Human, page 11
part #1 of Humanity Ascendant Series
As an answer, Eth leaned forward and touched the emergency close button on Glen’s suit. A spherical shell enveloped his head and then shrank down to proper size as the nanite-based helmet flowed into place.
“Smells better now, doesn’t it?” Eth asked. He tapped the side of Glen’s helmet. “Never accept the situation. There’s always a better way.”
“Yeah,” Glen admitted, “the stink is gone.”
Oliv laughed.
Glen gave her a mock-angry look. “That offer still stands…”
She made a face. “No, thanks, Retch!”
“Oh, hells no! That is not gonna be my call sign on this bucket…”
“Alright, knock it off you numbskulls!” Eth climbed into his seat next to Hendy. “Everybody close up. We might have hull breaches while the new emitters grow.” He waited till all suits read as closed and operating in his heads-up display before pumping the air into storage.
He opened a channel to all the suits. “Noa, you’re clear to go ahead and make the changes.”
Eth looked up and, sure enough, small sections of hull above him were dissolving away and flowing in to form the new emitters. It took less than two minutes to finish the new nodes and then the hull flowed forward to close the gaps. He got up to look in the back and found that one large hole had been left above the cube of spare nanites in the cargo area, just aft of engineering.
Rather than bringing the new replacement material forward to seal each individual breach, the hull shifted sections forward to seal the breaches, leaving one collected hole at the back where the new material wouldn’t have as far to travel.
The hole closed up as he watched.
“Repressurizing,” Noa advised.
A faint hiss slowly grew in volume as it created the atmosphere to carry it. Eth’s HUD gave him a green indicator and he opened up again.
That first breath after a re-press always had a slightly oily taste.
“We’re ready to try again?”
“Yeah, but take it easy this time. Let’s do a one gee acceleration and I’ll get some data. We might want to do a little more adjusting to make sure nobody suddenly loses their eighth vertebra through their chest or anything.”
“Y’know, that might have been a more sensible way for us to have run our last few attempts,” Eth muttered.
“Maybe,” Noa conceded, “but they implanted us with crew skills not with ship design and testing. I’d say we’re doing pretty damn well so far.”
Eth returned to his seat. “Keep it to one gravity this time, OK?”
Hendy grinned. “Fine with me.”
“Anytime you’re ready, Hendy.”
“We’re already moving,” the pilot replied, grinning. “One gee forward.”
“Huh!” He kept quiet for a few minutes, half expecting another gut-wrenching evolution.
Noa came up to kneel between them. “Found a few trouble-spots but they should all be gone now. Wanna try something more fun?”
The three men shared a look.
“Set up an attack run on the Dibbarra , Hendy.” Eth tightened his restraints, though he was certain this attempt would succeed.
“You’re not gonna need those,” Noa scoffed, “because, if you do end up needing them, they ain’t gonna save you at high gee. The recovery team will be scraping pasta sauce off the bulkheads for days.” He saw the pilot’s look. “Just kidding, Hendy.”
The pilot’s shoulders relaxed slightly as he finished setting up his run.
Noa grinned. “Because they’d probably just dissolve the ship back into a cube and then hose off the hangar deck.”
Frowning, Hendy’s finger stabbed at the control panel.
The entire fleet suddenly snapped back into view with brutal speed. The ships appeared to spread, rapidly growing until only the hull of the Dibbarra was visible through the windows.
Eth grabbed his armrests, his knuckles turning white, and even Noa was holding onto the back of Eth’s chair.
They stopped so suddenly that the three men twitched in alarm.
“Whew!” Eth shuddered. “That was intense!”
“Why’d we stop here?” Noa was looking out the windows above the front seats. The large circular armature that generated the spatial distortion of the Dibbarra’s shaping drive loomed overhead like a planetary ring.
“Blind spot in their sensor suite,” the pilot said quietly. “They’ll be wondering where we went.” He wiped a hand across his forehead. “That seemed a lot less horrifying when I laid it into the helm!”
Who’s laughing now? Eth thought. Still the Quailu, but now they’re laughing at their own instead of at us. The other ships would know where they were because the only blind spot they were in was the Dibbarra’s. They’d know the sensor team aboard their flagship was scrambling to figure out what had just happened.
Oliv came forward, stopping next to Noa. “It still stinks back there,” she declared. “When are we gonna try moving this bucket? I wanna get back aboard the flagship and spend an hour in the shower-hall getting this smell off me.”
The three men looked at each other, hardly believing she’d been completely unaware while they were scaring themselves half to death. After that kind of strain, there was no stopping it. They all broke out laughing.
“What?” she demanded, but they just laughed harder. Her skin flushed and, given her comment about taking a shower, she was probably interpreting their reaction all wrong. “Glen was right.” She stormed off. “You guys are assholes!”
Shore Leave
E th passed through an open airlock onto the station’s main concourse. From the looks of the undisturbed corrosion on the huge doorframe, it hadn’t even been test-closed in a few centuries.
He forgot about the door and stopped walking, his mouth hanging open. The space in front of him was immense.
The station orbiting Kwharaz was the size of a small shepherd moon and the middle was an open space that could have swallowed up the entire fleet without even noticing.
