DISCLAIMER: SKIP BEAT! and its associated characters are the creations of Yoshiki Nakamura. This author claims no ownership of Skip Beat or any of its characters. All other rights reserved.
Additional Author's Notes at bottom of the page.
The Adventures of Space Pirate Ren Tsuruga
Part II: The Rescue of Kana Kusunoki
Chapter 4: Part 2 - The Gravity Trap
Kana found herself in a gray room. Everything was gray—the walls, the floors, the sheets on the bed. It was utterly unremarkable and yet completely unusual. The Galahad, apparently, was one of those ships that only looked dirty and run-down on the outside. Inside, it was neat as a pin, if a little bit sterile. Her room was large enough to rival any guest room on a starcruiser, and likely cleaner.
She breathed in and then out again, trying to calm herself.
They'd made their way to the docks as quickly as they could. The Captain had vaulted her onwards, finding a path through the thick crowd in the lounge and out the door. Kana kept up—barely. For a man so tall and so…well-muscled, he was remarkably nimble. There was a dash out in the open once they were past the pleasure domes, and then, once ship-side, she'd been placed under the strict supervision of Amamiya, the comms officer. She'd been too dazed, too fresh from the panic of having escaped the team sent to capture her to really register what the hallways looked like. She had been led to her 'room' and told in no uncertain terms that she was not to leave it.
She nodded, simply relieved that the crew had taken pity on her. Her research into the ships docked at Lasella had shown the Galahad to be an honorable bunch, but what they would do with the information she had—well, she simply didn't know. She was sure she'd find a way from having to disclose everything to the Captain somehow.
Kana put her head in her hands. What she'd set out to do at the beginning of this adventure was to investigate the strange disappearances on her home planet. Sidar was known for beautiful women, and, as a journalist, she'd begun noticing a disturbing trend. Young girls were disappearing—off-grid, off-planet, and even off-system. Planetary officials were no use, telling her she was failing to account for girls going off-world and just…not telling anyone. It triggered her investigator's instinct—the very same instinct that Chidinma swore would kill her one day. She'd kissed Chi goodbye for the moment, promising one last crusade before retiring with her to run a quiet country inn nestled in Sindar's Quartz Mountains. She'd found the thread and gone undercover, only to find that Chi had been… right. Perhaps none of her other investigations would have done it, but this? This had every indication of killing her before the story could be told.
Kana didn't know if she would survive this chase, because what she'd found was far more than she'd bargained for—as far as she was concerned, she was walking a tightrope. But she'd gone through so much—crossed the galaxy, even—just to get this information. And now she needed to place it into the hands of someone who could do something about it. She sighed. If she'd listened to Chi and stayed, they'd be married by now. But if she'd stayed, then hundreds—no, thousands, possibly more—would be endangered with no one the wiser. She was headed to Angeles X to throw herself on the mercy of the Hizuran emperor and warn him of what the Fuwas were up to. Then, if the gods were merciful, she'd be able to return to Chi's open arms with a clear conscience.
She shook herself out of her reverie, strapping herself into the chair that doubled as an acceleration crash-couch. She didn't know what the Galahad's capabilities were for G-force nullification, but even a ship with guest quarters as nice as this one was bound to pass on some discomfort off the first burst of the inertial engine. And given the rush from the crew when they arrived, she expected them to commence takeoff procedures immediately.
She strapped herself in and waited.
And waited.
And then waited some more.
Was there some delay in clearance? It seemed unusually quiet out there—given the general rush from the crew once they'd arrived, she'd expected them to take off immediately. She began to worry.
Calm down, she thought to herself. The Fuwas can't force their hand in a place this public. She focused on her breathing. In and out. In…and…and then out.
She was entirely dependent on the Galahad now—they could just as easily hand her back to the Fuwas in lieu of giving her passage to Angeles. She would have liked to weigh her options, but it had been evident she'd been tailed to Lasella. She'd had no choice.
She checked the time and realized that nearly half an hour had passed since her arrival.
