SAL KONSTANZ
The wreck of the Gigolo Aunt resembled half a dozen other freighters I’d found over the years, drifting and incapacitated. I could see thin plumes of air, water and other fluids jetting from various fissures in the hull. They froze to crystal showers as they hit hard vacuum, glinting brightly in the light of the distant sun.
Like many ancient commercial craft, the Gigolo Aunt employed an antiquated set of electrically charged wings to haul it through the hypervoid—something the Trouble Dog claimed to find “quaint”, although she couldn’t quite conceal the scorn in her voice.
“And what’s with the stripes?” she asked. “Don’t these senile old ships have any self-respect?”
She’d changed into her default white shirt and black tie ensemble, making her look even more androgynous than usual.
“Be nice,” I told her.
She sniffed haughtily. “I’m always nice.”
I raised an eyebrow. She chose to ignore it.
“Just tell them we’re coming in fast and we’ll get them out.”
“Yes, Captain.”
“By the way, what happened to ‘Commodore’?”
The Trouble Dog made an embarrassed face. “That was when you had more than one ship.”
She said it so matter-of-factly, I almost missed the grief behind her words—grief I hadn’t known she could feel, and which she’d kept hidden from me until now.
“I didn’t ask Adalwolf to cover our retreat, you know.”
“I know.” She sighed. “I tried to talk him out of it.”
“I’m sorry.”
She shrugged. “It’s not your fault. He always expected to die in a fireball of glory.” She made a show of clearing her throat, and then recited,
“With weeping and with laughter
Still is the story told,
How well Horatius kept the bridge
In the brave days of old.”
* * *
Hypervoid drive signatures were coming in from all over the sky. Wherever we looked, white knife ships were closing on our position. I told the Trouble Dog to slide in next to the injured Gigolo Aunt, and changed into my bulky old pressure suit as we docked airlocks. Air hissed as the pressure equalised. The hatch opened, and I stepped aboard. A young woman met me. She had one blue eye and one brown. Her white hair had been buzzed short on one side, and a large golden earring gave her a spunky, piratical look.
“I’m Cordelia Pa. This is my father’s ship.”
I raised my faceplate. “Where’s he?”
“The Intrusion took him.”
“So who’s in command?”
“I am.”
She looked to be in her early twenties, but something about her eyes made her look much older, and she projected a fierceness that proclaimed her capability to deal with anything the universe might hurl her way. I glanced up the corridor behind her. “Your distress call came from somebody claiming to be Sofia Nikitas.”
“Yes. Would you like to meet her?”
“I most certainly would.”
“Follow me.”
She led me into the depths of the old freighter, and I clumped after her, cursing the caution that had made me don my suit. It wasn’t the easiest of things to walk around in—but the damaged ship was venting atmosphere, and for all I knew, it might suffer a sudden and catastrophic depressurisation. My House training wouldn’t let me go in unprepared.
Emergency lighting painted the corridors red. Some sections were completely in darkness, but Cordelia moved through them all with the sure foot of someone who’d spent a large portion of their life in these environs. The way she strode ahead, I wouldn’t have been surprised had she been able to navigate her way through the ship blindfolded.
The damage to the Gigolo Aunt was extensive, and we had to route around a couple of impassable sections of corridor. But eventually, after several twists and turns, we came to a common area. And there, standing in the centre of it, next to a small, frog-like creature, was Sofia Nikitas.
She looked almost exactly as she had in all the footage that I’d seen of her. Perhaps her face was a little older and more careworn, and her hair whiter than in the pictures of her I’d seen, but she was still essentially unchanged after more than a century.
“Hello.” She stepped forward and shook my gloved hand. Her gaze fell on the yellow star insignia stitched to my suit’s outer layer. “I’m Sofia, and this is Gant. Are you really from the House?”
“I am.” I detached my helmet and placed it on one of the chairs. “My name’s Sally Konstanz, and I am your great-great-granddaughter.”
Her eyes widened. “You are?”
“It was something my mother never let me forget.”
“And is she still alive, your mother? What about your father? Are there any more of you?”
“As far as I know, I’m your only surviving descendant.” I shrugged. “There was a war, you see…”
“Good heavens.”
“Yeah, I’m here to rescue you.” I jerked a gauntleted thumb back in the direction of the airlock.
“I appreciate that, my dear. But please forgive me if I need a moment to process this.” She put a hand against the back of a couch, and for a moment, I was worried she might be about to faint.
“It’s a bit of a strange situation,” I acknowledged.
“It’s more than that.” She gave a little shake of the head. “Of all the spaceships in all the galaxy…”
“It’s not that unlikely,” I said. “There must have been a fair chance one or more of your offspring would have entered the House. And then when you sent that distress call, you must have hoped a House ship would answer it.”
Sofia stood upright and raised her chin. “No,” she said. “A coincidence of this magnitude can only mean one thing: we were destined to meet.”
I smiled. “I don’t believe in destiny.”
“Nobody does, until it comes for them.”
The ship groaned around us, and the creature called Gant spoke up. “If we don’t hurry this along, ladies, destiny’s gonna come for us all, a whole lot sooner than you think.”
* * *
When we were all safely back aboard the Trouble Dog, I told the ship to disengage from the wreck of the Gigolo Aunt and head into the shelter of the Plates. If anything came looking for us, hopefully we’d be able to stay hidden among them, their bulks masking us from thermal and visual scans.
