Kathra had offered to let him rest for a while, but Daniel had politely refused, whispering to her that if he didn’t do it now, he might never work up the courage again. She could respect that. This entire day had been a calculated risk, the man’s ruthless drive against his psychological fragility.
Now she was sitting in Spectre One, hanging midway between the WinterStar and the Turtle. Originally, she had intended to keep more of the comitatus behind, but they had given her a look that promised all manner of rebellion if they weren’t allowed to be here with her, so she had twenty other ships handy.
What they might do, she wasn’t sure. The craft were all armed, but that was sufficient for pirates and fools, not conquerors, as Daniel had proclaimed the creature he was usurping today.
“Spectre One, this is Daniel,” the voice came over the radio sounding tinny.
They had made up a headset for him to wear. It didn’t have a lot of power or range, but it let her talk to the man, as he was truly intent on walking in space. Nobody understood how, but it had apparently been done, so Daniel was adamant that he would figure it out himself.
“Go ahead, Daniel,” Kathra replied, wondering if she should go ahead and assign him his own flight number, like the rest of her comitatus had, so that he understood that he belonged.
Perhaps when they got back, and she was sure he still existed as a person, rather than having been hijacked by Urid-Varg over on the ship. Or getting himself killed in the meantime.
Silence.
“Daniel?” Kathra repeated.
“Working up the courage,” he said. “Sealing up the airlock now and opening the outer door. Here goes nothing.”
Kathra heard the beeping over the radio fade as the air was drawn out of the chamber.
“How are you doing, Daniel?” she asked carefully.
“I think if I peed myself right now, the suit would just absorb it,” her chef replied with a slight chuckle. “We may find out soon.”
“Keep talking,” she ordered him. “If something goes wrong at your end, we might not know until your frozen corpse floated by.”
“Thank you for that lovely image, Commander,” his voice took on an extra layer of tartness. “I shall endeavor to remember it next time I’m making a dessert of some sort, where frozen spaceman might be an appropriate theme. When’s your birthday again?”
Kathra heard several of her crew snorting over lines that they had left open. At least everyone was approaching this with an open mind.
She didn’t think it appropriate to remind these women that their fates might come down to the decisions of one man. They might not appreciate her humor.
“Not for several more months,” Kathra replied when the line got quiet again. “You can torture Erin first.”
“Oh, thank you, Kathra,” her best friend came over the line.
More laughter.
“The outer door is opening now,” Daniel said. “And I’m not exploding, so we’ll perhaps count this as a win. I can see darkness and distant stars through the hatch as it retracts inward. Dead silence around me, without any air to carry anything but the sound of my heartbeat.”
She heard him swallow once, the mic being close enough to his throat for those sounds.
“And now, the stupid male is walking out into space, wearing a living gem as a spacesuit and pretending he’s not going to lose his bladder as he turns and looks backwards at WinterStar, hanging still behind him and rotating,” Daniel continued.
On her scanner boards, Kathra saw a new dot emerge from the stern of her flagship and begin to move in this direction. The space between the two ships was roughly a kilometer or so at the moment. Enough for all the Spectres to be in between, at relative rest and facing in all directions, with scanners pinging madly and guns ready for whatever trouble might emerge.
Kathra’s greatest fear over the last few days had been another, damned Septagon finding her, even clear out here. She was well beyond even systems with Sept colonies being established, and well around the curve of their border from the heart of the Free Worlds. Most of this sector was empty of anything but prospectors, and perhaps religious minorities that had fled the reach of Imperial Earth at some point in the distant past. How long those folks remained free was a matter of speculation.
Kathra and her mother had both understood that being on a planet made you vulnerable to conquest. The tribal squadron could just fly away from the Sept, or any others. It kept the population extremely small, but modern medicine allowed her to maintain eighty-five percent of the adults as females.
“And now, the craziness begins,” Daniel’s voice brought her back from flights of fancy. “I am…uhm…telling the suit to fly over there. I think. Somebody be ready to catch me?”
