This is a fan translation of The Black Relay Race (Чёрная эстафета) by Vladimir Vasilyev. This is the second book in the Death or Glory (Смерть или слава) series. I strongly recommend that you read the novel Death or Glory first. Its fan translation is available on this website.
I claim no rights to the contents herein.
Leg 5
Yiri-Yovasi, Oaonsz, Morita Griffin—Tau Claudus Turtur. The moment of Lieutenant Ángel María de Roberto's death
Yiri-Yovasi had calculated right: that moron from Botafogo hadn't even made a peep before dropping on the airlock threshold with a hole in his head. The Swarm-made gun had exceeded all of Yiri's expectations: punching through a force suit was no small feat. And the plasma pulse had gone all the way through, meaning it burned through the suit's field twice…
He had to give the Swarm's engineers their due. Yiri-Yovasi always suspected that, if it wished, the Swarm could rule the entire galaxy, but it simply didn't need to. It was more advantageous to the Swarm for the other races to do everything. Mining, producing. It was a lot easier for the Swarm to buy or trade for it than to try to mine or produce on its own. Even he, a shapeshifting pirate who'd plundered dozens of random ships of various beings, had to bow his head before the wisdom of the ancient insects. Even he knew that plundering everything wasn't always profitable. And sometimes it was downright unprofitable. And, of course, killing was unprofitable either. First of all, it was easy to run afoul of punitive measures, and even the magic of the x-drive was no guarantee of impunity. And second and most importantly, nothing that could be sold appeared on its own. Someone had to work to make it appear. So then why would he kill those who did the working? He just had to know how to take his cut, a small one at that, and then he'd be able to shear his pangals as much as he wanted. No one would say a word. If he went too far and made a hard worker go broke, then they might go for a gun. Yisi-Yovasi tried not to remember what a broke worker was like even in his nightmares.
And yet Yiri's accomplices, all of them shapeshifters, simply refused to get that simple truth through their thick skulls. But they did believe Yiri. Because it was better to believe the lucky ones. The fact that Yiri wasn't lucky and was simply smarter than the rabble he was flying and robbing with simply didn't matter. Interstellar pirates had only two evaluation criteria: the size of the prey and the time spent on pirate routes. If the first criterion placed Yiri-Yovasi squarely in the middle, then there were few in the galaxy who could compare to him in the second, and it had nothing to do with the Oaonsz having significantly longer lifespans than the other races.
Yiri also liked the Swarm-made ship. It was obedient, precise, and fast. He could prowl the entire galaxy in one of these and had a real chance of escaping from any super-duper-cruiser. Unless, of course, it was a Swarm cruiser, a mysterious matte sphere equipped with a state-of-the-art drive. Yasi's mouth was watering, but he'd already accepted the fact that he would have to return the ship to the Master. He also understood that deceiving the Master would be like tightening the noose around his own neck. The Oaonsz still employed this barbaric method of killing, especially in feuds among the old clans. Yiri had no doubt that the Master belonged to a powerful clan. One that was probably also in in the Syndicate… Those guys might skin the noose and go straight for cutting his head off with a hacksaw. No shapeshifting would help him then.
Basically, he'd have to complete the task quickly and precisely. Get his money—thankfully, the old clans were rarely stingy about paying those who worked for them—and go back to his accomplices to keep robbing the interstellar routes. Yiri-Yovasi congratulated himself on the successful start, kicked the human scout's dropped rifle away, and removed the case with a base and beacons from his belt.
He picked up an echo; the human had managed to set up four beacons, all of them apparently along the burrow. So he wouldn't have to meander if he didn't find what he was looking for right away. He'd just have to keep moving to the first beacon or, in the extreme case, to the fourth one.
Yiri-Yovasi found this unexpected gig during his brief visit to the homeworld: he'd managed to get some ancient promissory notes, still recorded on crystals, off some merchant. Yiri counted the years, estimated the interest, and was stupefied. Then he grabbed the merchant by the collar and inquired why he wasn't trying to get the interest himself. The answer turned out to be trivial but very plausible: the merchant was afraid. And he was right. If this moron had walked up to Yiri and started demanding something, less than a day later the moron would've met his end in some out of the way place with a hole in his torso, while Yiri would've quietly put the notes themselves into a safe or even vaporized them and forgotten about them. It was easy to forget about debts, especially if one didn't have to return them either. Yiri ended up pocketing the notes, then estimated the merchant's cargo and left him enough to make sure he made a small profit (even accounting for fuel expenses, parking, and customs duties), telling the guys to drag the rest into the Steersman's hold and suggesting the merchant leave while Yiri was feeling kind. The merchant, incredibly surprised that he still had something left, disappeared in record time, probably nearly burning out his guidance system. The fellas grumbled their usual, "Why did we leave so much stuff to that idiot?" Yiri-Yovasi brushed them off in the same habitual manner, explaining that the idiot wasn't going to be afraid to come this way again. Had they taken everything, he'd never be back. Finally, Yiri announced to his crew that the long-promised shore leave was coming, and not just anywhere but in the capital of Oa! And not for just a day or two, but for at least half a cycle! The crew exploded in excitement, anticipating plenty of merriment.
While the fellas were going to turn all of the capital's drinking establishments upside-down, Yiri-Yovasi planned to have a heart-to-heart with the one whose identification was attached to his newly-appropriated promissory notes. Or his heirs, which didn't really change matters.
But everything went very different from what Yiri-Yovasni had intended, and he got his first suspicions after visiting the online ID service. Yiri-Yovasni rose from the terminal with a slightly stunned look. The place where the searched individual lived was something like a cross between a fortress and a palace. And Yiri-Yovasi started to strongly suspect that he wasn't going to get anything, except maybe trouble. But he still paid a visit to the fortress/palace and was received. They threw a casual glance at the notes, handed him nearly half a million pangals (in bars! Not on his account, and not even in desired cash — in bars! Yiri nearly fainted and couldn't figure out if it was out of joy or fear). Meanwhile, the man who preferred to be called Master inquired if Yiri-Yovasi would like to make some more money. Significantly more.
So, Yiri, throwing caution to the wind, said he would. After all, it was forty-seven million pangals. He simply couldn't not take the chance, otherwise what sort of shapeshifter was he?
"The job's dangerous," the Master said.
"Well, I'm not exactly a good boy either," Yiri-Yovasi replied. "Why else would they call me Yiri-Yovasi?" ("Yovasi" meaning "goodbye".)
"Because you always say 'Goodbye' to those you kill," the Master said.
Yiri was surprised that the Master had guessed right. More likely, he'd already known.
"Yes," Yiri said. "That's why."
"It doesn't matter," the Master said. "I'm going to give you a ship that has no equal. You'll go to the Morita Griffin system, pick up a certain object there, bring it where I tell you, and then you're free to go."
"All right," Yiri-Yovasi said. "Will I have to kill?"
"Possibly," the Master replied. "So be ready."
"May I ask who?" Yiri asked.
"If you have to, then it's most likely going to be human soldiers," the Master replied.
"But they have suits," Yiri said doubtfully.
"You will have Swarm-made gear," the Master calmed him.
"Then I have no more questions," Yiri said. "Any details?"
