Entanglement Bound: An Epic Space Opera Series (Entangled Universe Book 1) Page 8

  "What's a science vessel doing in an outer asteroid belt?" Clarity asked. "That's a long way out from the center of activity in this system."

  "What are they doing?" Wisper repeated. "Science, of course. They're doing science, out on the edge of the system where they won't be bothered."

  It still surprised Clarity every time Wisper was snarky. She wondered, if there had actually been time for the roboticist, Maradia, to build a custom body for Wisper, what would it have been like? Would it be less surprising when the robot said snarky things because her face would give her attitude away before she spoke the words?

  One thing was clear: Wisper had far more personality than fit well in her stiff, skeletal body.

  Maybe the next time they passed by Crossroads Station, Clarity would take Maradia up on her offer—go out for dinner and talk over everything that had happened with Wisper.

  The view of the outer asteroid belt through the front window grew from a mottled band of brown and tan stretched across the blackness of space into a field of identifiably separate rocks.

  Wisper pointed toward an especially large, pear-shaped rock. It was about five times the size of The Serendipity, and it was at the edge of a clearing inside the belt, a sort of bubble where the asteroids were sparser than elsewhere. The clearing was probably large enough to hold Crossroads Station on the inside. "See that asteroid?" Wisper asked.

  "Sure," Irohann said.

  "There's a base on that asteroid generating a force field around the clearing. When I contact them, they'll open up a gap on the other side—" She pointed with a metal finger toward a space on the far side of the clearing, between an unusually spherical asteroid, another with a crack down its middle, and one composed of paler rock than the others. "That's where we fly in."

  "And your ship is in there somewhere?" Clarity peered at the field of rocks, but that was all she saw: space rocks. Nothing looked like a ship.

  "Cassiopeia is in there," Wisper said.

  "That's a beautiful name for a ship," Irohann observed, steering his own vessel toward the specified location.

  "She seems to like it." Wisper hummed the words, almost to herself. Then more loudly, she said, "I'm going to make sure my team is ready to depart. We don't want to disturb the work they're doing here more than we have to."

  Wisper climbed down the ladder to the mid-ship level, her hands clanking as always against the rungs. She did not have a body built for stealth.

  The Serendipity's thrusters fired from the left, the right, then the back, making the precise maneuvers necessary to let the ship nose its way between the asteroids, right up to the edge of the clearing. The changes in gravity caused Clarity's stomach to flip and jump inside her like a flopping fish on dry ground. The sensation was somewhere between the fun of being on a rollercoaster and the misery of being on a rickety, rusty, should-have-been-retired-years-ago, probably-going-to-kill-you rollercoaster.

  And then the gravity settled to a steady, normal, downward pull. The asteroid composed of a paler type of rock hovered above their heads, to the top right of the window. The asteroid with the big crack down the middle was beneath them, and the spherical one was over to the left.

  Now that The Serendipity was closer to the bubble of clearing, Clarity saw it wasn't entirely empty inside. There was a shimmer, a light dusting of sparkles, like it had just begun to snow. The clearing was powdered with dust or ice particles and, like snowflakes, they glittered when hit by sunlight.

  On the far side of the clearing, teardrop shapes, almost too dark to see, moved through the sparkles, visible mostly in inverse, as a lack of sparkles. There were dozens of them. Three of the teardrop shapes moved toward The Serendipity, and as they came closer, Clarity saw more details—the teardrops were lifeforms with blubbery bodies, maneuvering themselves through the use of tube-like jet organs. Each one had a long, spiraled horn at the bulbous front end of its body.

  "Starwhals," Clarity said in amazement. "I guess I got to see them after all."

  "Aren't starwhals smaller?" Irohann said. As the three closest teardrop creatures approached, it became clear each of them was approximately the same size as The Serendipity.

  "I don't know," Clarity said. "I mean, I thought so. But what else could those be?"

  Humans had encountered a wide variety of sentient planet-bound creatures in their travels through space. Watery worlds with enough dirt mixed in to keep them interesting seemed to be the perfect cradles for life to evolve. Deep space, not so much. In several centuries of space travel, humans had only encountered a handful of species evolved to live in the vacuum of space. So far, starwhals were the only vacuum creatures that were even close to sentient, and from what Clarity had heard, they were about as smart as ancient Earth dolphins or gorillas. Smart, able to communicate, but in need of a lot of help to do so. Not particularly in danger of creating their own civilizations.

