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Gau Shesharrim emerged from hyperstream sedation to find himself surrounded by unfamiliar stars again. The hypodermic slid from his arm and coiled into its compartment in the pilot’s cradle while he tried to blink himself awake for the few hours he would have between gate transfers. The brief transfer almost wasn’t worth waking up for, but he didn’t dare sleep through it. Gau also preferred to avoid the extreme vertigo and bouts of vomiting he’d suffered the last time he tried to stay awake during a hyperstream transfer.
He hadn’t wanted to pass through Rreluush-Tren’s system at all. There was altogether too much of a Terran presence for comfort, and their Urd allies weren’t much better. But the nav computer had determined the best route to the Aival system involved passing Rreluush-Tren, and he trusted those algorithms. The sooner he made it to Aival, the sooner he could cache his ship, disappear into the capital city’s underground, and start making the connections he was going to need.
Gau’s stomach filled with acid in the usual attack of nerves as he waited for the hyperstream gate’s systems to reject his ship’s forged authentication codes.
It was a risk for which he’d prepared. Camouflaging holograms swathed Carnivore in the guise of a Terran personnel shuttle, and faked authentication codes extended the illusion to any automated system that interrogated its CPU. He’d even installed a filter to mask the sibilance of his natural Osk voice should any ships hail him. Still, there always came a moment of relief when a ‘stream gate again let him past.
He was prepared to run if necessary. Better to be shot out of the sky than submit to a ship inspection and be arrested.
The console beeped and the screen flashed a message: Authentication codes accepted. Gau relaxed the muscles in his abdomen.
After setting Carnivore’s autopilot, Gau leaned back in the pilot’s cradle and watched the silver stream of Terran and Urd ships swinging along the orbit of Hensk, the system’s large gas giant. As soon as Carnivore was clear of the massive planet’s gravity, he could turn off its holo-generators and burn vacuum for the gate.
There was a pop so quiet he wasn’t sure he’d heard anything at all. Gau almost fell out of the pilot’s cradle as blaring klaxons filled the bridge. He hissed and thumbed a button on the arm of the cradle. The wailing notched down several decibels. With the alarm at a lower volume, he could hear a high-pitched hiss.
Hull breach.
Gau ripped free of the cradle’s webbing and kicked off, twisting in the zero-gee so all four feet pointed toward the wall. He touched down feet-first on the living black hide of the bulkhead and pulled open the compartment that held his emergency EVA suit.
Gau threw on the suit as fast as possible without shirking safety protocols, stepping into the lower half and pulling it up around his flanks. Activated by movement and exposure to air, the living suit began to flow over his legs, flanks and torso. Gau held out his arms in a T to help the suit climb; the faster it achieved full coverage, the sooner he could track down that leak. The suit’s texture was unfamiliar but not unpleasant—smooth and leathery, not unlike the living bulkheads of his own ship.
The suit closed over his head. Below the rigid helmet capsule that encased his long snout, the flexible integument lay close to his skin, providing both protection—though less than his combat armor—and freedom of movement.
Gau took a couple of experimental breaths; the air tasted the same as it had outside the suit. He grabbed a canister of spray-on integument and kicked toward where the hiss was loudest.
He had to remove several floor panels to find the crack in the life support capsule. A tendril of black smoke sucked through a gap so small he wouldn’t have seen it otherwise.
Centering the nozzle of the can over the trickle of escaping smoke, he sprayed thick white sealant over the pinprick. In seconds, the spray-on sealant hardened to an airtight scale. The thin hiss of air stopped. Its exit blocked, smoke began to fill the bridge with a bluish, nearly imperceptible haze.
“Computer, what is the source of the smoke?” Gau asked.
“Unable to diagnose at this time,” the machine-flat voice replied.
“Try!”
“Possible damage to cladding layers Four, Five and Six. Probable dry dock repair required.”
His displeasure and frustration escaped in a taut exhalation between clenched teeth. Gau pushed aside the impossible task of obtaining repairs in Rreluush-Tren space from his immediate attention.
He kicked off from the floor, snagged the arm of the pilot’s cradle and hauled himself in. The first thing he checked, even before running proper diagnostics, was the Carnivore’s communication frequencies. He needed to make sure none of the ships he’d come through the gate with had tried to hail him. The last thing he needed was an offer of help from a Terran ship.
The communication console showed no incoming messages. Gau breathed out slowly.
He was about to swipe away the communications screen when he paused. No one had tried to hail him, but his scans showed several messages exchanged between various ships and a single Terran ship. Gau brought up the metadata Carnivore had scraped from the communication logs. It was a heavy supply ship operating out of Greenwich Hub, scheduled to make a drop of food, medicine and miscellaneous goods to the Terran depots on Rreluush-Tren. Designation: the Skycatcher. And it, too, appeared to be in distress.
Gau commanded the viewscreen to locate and zoom in on the supply ship. A small ring of greenish glyph tags encircled one craft among the mass of silver ships; the view inside the circle enlarged, and Gau drew a sharp breath.
A corona of unidentified particulates surrounded the Skycatcher and stretched behind it in a train like a comet’s tail. Reflected sunlight turned the debris cloud silver. The ship itself was outgassing from several spots along its hull. Uncontrolled thrust from the venting atmosphere made it list to one side, like a seagoing vessel taking on water. The hull had been penetrated when the ship rammed into the cloud of mysterious debris.
A rush of belated fear made Gau’s snout flush blue under the EVA helmet. He didn’t want to think what would have happened if the smaller Carnivore had flown directly into the tumbling mass of particles.
Movement onscreen caught his attention. Several Terran cruisers were configuring an escort around the Skycatcher. The nearest extended a mechanical arm and began spraying sealant foam onto one of the hull breaches. A temporary fix. Like Carnivore, Skycatcher would need dry-dock repairs to its internal machinery before it could traverse hyperspace safely again.
Gau exhaled slowly as the wisp of an idea formed. He brought up his ship’s nav program and calculated a new trajectory. The projected travel time was eighteen hours. Gau groaned. He could redirect ventilation subsystems to expel some of the smoke, but it would still be an uncomfortable transit.
He hadn’t planned to visit Rreluush-Tren, now or ever. It wasn’t a premeditated move in the game by which he lived his life. But then, sometimes the most interesting moves were those made out of necessity, desperation spurring inspiration. Gau hoped this was one of those times.
The Skycatcher and its escort peeled away from the rest of the convoy, heading toward Rreluush-Tren. Gau turned the Carnivore’s nose to follow.