"Yes," the Master assured him and then provided them.
And now Yiri was here. On an asteroid near Morita Griffin. He just had to find what the Master had called a "sarcophagus," load it up onto the Swarm ship, and get out of there, far from the human squadron that was on its way to the asteroid.
He'd already shapeshifted eyes and heat-sensitive sections on his face. The suit's field relayed external stimuli onto his skin. Then again, the heat sensitivity wasn't really helping Yiri-Yovasi at the moment, as the asteroid had been cooled by time and space. After the warmth of the habitation module, the burrow hidden under the surface seemed evenly blue, so he could only rely on his sight. The dim phosphorescents on the tips of his boots provided so little light that no other race would probably be able to make out anything in this darkness.
But not a shapeshifter. Even this dim lighting was enough for Yiri. In this state, his eyes were even capable of perceiving individual photons.
The nearest beacon of the Botafogan human did not mark what Yiri-Yovasi was looking for. It had been set up in a small widening of the burrow where Swarm drones were lying in rows on the bare stone floor. All were dried out and dead for a long time — Yiri couldn't pick up any trace of residual heat. Even though the Swarm was made up of insects, and their body temperature was significantly lower than that of the shapeshifters, they still contained noticeable heat in their living state. But these were as cold as the surrounding stone. Yiri-Yovasi couldn't care less about what or who had killed them. To the Swarm, a drone was little more than a cell. Did Yiri mourn one of his dead cells or a peeled skin plate? The Swarm was likewise not going to mourn these drones.
Yiri-Yovasi suspected that the Swarm didn't know how to mourn at all.
Good, Yiri thought. Mourning only poisons the future. You have to build your future as clear and uncloud as possible.
Another dash through the asteroid, and Yiri found himself in a spacious chamber that had two other burrows connected to it besides the one Yiri had used. But he didn't have to choose which one to use next, as the object he'd been looking for was in the chamber.
Yiri-Yovasi recognized it right away. A scaly rectangular box that breathed with weak warmth. And it wasn't the box itself that was warm, there was something warm hidden inside. Warm… alive. But what? Yiri didn't know. And he wasn't really trying to find out.
He leapt closer. The box was clean of any dust, even though there was plenty of it accumulated on the chamber floor, especially by the walls. Not even dust, some tattered whitish rags retaining traces of residual heat. A thin strip, slightly warmer than the rest of the box's surface, crossed the upper part.
An opening, Yiri-Yovasi realized.
Two round greasy spots could be seen near the middle of both sides of the stripe. As if someone had been trying to stick something to the box.
Probably explosives, Yiri thought. They were trying to open it. Looks like they failed.
Yiri-Yovasi couldn't even find any traces of an explosion, even though he looked carefully.
No traces. None at all.
"Keep in mind," the Master had told him before the launch of the Swarm ship from a private landing pad on the palace/fortress territory, "you mustn't open the sarcophagus. If you try, you're a goner. We'll find you and crush you. But if you bring it as is, then you're never going to have to worry about anything for the rest of your life. Because even if you, as a true long-lived shapeshifter, live to see the day when your nearly a hundred millions run out, then the clan will find something to keep you busy."
Of course, Yiri-Yovasi was curious what was inside. But not enough to try to trick a powerful homeworld clan. Even an idiot had to know that there was something (or someone) worth a lot more than fifty million inside. Excellent. Let it stay in there. As long as it didn't climb out while Yiri was cutting through space in the marvelous Swarm ship.
He pulled out the flat disk of a portable antigrav from his pocket, slapped it on top of the sarcophagus, right onto the warm slit, activated it, and grabbed onto the rope with a crossbar on the end that was in the disk.
The sarcophagus remained right where it was. Yiri-Yovasi adjusted the settings, altering the intensity of the antigravity field. Finally, the sarcophagus shifted reluctantly. Yiri glanced at the dial and hooted in respect: the object's weight implied it was made of some transuranium element. The antigrav was just barely powerful enough to lift it, despite the fact that the gravity on the asteroid was laughable. Then again, Yiri-Yovasi was a thorough shapeshifter and had a backup antigrav. Attaching it to the sarcophagus, Yiri lowered the intensity of the first one, raised the intensity of the second one to the proper mark, and was satisfied to see the hovering sarcophagus. Then he grabbed the leash ropes and dragged the scaly thing as if it was a balloon.
He had to move fast. The Botafogan ships could arrive at any moment. They weren't going to jump, of course, as calculating the puncture at such a miniscule distance would take longer than getting here at sublight. For now, Yiri thought he would make it.
So he dove into the burrow, dragging the sarcophagus behind him.
He did his best to slip past the mummy cemetery as fast as possible. He kept feeling that the mummies were watching him. It wasn't that Yiri was afraid — he'd never have become a pirate leader with that attitude. It was just unpleasant. Uncomfortable. Uneasy. That was why he was rushing, jumping like a harnessed cricket.
Actually, the human homeworld also had a tiny insect that could jump and produce chirping sounds. In fact, such insects existed on nearly every inhabited planet. Once, in a fit of complacency, Yiri thought that the world was merely multiple reflections of the same essence, and that was why all the aliens were, while different physically, were incredibly alike in their actions and thoughts.
Yiri-Yovasi had left the outer airlock open. That was intentional to keep the defensive emitters from activating accidentally. Yiri had shut them off, but just in case… Alien tech was always a little odd.
In the airlock chamber, he had to adjust the settings of the antigravs again, as there was nearly normal gravity inside the module. Normal for the Shat-Tzoor, slightly lower by Oaonsz standards. At the threshold, the sarcophagus dipped its front part and seemed to get stuck to the floor. Yiri-Yovasi quickly raised the power of both antigravs, and the cargo gradually, as if reluctantly, flew up again. The power of the antigravs were approaching its limit… Yiri thought that the standard antigrav ball the Oaonsz were used to would probably be incapable of handling such a mass. Meanwhile, the Swarm-made devices—tiny, smaller than a palm, flat disks—could do it. At the limit and in a pair, but they were doing it.
The dead body of the Botafogan human was lying just past the threshold of the inner airlock. Yiri threw a sideways glance at it, then went to the other airlock along the ringed corridor, rounding the central post.
Actually, he needed to take a peek inside the post.
At the entrance, Yiri-Yovasi secured the ropes to the safety railing and went inside the central post. In general, everything here looked like the bridge of any starship, only incredibly spacious. Yiri spent some time studying the console in search of the needed drive type but couldn't find it. Then he noticed a strange structure with a removed rear cover that was standing on the floor next to the pilot seat; the structure was wired directly into gutted unit on the console. A moment later, Yiri-Yovasi realized that it was exactly what he'd been looking for.
The standard set of Shat-Tzoor external drives did not include a drive compatible with human data storage units. That was why the module's former owners had to grab some human-made player and splice it into the system.
Yiri quickly figured out what he needed, touched one button with his fingernail, then another, and finally grabbed the edge of a disk that slid out of a narrow slit.
"There it is!" Yiri hooted excitedly. He was very pleased with himself.
