Entanglement Bound: An Epic Space Opera Series (Entangled Universe Book 1) Read online

  Clarity found something eerie about seeing a rogue AI inside a maintenance robot body trying to look happy. She tried to shake the feeling.

  5 Assembling the Team

  Wisper led the way with clanking footsteps through a maze of hallways. Clarity rarely visited the Residential Quarter of Crossroads Station. She'd lived there for a few months, when she'd first moved to Crossroads Station as a nineteen-year-old, but ever since then, she and Irohann had rented short-stay quarters in the hostel section of the docks. Shorter leases, not as nice, but cheaper if you were only staying a few days and couldn't sign a long-term contract. She did not miss those days.

  And yet, she didn't want to live in the Residential Quarter either. She remembered the quarters she'd lived in, barely more than a studio, split between her and an insectile alien. It had been so thrilling for a nineteen-year-old to run away from home and move in with an exo-skeletoned alien with six long twiggy legs, wide wings like a cross between flower petals and stained glass windows, and a face composed of a curling, tubular proboscis and huge, multifaceted eyes like disco balls cut in half.

  At least, she'd found it thrilling. Everyone she'd known back on Antares 12 would have been terrified. That's why she'd wanted out of that place. Forget wanted, she'd needed out of that place like she needed air.

  Air might flow freely over the surface of the dirtball planet she'd grown up on, but life flowed freely up here. In all its forms. Even mechanical ones.

  Wisper stopped at one of the trapezoidal doors in the long hallway. The farther they'd worked their way into the depths of the Residential Quarter, the farther the distance had grown between doorways, meaning the quarters hidden behind those closed doors were bigger and bigger. It must have been expensive living this far into the Residential Quarter of Crossroads Station.

  Wisper raised a metal claw and knocked on the door. A moment later, the door slid open. Behind it stood an insectile alien so much like Clarity's old roommate that, for a moment, she felt like she'd stepped into her own past. Her life telescoped around her, stretching in weird ways.

  "Excuse me," Clarity said, about to ask if this alien had lived with a human about thirty years ago, further out in the cheap end of the Residential Quarter. Then she noticed the big difference—this alien had the same hard, black exoskeletal carapace, the twiggy legs, the bizarre face, but no wings. She was approximately the same height as Clarity if you measured all the way to the feathered tips of her antennae. The overall effect was less butterfly and more preying mantis. It couldn't have been the same species, and Clarity had almost made a terrible fool of herself, showing she couldn't even tell different alien races apart.

  Instead, Clarity muttered, "Never mind," and stepped back from the doorway, waiting for Wisper take the lead.

  The blue-and-silver robot stepped forward and intoned in her humming voice, "Am-lei, I presume. I am Wisper, and this is Clarity. She'll be ferrying us for the first leg of our journey."

  The giant insect's proboscis curled up tighter, and her antennae waved. She was wearing a dark gray, shimmery garment over her carapace, leaving her long limbs bare but covering her oblong abdomen. In a fluting voice, she said, "There's a problem. I can't go."

  Wisper didn't show any sign of frustration or anger, but she put a metal hand out and rested it on the doorframe, effectively blocking the sliding door from closing. She stood as still as she'd been inside Maradia's shop. Glassy camera eyes stared at multifaceted disco ball eyes.

  Clarity knew if it were her plans getting messed up, she'd be angry.

  "Can I ask why?" Wisper said.

  Perhaps it was Clarity's imagination, but the hum of Wisper's voice seemed rougher. Maybe the robot was angry after all.

  "I'm sorry," Am-lei said. As she shifted her weight between three of her four legs, the light shone off her carapace like a piece of obsidian. "I can recommend another physicist for you. There's one on Delphi Station, two star-systems over, who specializes in gravitational waves. And there are several physicists with similar areas of research at Wespirtech..."

  "That will not do," Wisper said. "This is a matter of some urgency, and there is not time to divert our path to Delphi Station, let alone Wespirtech."

  "I don't know how I can help you then," Am-lei said. Her voice had the haunting quality of a clarinet solo. "I've talked it over with my partner, and we need to be together right now." She repeated, even more firmly, "I can't go."

