BALBAO

 

Debris from Belle-Monde battered their lifeship. With each collision, Balbao’s desire to survive grew stronger. Chunks of flight instruction broke free of his long-term memory and floated into the present, and he began frantic res-shift preparations: check buffers, trajectory parallels, co-ordinate sequ—His hands shot out of virtual arrangement as the ship shuddered under the impact of something large.

He righted himself, snatched the vessel back into position and began acquiring damage feed. The view outside the ship showed a frightening minefield of flotsam between them and the Geni-carrier.

We must stay unnoticed long enough to make shift. That meant... No! A sliver of panic crept in. I-I can’t... pilot as well as...

A thin-fingered hand touched his knee. His eyes refocused on Ra.

‘What is it, Balbao?’ asked Ra. ‘What do you need?’

‘With no moud, I must prepare for shift manually.’

‘And?’

‘The Geni-carrier will detect us if we don’t use the debris to hide.’

‘You need someone to pilot while you prep?’

Balbao nodded.

Ra undipped his safety net and teetered across the small space. His light frame fell against Balbao’s as the internal gravity fluctuated wildly.

‘Strap me in with you,’ said Ra. ‘I am able to pilot without a moud.’

‘How so?’ asked Balbao, fumbling to secure them both.

Ra’s strange segmented eyes rippled as if lit from within. ‘Sole’s reward. Release the backup.’

Balbao banged a panel to his right, and a sensor piece dropped out. Ra slipped it across his forehead and pressed the interface point to the back of his neck. He lifted his hands above his lap and waited for the virtual field to activate. ‘I will keep us as well hidden as I can.’

His fingers began to twitch and twirl. Almost immediately the buffeting stopped.

‘Thank Sole!’ Miranda exclaimed with relief. ‘What can I do?’

‘Start thinking,’ said Balbao curtly. ‘Work out what the hell is going on and, if we survive, what we should do about it.’ He didn’t bother to look at her. ‘And for Crux sakes do it quietly!’

With half an eye on Ra, Balbao fell back to his task. Only a tiny portion of his mind registered Ra’s manoeuvres, but enough that he would remember his skill for ever. However long that turned out to be.

His own virtuals showed him that the remains of Belle-Monde were spread in a shining metallic landscape across Mintaka’s outer system. The lifeship’s EM scanners were giving similar information for the space between them and the shift station. He double-checked his coordinates. Min Minor, the closest planet, wasn’t where it should be. Instead, there was a giant expanding dust cloud.

‘Fuck,’ said Balbao, with full Balol anger intonation.

Ra didn’t pause or react.

Labile Connit did. ‘Bad news?’

‘Min Minor,’ said Balbao. ‘It’s gone.’

‘Gone? A planet can’t be gone.’ Miranda lifted her head from whispering in Jise’s ear. Her face was puffy.

Balbao might have been disgusted by her appearance, had he not been distracted with his own fury. He wanted to bellow and break things to vent his upset. ‘The fucking planet is fucking gone!’

‘It’s the Extros... My God, they’ve wiped out a planet,’ said Connit.

‘Fifty million sentients,’ said Jise. ‘Fifty million.’’ He spoke slowly, as if trying to absorb what it meant. ‘That can’t be. It just can’t.’ He banged his head back against the seat.

‘Fifty million and five, if we don’t get out of this system,’ said Balbao. ‘Ra?’

They waited a long few moments before the Godhead answered. ‘I can keep us hidden for a few more hours, but on this trajectory we’ll soon encounter the worst of the dust from Min Minor. I’m not sure the ship will withstand it.’

‘Can we go around the worst of it, Ra?’

‘Not without finding clear space and being noticed.’

‘Then what do we do?’ asked Miranda.

‘There are a number of larger ships in the area. Most are hastening to the shift station,’ said Ra.

Miranda’s bottom lip dropped. ‘Can we contact some of them? They would take us aboard, surely? We’re refugees!’

‘Our signal will pinpoint our position,’ said Balbao. ‘And it’s unlikely they’ll come for us. Everyone with any sense will be leaving as quickly as they can. They’re all refugees.’