The Master had said that if he couldn't find the disk, it would be bad but not fatal. Then Yiri would have to head for a remote star system with the strange name Cosine and wait there. If Yiri found the disk, then there would be no problems, as the disk contained the complete calculations for several routes. Just insert the disk into the drive, account for the latest corrections, initiate the pulsations, and he'd be home free. Yiri-Yovasi even remembered thinking why it had to be so complicated but didn't show it. And yet the Master seemed to catch on to that too.
"You see," he'd said, "the sarcophagus can't be located in a random point in space. Well, it can, but it leads to disastrous consequences. The disk contains the coordinates of places where the sarcophagus can be for a long time relatively painlessly. So don't be surprised as illogical routes and chaotic pulsations. They're only chaotic at first glance. If you don't find the disk on the asteroid… Then you know where to go. But it's best if you do find it."
After saying that, the Master gave Yiri such a look that it became clear to him that he'd better find that damned disk. Otherwise it would result in… disastrous consequences. Like the sarcophagus being in a random point in space.
That was why Yiri-Yovasi felt great relief when the disk ended up in his hands. Then he had a suddenly doubt: what if this was the wrong disk?
He stuck it back into the drive and sat at the terminal.
The Shat-Tzoor terminal was a little uncomfortable but basically workable. The system was intuitive, as it wasn't based on the alphabet of a particular race; instead, it used symbols that had become fairly universal in the galaxy. Yiri-Yovasi spent some time trying to figure out how the human device was spliced into the navigation computer. Afterwards, he looked through the disk's contents and calmed down.
It was the disk the Master had advised him to find.
Yiri pulled it out of the drive, placed it into a prepared container, put the container into a jumpsuit pocket, rose, and looked around. Then he reached into another pocket and scattered several tablets of a universal explosive on the floor. He stuck the needle of the detonator into the last one and placed it on the flat manipulator of the alien computer. Yiri placed the remote for the detonator into his pocket for now.
"I think this is it," he grumbled, heading for the door.
The door parted obediently, Yiri-Yovasi stepped into the corridor and nearly fell in surprise. His entire body was suddenly covered in tiny folds, and he only avoided shapeshifting reflexively by some miracle.
Instead of the sarcophagus, there was the Angel of Death hovering in the corridor, tied to the railing. It was an Oaonsz in an untransformed state with a water clock in one hand and a nine-pointed star in the other. The Angel's yellow clothing was shimmering and pulsing weakly, as if it was the living flesh of a sea mollusk.
Yiri-Yovasi recoiled back into the central post, grabbing madly for his plasma pistol.
Nothing was happening.
He was standing some distance from the door, his skin plates sticking out involuntarily, with confusion and disarray in his head.
The Angel of Death? But Yiri-Yovasi didn't believe in angels. And even if he did, then he'd be wondering why he was still alive.
A shapeshifter saw the Angel of Death only once in their life. The moment before it ended. And only if they were religious.
Yiri-Yovasi had always thought the clergy's stories to be nonsense. As a kid, mother would often bring him to the temple, and Yiri remembered the image of the Angel of Death on the temple walls. The water clock, the star, and the yellow clothing…
"Shit!" Yiri-Yovasi swore loudly, pulled himself together, and, holding the weapon in front of him, stepped into the corridor.
The sarcophagus was calmly floating over the shag floor. There were no angels in the immediate vicinity. None at all. Yiri looked around energetically, quickly untied the ropes from the railing, and almost ran to the front airlock. The sarcophagus was soaring slightly behind him, occasionally hitting the walls with its corners on particularly sharp tugs. Yiri thought that it was probably too much but couldn't find the strength to slow down.
It's going to be fine, Yiri thought with some irritation. It's not made of glass. The damned thing is ridiculously heavy…
After passing through the airlock, Yiri-Yovasi tore off a patch with the compound eye of a Shat-Tzoor drawn on it from the scanner, reset the code, and hurried to the spherical ship sitting over the fault. Naturally, he'd already named it Steersman.
With the first step, Yiri left the artificial gravity area, and the antigravs shot the sarcophagus up. Yiri-Yovasi was thrown and dragged into the sky, as if he was on a hot air balloon. Fortunately, he hadn't let go of the rope ends, holding on to the bars on ends; then he gradually wrapped the rope on his elbow, managed to reach the antigravs on the sarcophagus with great effort, and adjusted the intensity. The flight slowed down, and then turned into a smooth fall.
"There we go," Yiri-Yovasi grumbled in relief. "I seem to have lost my mind. Moron. And all because of some hallucination…"
He remembered the Angel of Death and shuddered despite himself.
The smooth fall ended with a landing on top of the Steersman. Softening the landing with his legs, Yiri-Yovasi lowered to the ground next to the fault, set the sarcophagus next to him, and opened the airlock. The Steersman let him in without complaint, like a loyal ship.
Inside, Yiri-Yovasi used the captain's console to open the cargo hatch, came out, towed the sarcophagus into the hold, secured it, remove the antigravs, and jogged over to the cockpit.
He stopped before entering the airlock.
"Oh, right," he said. "Almost forgot."
He pulled out the detonator remote and pressed the orange button. A countdown appeared on the tiny screen.
"Yovasi, Shat-Tzoor module…" Yiri-Yovasi said in farewell.
Then he hurried to the cockpit. The bombs were about to go off.
It was time for lift-off.
Sitting in the pilot seat, Yiri-Yovasi stuck the recovered disk into the drive. For some reason, he wasn't surprised at the presence of a human drive aboard the Swarm ship. He probably understood on some level that the Swarm built ships for other races. Including humans. So it was that sort of ship the Master's clan had given him.
The matte sphere of the Steersman lifted off from the edge of the fault and shot up towards the stars. Some time later, the rock over the module shuddered but didn't crack the way Yiri-Yovasi had been expecting, as the module was buried deep into the thick stone. The sensors indifferently picked up the shaking of the nearby mass.
Meanwhile, Yiri activated the instant mail browser. The Master answered almost immediately, as if he'd been awaiting the call. But he was busy with something, sitting half-turned to the camera pickup.
"The sarcophagus is aboard, Master. The disk is in the drive," Yiri-Yovasi reported cheerfully.
"Excellent, kid. Get moving," Like all businesspeople, the Master was terse.
"The pulsation is being calculated. By the way, where am I going to end up, just so I don't have to dig through the info?"
"Amazon."
"Amazon…" Yiri was now bored. "Human space. Don't like it."
"You'll be fine."
"Of course I will, Master."
"Call me every eight pulsations."
"Understood, Master."
The Master ended the call without saying goodbye, the way a clan big shot was supposed to. Yiri-Yovasi suspected that the Master was also an important figure in the Syndicate, to say nothing of the clan. If Yiri completed the task and they hired him on for another, then it would mean that the clan was interested in him as someone who could get things done. Which meant that he could start his long climb up the clan's hierarchy. This wasn't some pitiful piracy on the provincial routes. It was a career. It was an incredible stroke of fortune for a commoner shapeshifter to end up under the patronage of a clan.
Yiri-Yovasi no longer really believed that the clan was going to pay him the fifty million, but it didn't particularly bother him. It was one thing to make trouble at his own risk, but it was different to feel the might of the Syndicate at his back.
