“I’VE COME UP with a method to chart these previously unknown systems,” Yuskeya said as she returned the injector to the cupboard in First Aid. “You want to hear about it?”
I dangled my legs cautiously over the side of the gurney, hoping the meds wouldn’t take long to kick in. I had new sympathy for everyone I’d ever known who suffered from migraine headaches. Before this, I couldn’t have imagined what they were like. Now I had a new, very vivid, appreciation. I still hadn’t told Yuskeya about any other symptoms, though. What would be the point, if she couldn’t treat them anyway?
“Sure,” I said. “Good idea. We’ll want to give the Protectorate all the data we can.”
Yuskeya nodded. “We’ve only been in two new systems so far, and I don’t know how the Protectorate might have already designated the first one out of Delta Pavonis. It doesn’t matter, though.”
She crossed to the First Aid computer console and pulled up a personal file from her navigation charts, pointing to the entries she’d made so far. “I’m using a modified spectral classification system, simple identifiers. Maybe someday we’ll learn what the folks who live here actually call these stars,” she said with a smile.
“You’re optimistic,” I said.
“I’m prefacing all the stars since we left Nearspace with ‘OS’—for ‘Otherspace’,” she explained. “So the first system, out of Delta Pav, was OS-B8VI-01. Otherspace, then the spectral information, and 01 since it was the first one we skipped to. I logged the wormhole coordinates when we came through, too. So this system is OS-K0V-02.”
I grinned. “‘Otherspace’. I like it.”
“I was going for descriptive,” she said, “not necessarily scientific.”
“It works.”
“Great. I’ll keep an updated file with open access in the main computer.” She turned to leave the First Aid station.
Part of me hated to bring it up, but this seemed like as good a chance as any to talk to her about the ongoing tension between her and my engineer. “Yuskeya,” I said, “how are things between you and Viss?”
She turned to face me slowly, and leaned against the door, crossing her arms. Her dark eyes were wary. She’d taken to wearing her Protectorate uniform constantly, instead of her usual shipsuits or casual clothing. I wondered if she needed the comfort and familiarity of it, or if the choice spoke to something else. Perhaps the presence of Gerazan, a subordinate officer, on board? As some kind of a rebuke to Viss? Or did she simply want to be wearing it if things went . . . badly?
“Fine. Why do you ask?”
Her face had changed, shifting into that calm, expressionless poker-face I think they teach at the Protectorate akademio. Goodness knows, I’ve seen it enough times on Lanar, particularly when there’s something he can’t—or doesn’t want to—discuss with me. That spoke volumes all by itself.
I smiled. “Nice try. You think I haven’t noticed a little chill in the air between you two? More like an iceberg. It’s almost big enough to trip over.”
She sighed and shrugged. “We . . . have some things to work out.”
“Like the fact that you’re a Protectorate officer and didn’t tell anybody?” She opened her mouth, and I held up a hand. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me; I’m fine with it. But I get the feeling Viss isn’t.”
“I wasn’t too thrilled to find out he was doing . . . questionable . . . work for the Protectorate without my knowledge, either,” she said. “Smuggling cargo on your ship? I’m also not entirely pleased with your brother on that one, but he’s my commanding officer. He can get away with doing things I don’t like and not telling me everything.”
I slid off the gurney. Pain lanced behind my eyes, but I tried to hide the flinch. The room swam around me, and my vision blurred as if I was about to start crying, then everything righted itself. “So, the way I see it, you’re mad at each other for being on the same side. It doesn’t make much sense.”
“It’s not that.”
“It’s a trust issue, then,” I said, and she bit her lip and nodded.
“I know Viss has an . . . interesting past,” she said with a hint of a smile. “I don’t want—or need—to know everything he’s done. But he should trust me enough to tell me what he’s doing now.”
“Even if his bosses tell him not to? Doesn’t that put what he did in the same category as what you did?”