  "Your partner?" Wisper asked.

  "My wife, yes."

  Wisper looked at Clarity a moment, as if checking with her before making an offer. But they didn't have that kind of rapport, and Clarity was floored when Wisper said to Am-lei, "Bring her."

  "Really?" Am-lei's antennae tilted forward, bringing their feathered tips close enough for Clarity to notice them quivering. Her ebony thorax heaved as if with a deep breath of relief.

  Clarity turned toward the robot and echoed Am-lei's question. "Yeah, really?" She only sounded a little sarcastic. She'd been working on her sarcasm—she knew she could overdo it. However, perhaps this moment wasn't the best time to cut back.

  "Please, get everything you will need," Wisper said, either oblivious to Clarity's sarcasm or ignoring it. "We need to leave right away."

  "Of course!" Am-lei said, her proboscis uncurling and her antennae waving wildly. She skittered away on four long, twiggy legs into the depths of her palatial quarters.

  From where she stood in the hall, Clarity could see that the front room of Am-lei's residence was bigger than the entire quarters she'd rented as a teen. This insectile physicist was not used to cramped spaces.

  Clarity whirled on Wisper and said, "Bring her?" in a mocking tone. "We warned you that The Serendipity would be cramped with three additional passengers, and you just went and invited a fourth?"

  Before Wisper could respond, the situation got even more ridiculous. Am-lei's wife trundled into the front room, wheeling several suitcases after her—she was a bulky woman, closer to Irohann's height than Clarity's, with wrinkly gray skin, wide arms and legs like tree stumps, flappy ears, and a long, sinuous, prehensile nose. She was wearing a mauve and pink calico dress with lots of pockets; the garment looked adorably like it belonged on a frontier world covered in prairies rather than on a space station. Her nose was pulling one of the wheeled suitcases. She was an elephant, basically. Literally the elephant in the room.

  Clarity was going to have trouble not making that joke, but jokes of that sort never worked well. Every species on Crossroads Station had grown up on a world with an entire menagerie of sub-sentient animals. For every sentient alien race in the universe, there were thousands upon thousands of sub-sentient animals that looked distressingly like them.

  If Clarity started making jokes about elephants, she'd basically be begging for this woman to ask if she needed a banana and a tree to swing on.

  The elephant-like woman arranged the suitcases and crossed the room shyly, with timid steps. She held her flappy ears close against the sides of her face, and her voice was surprisingly quiet when she said, "Thank you so much. We've been trying to charter a ship to take us to Leionaia in the Eloia LIV-system for months. We were almost out of time." Her gray skin took on an almost rosy cast like she was blushing. "My name is Jeko."

  Jeko held out a thick hand with wide nails on each finger toward Wisper, and the robot shook her hand gently. Jeko offered her hand to Clarity.

  When Clarity grasped her hand, the woman's gray skin was softer, silkier than she'd expected. Jeko's huge hand dwarfed Clarity's, but she wrapped her fingers, each as thick as a human wrist, so carefully around the small human hand. She was truly a gentle giant.

  Clarity had meant to argue, to disinvite this huge alien woman from intruding into her vessel, but her determination failed in the face of such a sweet, sincere introduction. Even so, when Jeko returned into the depths of her and Am-lei's quarters, Clarity whirled on Wisper again and said, "Seriously, how are we all going to fit?"

  "
I am sure you will figure something out." Wisper's expressionless face offered no sympathy.

  "I don't think we can," Clarity said.

  The metal irises of Wisper's eyes constricted and reopened in a quick flash, like she was trying to blink, nonplussed by Clarity's objections. All she said was "450,000 credits."

  Clarity countered, "500,000 credits."

  Wisper shook her metal head. "480,000 and no more haggling."

  Clarity didn't like haggling anyway. She still wasn't sure how they'd all fit, but it was hard to argue with so much money.

  When Jeko returned, she backed into the room with her long nose held high, arcing up above her head and holding onto the handle at the top of a sealed cargo crate. The crate was cylindrical, a meter and a half high and about a meter in diameter, marked bio-material on the side. It was large enough to hold Clarity inside it. Jeko and Am-lei both held handles on the sides of the crate, carrying it into the room, awkwardly, carefully, together. They placed it beside the pile of suitcases.