The Syndicate had appeared a few centuries ago, right after humans were admitted into the Alliance. After the Oaonsz got out from under the intrusive Zoopht patronage and restored the original clan structure of their own society. The trouble brought by the human slobs into the harmonious and ordered structure of the Alliance turned out to be fertile soil for the Syndicate, causing it to rise like a colossus from the ruins and firmly establish itself in the part of the galaxy controlled by the shapeshifters.
Now Yiri-Yovasi realized that the Syndicate maintained some secret relations with the Swarm. At the very least, the Syndicate possessed a lot more Swarm products than Yiri had seen in his life.
The Steersman beeped, indicating that it was ready to jump. Yiri touched the approve key.
He wanted to say "Yovasi" to the rogue asteroid that had come to Morita Griffin from who knew where but decided against it. Then he'd have to blow it up, and he didn't have anything to do it with.
The spherical ship disappeared from real space without disturbing any strings of existence.
The Botafogan squadron that reached the asteroid thirty Earth minutes later never knew what had happened. The scouts walked through the beacons, found an obstruction in place of the habitation module, shrugged, and got busy with the x-drive. Just in case, Ángel María de Roberto was awarded a posthumous medal. They found what Botafogo was interested in. The human colony didn't really care about the rest. And even if it did, it was physically impossible to detect the recent presence of the tiny Swarm ship.
And so, the Steersman made several jumps and got almost six thousand light years away from Morita Griffin. Yiri-Yovasi spent all this time in the cockpit, playing with the ship's computer. He was curiously to test the Swarm-made computer, and he was involuntarily comparing the capabilities of this crystalline monster to the navigation computer of the real pirate Steersman. That computer was of Zoopht make. Yiri-Yovasi didn't feel any major differences, even though the pirate Steersman was supposed to have a more powerful computer — the Swarm ship was tiny, while the pirate Steersman was bigger.
Some time later, Yiri got bored of that task, he was also feeling sleepy. Eating two tubes of standard space rations, Yiri-Yovasi hung up the hammock, climbed into it, and thought that he could simply shut off gravity and stretch out. Sleeping in the embrace of weightlessness was far more pleasant than in a hammock. But he decided not to take any chances. If the Steersman came out into normal space within the gravity field of a celestial body, then Yiri might get struck by something flying through the cockpit. Besides, weightlessness had this unpleasant quality where it was impossible to find the right object after being in it.
The shapeshifting pirate closed his eyes and almost immediately fell into a cold stupor. His breathing slowed, his temperature lowered. Any shapeshifter could enter this state at will and spend a long time in it — close to one Oa lunar cycle. Maybe even longer, but then the body started to waste away and weaken. The reverse was true as well: shapeshifters could stay awake for just as long without particular harm to themselves. Yiri hadn't slept for quite a while, maybe half a cycle. That was probably why he was feeling sleepy.
Yiri ended up not getting enough sleep. Like every pirate, he was subconsciously always ready for a fight. That was why a sharp and clear blow to the ship's bulkhead woke him up instantly.
Shooting up, Yiri got tangled up in the hammock and spend some time to get out. Getting to his feet, he listened.
He rarely saw dreams and didn't remember them well. So he could've sworn that the blow hadn't been in his sleep.
A meteorite? Yiri-Yovasi thought with concern.
Technically, the Swarm ship was very tough, but who knew what a collision with a sufficiently large meteorite could cause? In general, such an event was so unlikely that it could be discounted. Besides, the x-drive's guidance system accounted for the movement of mobile masses at the destination and would never deposit the ship in the path of even a small meteorite. Yiri-Yovasi had jumped plenty of times in his life, and neither the Steersman nor any other ship he'd traveled on had ever been struck by a meteorite.
With some distrust, Yiri sat at the console and ran a diagnostic of the outer hull.
And then a new blow echoed in his years.
Yiri-Yovasi leapt to his feet. The blow came from an inner bulkhead, that much was clear right away. Which meant that meteorites had nothing to do with it. And it seemed to be the bulkhead separating the cockpit from the cargo hold.
The sarcophagus was in the cargo hold.
He suddenly felt very uneasy. Yiri-Yovasi recalled the vision on the asteroid, and his unease doubled. Then he realized that the Swarm ship had video monitoring of all the compartments and perked up a little. For some reason, he really didn't want to go to the cargo hold.
Yiri-Yovasi had almost never been along in all the time he'd spent in space. He always flew and pirated in a crew; the trip to Morita Griffin was his first solo flight. And if the way to Morita Griffin hadn't bothered Yiri much, then the return flight's solitude was unexpectedly getting on his nerves.
Yiri-Yovasi got ahold of himself and sat at the computer. He found the video monitoring menu, activated the cargo hold's sensors, and pulled the image up on the screen.
The sarcophagus was slowly floating from one wall to the other, as if there was no gravity in the cargo hold. Yiri stared dumbfounded at the large scaly "brick" crossing the distance to the bulkhead and producing a loud "bang" with the contact.
Yiri sighed with some relief, while the sarcophagus started moving towards the opposite wall.
"But, damn it!" Yiri-Yovasi grumbled. "I secured it! And why is there no gravity in the hold? Ridiculous. This is the Swarm's doing…"
He rose, suppressed the half-formed desire to grab the gun (it had shot through a suit, so it might accidentally poke a hole in the hull), and headed for the cargo hold.
Yiri didn't hesitate even a second in front of the hatch, even though there was still a slight chill in his chest.
The door slid into the bulkhead; Yiri grabbed a railing and tensed his abdominal muscles to throw himself into zero-g.
He nearly twisted his arm. There was gravity in the cargo hold. Scraping his nails on the railing, he slumped at the threshold.
The sarcophagus continued to float majestically towards the far wall, which was slightly concave.
Yiri-Yovasi turned his head and looked at the secure clamps. Besides gravitational clamps, ships traditionally also used mechanical ones.
The mechanical clamp's arms seemed to have been burned through. An oblique cut with the hardened bubbles of cermet… It was incredible.
And again, not even a hint of zero-g.
Yiri gulped and remembered in detail how he'd removed the portable antigravs from the top of the sarcophagus and then placed them into his pocket. There they were, both of them.
With his hand still in his pocket, Yiri-Yovasi stared at the sarcophagus.
BANG!
Another hit against a bulkhead, and another course. This time straight at Yiri. Slowly and deliberately…
Three Mothers, it's got crazy mass! Yiri-Yovasi remembered how powerful the antigravs had to be to lift the sarcophagus on the asteroid and was horrified.
Meanwhile, the sarcophagus was floating through the compartment towards him.
When the scaly box was only a few elbows from him, Yiri-Yovasi leapt. At the same moment, he touched the sarcophagus, pushing away from it. Maybe that ended up saving him.
As soon as his hands slapped against the warm, almost alive side of the sarcophagus, the "brick" suddenly regained its full weight and dropped like a rock onto the compartment floor, breaking the already damaged clamps. The Steersman shuddered. If Yiri hadn't pushed and leapt away, the sarcophagus could've easily crushed his legs. Or even him.