But now that she was in her little gray room, so what? After that mad dash through hostile territory, she…couldn't feel the ship accelerating at all. Were they even undocked? Why weren't they moving? Why that insane run back if they weren't going to try and leave at all?
She began to panic.
Was there a bounty on her head? There hadn't been one when she'd run—she was counting on the Fuwas wanting to keep this affair as quiet as possible. The Galahad ran bounties—it was possible that they were negotiating their fee right now. But surely not. Surely not. The Galahad was known for fair dealing, and having offered her a berth and defended her from her would-be captors, surely they wouldn't abandon her now?
You can't trust anyone, Kana, a little voice inside her said. And here she was like an obedient little girl, not even assessing the boundaries of her would-be prison.
Fine. If that was going to be the way it was, then she'd have to take her chances out there instead of in here. With some luck, perhaps the Fuwas could be tricked into assuming she was still in the Galahad's custody while she snuck off-ship and negotiated a spot on one of the cruisers after all.
She unstrapped herself and then placed a tentative hand on the door's lock, half afraid she'd been locked inside.
She breathed a sigh of relief when the doors soundlessly opened onto a brightly lit hallway with walls just as gray as her room.
=.=.=.=
Meanwhile…
Kijima groaned as the voice boomed over the shared comm link, removing his headphones to protect himself from the pilot's bombastic voice.
"You are harboring a wanted criminal," the voice said. "She has stolen sensitive Fuwa materials. Please remit custody to the Fuwan team docked spaceside."
"Don't respond," Ren said.
"Aye, Captain," Amamiya responded.
"Are you sure that's wise?" Yashiro asked.
"The Fuwas aren't exactly saints," Ren responded. "She said she did the right thing, and I believe her. No APBs out there for anyone even remotely meeting her description. They're bluffing."
Yashiro didn't want to gainsay his captain, but the idea of taking the stray in and at her word had little appeal. "You have no idea what she did."
"That's true. But…if we do find she's not as she seems, then I will make restitution to the Fuwas myself. Meanwhile, we'll have some fun with the local bullies."
Yashiro shut his mouth. The Captain did seem to have an uncanny ability to tell the truth from the lies. Whether it was some finely-honed skill or some truly unusual superpower didn't matter to him. If this had been a hegemonic request or pursuit, his path would have been clear. He'd been assigned to the Galahad partially due to his knowledge of intergalactic legal conventions, after all, and part of his task was to ensure Ren didn't get into anything that would result in open war. But the Fuwas, while powerful, controlled no planets. They'd been involved with the Morizumis, but for the most part made their wealth in connecting the galaxy's populated planets with each other. If Ren wanted to entangle them in a dispute over industrial espionage, the damage would be relatively contained.
The Galahad had risen above the Lasellan dock. The Fuwa Stingrays, predictably, rose to tail them immediately.
"This ship does not recognize any claim by the Fuwa Corporation on its cargo or its passengers," Ren transmitted back to the Stingray.
There was a pause as static filled the channel. "Give us the girl and no one gets hurt," the crew heard. Ren rolled his eyes and shook his head. Increasingly, he felt as if he'd made the right decision. There was no bounty on her head, no warrant for her arrest. All this told him that whatever they were chasing her for was, perhaps, something they wanted to keep quiet. As for the bully tactics, well…perhaps a normal ship would be intimidated by them. But the Galahad was not a normal ship—and Ren could call whatever bluff the repo team threw down.
Ren hadn't wanted to use the umbar drives to make a fast getaway. With Lasella, and therefore the galaxy, watching, he'd need to restrain his ship's capabilities to that otherwise found in any normal spacefaring ship.
"Captain…uh. Do you have a plan?" quipped Kijima from his station.
"Kijima, tone," Yashiro said. Ren looked at him with sympathy. Sometimes, the poor man acted as if they were still in the military. The chain of command was important on any ship, but he'd allowed his crew to have a measure of informality.
"Yes, I do have a plan," Ren said, interrupting the budding argument. "Yashiro, you're not going to like it."
Yashiro gave a prolonged groan.
=.=.=.=
Kana was creeping alongside a long, gray wall.
Something was wrong.
Something was definitely wrong.