  "You're the couple who wanted to lease a ship to take them 20 light-years for 9,000 credits," Clarity said. "I was looking at your listing this morning."

  "And you didn't answer it." Am-lei’s antennae curled.

  "No," Clarity agreed. "It wasn't enough for the distance."

  "That does seem to be the consensus from every ship captain who has docked at Crossroads Station for the last six months," Am-lei said in a flat, sour tone. "But I'm not bitter," she added wryly.

  Wisper offered to help carry Am-lei and Jeko's suitcases, and soon Clarity found herself loaded up with a bag under one arm and another strapped to her back. The rest of the suitcases were distributed between the others, most of them strapped to Jeko's body in one way or another. The bio-matter cargo crate turned out to have a small anti-gravity generator attached to the bottom, so once turned on, the crate hovered slightly above the ground, and Jeko was able to steer it through the halls of the Residential Quarter by herself, nose holding the top handle.

  "Where to next?" Clarity asked, hoping the next passenger wouldn't come with so much extra cargo.

  "Not far," Wisper said. "We have my physicist. Next we pick up the pilot for the science vessel awaiting us."

  They stopped at another trapezoidal door. Behind this one, a dozen or so lapine children hopped about, chasing each other playfully, and literally bouncing off the walls. Clarity was horrified. She hadn't signed up for ferrying a whole slew of children.

  "Are you here for Uncle Roscoe?" one of the—honestly—adorable children asked, nose twitching, as she stared up at the group of alien adults at her door.

  "Yes," Wisper said, kneeling down in a strangely companionable way for a robot. She held a metal claw out and shook hands with the rabbit-like child. "My name is Wisper, and I'm going to take your uncle on an adventure."

  The lapine child's eyes widened, and her nose twitched faster. It was a tender, touching moment.

  Clarity really didn't know what to make of this robot who downloaded illegally into bodies, played dead when it was convenient, and was kind to children.

  An adult lapine with a backpack and sleeping bag strapped to his back and a staff-like walking stick in one paw came in from a back room. He wore a brown jumpsuit made from a coarse weave. Plain but practical. He was bigger than the children, but still only about waist-high to Clarity. The children swarmed around him, insisting on hugs and getting their long ears ruffled affectionately by his free paw. One of the little ones tried to steal his walking stick. "Oh, ho, hey now," the adult lapine said. "Uncle Roscoe's gonna need his walking staff!"

  "Then if I take it, you can't go!" the little lapine squeaked.

  Another one of the lapine children tried to zip open a flap on Roscoe's backpack and climb inside, but the elder lapine deftly maneuvered the little one into a hug instead, swooping him up and spinning him around to the sound of giggles from all the children.

  A couple more adult lapines came out from the back and helped pull the hopping children away from Roscoe. More bunny hugs all around, and Clarity started to think she'd melt from the sweetness.

  At long last, Roscoe backed through the trapezoidal door and waved a final goodbye to a chorus of, "Goodbye, Uncle!" and "Bye-bye, Grandpa!" from the little ones. The door slid shut, and Roscoe backed away with a dramatic sigh. He tugged on one of his long ears and said, "Goodness, I love those lil' ones to bits, but it'll be nice to get away!" His ear popped back up, straight and tall. "I need to feel a ship accelerating under my paws, know what I mean? None of this spinning around in one place like a top. Stars streaming by at light-speed! Now where are we off to?"

  "We have one last stop before boarding The Serendipity," Wisper said, taking off down the hall.

  "The Serendipity!" Roscoe whooped with gusto, hopping after the robot. "Sounds like a great ship; can't wait to get my paws on its controls! What model is it?"

  "The Serendipity already has a pilot," Clarity said, striding past the lapine man with her much longer legs.

  Jeko and Am-lei lagged behind, talking quietly to each other in a language Clarity didn't recognize.

  "You've been hired to pilot a vessel called Cassiopeia," Wisper said. "We'll rendezvous with her at Eridani 7 in six days time."

  "A science vessel," Clarity added helpfully.