Yiri-Yovasi was frozen for several moments, then dashed to the open hatch. He froze again at the threshold, turned, and looked at the mad cargo. He was gripped with confusion; there was something frighteningly unreal in what was happening.
Yiri spent a long time staring at the sarcophagus, expecting it to fly again or even do something even crazier. But, like an ordinary box in stable gravity, it remained motionless.
Gradually, Yiri-Yovasi focused his gaze on something that looked like a short, thick pipe at one end of the sarcophagus. For some reason, he hadn't noticed it before. But now he did.
Interesting, Yiri thought. Was it there before? Or can that damned box change?
He suddenly pictured the pipe start expelling a thick, viscous liquid that filled the compartment, then the entire ship, and Yiri drowned in it, frozen in terror… Yiri-Yovas went cold in mere moments, getting scared even more, recovering from the vision and getting angry.
What am I doing? Behaving like a little girl in a dark room. Coming up with some stupid horror stories and getting scared of them.
Yiri-Yovasi gathered his willpower, took a step, then another. Those were the most difficult, and the rest were easier: three, four, five. Then he kicked the sarcophagus with his boot. His foot hurt, but the fright was gone. Well, almost.
"You filth!" Yiri spoke through gritted teeth. "Trying to scare me? I chased away Saaian patrols! I told 'Yovasi' to Admiral Satailamai himself and vaporized him and his boat to the Three Mothers!"
Then he kicked the obstinate box again. This time not as strongly, as he didn't want to hurt his foot. The box didn't complain. Or resist. It was pretending to be a simple box, even if there was someone alive inside it. Although typically sarcophagi contained either corpses or people in hibernation that only differed from corpses because they could be brought back to life.
At that moment, the Steersman jumped. Yiri-Yovasi felt a short puncture, "lost himself" for a moment, and was reborn in a new place many light years away. At the same time, he remained in the cargo hold, alone with the strange scaly box. After all, the compartment and the box had jumped along with him. More precisely, everything, from a speck of dust on the floor to the Swarm ship itself had shifted along with the x-drive.
This sobered up Yiri-Yovasi completely. He walked over to the gravitational clamp controls, "picked up" the sarcophagus, shifted it slightly to the local gravity epicenter, and slid the lever to maximum. Just in case. The sarcophagus did not object. At least Yiri didn't notice anything of the sort. Yiri spent a short while in the compartment, shifting from one foot to the other nervously. It seemed that the sarcophagus wasn't going to make a fuss again.
"There!" Yiri-Yovasi declared triumphantly but, unfortunately, not very convincingly and went through the hatch. He slid the door shut and sealed it. He was a little glad that it could only be opened from his side.
There was something in the sarcophagus that made him glad of that fact.
"Some flight!" Yiri-Yovasi grumbled. "Definitely not going to fly by myself again, or I might go crazy."
Then he went to the cockpit.
The Angel of Death in yellow clothing was waiting for him there. It was holding a water clock in one hand and a nine-pointed star in the other.
Feeling everything inside him turn around and go numb, Yiri-Yovasi stumbled in the doorway. At that moment, the Angel disappeared, leaving behind a slight thermal trace that looked like a swaying air mirage over hot stones.
The Angel's ghost.
Yiri-Yovasi grabbed the bulkhead to avoid falling. He had no idea what was happening to him.
Then he tried to grab ahold of himself despite the weakness in his arms. He shut the door and slid into the seat.
All right. Let's start from the beginning.
Oa was over thirty thousand light years from Morita Griffin, which meant almost seventy pulsations, including correctional ones. The flight had taken half of an Oa lunar cycle, and throughout that time Yiri-Yovasi hadn't even thought about his solitude, hadn't felt alarm or felt unease. And, of course, hadn't been seeing any visions.
And now? Even before he'd left the asteroid, he was starting to see nonsense! Although he was afraid to call the visions "nonsense," just in case the Angel would be offended. Then Yiri-Yovasi was definitely done for.
He shook his head and clenched his fists.
Calm down. Calm down. Don't panic. Fear was a very delicate matter. If he gave into it, he'd never be able to get it out of his heart. It would stay there, grow, fill his entire being, and if his heart was full of fear, then that meant trouble. Where a carefree man might do his business and forget about it, one gripped in fear would get burned and mess it up. And that was what fear wanted.
But how could he beat the fear, Three Mothers damn it? How could he handle both it and the loneliness, if there was nothing around him but the void, decorated with the distant lights of stars, with the Angel of Death that didn't really exist walking around the ship, with heavy objects flying around as if possessed? How?
Yiri knew that there were no precise answers to those questions.
First, he thought, he needed to convince himself that everything that was happening was merely a hallucination. A result of some strange emission from the sarcophagus. Of course it was the sarcophagus, what else? As soon as he got close to it, that was when the strange things started happening. There hadn't been any strange things before, right? He had to make sure that such an illusion couldn't harm him.
Yiri-Yovasi randomly thought that, even after going into space, many races could shake their primal superstitions.
A little later, Yiri-Yovasi picked up on the random thought and perked up a little. If he was capable of getting distracted, then it meant the fear hadn't consumed him fully yet. Then he was still capable of thinking about other things, which meant he could fight all the recent problems. Successfully.
Yiri-Yovasi produced a crooked and slightly tense smile (the tension was unpleasant but obvious) and hissed angrily, "Forget it, you scaly thing! You won't get to eat Yiri-Yovasi! I'm poisonous!"
There was a measure of false bravery in all this but not much. Yiri thought he ought to turn on some triumphant music, but all he'd brought with him on the flight was a selection of movies and books. Not even audiobooks, ones with symbols.
Maybe I should put on a movie, Yiri-Yovasi thought but decided against it. Instead, he turned on constant video monitoring in the background. The sarcophagus was resting in the grav-clamp and didn't seem to intend on flying like some fairy tale creature anymore. Thanks for that, at least…
Instead of a movie, Yiri-Yovasi decided to sniff some Joyful in order to calm his nerves and justify the hallucinations somehow. Maybe later he'd be able to blame it all on the Joyful. He'd wake up with a heavy head and memory gaps, but then any visions would no longer seem strange or scary.
With that thought, Yiri-Yovasi reached under the seat and pulled out his favorite bag made of the hide of a sand predator he'd personally killed on Inshudi. He dug through it and found a small bag with a gray powder in it. All he needed was to measure the right dosage and burn it slightly…
Soon he was able to throw off the tension, and life was starting to seem colorful and no longer as frightening. So what if he'd seen the Angel? If he had to, he'd dance with spirits and shake demon hands.
A serene smile appeared on Yiri-Yovasi's face. He leaned back in the seat and stared into the void that no longer seemed so empty to him. The half-empty bag of powder was lying on the edge of the console, right next to the keyboard.
Life went on.
The Steersmani was calculating a new pulsation. The disk was silently spinning in the drive, its data being read and processed. Far away, the Master was waiting impatiently for his cargo on the shapeshifter homeworld. Far away, an unknown Botafogan human was lying under collapsed rock on an unnamed asteroid. His pirate crew was partying on the homeworld.