The ship was absolutely silent. Not just quiet, but silent. It was eerie. Even the most thoroughly insulated ships had some noises coming from outside. She should have been able to hear something—at the very least, she should have heard the bare hum of the engines providing power to the aux systems they were using while at rest. Instead, all she heard were the little noises. The noises one never noticed because one was normally too busy to note the sound of one's foot on a soft rug, or the thwap of someone else's tongue on a palate. She should've noticed the lack of sound in her room, but she'd been so preoccupied with thoughts of Chi that she had failed to observe the absolute lack of sound until she left it. Lasella's dockyards operated outside their atmo domes, so they were predictably quiet in the vacuum beyond—but she should have heard something. Objects—objects with mass, anyway, simply felt a certain way as they moved through time and space. They creaked and ticked and wiggled. This hallway—heck, even her room—felt as if it existed in a vacuum. She could sense nothing beyond it, and it was a frightening feeling.
But it wasn't just the absolute silence and stillness—it was the size of the place.
The ship on the dock was a fairly trim affair—large enough to be comfortable, but not so large as to be truly 'roomy.' It might have been big enough, perhaps, to have a sizable hold, quarters for less than ten, a galley, and the bridge. Perhaps there might be room for some small recreational space. But the hallway she found herself walking was several meters longer than what the ship she'd seen could possibly accommodate. How, then? Had she simply misjudged the size of the Galahad? Perhaps there was some visual trick that made the ship look smaller than it actually was, but she doubted it. She was good at observing; it was what she did for a living. But what she observed did not make sense.
She saw an intersection a few feet ahead and took another step towards it—perhaps the airlock was that way, after all—
And the world spun as she found herself knocked back to the padded wall. Force—massive force—a wall of force—pinned her down.
How…? What!? Her mind attempted to make sense of it, but no matter how she considered it, nothing made sense. She hadn't felt any movement at all just seconds ago—had thought that the ship was still docked, even, and within Lasella's artificial one-g field. But there could be no mistaking the fact that the Galahad was in motion—at least from where she was now. And from the amount of inertia pinning her to the wall, they were going quite fast. How is this possible!? she thought. Her bewildered mind boggled at the idea.
She fought to try and move and attempted to raise an arm to right herself, but the ship kept accelerating and her arm was forced downwards as she gasped under the pressure. She felt the pressure in her eyes and in her bones—her vision was blurring and she was wondering how many Gs were holding her down. She was being squeezed, pressed, folded—she could feel the muscles on her face distend as the ship kept moving.
How had 'her' hallway escaped this!? She saw the space beyond the intersection—rope hand-holds were moving in tandem to what she now perceived was the Galahad's movement. In contrast, the place where she'd come from hadn't been moving at all.
"GAHHHHhhhhhhh!" she yelled—the Galahad had apparently executed some kind of inversion, because all of a sudden the force pinning her to the wall had disappeared, and now she was forced face-forward to the opposite wall. She hit it with a thump and a quick expulsion of breath. Inertia held her down again in this new position and she felt impossibly heavy.
Even her lungs felt constrained. She attempted to take deep breaths, only to be thrown forwards, and then back in quick succession like a ping-pong ball. Grunting, she finally managed to clutch at a handhold, securing herself to it as the ship flipped and surged and otherwise changed direction in speed. "Gravity points down…gravity points down!" she chanted to herself. She was trying to get her bearings somehow. She was entirely disoriented, particularly as the walls had been constructed without a 'right side up' in mind.
They must have started another acceleration run then, because the directional changes stopped and she felt herself pressed flat against the wall once more.
The world went black as her body succumbed to the excess forces on it.
=.=.=
She woke—perhaps seconds, perhaps minutes—later. The ship was still accelerating, though apparently not nearly quite as fast as before. Fighting back panic, she maneuvered herself so she'd be thrown back into the hallway where her room had been. She was going to pass out again—and soon—if she didn't find a way to get to a place where the G-forces had been dampened to something remotely resembling a survivable human scale. She felt the ship change direction one more time, unmoored herself from the wall…and fell backwards.
To silence.