“I have you, Daniel,” Erin came over the line. “We’ll chase you down if something goes wrong, and I’m in a suit so I can vent my ship to let you inside.”
“Thank you,” he said succinctly.
On the scanner, a blue-shift appeared as he started to move. It wasn’t much, but the very recognition that Daniel Lémieux could move in space without a suit or a ship was dangerous enough.
Any other man…
“Commander, I must share an image with you,” Daniel said quietly. “In my mind, in somebody else’s memories, all four of the forward fins are landing platforms. The rear two are…I can’t call them engines, because I really don’t understand it, but they make it fly.”
“Someone else’s memories, Daniel?” Kathra asked.
“They’re all in here, Commander,” he said with a jerky, jittery voice. “Urid-Varg controlled them, but he’s gone now. I don’t want to enslave them, but some of them are willing to…talk, I suppose is as good a word as any other. They are trying to share memories with me. If you hear me talk in the present tense about those other men, that’s what happened. Erin won’t necessarily have to shoot me.”
“Necessarily,” Erin clarified with a chuckle.
“Necessarily,” Daniel agreed. “She might do it because it becomes necessary later, but I can’t help that. I am going to try to land on the right, forward fin. Is the correct term starboard?”
“Starboard One,” Kathra said, classifying it for everyone listening.
“Yes. Very good,” Daniel said. “Could you join me, please? I could really use some company.”
Yes. She supposed he might. Nothing would prepare anyone for what he was doing. But nobody else on WinterStar could have done it. He was the first man to serve aboard her flagship in several years.
“Coming alongside, Daniel,” she replied, manipulating her thrusters and gyros to bring her nose around and then start pushing her on an intercept course.
The Star Turtle was huge. Septagon-sized, without the gap in the bottom. Nearly two and a half kilometers wide across just the shell. Several times that from tip of the snout to the end of that tail, stuck out just like a real sea turtle’s. As she approached, that fin looked large enough that the entire Haunt could have landed on the outside with space to spare.
Daniel hung in space beside her, glowing enough that she could see him with her naked eye, perhaps fifty meters away. The rest of The Haunt hung around the two of them protectively.
“I always wanted to do this,” he said mischievously. “Open sesame.”
Kathra recognized the term from ancient, Terran literature that had apparently infected almost all cultures eventually. The Tales of the Thousand and One Nights.
In front of her, the fin seemed to split open horizontally, the top retracting from the bottom to open a wide, slit mouth that ran over four hundred meters, from where the fin emerged to the hinge near the tip.
Curses and joy filled the radio as the others saw the same thing.
Daniel turned towards her across the space, like he wanted to make sure she was still there.
“I’m supposed to go in there,” he said. “You’ll come with me?”
She could hear the fear in his voice. That perhaps she and her people would blast off on their valence drives instead as soon as he was out of sight and he would be left alone with his fears and Urid-Varg’s ghosts.
“Of course,” Kathra reassured him. “Lead the way.”
He moved quickly, with so little mass to accelerate. Kathra followed at a more sedate pace, knowing she would have to decelerate at the other end when she wanted to land.
Inside he came down onto what looked like a firm deck. She would have said metal, but it was too green for anything she had ever seen, much like the rest of the giant ship.
Still, Kathra flew into that maw and maneuvered herself adroitly. The deck here was deep enough for six of her Spectres to be lined up nose to tail, and perhaps thirty ships wide. And this was just one of four landing bays?
“Anyone else coming?” Daniel asked.
Kathra considered it briefly.
“Erin, Areen, Joane, join us,” she called out. “Kamharida and Iruoma set up a watch cycle and rotate half the team back to WinterStar for now, but keep people in the sky at all times.”
A chorus of assents as people began to move.
Kathra began to shut down her engines and power system, but she kept an eye on Daniel, standing in the middle of the deck, alternately watching her, the approaching Spectres, and the place at the body where there appeared to be an enormous airlock.
What would they find inside?
Or who?