At that moment, if Yiri-Yovasi wanted, he'd be able to embrace the universe. But he didn't know how to want in this state. He didn't need to want for anything. Yiri was swaying on the waves of euphoria, hoping that the euphoria lasted longer. That was the higher meaning, at least it seemed that way to him at the moment.
The subsequent recollections were fragmentary and blatantly incomplete. At some point, Yiri remembered himself dumbly struggling with the seal to the cargo hold and then, without any transition, performing some barbaric dance atop the sarcophagus and swearing on the four languages he somewhat knew. And then again, without a transition, Yiri found himself sitting on the bathroom floor. His head was wet, for some reason, maybe he'd stuck it into the water in hopes of sobering up. Yiri managed to get up and decided to go to the cockpit, hang up the hammock, and get some sleep, but instead once again headed for the cargo hold. Yiri couldn't remember if he made it or not because halfway there his mind faded again, and when it turned back on, he was trying to set up a code on the same cargo hold hatch with bloodied hands. Then there was another blackout that ended in the cockpit. This time Yiri found himself hanging across the hammock with the floor covered in lots of tiny pieces of debris. Apparently, Yiri had broken some piece of equipment in a fit of rage.
When the Joyful finally released him, Yiri-Yovasi realized he was lying on the floor under the hammock, on sharp and prickly debris. There wasn't an untouched spot left on his back, and the jumpsuit hadn't helped either. His fists were swollen and gray. His head was aching. With a guttural groan, Yiri moved and tried to get up. He managed it after several tries. He plodded over to the galley corner (a whole six paces!) and sucked down an entire lake's worth of the first juice he found. Two and a half packages. He felt slightly better.
Then Yiri remembered dancing on the sarcophagus and hooted in contrition. He brought the fists up to his eyes and saw that a translucent scale was stuck to the left sleeve.
The only thing scaly on the ship was the sarcophagus.
Carefully, as if afraid of burning himself, Yiri removed the scale from the sleeve and brought it closer to his eyes. The fingers were obeying reluctantly, as if upset their owner hadn't kept them safe while in joyful frenzy.
The scale looked dead. It also seemed to have never been alive in the first place. Yiri-Yovasi had almost no doubt of that.
At the next moment, Yiri shifted his gaze to the console and froze. He realized what exactly he'd broken while under the effect of the Joyful.
The computer unit that contained the drive for reading human disks. He'd pulled it out of the socket and shattered it.
In a panic, Yiri looked around and almost immediately spotted the intact disk with the Master's course and the instant mail browser near a wall. It seemed that Yiri had pulled the disk out and tossed it aside and then started smashing the equipment…
Picking up the disk, Yiri found the case for it and, just in case, put everything into a cabinet by the console. Then he did his best to sweep up the trash on the floor and got to thinking. What should he do next?
Obviously, he wouldn't be able to continue on the course acceptable to the Master. There was no backup drive… Then he'd have to get one. Was the navigation system itself intact?
Yiri-Yovasi felt his skin plates rise on ends. If it wasn't, then he was a dead man. With a nonfunctional x-drive, he would be stuck in this part of space until he died, which would come fairly quickly, as the Swarm ship's resources weren't that high. There wouldn't be enough supplies for ten cycles, even if he hibernated. At least there was no way for water and air to be exhausted…
Cursing his own stupidity and the disobedient fingers, Yiri-Yovasi ran a system diagnostic and was incredibly relieved to learn that the basic functions were still intact. This meant he could jump anywhere. He just didn't know where without a working drive.
All right, Yiri-Yovasi thought with concern. I'll have to go to the closest inhabited place and buy that damned drive. And do it quickly before the Syndicate starts thinking that Yiri has decided to play his own game, which would be like signing my own death warrant.
He engaged the scanner and tried to get his bearings. Yiri figured out where he was fairly quickly. In a very strange place that officially belonged to humans. It was called the Claudus Turtur Cluster and consisted of over a thousand stars, primarily dwarf and neutron. Then again, some were spectral kin of Oa's sun. Once, humans had a colony called Rutania in one of these systems. Later on, the Svaigh burned the colony down, turning it into a radioactive dust cloud, and humans left Claudus Turtur for a long time, returning only after being admitted into the Alliance. Naturally, the slowly expanding dust cloud had to be avoided, but they did manage to find a few stars with habitable planets in the cluster. One such star, Tau Claudus Turtur, currently had a human colony. Yiri-Yovasi was very interested in it. A human world was the best place to find a human drive…
Yiri quickly estimated the journey. He'd be able to make it in three pulsations and then fly on the antigrav. Luckily, the Steersman was fully charged. Initiating the calculations, Yiri went to the bathroom to get cleaned up and healed up.
In any case, he'd succeeded in his goal of distracting himself and forgetting his fears, the oddities with the sarcophagus, and the Angel of Death. But at what cost?
It took him until the first pulsations to get his damaged hands taken care of. Yiri spent the second jump calculation locked in the tight circular shower and fighting the temptation to take a tiny whiff of the Joyful to get over the headache. But he had the strength and the presence of mind to restrain himself. He waited for the third pulsation after getting back to the cockpit and forcing himself to consume the required ration tube. For some reason, Yiri-Yovasi always lost his appetite after Joyful for a day or two, but his body needed food, so he choked but swallowed the nutritious jelly, washing it down with lots of juice. The Joyful usually had the opposite effect on his thirst.
By the time Yiri could engage the antigrav, he was almost back to normal. His head still ached, but he could ignore it now. Yiri-Yovasi programmed the third jump in order to pop out in orbit of Tau Claudus Turtur's only inhabited planet. Fortunately, the Swarm's x-drive allows such a precise positioning of the arrival sphere that he could save on a few megameters (when getting close to the human world, he had to switch to their units of measurement).
He fluttered out from beyond the Barrier completely unnoticed. Then he immediately contacted traffic control, "Steersman calling Tau Claudus Turtur traffic control!"
Yiri-Yovasi was naturally speaking Inter.
He was answered after a brief delay, "Takhcha traffic control here! We see you, Steersman! Where the hell did you come from? Our equipment can't pick up your flight path."
"And it won't," Yiri even puffed up a little. "I've got precise equipment."
"Do you need video control?"
"No, I'm requesting a transit stop and a temporary visa for… let's see… four Earth hours."
"Your name, citizenship? And, if possible, your race?"
"Yiri-Yovasi, Oa citizenship, Oaonsz. Here's the data…"
He inserted his ID card into the reader and transmitted everything that was required for a landing.
"Data received… Damn, Yiri, where did you get a Swarm boat?"
"None of your business," Yiri bit back. "And the boat's not even mine."
Yiri-Yovasi could sense the traffic controller's confusion and thought that visiting a human world in a secret and therefore highly desirable ship might result in plenty of unforeseen complications. Then again, Yiri had already come up with a landing strategy, considering he'd had plenty of time to study the ship's capabilities on the way to Morita Griffin.
"Are you going to land on Takhcha or the orbital base?" traffic control inquired.
"Will I be able to find and buy astrogation equipment on the orbital base? I've got a malfunction."
"Of course you will! The orbital base is a city with a population of half a million. You can buy anything there, including land on any planet in the human sector."
"Understood. Then I'm landing on the base."