And calm.
She could see the jostling of the ship just a few feet away, and yet she felt and heard none of it.
What in the hell is going on? she thought. Her heart was racing and she could see black spots in her vision as it re-acclimated itself to what felt like a standard G of gravity.
For a minute or so, she attempted to catch her breath. She had a sharp pain in her side and she was afraid a rib had cracked, but this…this was simply too bizarre to leave unexplored. Tentatively she reached a hand forward and felt when an invisible barrier of sorts was crossed. It was quite tangible—one second, her arm was moving forward normally on a standard axis…and then the next, it was pinned to a surface wall and flat as the ship moved through an acceleration phase. It was like having only a single limb subjected to a crushing juggernaut that was pushing her down, relentlessly.
Gingerly she clutched at handholds in 'her' hallway with her right hand and reached out with her left to ones immediately adjacent—only to feel the distinct oddity of having her body in two separate gravitational fields as she transitioned between the two halls. It was only for a second, and yet she felt her body panic as her heart tried to accommodate the two different states she happened to be in.
She sprang back. Any length of time split in two like this would kill her, she was sure of it.
She needed to understand the phenomenon. The more she saw, the more bizarre the ship appeared.
Onwards, then. If they were no longer docked at Lasella, then she would take her chances with seeing what they were doing on the bridge.
She hardened her resolve. One hand, then two, then her feet found secure holds. She groaned at the continuous pressure that pushed her against the walls, her ribcage a sudden mass of pain with every movement. There was a sudden pull backwards and a quick lurch, almost as if the ship had been reined in—and the wild maneuvers stopped, though she could feel that they were still moving. She used the lull to make as much headway as she could towards the bridge—clearly they were no longer on Lasella, but a confrontation with the Fuwas happened regardless.
She saw what looked like a central conduit running up and down the length of the ship and decided to head upwards towards a promising set of double doors. Dimly, she could hear the sound of voices from the room—the Captain, giving orders, perhaps? That clinched it. She would go there to ask questions. She was certain she'd found the pathway to the bridge when all of a sudden, they accelerated again and she came crashing through the double doors.
=.=.=.=
She took in a number of things in the second immediately after falling into the bridge.
The first: that they were flying upside down, at least in relation to the curve of Herbin's atmosphere.
The second: that they appeared to be seconds from entering Herbin's atmosphere.
The third: no one seemed worried about it at all.
She found a handhold and was clinging to it as she fought the blackness threatening to overtake her. She was in a haze of pain from whatever damage she'd done to her ribcage and gasping to catch her breath, but she swallowed a frisson of terror as she observed where they were. Herbin loomed large on the shipboard display, the curve of the planet dominating the view. Its near-iridescent clouds sped below them at a speed that made Kana's heart nearly seize. The sight of it exacerbated the way her head had been spinning since being thrown around in the hall just beyond. Was the ship even atmo-hardened? Atmo hardening hadn't been standard for a long, long time—many planets used space-side docking for intergalactic vehicles and relied on elevators in static orbit to get people and goods on-and-off planet. There was simply no need to subject most ships to the burn of atmospheric re-entry. The Fuwan Stingrays were chasing them, but surely the Captain wouldn't risk his ship and his life just for her—surely they'd just hand her over before any true danger happened—oh gods, were the Stingrays armed!?
Her mind began running through survival scenarios and then she heard—
"HOLD. ATTENTION ON DECK!"
She had to stay awake. Had to. Must stay awake.
"Kijima, tend to your guest, please." It was the Captain, and his voice was calm. "Normalizing gravitation on bridge, standby."
"Aye, Captain," Kijima replied. All of a sudden, Kana felt the gravity normalize, and the inertial force that had been pinning her down retreated, only to be replaced with what felt like a standard G. Instantly, she felt better. She heard a snick as Kijima unbuckled from wherever he'd been sitting.
"Amamiya!" Kana heard the XO berating the crew member who'd taken her to her room. "You didn't lock the guest quarters down?"
Amamiya's reply was indistinct, but she was aware of Kijima rushing over as soon as he realized she was hurt.