  "Maybe the scientists here are studying them," Clarity said. Then she had a darker thought. "Maybe the scientists here are breeding them, and that's why they're bigger."

  "They're breeding spaceships," Irohann said, putting the pieces together.

  "Can that even be possible?" Clarity was fascinated and horrified. She didn't want to believe it, but here was an entire herd of starwhals, captive inside a force-field-enclosed bubble of an asteroid belt. Three giant starwhals clustered close to their window, staring at them. At least, she assumed they were staring at The Serendipity—they'd pointed their spiraling horns toward the front window. They weren't built like planet-bound creatures—no recognizable eyes or mouths—but somehow the spiraling horns made Clarity think of radio antennae. She thought they must be some sort of sensory organ.

  "I'm going to radio the base," Irohann said, shoving the earpiece into the base of his triangular ear. "If Wisper's in such a hurry, we might as well get the process of docking with her ship started." He adjusted the controls, then said, "This is Irohann of the merchant vessel The Serendipity. We're here to deliver Wisper to The Cassiopeia."

  Clarity wanted to hear the base's response, so she shoved an earpiece into her ear as well, right in time to hear, "Excuse me? Who are you?"

  "We're delivering Wisper to The Cassiopeia," Irohann repeated. "If you lower the force field, we can commence docking."

  The answer over the radio was muffled and incoherent, like the speaker had covered the microphone, but it seemed to involve swearing and confusion.

  "I don't think they're expecting us," Clarity said.

  Clanking on the ladder, Wisper rose into the cockpit. "What have you done?" she said, her humming voice high and scratchy. "Let me plug in."

  This time, Irohann hesitated. He held the cord all balled up in his paws, and his triangular ears flattened against his head. "Are we here to steal a ship?"

  Wisper didn't answer. She grabbed Irohann's left paw with her metal claw of a hand and twisted. Irohann barked in pain and dropped the cord. Wisper picked it up and plugged it into her skull. Clarity reached out to grab the cord, but Wisper blocked her with a metal arm and shouted with a squealing hum, "Mazillion!"

  The cockpit flooded with swarming, buzzing flecks of darkness, flitting erratically and filling the air. Clarity froze in fear. Could Mazillion's insect bodies sting her? Did they bite? She felt tiny wings brush against her arms. She flinched and strangled a sob, convinced at some primal level that holding perfectly still was the best way to survive the swarm of insect bodies all around her. She squeezed her eyes shut, but the buzzing seemed louder, and she could no longer see the peaceful whale-like bodies of the starwhals through the window.

  Clarity opened her eyes in time to see a grid-like pattern of light flash outside the window; narrow blue beams stretched between the cracked asteroid, the spherical one, and the pale one in a geometrical grid. Like iron bars on a jail cell, locking the starwhals inside.

  Then, the lines of blue light were gone.

  Startled, two of the three starwhals turned and jetted away. The third one, th
e largest, flared a tube jet on one side of its body, pushing it down toward the cracked asteroid.

  "The force field is down," Wisper said, yanking the cord out of her skull. "Pilot us through the gap," she ordered Irohann.

  "Never," Irohann said. The buzzing bodies of Mazillion tightened around him, landing in a layer of darkness on his red and white mane. Wisper grabbed his left paw by the wrist again. Her metal hand looked like a vice; she could easily break his wrist. "Do what you want to me—it's not happening!"

  They couldn't stop Wisper from taking over their ship, but Clarity could stop anyone from getting hurt while it happened. "I'll do it!" Clarity cried, reaching for the control dash through the cloud of Mazillion. She fired the rear thrusters, just a little, nudging The Serendipity forward. She'd rather fly The Serendipity herself than let Wisper do it, and she couldn't let Wisper and Mazillion hurt Irohann. He was already an outlaw on the run; better to have a black mark by his new name than to have his arm broken off and whatever the hell Mazillion was going to do to him.

  "We are not stealing a spaceship—or a starwhal science project!" Irohann growled through gritted teeth.