"All right, sending you the arrival corridor calculation. Sector Delta, dock number four—"
"I'm not taking the Steersman to the base," Yiri interrupted. I'm jumping in a spacesuit."
The traffic controller hesitated again.
"Really?" He heard notes of disappointment in her voice. "Too bad," Then she admitted, "Would've been interesting to get a closer look at your ship."
"I'm sure it would," Yiri grumbled. "But the boss is going to have my head if I allow it. I'm sure you understand…"
"Of course!" traffic control hurried to assure him a little too quickly. "Then you've been granted arrival permission in the passenger zone, orange airlock. There's a beacon, you can't miss it. Here are the walkway coordinates…"
On all the worlds, "walkway" was what people called a corridor free from traffic. A no-fly zone for ships and arrival spheres.
Yiri received the data, immediately entered it into the portable astrogation computer, and hooted in satisfaction, "Got it. See you soon, Takhche…"
"The base is called Orion," she corrected him. "Takhche is the planet."
"Oh," Yiri-Yovasi said. "Sorry. Then, see you soon, Orion."
He ended the call, put on the suit vest, linked it with the computer on his belt, and ran a diagnostic. He returned the ID card into his chest pocket, and grabbed some cash from his bag, just in case. Who knew these provincials? They might be stubborn and refuse to work with an account on Oa or Fayd Zegu. He strapped the plasma pistol to his belt, hoping customs would turn a blind eye at it.
That just left programming the Steersman. He quickly called up the right menu, calibrated the barrier saver, entered the password signal, repeated it for confirmation, and placed the summoning remote on a thin leash in another chest pocket. Then he had another idea and entered a calculation for a blind jump to allow him to instantaneously disappear into the Barrier and leave hypothetical pursuers in the dust if he had to flee Orion.
Now he thought he'd covered all the bases.
"All right," he told himself with enthusiasm, "good luck, Yiri-Yovasi!"
The airlock spat out the shapeshifter's solitary figure into the orbital vacuum several Earth minutes later. The Steersman's matte sphere looked majestic and mysterious against the backdrop of the dim white stars and the huge blue Takhche. Maneuvering with his boot thrusters, Yiri-Yovasi got to a safe distance, pulled out the remote, and pressed the "Away" button. "Away" was written in Inter, suggesting that the Swarm had built the ship not specifically for the shapeshifters, but for anthropomorphs in general, like humans and Shat-Tzoor. That body shape was fairly common in the galaxy.
Moments later, the sphere of the Steersman was gone. It simply vanished without any side effects. It left three-dimensional space, went beyond the Barrier, and remained there. He couldn't say "for a time" because there was no time beyond the Barrier. The Steersman simply left existence for a zero time period. When Yiri pressed the "Return" button on the remote, the Steersman would appear in the same spot. From the viewpoint of the Steersman, it would be the moment it had disappeared. It was both simple and complicated at the same time. For example, if asked the question, "Where is the Steersman now?", the most precise answer Yiri-Yovasi would be able to give was "Nowhere." The Steersman simply didn't exist at the moment. But Yiri would never able to answer the question, "How was it done?" But he made use of this ability perfectly fine, even without knowing how it works.
And so, the humans from Orion and Takhche would not be able to get to the Swarm ship and its state-of-the-art x-drive. They wouldn't be able to summon the Steersman back from beyond the Barrier even with the remote. They also needed to know the passwords and to match Yiri-Yovasi's molecular matrix. And to do that, one had to be Yiri-Yovasi himself. No exceptions.
Telling the computer to take control of the thrusters, Yiri relaxed and gave himself into the flight. Far up and ahead shone a star that was brighter than the others: the Orion orbital base. The computer was taking Yiri to it on a wide arc, maneuvering within the walkway zone.
At first, Yiri couldn't sense movement at all, as the star of Orion wasn't changing in appearance at all. Only when it fell away into separate distinct lights and had more of a visual presence was Yiri able to notice moving closer to it. The base's airlocks and hangars were brightly illuminated and not just with astrogation lights.
From the outside, the base looked like a huge biconvex disk. Yiri was approaching it almost straight from the side. Soon the disk grew and blocked out half the sky, while the lights of the base continued falling apart into separate light sources. The orange zone was located not far from the edge — Yiri manually adjusted his course slightly, temporarily cutting the computer off from thruster control.
Very soon Yiri felt as if he was falling onto a huge plane. The shaft of the orange zone looked like a gaping maw ready to swallow anyone careless enough to be near. That was exactly the fate that awaited Yiri. But he hoped that it wouldn't be able to digest a shapeshifter.
Once inside the shaft, Yiri maneuvered and entered the first airlock he saw. His weight returned gently, as Orion's artificial gravity took hold. Yiri stood on his feet. The outer airlock doors closed slowly. As soon as they were shut, air began to rush in. Yiri was nearly knocked off his feet by the air stream, but he managed to remain standing. The brief storm in the airlock calmed down; Yiri had been irradiated and disinfected. That was it. Now he was ready to stand before the local customs officers.
The inner doors opened smoothly. Beyond it was a short corridor that led into a large bisected room. Uniformed humans were sitting on the other side of the partition. They looked identical, as if they'd just walked off an assembly line.
Yiri had always thought that uniforms tended to neutralize one's identity. As soon as a person put it on, they ceased being themselves, turning into yet another cog in someone else's wheel.
"Welcome to Orion," the closest customs officer told Yiri. "Are you the one who needs a four-hour temporary visa?"
"I am," Yiri confirmed, pulling out his ID card.
The visa issuing procedure took several moments.
"I will remind you that, if you decide to extend your visa for any reason, you may pay the fee in any place with a reader. Like a store or a meeting point."
"Thank you, I'm aware," Yiri informed him politely. "This is not my first visit to another world."
Returning the card into its pocket, Yiri shut off the suit, and the invisible shell separating him from the rest of the universe disappeared.
The air of the Orion base was dry and lacking in smells. There was less oxygen in it than on Oa, but Yiri was used to the constant lack of oxygen. That was why his respiratory tract remained constantly in a shifted state.
Yiri passed through another hatch and found himself in the free zone.
Stars shone overhead, and he could see the edge of Takhche illuminated by the sun that couldn't be seen from this vantage point. The base looked like a typical city on any inhabited world. Yiri-Yovasi stood on the sidewalk with his back to the hatch he'd just left. There was a perfectly ordinary street in front of him: pedestrians, lights that were stylized in an antique style, and occasional ground vehicles — it was difficult to do much flying under a force field dome. There were few pedestrians and vehicles. Far fewer than Yiri was used to seeing on streets.
He turned right and spent some time walking along a solid wall. Then the wall gave way to a window display that contained either actual mannequins in various clothes or skillfully made holograms. In any case, Yiri was unable to spot the source of the images.
Soon Yiri found what he'd been looking for: the glowing sign of a technical store across the street. The store was called El Dorado — at least that was what the Inter symbols said on the brightly colored sign over the entrance.
As soon as Yiri entered, the store manager headed in his direction. It was a short, puny human with two bunches of hair under his nose. Yiri remembered that it was called a "mustache."
It had been a long time since Yiri ran into humans (ignoring the soldier he'd killed on the asteroid).
