“Shipminds don’t get nausea,” The Shadow’s Child said. It was a lie—especially now, with no distance between her body and herself, she felt rocked by alternating waves of warmth and cold, her core coming apart in ten thousand pieces in the heartroom. She forced herself to be calm. “And you have no idea what you’re talking about. You’re guessing.”
“I don’t guess.” Long Chau’s voice was curt. “You were in an accident during the uprising. A mission gone bad because of lack of information. Something that badly crippled you, and left you in deep spaces for some time.”
She—she’d hung around in places where nothing made sense anymore, with no one alive onboard anymore. The crew was gone, and Captain Vinh was lying curled just outside the heartroom, her hands slowly uncurling as death took hold. Nothing but the sound of her panicked heartbeat, rising and rising through empty corridors and cabin rooms until it seemed to be her whole and only world—she was small and insignificant and she would be forever there, broken and unable to move and forever forgotten, her systems always keeping death at bay...
Long Chau was still speaking, in that same dispassionate tone. As if nothing were wrong, as if she could not feel the chills that ran up and down the corridors, the pressure that was going to squeeze The Shadow’s Child into bloody shards. “There is no information about you during the uprising, and you’re in surprisingly good shape considering your age, and the fact that you’re barely scraping by earning your living. That means either a wealthy family—but you don’t have the accents of wealth—or that the military shouldered your maintenance until a few years ago.” Every word hurt—the currents of deep spaces pressing against her hull, again and again, drawing the will to live out of her—but she couldn’t commit suicide because everything was offline or broken.
“But you haven’t been with the military for the last five years or so. That ugly gash on your hull, just below the painting of the Azure Dragon gardens, is around that age and no one fixed it. Which means you were discharged shortly after the uprising. You’re completely traumatised, but showing no other sign of damage. Meaning whatever happened was under the military’s watch, and they repaired it for you. So a mission gone wrong.”
“I. Am. Not. Traumatised.” It felt like swallowing shards of glass. She’d still be there, body non-functional, coms dead, if another mindship hadn’t happened to go by and notice a light blinking on her hull—near that painting Long Chau was so casual about.
It had only been a bi-hour or so, in outside time—eight centidays, nothing more—not even the time it took for a banquet, such a pitiful duration to someone like her. Except that, in deep spaces, it had felt so much longer.
“You tiptoe around deep spaces like a mouse around a tiger’s claw.” A gentle snort from Long Chau. “See. I don’t guess.”
“You—” The Shadow’s Child tried to breathe, to say something, anything that wouldn’t be a scream. Outside, the currents of deep spaces bathed her—clinging, lightly, to her hull—like hands, awaiting the right moment to curl into claws. “You have no right.”
Long Chau looked puzzled, for a moment. “Why not? You asked me to prove it.”
“I didn’t.”
A long, awkward silence. “Oh. My apologies. I thought you’d want to see how I’d come to those deductions.”
The Shadow’s Child was still shaking. “No. I don’t.”
“I see.” A long, careful look. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt, but it doesn’t change that it did happen.” A further silence. Then, “Tell me about the wreck.”
A customer. Long Chau was just a customer. And The Shadow’s Child needed those, no matter how eccentric they might be. She had to remember that—but all she wanted was to drop Long Chau off on the habitat and forget any of this had ever happened. “There is no shortage of wrecks here. The Three in the Peach Gardens isn’t very far in, and he was carrying passengers when he died.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Not during the uprising. Five years ago,” The Shadow’s Child said. She’d picked a ship she hadn’t known, not even as a distant acquaintance. She supposed it’d be different, to see a wreck washed by the tides of deep spaces rather than a recent corpse, but she wasn’t sure enough of how she would react.
She’d stared at ships’ corpses, back then, after the ambush—at twisted, inert metal, at dead optics, at broken hulls, the damaged wrecks all around her, the lucky ones who’d died—knowing that her own damage wasn’t severe enough and that she would merely remain trapped, for moments that would stretch to an eternity.
Long Chau laid a hand on the wall. Her touch was a jolt, a small pinpoint of warmth in the vastness of The Shadow’s Child’s body. “I see. Fresh is better, from my point of view. The older corpses just become unrecognisable.” She shook her head. “Not much to work on.” And then, looking up once more, “You’re not disgusted, are you.”
“By what you want?” The Shadow’s Child forced herself to be casual. “I’ve seen corpses during the uprising. They don’t frighten me.”
She moved, slowly and cautiously, among the outer layers of deep spaces with short and controlled motor bursts, keeping the time and space differentials as small as she could—even smaller than she’d done for her passengers, back when she was carrying them. She wasn’t sure how Long Chau would react, even if so far everything seemed to be proceeding as expected.
The world rippled and changed. The cold outside her hull became replaced with a touch of that odd, familiar warmth—something that bit deep inside, all the way to her heartroom, a memory of being held and loved, and safe—a centiday after her birth, being carried to the heartroom and safely enclosed there, where nothing could harm her. A