"Miss Kusunoki!" he exclaimed. "Can you stand?" In seconds, he was crouching down beside her and offering a hand.
"I—I'm not sure," she replied. Truthfully, her body was limp from the excessive Gs she'd been subjected to, and her torso throbbed painfully.
"We will get you to the medbay immediately after we take care of the present situation," Ren called from beyond Kijima. "Can you hold on until then?"
"Yes," she groaned. "I think I may have broken a rib."
"Yashiro," Ren called.
"Prepping the designated couch for the diagnostics, sir," the XO responded.
"We'll have the Galahad run diagnostics on you in the meantime," Kijima explained. "We're a small crew and we're having a bit of drama right now—"
"Kijima!" The urgency in Tsuruga's voice was unmistakable.
"Aye, Captain!" he called over his shoulder. Looking back over at her, he said "May I lift you, then? We'll put you into one of the crash-couches so you'll be secured and comfortable."
She nodded and took his hand. Kijima carried her princess-style into a crash-couch, which immediately conformed to her body. Here, at least, she couldn't be thrown across the ship.
"Everyone secured, then?" she heard the Captain ask. It was a rhetorical question, it seemed. "Let's do this."
She saw him stand tall on a central, circular platform, a dais slightly raised off the ground. And when he raised his hands, she understood why the crew of the Galahad kept their distance from others and avoided bringing outsiders on board.
It was like nothing she'd ever seen.
In the Captain's hands was a single, glowing orb—entirely featureless and shining with a bright, white light. Around him she saw displays materialize out of seeming thin air as figures for the ship's telemetry scrolled past. The Captain stood in the column of light like an avenging angel of some kind—figures, graphs, glyphs appeared before him at a flick of his finger, and disappeared just as fast. Behind him, the rest of the ship's crew worked on less…ethereal…stations, but not one—not a single one—looked like the controls on any ship she'd ever seen before. Had this been what she'd interrupted when she crashed through the door?
In the air, just beyond Ren's command station, Kana saw a holographic representation of the Galahad—rust and all—being pursued by the two Stingrays in strict formation. Lines extended from the Galahad to the two ships pursuing them—something which she later realized were tractor beams.
She sat back and tried to relax where she was, breathing through the pain.
=.=.=.=
"Yashiro, have they extended full power on their tractor beams yet?" Ren asked.
"No, Captain. Still at seventy-five percent and increasing."
"Inform me when they're at ninety," he replied.
Ren tamped down his irritation at having the stowaway appear on the bridge. He should've instructed Amamiya to lock down her room, but he'd been so preoccupied by the Stingrays—and he'd hesitated because she was a guest, not a prisoner when all was said and done. And now the Galahad's capabilities had been exposed—from the bridge, no less!
Exactly who needs counterintelligence training now, you idiot? he thought to himself.
Given Kana's injury report, she'd likely realized by now that the ship was bigger than it should've been given its outside appearance. She likely crossed the n-space threshold during the most…energetic…parts of the chase. She was lucky her injuries weren't worse, honestly. He regretted those injuries, but, well, hadn't she been instructed not to leave her room? While the n-space rooms were always windowless and spare, they were at least safe. The back halls hadn't had any nullification activated for the Gs they were pulling during the earlier part of this pursuit, and surely she would've noticed the transition immediately upon exiting the n-space quarters and onto the actual ship.
What to do, then? There were certainly drugs that could be administered to have her forget what she'd found out, but he'd never been inclined to use them. They seemed unethical to him, and besides, until now, the only two outsiders who'd ever been on the ship were Fox and Kojiro. Would she perhaps consent to forgetting? It had to be proposed somehow. Later.
That was a problem for his future self.
Right now, he had some Stingrays to dispatch.
He shifted his fingers on the lightsphere and sped the Galahad up a little, pushing the Stingrays to expend more energy on the beam that was holding it back.
"Ninety percent now, Captain," Yashiro called out.
"Standby for acceleration," he called out.