  "A science vessel?" Roscoe repeated, sounding surprised. "I thought..." He started speaking but seemed to cut himself off. Clarity looked back at the small lapine man to see why he'd stopped mid-sentence. He glanced back and forth between Clarity and Wisper a few times, shook his head, and said, "Never mind. These paws can pilot any kind of vessel they're blessed to touch."

  Clarity wondered what he'd decided not to say. Had Wisper told him a different story than the one she'd told to her and Irohann? Once they were all aboard The Serendipity, she'd have to find a private moment to talk to Am-lei and Jeko to see if there were any discrepancies between the stories Wisper had told her and them. She could try talking to Roscoe too, but the way he'd clammed up just now suggested he might be less forthcoming than helpful.

  Even if Wisper was lying to one or all of them, as long as she and Irohann got this group safely to Eridani 7, none of it would matter in six days.

  6 From the Arboretum to The Serendipity

  Wisper led the motley group out of the Residential Quarter and up to the back entrance to the Crossroads Station arboretum. The main entrance was from the Merchant Quarter, but there were smaller, less grand entrances from several other locations around the station. The arboretum itself was housed in the spinning spherical center of the station's twisting rings but could be reached by elevator spokes from the various toroids for convenience.

  "Wait here," Wisper said to the group while setting down her portion of Am-lei and Jeko's luggage. She proceeded into the airlock-like entrance to the arboretum. Clarity set down her baggage as well and followed, figuring Wisper's edict didn't apply to her. She was still vetting these passengers for whether they were welcome in her and Irohann's home. She was also still trying to figure out how they'd all fit.

  The airlock-like entrance cycled around Wisper and Clarity, whooshing with the change in the air as it rose from the Residential Quarter and arrived at the arboretum level. When the doors opened, the air was warmer, muggy, and sweet-smelling.

  Clarity breathed it in deeply as she stepped off the metal floor of the elevator and onto the springy ground of grass and dirt. It felt perpetually like spring in the arboretum, a little damp and bright in a way that perfectly simulated natural sunlight. Clarity closed her eyes and let the golden glow warm her shoulders while the mist in the air kissed her face. Her energy levels were already rising, a giddiness inside, from the full spectrum light soaking into her photosynthetic hair.

  Clarity regretted she wouldn't have more time to spend in the arboretum this visit. She'd actually liked the idea of staying at Crossroads Station for a few weeks, maybe even a month or so. But assuming everything worked out, Wisper's paycheck
was too good an opportunity to pass up.

  On the side of the arboretum where they'd entered, the ground was covered with well-trimmed yellow-green grass, and thick leafy branches knit together over their heads in dapples of emerald, jade, and every other shade of green. The branches were heavily laden with gemlike globes of fruit in every color of the rainbow.

  They had emerged in the middle of an orchard of fruit trees gathered by seed or cuttings brought to the arboretum by the station's residents from dozens and dozens of different planets. Most of the food on Crossroads Station was synthesized from base proteins and amino acids, but the fruit grown in the orchard—along with vegetables, nuts, and mushrooms grown elsewhere in the arboretum—were special delicacies.

  Where breaks in the branches let the light through, Clarity caught the occasional glimpse of the far side of the arboretum high, high above. On the inside of a sphere, there was no actual sky—only the other side, and in the arboretum, that meant the sky was filled with more trees and grasses. A thicket of green curled around them, holding them safely inside itself from every direction.

  The bright yellow light came from periodic lanterns on lampposts, standing taller than the tallest of the trees. So, the sky was also filled with glittering yellow shards of light. The arboretum on Crossroads Station was one of the most beautiful places Clarity had ever visited, and she'd traveled with Irohann to a world covered by plum-purple jungles; a planet where the ice rings had been melted and filled with schools of fish that darted through the water like living rainbows; and a trinary star-system orbited by a planet-sized diamond—the three suns reflected and refracted through the diamond's facets, dancing together in a waltz of blue, yellow, and orange light.

  The universe was filled with stunning natural wonders.

  The Crossroads Station arboretum was, technically, an artificial wonder, but it was a comforting, cozy, nature-filled artifice.