  "No," Clarity agreed, steering the ship smoothly between the three asteroids into the glittering field of ice crystals. "We're being commandeered by someone else," she looked pointedly up at Wisper, still flinching every time a piece of Mazillion flew too close to one of her eyes, "who's stealing a spaceship. Not our fault. Right?"

  "I take full responsibility for your actions right now," Wisper agreed. She pointed at the window. "Steer that way."

  "We get you onto The Cassiopeia, and then we're free." Clarity said. "We cooperate fully with the authorities, as soon as you and your team are off our ship. Is that a deal?"

  "I don't care what you do after we leave," Wisper answered.

  "See?" Clarity said to Irohann. "We're not doing anything illegal; we're just protecting ourselves."

  Irohann huffed, unimpressed by the fine distinction. But Clarity didn't care. She just needed to get her and Irohann out of this situation in one piece. They could worry about anything else after the storm of insects and killer robot were off their ship.

  She had a twinge of conscience worrying about the rest of Wisper's team. Roscoe, Jeko, and Am-lei hadn't signed on for this either—at least, as far as Clarity knew. Had they been keeping Wisper's plan secret from her and Irohann all week?

  "Open up your radio to transmit at 24.5 kHz," Wisper said.

  Clarity did so, and then Wisper began calling with her humming voice, "Cassie, Cassie!" in the way one might call to a pet who'd strayed too far away.

  "What the hell?" Irohann said. He still had a coating of Mazillion's bodies perched over his mane and ears—it looked almost like a chainmail hood.

  On the far side of the clearing, where the majority of the several dozen starwhals huddled, a stirring began. Their teardrop-shaped bodies jetted about, and out of the motion, one of the bodies emerged, jetting straight toward them.

  "Good girl, Cassie," Wisper said. "Begin docking." Once again, she said the words like a command spoken to a trained pet.

  And Cassiopeia obeyed. The teardrop-shaped lifeform barrel-rolled and shimmied up close to The Serendipity. The blubbery curve of her deep purple flesh pressed right up against the cockpit window. This close to the base of Cassiopeia's spiraling horn, Clarity could see tiny filaments, delicate hairs sprouting from the straw-colored horn in fractal patterns.

  "The airlock is synced," Irohann said. His ears were flatter than Clarity had ever seen them before, lined with Mazillion's tiny bodies, translucent wings flittering and many-jointed legs twitching.

  Clarity noticed that the numbers of wings and legs varied widely from one body to the next—most were six-legged and two-winged; but some had fewer, and others had many more—so many legs she couldn't count them at a glance and the clusters of wings on their backs were like translucent, vibrating flowers. She wondered what the differences meant, if anything, and then she hoped fervently she'd never find out. She wanted Mazillion to funnel out of the cockpit, disappear into the mid-ship level, and then exit The Serendipity with the rest of Wisper's mad team.

  After, she and Irohann could get The Serendipity out of here. Forget spending a day exploring the Eridani 7 system. She was ready to hit deep space again, and fly anywhere else, ensconced in her own room, with her little menagerie of toys and the trashiest vid-drama she could find playing around the clock.

  Instead, The Serendipity rocked, lurching in space, and a high-pitched squeal—the worst sound Clarity could imagine—screamed in her ears. "What happened!?" she shouted, slamming her palms over her ears, trying to block the screeching sound.

  Irohann pointed to a screen on the control dash showing the view through a rear camera. "One of these other science experiments decided to ram us."

  Sure enough, the really big starwhal who had come up to examine them and who hadn't been frightened away by the pulse of the force field shutting down was horn-deep in the cargo bay.

  "Holy hell!" Clarity said. "What are those horns made of?"

  "That's not the question," Wisper said.

  Irohann sounded bleak as he said: "The question is what happens when that science experiment pulls its horn out."

  "No again," Wisper said, already clanking her way down the ladder. Mazillion funneled out of the cockpit, following the robot down the ladder.

  Clarity leaped from her seat, grabbed Irohann by the paw and pulled him to the ladder. "The question," she said, taking the rungs down as fast as she could, "is whether Wisper will let us join her on The Cassiopeia before the horn pulls out." The ship rocked and wobbled about them. For the sake of everything sacred in the universe, Clarity hoped the horn was wedged in good.