The two Stingrays had pursued the Galahad out of Lasella's docks, attempting to run an intercept course. They evaded them successfully, but Ren wanted to put a stop to their tracking immediately. They headed for the 'dark' half of Herbin, far away from Lasella's glass domes, trusting that the pursuers would follow. They had—and Ren had led them on a merry chase that had resulted in the tumbling around that Kana had experienced.
The plan had been simple. The Stingrays were set up to do repo for the Fuwas, and if they were doing repo, it was likely that they would deploy tractor beams in order to capture fleeing prey. He would simply let them "catch" the Galahad…and then use their own tractor beam like a leash to drag them into an atmospheric re-entry for which they were not prepared.
…It wasn't going to be a good day for the Stingray pilots.
Ren had allowed the "capture" of the Galahad just minutes ago, right before Kana stumbled onto the bridge. Ren felt the two beams on each wing of the ship, dragging it down. It was revolting, really, to let anything touch the Galahad like that, but he was going to relish what would follow.
He felt Galahad's feedback as soon as he fed power into the engines. What they were doing had to be done quickly, before the Stingrays could disengage. He whipped the Galahad forward, angling the ship downwards into Herbin's maelstrom of clouds. The Stingrays were dragged down along, helpless against the sudden rebellion of their tractor beam. Ren could feel how their pilots attempted to shift directions—but they were helpless against the drag. The angle of attack he'd used would maximize the pressure wave on their spacecraft, and he knew that they would begin to break apart in just a few short seconds.
"Visuals, please," he said out loud.
Holograms appeared in mid-air, showing the two Stingrays as they attempted to make their improbable atmospheric re-entry. It started with a corona of flame around the leading edges of their wings—almost like a gilding of gold. Ren felt the tractor beams disengage as the flames intensified—external tools like that were going to be the first to go. He righted the Galahad back to an even keel, hovering as the Stingrays fell further into Herbin's gravity well. Soon everyone on the Galahad saw the wings of both Stingrays disintegrate into balls of flame, and soon the core of both ships had exploded. Grisly as it was, the lightshow over Herbin's cloudscape had been beautiful.
"Amamiya, vital signs?" he asked.
"I'm showing two, Captain," she said. "Both have deployed their stasis chamber capabilities. Both are tracking.
"Very well," Ren said, "send their telemetry information to Lasella and indicate the need for a rescue team."
His gaze turned to Kana.
"Second Officer Kijima will escort you to the medical bay," he said. "And after you are done with treatment, we must have a long talk together, you and I." Obsidian eyes stared back at her, daring her to challenge his pronouncement.
Kana opened her mouth to respond, but nothing came out. Her mind was swimming with questions—who, exactly, was Ren Tsuruga? What, exactly, was the Galahad? How, exactly, was the ship bigger on the inside?
Had she gone insane?
=.=.=.=.=.=
Author's Notes:
Thank you so much for reading! Reviews are greatly appreciated—this is a new kind of story for me, so I'm still learning.
1. Do I have any physicists out there that want to talk to me about the implication of moving between two universes, where one universe puts one within a ship that is currently in a bit of a dogfight while the other is essentially at rest? Because it's been a LONG TIME since my last physics class, ya'll, and I am not entirely happy/sure about the implications of the shift between something at rest vs 3 Gs of force while moving between two separate but joint universes. Also, if there are medical professionals out there who want to ponder implications on the body where you're split between two sets of gravity, LET'S TALK. SERIOUSES.
2. Yes, the Galahad follows in the grand tradition of things that are 'bigger on the inside,' much like Doctor Who's Tardis, Hermione's Undetectable Extension Charm Handbag, Mary Poppins' carpet bag, and Discworld's Unseen Library. In this case, we're doing a classic pocket dimension-style space, based on babblings by Brian Greene and Avi Loeb. More on this later via Seven Moons of Aris.
3. Atmospheric entry, descent, and landing: I'm sure that in the future ships won't burn up on re-entry, but also: this is *my* space opera, dammit, so I get to burn ships up on re-entry if I want to. But generally…in this universe, I think the exigencies required to slow down a ship for atmospheric re-entry would be more costly than…simply building space-side to planet-side elevators or transition stations.
Er. Lemme know what you think.