The store manager had clearly assumed that Yiri was human. When he realized that the customer wasn't human, he raised his eyebrows in surprise. Still, he greeted him politely and inquired if he could be of any assistance.
"My guidance system drive broke. A disk reader like that one," Yiri explained in as casual manner as he could. "I'd like to buy a new one."
"Broke?" the manager asked with some surprise.
"Broke," Yiri sighed. "I dropped a rifle on it."
The manager gave Yiri an odd look. Maybe he didn't believe him, but in the end he didn't care, as long as the customer was satisfied.
"I recommend this model. It's compatible with all optical recording standards and can interface with most manufacturers of astrogation equipment. And it's not going to break even if you decide to shoot it with a rifle—"
"Excellent," Yiri interrupted the salesman's spiel. "I'll take it. How much?"
"A very low price, sir. Thirty-eight pangals. Plus three if you also get a set of adapters. Who manufactured your computer? We humans?"
"No. I have a Swarm-made computer."
The salesman gave Yiri another disbelieving look.
"Swarm? Then you're definitely going to need an adapter."
"Wrap it up," Yiri agreed graciously. "Do you take Oa credit cards?"
"Of course."
After paying, Yiri became the owner of a pretty colorful box.
"Please come again," the manager invited him.
"Unlikely," Yiri said. "I'm here for the first and probably last time. If not for that damned drive, then I'd never have come here at all."
If the salesman was offended, he managed to hide it well. Backwater denizens tended to react very strongly to such comments made by visitors.
Of the four hours granted to him for the visit, Yiri had used up only a third of an hour. He still had tons of time left. Remembering the ill-fated cargo awaiting him aboard the Steersman, Yiri caught himself thinking that he really wasn't in a hurry to get back to the ship. He was walking on the narrow sidewalk, automatically removing his shoulder to avoid running into occasional passersby and wondered where to go in the remaining time. He decided to go into the first restaurant he saw and just sit there.
He spotted a tail as soon as he turned a corner.
A nondescript human in clothes of an indeterminate color. Had there been more people on the street, he never would've caught Yiri-Yovasi's attention. He was the only one turning where Yiri had.
Huh, the shapeshifter thought with concern. Maybe I should forget about restaurants and get out while I still can. The traffic controller has probably told someone about a new arrival in a Swarm ship…
Planets far from homeworlds were typically ran by the law of the gun: might made right. Yiri finally realized just how much he was risking by walking around on someone else's territory.
He picked up the pace, but the one following him did the same. Fortunately, he was alone. Then again, others could be hiding. Like walking on parallel streets. As long as one of them could keep the target within sight.
Yiri returned to the customs office along a different path and, without pausing, went straight to the counters. It was the same officer who'd given Yiri his visa.
"Already leaving?"
"Yeah. I got everything I needed. I'm actually in a hurry…"
The customs officer nodded in understanding and made a note of the departure. Putting the ID card away, Yiri turned and saw his tail standing in the middle of the room, not even making an attempt to hide. He was staring at Yiri in either confusion or anger.
Hooting in satisfaction, Yiri-Yovasi activated his suit's field and stepped to the first available airlock. The doors opened with barely a sound, and, when the chamber was emptied out of air, Yiri stopped hearing anything at all.
A moment later, the thrusters were carrying him away from the alien orbital base. Just in case, Yiri set them to full power and started moving away at nearly one and a half gravities.
As expected, he was being scanned. The computer on his belt poked Yiri in warning.
Seems a little early for them… the shapeshifter thought. I should get farther away…
More than likely, they were going to send out a boat after Yiri. Maybe even a military one. Still, Yiri was going to head them off.
Pulling on the leash, he fished out the remote and commanded the Steersman to return. The matte sphere appeared in the same instant, as if by magic. Even the airlock started to open, as every second now mattered.
Yiri didn't even notice any pursuers. He dove into the airlock and opened the inner doors as soon as the outer ones had a chance to seal. He felt a shove of the air and hurried to the cockpit.
The Steersman was ready to jump at any moment. The screen showed four red dots moving towards the gray spark of the Swarm ship. A gravitational giant, the Orion base, remained beyond the edge of the sensors, but its presence could be felt in everything, from the trajectories of the pursuers to the drift of the Steersman itself.
"You're weak against my tech!" Yiri said arrogantly and told the system to jump. The fact that the tech didn't actually belong to him (produced by the Swarm and owned the Master) didn't bother him in the least.
The sphere of the Steersman left into the Barrier, leaving the pursuers in the dust. It was one of those cases where no one in the universe would be able to track the jump. Well, maybe the Swarm's own engineers. After all, they'd built the drive, so they could probably track it.
But Yiri-Yovasi could also be mistaken about the latter.
He looked at the gradually fading dots on the screen that indicated the alien ships. He regretted not being able to tell them "Yovasi" for real, simultaneously with a volley.
If the Master entrusts this ship to me again, Yiri-Yovasi decided, I'll ask that they install a weapon of some kind on it. Preferably a powerful one…
With that, he unpacked his purchase. The drive was almost identical to the broken one. Yiri placed it where it was supposed to go, hooked it up, loaded the disk, and linked it to the guidance system. The computer started to process the data.
"It's working!" Yiri hooted in satisfaction. "I think I'm good now…"
He'd been taking a huge risk by going to Tau Claudus Turtur. But now the risk was behind him.
Yiri also thought that it had helped distract him from the visions and the oddities with the sarcophagus.
Soon the system signaled that the new course was processed, the route was laid in, and he could initiate the first pulsation. Yiri hurried to confirm the jump without even bothering to review the route. He didn't even consider where the nice and trouble-free Swarm ship might go.
Unfortunately for Yiri-Yovasi, the superinsect tech had simply decided to reuse the recently employed data. Specifically, the gravitational chart of the area around Tau Claudus Turtur, as the Steersman had performed the blind jump in virtually the opposite direction of the course desired by the Master. And now it was going back.
The small sphere was detected by Takhchean military the moment it appeared from beyond the Barrier. By chance, the Steersman had arrived within weapons range of a combat satellite. And for a short while it couldn't leave the danger zone while it was calculating the adjustments to the second pulsation.
The Takhchean military decided not to take any chances and fired. A deadly wave dashed out towards the Steersman.
Yiri-Yovasi, still in a slight euphoria from a successful escape, felt a chill in his chest. He rose sharply in his seat and then turned towards the exit from the cockpit.
The Angel of Death in yellow clothing stood there holding a water clock and a nine-pointed star. Silent and motionless.
The Oaonsz shapeshifter Yiri was seeing it for the third time in a very short period.
In the silence of the cockpit, through the barely audible rustling of the drive, Yiri made out an exhale, "Yovasi…"
Why "goodbye"?
And then the pulse from the satellite reached the Steersman.
The Swarm ship had some defenses, but it simply didn't have enough power to completely shield the crew from a pulse of such power. So Yiri-Yovasi had time to realize he was dying.
The Angel of Death waited for what was only recently a living being to stop moving on the cockpit floor as a lump of unthinking protoplasm and slowly faded away.
It couldn't exist for long outside the illusions of those it appeared to.