He had no real plan, but he had four hours before he needed to be back on the ship and the chance to get away from everything was impossible to pass up. He never realized what a luxury it had been to serve under Ab. With Ab dead, his entire unit looked to him for answers.
He walked across the busy surface-street, stepping around a patch of bird droppings beneath a lamp-post. He approached the railing on the far side. Looking down, he thought he saw the bottom but it was kilometers away. The ceiling, if that word applied to something so large, curved away into the hazy distance.
A roughly spherical conglomeration floated in the middle and he’d been told it contained the majority of the station’s commercial and entertainment districts. It also served as a transit node for people and goods travelling from one side to the other. He had no specific destination in mind so he headed for one of the barge docks.
There was a toll-gate but he just jumped the railing and dropped into the barge, knowing he wouldn’t get caught. He took a seat just as another alien did the same thing. He was slightly taller than Eth but built more lightly. A single, heavy plate of flat horn, triangular in shape, descended between wide-set eyes that stayed on Eth as he sat across from him.
The forehead plate was Eth’s first clue.
The barge pulled away from the dock and turned for the central globe. When they left the bleed edge of the station decking, he noticed that the gravity didn’t extend above the gunwales of the barge. A good jump could send you floating off into the empty space. He let his arms float free to confirm it, then dropped them back into the gravity, feeling like a yokel.
He shrugged at the tall alien, who was still watching him, but the creature made no attempt to reciprocate the gesture.
Screw you, buddy.
About a half kilometer into the trip, they ran into moist air. Droplets of increasing size were coalescing all around them. With no gravity out here, atmospheric water had nowhere to go unless it was picked up by one of the small orange and white collector ships that plied the damp weather.
He leaned forward, which finally seemed to elicit a reaction from his new companion, but it was mastered quickly. Curious, Eth sat back again, just missing a large lump of water that undulated past where his head had been. He gave up on the alien and concentrated on avoiding the water.
He could see now why the grav field only reached as far as the gunwales. Any higher and it would be pulling a torrent of rain down on the passengers. He noticed they were all leaning down with their heads between their knees or, if space permitted, laying on their sides on the benches to avoid the water.
Why can’t they just put a shield out front? He lay over on his side, noticing the other creature merely sat upright, making no effort to avoid the water.
It seemed completely improbable, but not a single drop touched him. Eth could have called this his second clue, but why waste time. That kind of luck was confirmation enough.
He’d never seen a Varangian before.
The water seemed to have passed or, rather, they’d passed the water, so he sat up again. The globe was closer now and he could make out a steady stream of cargo vehicles on flight paths that led to the arms radiating from the outside surface of the station where freighters docked. The interiors of the arms were hollow to allow fast access from the receiving docks to the commercial zones deep inside the station.
They pulled up to wait for their turn at a dock and he could smell the place. Spices, hot food, garbage and the sweat of a thousand races all mingled in an exotic brew. It made a surprisingly pleasant change from the musky odor of his Quailu crewmates.
These were people who didn’t automatically think of Humans as slaves and they didn’t have any expectations of him either.
Nobody out here gave any thought to a backwater like Kish.
The barge ahead of them finally backed away and they slid into place. He hopped off and set a course for the center, not as a result of any particular logic; he was just letting his feet choose while he enjoyed the new environment.
Centuries of grunge had accumulated in every corner. Cooking-grease smoke from the myriad hole-in-the-wall cook-shops had settled onto every surface and, where it didn’t get ground away by shoes, it trapped dirt, building up a crust, spattered here and there with droppings from the birds and small pests that infested every station in the empire.
His stomach growled and he turned down a side alley, narrowly avoiding a small delivery vehicle that careened around a corner. The smells were promising good food. He stepped over the extended legs of a Vegan youngster who sat outside a noodle shop, scrubbing sensory hairs from the back of some kind of arachnid they’d be featuring in that night’s menu. Another Vegan, probably his little brother, was rinsing small cups in a trickle of water that ran along the curb.
Eth made a mental note to observe the plumbing arrangements of any place he decided to eat at.
He picked a shop at random but their menu was one of those annoying holo screens that kept changing every time you thought you’d spotted something you might like to try.
He moved on, finding a shop with an interactive holo-menu and bought some kind of dead animal on a stick. He had no idea what it was or where it came from but it had a great sauce on it. The meat was cooked to a crisp so it was probably safe. By the third bite, the salt content was making itself unmistakably obvious. He continued along in search of something to drink.
The alley opened up on a small urban crevasse of sorts and he stopped at a small bar that was little more than a walk-up counter where the bartender stood with his back to the railing. It gave a great view of the open space and, more importantly, the bartender was washing something in a sink that had suds in it.
Eth ordered an orange-hued ale. He took a deep drink, then set it down to take another bite.
The hairs on the back of his neck sprang up and he looked to his right. The Varangian was standing next to him. He was annoyed but did his best to pretend the creature wasn’t there.
“You’re a Human, aren’t you?”
Eth finished chewing his last bite of… whatever… and tossed the stick in a collection bin behind the bar. “Yes.” He took another drink.