A glum silence fell over the cabin as Ra and Balbao went back to concentrating on their tasks.

Miranda laid her head on Jise’s shoulder. ‘I wonder where Tekton is?’ she said softly.

‘Being carnal somewhere, no doubt. Why?’

‘He always was lucky,’ she sighed. A tear trickled down her nose and plopped onto her hand.

Jise squashed it with his thumb and squeezed her wrist. They hunched together in mutual support.

Opposite them, Labile Connit closed his eyes and mouthed something prayer-like.

Who’d have imagined this? Balbao mused as the ship’s computer ran shift-algorithms. Though someone should have. The Extros fled quickly from the Stain Wars. OLOSS should have guessed they were rebuilding. No wonder Sole has disappeared.

Disappointment stabbed him. The entity had not bothered to warn the tyros of the danger. Whatever the nature of its sentience, compassion surely did not feature. Or perhaps the timing was mere coincidence. Perhaps Sole had no foreknowledge.

He considered that notion for a while, then discarded it. Sole knew all right. ‘Your god abandoned you,’ he said aloud.

Jise lifted his head. ‘Pardon me?’

‘Sole. He didn’t warn you, and he left you to die.’

‘What evidence leads you to believe Sole knew what was about to happen?’ demanded Connit.

‘What evidence is there that Sole didn’t?’

Any answer was stalled by a sudden vibration.

Miranda sucked in a noisy breath. ‘What’s that?’

‘Rock showers from the dust,’ said Ra. ‘We should activate the buffers.’

‘But they won’t protect the ship enough,’ said Connit.

‘Do you have any useful comments to make?’ snapped Balbao.

Connit glared at him. ‘Do you understand the forces at work, Balbao? Ra can’t dodge the remains of an entire planet.’

‘I don’t have to be a geneer to know that.’

‘Then change direction and head away from the dust cloud.’

‘It will catch us anyway, Labile,’ said Ra.

‘For Crux sakes, ask for help,’ pleaded Miranda. ‘It has to be better than disintegration.’

They all stared at each other. Doubt laced their moment of mutual agreement. Was it?

Ra sighed. ‘I’ll ‘cast a distress signal and buffer the cabin. At least the planet fallout will make it harder for the Geni-carrier to notice us.’

Within moments of his words the vibration stilled.

‘How long will the ship hold together?’ asked Jise.

Balbao shrugged. He’d done everything he could, and it hadn’t been enough. It seemed so unfair that his brilliance should be wasted on such an untimely death. ‘Impossible to say.’

Miranda grasped Jise’s hand and then reached out for Connit’s. ‘Then I think it’s time we prayed.’

‘Who to?’ asked Ra.

‘The Entity,’ said Miranda. ‘Surely if we concentrate our thoughts, it will hear us.’

‘And you truly think it would care?’ Ra again.

Miranda rebuked him with a stare. ‘You, of all of us, should be the closest to Sole. You could at least try.’

Ra sucked his thin lips inside his mouth and nodded. He removed the pilot interface, loosed the safety web around him and twisted around so that he could reach the others’ hands.

Balbao watched them with despair. What nonsense were they on about in the face of their own demise? He bared his teeth and let loose a small growl. His frill stiffened in agitation. If only they would use their supposed intellects for something helpful.

Alarms dragged his attention back to the ship information flow. The scanners told him that they were heavily mired in the fallout from both Belle-Monde and Min Minor now; data was escalating; stress limits approaching. Among the confusing accretion of information, he nearly missed the response to their SOS.

Breath on hold, he sent a pingback before alerting the others. When it confirmed itself as an OLOSS ship, sweat oozed out from under Balbao’s scaly skinplates. He sent their coordinates immediately, and was rewarded with an estimated rendezvous of less than an hour.

Balbao opened his mouth to share the joyous news with the others, then promptly shut it again. The four tyros were still communing silently.

He leaned back in his seat and took a deep relieved breath. Let them keep working for it. Let the annoying bastards work for it.