I’d called the whole crew together. Preston, Nod, Riley Addison and Lucy joined Cordelia, Sofia and Gant in the galley. Even Okonkwo had joined us. The changes he’d undergone weren’t immediately apparent. The effects of the chromosome adjustment would take a few days to fully propagate through the body, and his hormones would still be in a state of flux. But already, thanks to cosmetic surgery, his voice was deeper, chest flatter, and jaw squarer than they’d previously been. Even his shoulders looked wider. As the others helped themselves to coffee and took seats around one of the tables—and while Preston checked the new arrivals for injuries or infections—I took him aside.
“How do you feel?” I asked. His skin smelled of soap and his uniform remained as immaculate as ever. But for the first time since I’d known him, he seemed uncertain. Maybe a little nervous.
He forced a self-conscious smile. “Like a new man, Captain.”
Despite his uneasiness, a weight seemed to have been taken from him. Bronte Okonkwo had been an uptight pain in the ass. The person now standing before me seemed looser and more relaxed, even if he moved awkwardly due to soreness from the procedures he’d undergone.
“So, what do I call you now? I assume you’re no longer going by the name Bronte?”
“I have yet to decide.” He looked tired. If the situation had been different, I would have ordered him to his bunk for a couple of days of rest and recuperation. “For now, Okonkwo will suffice.”
I put a hand on his shoulder. “Okay, then. You take it easy.”
His posture stiffened. “I’m more than capable of discharging my duties.”
I let go. “Relax, Commander. I wasn’t calling your capabilities into question. Just trying to express some friendly concern, that’s all.”
“Yes, sir.” The corners of his eyes crinkled. “Sorry, sir.”
The butterflies were in my chest again. I pushed him away. “Now, go and get a coffee and sit down, for heaven’s sake.”
“Yes, sir.”
I watched him pick his way between the tables towards the printer, and then turned my attention to the rest of the room.
“Okay,” I said loudly, cutting across their conversations. “I’d like to welcome our guests aboard the Reclamation Vessel Trouble Dog. But before we go any further with the pleasantries, I have some questions that urgently require answers.”
Cordelia brushed back her lopsided fringe and frowned at me. “Such as?”
“Such as how an unarmed freighter disabled three warships from the Marble Armada.”
Her cheeks reddened. Her different-coloured eyes glanced down at her hands.
Standing beside the girl, Sofia said, “Cordelia’s sensitive to Hearther technology. She can manipulate it through force of will.”
I could see faint traces of my own features in the lines of the old woman’s face. We had similar cheekbones, and there was something about the eyes and the shape of the mouth that gave me the unnerving sensation of confronting my future self.
I rubbed the bandage covering my empty eye socket. One day, in the unlikely event we lived through all this and made it back to somewhere with a decent hospital and skilled surgeons, I might be able to have it replaced, but for now, I was content to wear the wound in the same way the Trouble Dog had left the dents in her prow. We’d both made sacrifices for the cause. We’d both been damaged, but as our comrades had paid with their lives, it seemed petty of us to worry about superficial scars.
“Are you saying she ‘manipulated’ three warships to death, just by thinking about it?”
“Essentially, yes.”
I didn’t know what to say. I glanced around at the others in the room and saw my confusion shared.
Sofia said, “The ability was implanted in her genes by the Intrusion, as a contingency measure.”
“Why?” Okonkwo demanded. “To fight the Fleet of Knives?”
“Partly.”
“Then why didn’t it create a thousand such individuals?” He slapped the table in front of him, making his cup jump. “The Fleet has a million ships! Surely she cannot deal with them all?”
“Not by herself, no.”
“Then what is the purpose?”
“Escape.” Sofia swirled her finger on the tabletop and brought up a view of the Plates. To me, they looked like twenty serving platters, each heaped with a different delicacy. Some were brightly lit and covered in vegetation; others held barely illuminated industrial facilities.
“The Plates can support a population of several million,” Sofia continued. “We intend to use them to evacuate this sector of space. No matter the outcome of the confrontation between the Fleet and the enemy, some humans will survive.”
“And the rest?” Addison asked. It was the first time I’d heard her speak in several days. “What about them? Are you just going to run away and leave them to die?”
Sofia blinked at her. “There isn’t much else we can do. We can’t take on the whole Fleet, and certainly not while we’re fighting off the enemy from the higher dimensions.”
Addison made a face. She got to her feet and walked out. I wanted to go after her. I knew she was still angry and grief-stricken over Johnny Schultz’s sacrifice. Instead, I looked Sofia in the eye.
“To be honest, we were hoping for something more.”
The faces of my crew all registered disappointment. “We’ve come a long way and lost a lot of people,” I told her, “because the evidence suggested both the white ships and the Scourers avoided the Intrusion. We were hoping you had some defences. Maybe even some sort of weapon. But all you’ve got is one girl and a lifeboat?”
“A swarm of lifeboats capable of transporting several million people.” Sofia held up conciliatory hands. “And we do have defences. Neither the Fleet nor the Scourers can pass through the Intrusion. Nothing can enter without the right codes.”
“And you have these codes?”
“I do.”
I felt like being sick. “And what’s on the other side of the wormhole?”
“Safety, of a sort.”
Silence fell.
Gant let out a long, reptilian fart. “Well, excuse me,” he said, “if I’m not very fucking reassured.”
I moved away from him. “Is there nothing else we can do?”
Sofia shook her head. “I’m open to suggestions, love, but our options seem rather limited. We can’t take on both of the forces coming at us. Our only option is the one prepared in advance: a strategic retreat.”
Beside her, Cordelia looked up from the contemplation of her hands. Her golden earring caught the light. Her mouth was a straight line.
“I think I might have an idea,” she said. “But I’ll need to borrow a shuttle.”