“I’ve never seen a Human before,” the Varangian said. “I thought they all had to stay in their sector. Aren’t all of your people wardu?”
“Not all of us,” Eth grunted. “Not anymore.”
“Ah.” He nodded. “Lots of native species filling out the ranks lately, given all the excitement.” He looked over at Eth. “Not many arboreals, though.”
“You have a problem with that?”
“Why should I?” The Varangian sounded mildly amused. “My species is arboreal as well. Something about leaping for branches and not missing… It opens evolutionary paths – sometimes.”
“We’re certainly rare, you and I,” Eth admitted, turning to look at the creature. His face was mildly unsettling. The hard plate on his forehead gave him a fierce appearance. “What stroke of wild luck brought the two of us to this conversation?”
“Luck is a deliberate thing, Human. Some of us may be more deliberate than others, but never mistake luck for mere numeric chance.”
“Ok, my deliberate, arboreal brother – what deliberate stroke of luck put us here together?”
The Varangian gazed back at him for a heartbeat. “That toll collector, back at the barge dock – he works on commission. He’d slit his own mother’s throat before he’d let her ride free… Well, mother-in-law, at least.
“There’s a fair amount of money lost through rail-jumpers, so he employs a couple of urchins to watch the rail for him. They get paid every time they catch someone and the little brats are hungry. They don’t lose focus.”
“So?”
“So, how did you know you’d get away with jumping the toll?”
“You with the transit police?”
“I’m a forensic accountant.”
“Then why all the questions?”
Another pause. “Because you seem very lucky, my arboreal acquaintance.” He’d somehow managed to make it sound almost like an accusation.
Eth was getting tired of talking about himself. “You’re really an accountant?”
“Why not?”
“I guess I thought you’d turn out to be an imperial guardsman.”
“I get that a lot. Would it surprise you to know that my world has an entire economy of its own? We have soldiers, cops, politicians, accountants, welders, washroom attendants…”
“You mean those guys that sit by the hand-washers, handing out mints? They creep me out and, given what you were just doing, where do they expect you to put the mints?”
“You’re changing the topic…”
“Yes, I am. That’s what you do in a conversation. It’s frowned upon, however, in an interrogation, so piss off.” He turned back to his ale and took another drink.
The Varangian inclined his head. “As you wish. I’ll…”
Eth looked over, intrigued by the pause and frowned. The mug he was setting down on the counter missed and tumbled down onto the barman’s shelf, splashing ale everywhere.
The young Human female they were both staring at turned to them and went immediately into a slight crouch, eyes wide in shock.
Before Eth could say anything, her expression went blank and she turned to sprint away, her dirty orange jumpsuit still advertising her progress until she ducked down a side alley.
“One of your crew?” the Varangian asked.
“No.”
Without another word, the alien raced off after the woman.
Eth stood there, frowning until the barman’s complaints finally registered. With an irritated glance at the ale-soaked creature, he waved his wrist over a scanner to pay for his drink and then set off after the Varangian.
Why would an accountant take such an interest in some random Human? Why would he take an even greater interest in the wild-looking woman they’d just seen?
More to the point – who the hells was she?
He jumped, sailing over a trashcan knocked over by a drunk, and landed lightly, swerving right to head down a side alley parallel to the one she and the Varangian had disappeared into. He raced through the startled crowd, fending off elbows and protrusions as he approached the outer end, facing onto the massive open space of the station.
A deep thrumming noise vibrated his gut just before he rounded the corner to find the woman lying on the ground with the Varangian jogging over to her.
“Thought you were just an accountant,” Eth commented, nodding at the small stun emitter in the other’s hand.
“Well…” The Varangian shrugged. “… Not just. ” He knelt beside the woman.
“I’m trying to decide what to ask first –” Eth admitted. “Why you were following me, why you chased that woman or why you shot her with a stun weapon.”
“We’ve been curious about you Humans for a long time now,” the Varangian explained as he slid his weapon into a pocket. He leaned forward to gently open one of the woman’s eyelids. Apparently satisfied with what he saw there, he stood again, turning to face Eth.
“As for her, she ran.” He grinned at Eth. “It seemed churlish of me to simply ignore the gesture and, as I’ve said, we’re curious about you.”
“So why stun her instead of me?”
“You’re mushkenu.” He nodded down at the woman. “She’s wardu and, from the look of her, she’s been on the run from her owners for a long time. That makes her contraband.”
Eth’s right hand came to rest on his holstered weapon. That word didn’t sit well with him. He’d been a member of her class a few short weeks ago but he was surprised at how angry he now felt at hearing one of his own kind referred to as contraband.
A major part of coming to terms with his own freedom involved a re-definition of his views on Humanity in general. Comments that would have passed unremarked now had new impact for him. You couldn’t insult a slave.
But you could insult a mushkenu.
The Varangian seemed to read some of this in Eth’s facial expressions, or perhaps simply from his hand moving to his weapon. “I mean no insult to your species,” he asserted. “You have no need to fear for her safety, assuming, of course, you don’t intend to claim custody.” His tone pitched the last part of his statement as a question.
