People were eating the last of the crumbs by this point and Gaylen spotted a window of opportunity.
“Say, Ayna, what do you say to entertaining our passengers a bit? I think that little adventure on the null-world would make for a good story.”
“Oohh, it would!” the girl said, clearly happy at the suggestion.
“A null-world?” Vek said.
“Yeah. It started with pirates.”
She grinned.
“Do I have your attention?”
Gaylen made eye-contact with Kiris for a moment, then stood up, put his plate on the counter, and walked to the men’s quarters. He closed the door behind him, then crossed the room and walked out through the opposite door.
He stood on the balcony that overlooked the cargo bay. He sat down and stuck his legs out through the bars. After a brief wait the door to the women’s quarters opened and the golden woman stepped out.
“You want to talk about something?” she asked.
“I do.”
She sat down next to him and stuck her legs through as well. She even dangled them, and Gaylen felt he detected a relaxation of the tension that being around strangers tended to put into her.
“Are you worried you may have made a mistake letting that woman on board?” she asked. “Seasoned freelancer that you are?”
“I am only human,” he admitted.
“Oh, so am I. And I haven’t had much time to get to know her.”
“But what’s your immediate impression?”
Kiris considered her reply for a few seconds.
“Unbalanced.”
“You mean mentally ill?” Gaylen asked.
“I mean unbalanced. Angry. Hurt. Some kind of inner conflict.”
“I do recognise fighters when I see them.”
“I know you do,” Kiris said. “And yes, it’s probably battle damage. She did mention having seen Volkan Vol’s war. Still, she’s...”
She fell silent again, until Gaylen felt compelled to prod her.
“What?”
“I don’t know,” Kiris admitted. “She’s weird. Ashamed and... weird. Oh, and something’s up with her and Bers, but I suppose you noticed that.”
“I did. They are both from the outer reaches.”
“Yes, they are,” Kiris said in a musing tone. “From a very different society, with a very different history and mindset. I know he acts like a savage... well, he IS a savage. But there is a mind there. I sometimes get the impression that he’s simply lived longer than he ever intended to, and is just sort of floating along with the wind.”
Gaylen chuckled. It was a weak little sound.
“I myself have already outlived my early predictions,” he said.
She turned his way, silent for a while.
“You made it, though,” she then said, as softly as she ever did. “You got out of all that underworld shit, like you always wanted.”
“A bit late, but yeah.”
She turned back forward.
“But since I mentioned Bers... what did happen with you two? Just after we left Chukata Mog? Because it sure was something, and it upset you a lot more than it upset him.”
Madness. Swirling colours. A confirmation of every spook story told about the Other. About pushing leap reactors too far. An upending of the way I understood reality. That damned colour...
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He wanted to say it all, and none of it. He wanted things to make sense again. He wanted to forget all about that incident and focus on life’s normal troubles.
The alarm was something of a relief.
“Which one is that?” Kiris asked as Gaylen bolted to his feet.
“Incoming message,” he replied and ran through the men’s quarters, through the living room and into the cockpit. He set all of the alarms every time he stepped away from the controls, but still took a moment to assure himself there were no heat signatures closing in. The ‘message’ was the most basic kind; a pulse repeating with the kind of regularity not found in nature.
“It’s the Universal Emergency Signal,” he said for the benefit of the people gathering outside the door. Herdis was already in her spot in the copilot’s chair.
“Where is it coming from?” she asked.
“That rogue planet,” he said, and indicated the rocky, drifting body.
“Are you thinking pirates?”
For a moment, he did. Pirates used dirty tricks like these. But this was an odd location to lie in wait. There was hardly any traffic at all, and certainly no decent-sized freighters.
“It probably isn’t,” he admitted.
He stared at the instruments for a few moments. The pragmatism that had kept him alive all these years amidst the scum of the galaxy made itself known. Calculate risks, it whispered. Don’t stick your neck out. Look after yourself, because no one else will.
But eight people were watching and waiting for his next move. And redirecting to check things out was the civilised thing to do, wasn’t it?
“It’ll take three hours to get there,” he said. “I’ll send a message on the way and see if we get a response.”
“Alright,” the woman said.
“Just in case of trouble; everyone keep your weapons handy,” he said. “And Jaquan...”
“Yes?” his friend said from the door.
“Go into the cargo hold and be sure the special package is okay.”
With three strangers on board and staying in the cargo hold, Gaylen kept his tone casual. Jaquan understood well enough, and slowly strolled off.
“And the rest of us?” Kiris asked.
Gaylen swivelled his chair around. He wanted the passengers out of the cargo hold for the moment, without being too obvious about it.
“We have board games,” he suggested.
# # #
Those three hours passed without incident. The pulse kept on blasting out into the void, but there was no response to Gaylen’s hails. He mostly kept his attention on the readouts, occasionally glancing at security feeds from within the ship.
Jaquan was at his spot in the engine room, looking like the old hand at this that he was. Kiris sat on a stool near him, idly playing with a rubber band, waiting for a chance to be useful. Ayna, Vek and Dulel had taken a break from games and simply seemed to be chatting. At a glance he would say that the journalist looked somewhat excited about things, while the historian looked slightly nervous. Bers was in his bunk, either napping or just relaxing. And his fellow Fringer was on an empty spot of floor in the cargo bay, exercising. She went without equipment, doing the slow, elaborate balancing acts and handstands that always looked agonising and challenged Gaylen’s understanding of what the human body was capable of. But all that muscle tone had to come from somewhere.
With no nearby star, the rogue planet was completely unlit, but the scanners still told him plenty and painted a picture as he got within what would have been visual distance.
“Attention everyone,” he said into the intercom. “We are now entering the planet’s gravity well. The signal is still broadcasting, but I still haven’t received any reply. It could mean their comms aren’t working, but probably means we are in for a ship of the dead. Just so you know.”
“What are you going to do if that is the case?” Herdis asked him after he cut the feed.
“See about recovering their record keeper, at least,” Gaylen told her. “If it can’t be accessed... well, there’s no reason not to report this, at least. If it’s not just a private ship someone might launch an operation.”
They entered the well. A faint heat trace remained in space, tracking the vessel’s passage. Whatever had happened had been recent. The instruments painted an outline of the great, drifting body’s surface, all craggy rock and meteor craters. And down there, nestled amidst spike-like cliffs was the source of the pulse.
There were still no other heat signatures. Pirates generally ran their ships cold when striking, but this would be a very odd setup for an ambush. The ship down below was very real.
“I’ve never been to a rogue before,” Herdis muttered softly.
Gaylen had, and for all that he considered himself a rational man there was something about rogue planets that simply creeped him out. Somehow even the empty depths of the void seemed less lonely. And rogues were very popular settings for dark stories.
The ship was slightly bigger than the Addax, but didn’t seem to have much of a cargo hold. Gaylen couldn’t immediately place the model. The chassis had survived the crash, but it clearly wouldn’t be flying again without extensive repairs.
“Jaquan, are you watching this?”
“I am. That’s a Manok Prime Scout.”
“Sounds fancy.”
“Oh, it is. Only been available for two years. Manufactured in the Freestates, fast and energy efficient, meant for patrolling travel lanes.”
“Officially,” Gaylen said.
“Yeah.”
“Not a typical vessel to find out here, is it?” Herdis said.
“No,” Gaylen said and peered at the image on one of his screens. “Not even close.”
He opened the intercom.
“We’re now above the vessel,” he said to everyone. “It has crashed on the rogue, but we can’t land close to it. I’m going to go down slowly and see if I can’t descend on a line. You can watch it on any of the screens, if you want. Jaquan, suit up.”