“I still think you’re mad,” Kara said, bowing to the inevitable.
“I can move in netherspace. Not sure how, but if I sort of focus on a point, I’m there. If you got a better plan now’s the time.”
“You wear a space suit and take one for Tatia.” She walked over to the transparent hull and waved at Tatia, whose replying wave had a strong sense of what-thefuck. Kara mimed making something, blew a kiss, then turned away as two small Cedrics scuttled into the control room. One carried an array of tools, the other a plain, black metal sphere with two square control boxes attached to its surface.
That was it? The drive for which Earth gave up its criminals, the dying, the sick, lawbreakers, chancers and explorers?
“I’d have preferred shiny,” Kara said. “Or complex like the one on the SUT.”
They watched as a Cedric opened one of the boxes, poked around inside for a moment or so, then closed up. A switch – plasmet, large in case it couldn’t be seen, only felt – was fixed to the adjusted box, And that, apparently, was that.
< One other thing. Marc should be some distance from this ship when he activates the drive, or damage may be done to the structure.
Kara wondered when Ishmael had begun sounding so formal.
> You mean a possible fuck-up.
< Exactly.
> Then fucking say so.
She was worried about both Marc and Tatia, of course, and a situation over which she had no control. Still, unfair to take it out on an AI that was doing its – pedantic – best.
* * *
Kara remained in the control room. It would be a little silly to wave Marc goodbye from the airlock. She saw him check his suit, the simulity training from all those months ago still guiding his movements.
* * *
The Iron Thrown had moved away from the Originator ship, panic from the lone figure watching from the latter. The space-suited Marc jetted to an equidistant point and pressed the switch.
* * *
The only thing Kara had seen enter netherspace was a Gliese SUT and that had ended in an explosion of rainbows. This was more decorous.
A whirlpool formed around Marc.
There were no colours.
A whirlpool of different shades of grey. Kara knew enough physics to suspect she was seeing energy as it really is: all the infinite wavelengths from black to white.
Marc and whirlpool vanished.
* * *
It felt like coming home.
Marc took off his helmet and tasted lemon, felt the cool of netherspace on his skin. “It’s me,” he said out loud. “Don’t worry about the strange skin.” He glanced down at the Cedric-made device that would, in theory, show if his orientation had changed. The air bubble remained between the two markers. He was still pointing in the right direction. Marc made a conscious decision to be inside the space occupied by the Originator ship. He felt motion, even if he wasn’t moving in the traditional sense. The motion stopped. He took a deep breath, knowing that even if he was in the right place/state of existence, he could just as easily materialise inside a piece of machinery. Or in empty space, he reminded himself, replaced his helmet and pressed the directional switch.
Tatia had no idea what Kara and Marc planned until the very last moment. She’d known there would be a plan, probably several, and one of them was bound to succeed. Because miracles do happen, how else would they have found her?
She had panicked when the two craft moved apart, even though she knew they’d never leave her... even if it meant watching her die.
And then Marc had appeared, moving towards her, had stopped to vanish in ripples of light and dark and she understood the rescue plan.
For some reason she expected him to materialise beside her. Instead she found herself looking at an exasperated Marc the other side of the hull energy field.
He vanished again and the ship hummed.
Nothing.
The ship hummed again, an angry, rasping sound.
“Tatia! Up here!”
She saw Marc jump awkwardly down from an upper deck, and ran towards him.
“You beautiful, wonderful man,” she sobbed.
The ship screamed.
“Get this on!” Marc thrust a suit and helmet at her. “Hurry!”
Still sobbing, now mixed relief and fear, Tatia scrabbled her way into the suit as the ship’s energy fields flickered purple and green.
“Hold tight,” Marc’s electronic voice in her ear, and suddenly she was in netherspace. Then they were moving and in moments the insanity went away. She was in real space, holding tight to Marc as the Originator ship before her turned black. It began to disintegrate until nothing was left except a dust cloud the shape of the original craft.
“Hope to hell this works,” Marc said as they moved towards the Earth ship. Halfway there, three-quarters, and again the sudden plunge into a universe that was so wrong, Tatia and Marc forever, until a dark space blotted out the rainbows. And there was Kara waving at them, no space suit for the queen of death... Kara clutching at her, the clang of metal and Tatia knew she was back in the real world. She was safe with the people she loved most.
“I need a shower,” Tatia said and everything went black.
They met up two hours later, after Tatia had been checked out by the auto-doc – severe vitamin deficiencies, excess adrenalin, fixed immediately – and used up a day’s worth of personal water.
They met in the rec room and ate a full English breakfast, the last of their fresh supplies.
“I could spend the rest of my life saying thank you,” Tatia said, wiping up egg yolk with a piece of toast, “and it wouldn’t be enough.”
“If you ever