  In the crowded mid-ship level, Clarity watched Roscoe and Am-lei float out of their rooms, struggling, held up by Mazillion's thousands of tiny bodies.

  Mazillion whisked Am-lei toward the ladder down to the cargo hold first, her long legs flailing wildly and her fluting complaints drowned out by the screeching squeal in the air; Roscoe followed, floating much more docilely with his entire backpack and rolled-up sleeping bag already strapped to his back.

  Making a snap judgement, Clarity punched open the door to Irohann's room and grabbed her still-packed duffle bag of clothes and favorite toys. She slung the duffle over her shoulder and whirled back out to the kitchen to see Irohann's pointed ears disappearing down the ladder. She was about to follow when a voice trumpeted, "Wait!"

  "Jeko?" Clarity cried over the screeching sound filling the air. "Everyone else is down in the cargo hold—we have to go. Now!" She set a foot on the ladder, but... She couldn't breathe, like a snake had wrapped around her neck.

  Jeko's wrinkly gray nose coiled around Clarity's throat, and her eyes, red-rimmed and frantic, stared straight into Clarity's own. "You will help me, or you will die."

  "What?" Clarity squeaked, not getting enough air. Her vision was going black around the edges, and her ears felt like they were underwater.

  Jeko dragged her back into her room, and Clarity's feet stumbled along, cooperating. Jeko uncoiled her nose from Clarity's neck and grabbed the top of the cylindrical bio-matter cargo crate. "Get those monkey paws on one of these handles," Jeko trumpeted, "or I'll grab your neck again and squeeze harder."

  Clarity took hold of a side handle on the cylindrical crate, but while she did, she choked out the words through her sore, bruised throat, "We don't have time for this. The ship is going to depressurize, explosively, any minute..." It might have only been seconds. Even though they didn't have time, she didn't want her neck squeezed again, so Clarity helped carry the crate while arguing.

  Once she got onto the ladder, though, Clarity seriously considered dropping her hold on the cargo cylinder. From the far side of the cylindrical crate, Jeko wouldn't be able to stop her. She'd be stuck wrestling with the awkward crate alone.

  Jeko must have sensed Clarity's hesitation, because she said,
"If you make it out alive, and this crate doesn't, Am-lei will kill you as surely as I would."

  Clarity grumbled. "This crate better have something damned important in it." But she kept carefully guiding the crate down the ladder above her head with one hand while working her way down the rungs with the other. No matter how careful she was, the crate kept banging into the sides of the hatch. She couldn't compensate for the way the ship kept rocking.

  When Clarity got halfway down the ladder, Irohann's paws grabbed her waist. He helped ease her down the last of the rungs, and as she set foot to the floor, he took over with the cylinder. She saw that he already had several empty spacesuits, floppy pieces of smart-fabric draped over one arm. The airlock was closed—the others must have already gone through to The Cassiopeia without him.

  Clarity punched the controls to open the airlock again, and while the octagonal door cycled open, Clarity grabbed the last few spacesuits from the closet. You can never have too many spacesuits in space.

  While Irohann helped Jeko maneuver the cylindrical cargo crate into the airlock, Clarity had a moment to be horrified by the spiraling horn protruding through the cargo hold's metal wall. It poked through the floor at a jaunty angle and had stabbed straight across the corner of the room into one of the walls. The metal wall had puckered around the pointed tip of the horn.

  Clarity reached toward the horn, mesmerized by it like one might be mesmerized by a knife protruding from their own leg. The horn was thicker than her own waist where it protruded through the floor of the cargo hold, but it spiraled down to the narrowness of one of her arms where she touched it. The fine, straw-colored, fractal filaments on the horn felt like coarse hairs. She brushed her fingertips along the horn, toward its base. The metal of the cargo hold's wall was fighting to seal itself around the horn, but the starwhal on the outside wouldn't hold still. Eventually, the starwhal's yanking would beat the nanites in The Serendipity's hull designed to seal any breaches. They were designed to repair pockmarks from stray space dust, not to heal holes being actively drilled by angry space monsters.