Kylier was looking a black, frilly ensemble that would have been illegal in several major Midgard kingdoms.
"Larissa's," Will called back. "It's all we have in your size."
Shuddering at the thought of anyone ever getting wind of her wearing something like this, Kylier slipped into the unmentionables. The lace started to itch in seconds, but at least it was a good fit.
"It hasn't shocked you or anything?" Will asked after a minute. Kylier carefully rearranged herself to get the bra clasp within easy reach.
"No… why?"
"I tried to swipe it without being noticed, but Larissa is an enchantress, so…"
"Great! Ankh cannons, engines, even my own fucking underwear is out to get me!"
Will apparently found this hysterical, as Kylier could hear him laughing the entire time she was putting the rest of her clothes on, taking care to pull her leggings up far enough to cover the frills of her borrowed panties – the last thing she needed was Miss Bitch knowing she was wearing actually them. Dressed, she stepped back into the main room, where she found Will standing and leaning against the gene-screen again. She paused.
"What's up?" he asked, reaching into his pockets.
"Can I get through that?"
"Of course. Lin just blocked male DNA from passing through your screen. Privacy thing." He found what he was looking for – a cigarette and lighter. He lit up and stood aside as she stepped out of her room.
"Do you have to do that?" Kylier asked, wrinkling her nose. Smoking was very high on the list of things she couldn't stand.
"It's just catnip," Will said, blowing smoke rings.
"Catnip?"
"There's some Felucian in my bloodline a couple of generations back – feline humanoids. Anyway, I have a cat's night vision, a bad habit, and that's about it," he started walking. "You missed breakfast, but according to Zadia, I doubt you'd want any."
"She got that right," Kylier muttered, still not quite believing she was walking along next to someone smoking a catnip cigarette. They walked in silence until they reached the bridge.
"Sure took your time, Ed."
That was Roderick. In better light, Kylier could take a more direct look at him. His hair was violet and looked almost reflective, straggling waves reaching down his back. His outfit was similar to Zadia's, but different again – the top only had half-sleeves and covered him right up to the throat, with pants of the same material. Kylier could just make out the shape of his datacore hidden under his neckline.
"'Ed'?" Kylier asked.
"The lieutenant here is big on his nicknames," Will explained, giving Roderick a pointed look. "At least mine is obvious – my full name's William Edwards."
"So you people do have last names?"
"Yes." Lin ascended the stairs to stand with them. "But don't ask a Zephyrian for theirs – they take several centuries to say correctly."
"What?"
"When Zephrians marry, you simply tack the female's surname onto the end of the male's," Roderick explained. "Sure, that works when you're only dealing with a couple of hundred syllables but after a few thousand years of recorded history things get out of hand, so individuals just make up quick-access names for themselves."
"Lin Elwick, for example," the commander said. "Sleep well?"
"Apart from the near-death experience, yes."
Lin chuckled. "I've been meaning to thank you. I've wanted to dump the paperwork backlog on Roderick for a while now but he bitches if I don't have a reason."
"Shut it, Sweet."
"They're a couple," Will explained, putting his cigarette butt out and tossing it into a small hole in the wall.
"Question," Kylier said, trying not to think of Durant blowing veins at the idea of a commander and her lieutenant being an item – and the following surge of heartache that showed no signs of fading away. "How do you tell day from night up here?"
"This is for you," Lin said, fishing an item out of one of her pockets. "It's a chronograph that…"
"I know what a wristwatch is," Kylier said, putting it on. Surprisingly, the numbers were in Midgard script (even if they did go to twenty-four) and one half was rimmed in orange, the other half in blue.
"Blue is night, orange is day?"
"More or less."
"How do I wind it?"
"No need, it's got its own power source. Should last a good few years. Lethanial redid the face, in case you're wondering."
"Go figure," Kylier muttered, admiring it.
"Okay, we know you're healthy now," Roderick declared. "Zadia, get us out of here."
Kylier noticed Zadia sitting in the chair that partnered the one Trak had been in the last time she'd been here. The glass plate was lit up, but instead of plain text, there were complicated-looking patterns of coloured pictures and Zephyrian 'writing' that she couldn't even guess the purpose of. "You got it," the redhead called back. "Slipping into antispace in three… two… one…"
Kylier had the very unpleasant feeling of being inverted in just about every context she could come up with. As soon as she steadied enough to know she still had four limbs, she fell to her knees and vomited.
"Sorry. Probably should have warned you," Roderick said. "Antispace slips can be uncomfortable to first few times."
"Nah, s'okay," Kylier assured him. "That tasted better coming back up."
Everyone on the bridge chuckled. Still on her knees while she waited for her stomach to settle, she asked about cleaning up the mess.
"Don't bother," Roderick said. "Catleia will show up with a mop and bucket in five minutes, tops."
Kylier nodded and managed to stand, turning and looking out the windows. She found herself inspecting a rapidly shifting psychedelic blur.
"What the hell is that?"
"Antispace," Lethanial provided. Kylier readied herself for a long, complex explanation – everyone else was going on with what they had been doing. "It's the opposite of normal space, entered by generating and moving through a specific quantum waveform. The inverted physics here have a useful effect – are you familiar with the speed of light?"
"Light moves?"
"Apparently not. Anyway, light moves at something like three hundred million klicks a second, a little bit under perhaps. Normally, it's physically impossible to move above this speed, as laid out in the accepted Theory of Relativity…"
"And the 'relativity' of your explanation better improve or I'll save her the trouble of hitting you," Zadia interrupted.
"The important part is, in real-space you can't move faster than light. And to give you an idea of the distances we have to travel in space, we measure distances in light years – literally, the distance light travels in a year, which is just a tick under 9,460,730,472,581 klicks. Enough to circle your planet… more times than I care to work out."
"Stop shitting me," Kylier snapped. "I'm ignorant, not stupid."
"He's telling you the truth," Lin said. "Every word."
Kylier let her jaw drop as Lethanial went on.
"Since you can't move faster than light, that means in real space, ignoring theoretical temporal warping at near-light speeds, it would take eight to ten years at absolute best to make a hop between two systems considered very close together, and realistically more like a century and a half.
"In antispace, however, the short version of a long theoretical physics exercise is it's impossible to move slower than real-space light. A ship only needs to use its positioning thrusters to stay on course and have up-to-date antispace maps, and it can cross hundreds of light-years in a matter of days."
Kylier gawked for another minute or so before managing, "A simple 'We go faster in anti-whatzit' would have done."
"YES!" Clapping her hands, Zadia leapt to her feet. "FINALLY, someone who can tell him he talks too much to his face!"
Lethanial looked mildly offended, but Kylier realized he'd had the expression since she'd made her suggestion. She blushed lightly and mouthed, "Sorry."
Lethnial waved her down, then stepped back to avoid being prodded with a mop handle as Catleia, looking tired and grumpy, started cleaning up the mess on the floor, muttering darkly to herself in a language Kylier didn't understand.
"Told you so," Roderick said smugly as he and Will walked back up the stairs to the platform.
"Okay…" Kylier muttered. "So, uh… what do we do while we're in anti-whatzit?"
"Now," Roderick cracked his knuckles, "we beat the living crap out of you."