She flushed, one corner of her mouth twisting. “I know what you’re saying, Luta. And I know it makes sense. But I don’t seem to feel it—here.” She closed a fist and tapped it lightly over her heart. “You know?”
I sighed. “I guess I do. Just . . . don’t stop trying, okej? I’d rather see my crew happy than miserable, and things are—uncertain.”
“What, because we’re stranded in unknown space, surrounded by enemies?”
“Well, I meant because I don’t know how long this headache will last, but sure, that too,” I said with a smile. “We need everyone working together to get through this, right?”
She stood to her full height. “You don’t need to worry about that aspect of it, Captain. You have my word on it.”
I patted her on the shoulder. “I know I do. Now let’s go see what else needs doing before we leave here and start the really dangerous part of the journey.”
WE SAW OUR first real Corvids when they came to deliver the activator drive. Well, I say we “saw” them, but we didn’t, really. We saw two tall figures who arrived at the engineering deck airlock with an array of items on gravsled-type carriers. Fha had assured us that the Corvid technicians would be able to do their work wearing environment suits, so that the bay holding the Tane Ikai could remain configured for human habitation.
If they wore robes like Fha’s, they were hidden by the enviro-suits, which were, unsurprisingly, black. The material held a sheen similar to the ships and the station, which was explained once you got close enough. The surface was coated with a layer of tiny, flat, hexagonal discs. These slid and shifted as the Corvids moved, apparently reconfiguring themselves to suit some unknown parameters or purposes. As the light caught their movements, it created the shimmery effect.
The suits themselves were shapeless and loose-fitting, but didn’t sag or wrinkle—rather they seemed to move and flow around the Corvids’ bodies, flexing and reshaping to fit the aliens’ movements. They did, however, reveal a few more details about Corvid physiology. They stood taller than Fha’s hologram had been, easily topping seven feet. They were bipedal, but the suits did not outline their legs, so it was difficult to guess at their proportions. They did have two arms, but it was impossible to speculate about hands. The suits themselves, with their hexagon building blocks, reconfigured “fingers” to whatever purpose was needed. They formed club-like paws for lifting large objects, then flowed into thin digits for making minute adjustments. Viss said later he observed a range from two to eight fingers on a hand, as required.
Their helmets, by contrast, were completely transparent, and oblong, shaped to accommodate their beak-like mouths. They seemed able to call up various displays on the inside of the faceplates, although the mechanism for doing so was never obvious. Viss and Gerazan stayed in engineering to assist them, although there seemed little for them to actually do. When the Corvids needed to communicate, they did so through small speakers set at the bottom edge of the helmet, and apparently did so with as much language facility as Fha had displayed in talking to us.
“We got very lucky,” Viss said to me that evening in the galley, where we’d happened to end up at the same time, seeking hot drinks. “If it had been the Corvids who’d wanted to wipe out humanity a century and a half ago, none of us would be here. I’ve never even imagined some of the tech that’s everyday for them.”
That was a chilling thought. “How’s the work going?” I’d stopped in to the drive bays a couple of times throughout the day, but I didn’t have any real sense of what they were doing or how long it would take.
Viss shrugged. “Fine, I think. They mostly go about their business. Ask us questions, and we try to answer. When we understand what they’re asking.” He smiled thinly.
“Do you think it’ll work?” I was still worried by Fha’s statement that with our current drives, we wouldn’t be able to outrun a Chron ship if we ran into one.
He ran a hand over his face. “It’s not easy for me to admit it, but half the stuff they’re doing—I don’t even understand it. That’s what I mean about the technology. It’s so far beyond what we know about, it’s like they’re operating on a whole different plane of understanding.”
“Maybe that’s why they don’t mind sharing tech with us,” I said. “They know we’re not smart enough to reverse-engineer it.”
Viss chuckled. “You could be right.”
I pulled a deep breath. “Well, I hope we made the right decision. We seem to be totally dependent on what they’re doing for us.”
“We are, no mistake about it. But I do trust them.”
“Me, too,” I told him, warming my hands around my mug. “I just hope it’s enough.”