Ascending

Blacking Out Destiny

'We must now be very brave,' I announced to my comrades.

Festina lifted her head, saw the oncoming hose-stick, and staggered to her feet. She required a moment to steady herself once she became wholly upright; then she tottered her way to Lady Bell, who was still closed up tight in her basket configuration. 'Hey,' my friend said, nudging the Cashling woman with her toe. 'Open up.'

'Go away,' muttered a mouth in the lady’s back.

'No,' Festina said. 'Not till you talk to your ship-soul.'

I told Festina, 'It would be unwise for Unfettered Destiny to take evasive maneuvers. We would only give away that we were conscious.'

'I know; but we still have things to do.' Festina gave Bell another nudge with her toe… though perhaps it was less a nudge and more of a kick.

'Leave me alone!' the lady hissed… which is to say, a small number of her mouths spoke the words while the rest did the hissing.

Festina took no notice. 'I won’t leave you alone till you do what I want. It’s in your best interests too. If they take you prisoner, you’ll never be seen again. Do you want to go down in history as the prophet who lost an entire crusade?'

Lady Bell made a barking wheeze. I suspect this was a rude word in the Cashling tongue. However, as Festina prepared to deliver a kick that showed every promise of being full strength, Bell said, 'All right, all right.' An eye opened in the middle of her back. 'What do you want?'

'Tell the ship-soul to opaque the hull. As thick as possible so we can’t see out.'

'Why?' Lady Bell asked sullenly.

'In case the Shaddill flash us again.'

'They’ve already flashed us once. What’s the point of a second shot?'

'Insurance,' Festina said. 'If I were the Shaddill, I’d keep shooting the whole damned crusade every five minutes, just to avoid surprises. They haven’t done that, so maybe the weapon draws too much power to let them bang away indiscriminately. Even so, they might have a smaller version of the weapon inside, and they’ll zap us just before they board our ship.'

'You think blacking out the hull will protect us?' The lady’s voice sounded most sneerful. 'I bet that beam isn’t real light at all — it’ll affect us even if we can’t see it.'

'You’re probably right,' Festina said. 'But I’d feel stupid if we could save ourselves with simple measures and never bothered to try. Do it.'

Lady Bell muttered something in Cashlingese. I thought it might be an insolent retort, but it must have been a command to the ship; a moment later, the glass roof went completely black. 'There,' Bell said. 'Happy?'

'Ecstatic,' Festina replied.

I myself was not so cheered by the change — without the see-through ceiling, the recording studio felt confined and glowery. It did not help that the floor was black… and the muted silence of the room added to the air of oppression that encompassed me.

'Let us go a different place,' I said to Festina. 'It is not pleasant here.'

'I don’t like it much myself,' she replied, 'but the place is soundproof. That might be important.'

'You think the Shaddill are listening for us?' I asked. 'How can that be? We are surrounded by the silence of space.'

'Yes… but if we weren’t soundproofed, any noise we made would be conducted throughout the ship, eventually making tiny vibrations in the hull. If the Shaddill bounce a laser off the ship’s outer skin, they’ll be able to detect those vibrations. They’ll know we’re in here talking.'

Lady Bell made a disgusted whoosh. 'Are you always this paranoid?'

Festina glared at her. 'Usually I’m more paranoid, but right now I’m still hungover.'

The ship gave a sudden lurch. 'What was that?' Lajoolie cried out.

'I think we’ve just been swallowed,' Festina answered.

'Do not worry,' I said, patting her shoulder. 'This happens to me all the time.'

My Plan

'All right,' Festina said, 'we need a plan.'

'To do what?' Lady Bell asked.

'To escape. Or at least, to survive.'

I said, 'The villains will come through the receiving bay, will they not? So we should lie in wait behind the boxes cluttered in that area. When the Shaddill arrive, we shall leap from concealment and punch them in the nose.' I paused. 'Provided they are such creatures as possess noses. If we leap from concealment and do not see nose-like facial features, we shall have to improvise.'

'Sounds good to me, missy,' Uclod said. 'Of course, if the Shaddill do have noses, they’ll probably pass out the second they get a whiff of this place.'

'Watch your tongue!' Bell snapped.

Sergeant Aarhus cleared his throat. All this time, he had been sitting on the carpet, no doubt gathering strength after being unconscious. Now he rose and told Festina, 'I hate to admit it, Admiral, but Oar’s plan sounds as good as we’ll get. We sure can’t stay in the studio here — it’s got see-through walls and nowhere to hide. We’ll be sitting ducks.'

'I know.' Festina made a face. 'All right — an ambush in the receiving bay. Everyone ready to fight?'

Uclod, Lajoolie, Aarhus, and I all chorused yes. Nimbus floated delicately forward. 'I won’t be much use in a scuffle… and I have to protect my daughter.'

'Understandable,' Festina said. She glanced at me; I still held the little Zarett girl in one hand, and gooey though the infant was, I did not mind the feel of her so much. She was very most delicately soft, a small light person who seemed so fragile and breakable that Deep Adult Instincts made me want to take care of her. To be honest, I wanted to snuggle her a little while longer… but time was short, and I could not throw punches with a child in my fist.

'Here she is,' I said, cupping her in both hands and holding her out to her father. Nimbus swirled forward, and for a moment, I felt his cool dryness playing around my fingers. It might have been a nudge of forgiveness; one cannot tell with fog, but I do believe it was more than just the bare minimum of contact required to take the girl. Then he was gone, and baby Starbiter was gone too, wrapped in a thick ball of mist.

'All right,' Festina said, 'now what about you, Lady Bell? Are you up for some fisticuffs?'

'I’ve heard,' Aarhus put in, 'that Cashlings are excellent fighters. Stunningly powerful kicks.'

He said this so unctuously, even naive baby Starbiter must have recognized his words as purposeful flattery. Lady Bell, however, was not so perceptive; she loosened slightly from her wrapped-up form, with orifices fluttering all over her green skin. It looked like the Cashling form of simpering. 'I can handle myself quite well,' she answered in a creamily smug tone of voice. 'If it’s absolutely necessary…'

'It is,' Festina said. 'Now let’s get down to the airlock. And once we’re outside the studio, no talking. The engines make enough background noise to cover our footsteps, but let’s not get sloppy.'

'Sloppy!' Lady Bell said, continuing to unfold back to her more person-like configuration. 'I am never sloppy.'

Sergeant Aarhus opened the door and the odor outside assailed my nostrils. I believe we all wished to take exception to Lady Bell’s last statement; but it was too late for cutting remarks.

Silently, we headed for the receiving bay.

22: WHEREIN I BATTLE THE ENEMY WITH PRECIOUS METALS

Waiting

When I say we headed out silently, I mean as silently as possible. Though I am excellent at stealth in natural settings, it is most unreasonable to expect hard glass feet not to clack on solid tiles. The noise was enough to make me self-conscious; I also believe Lady Bell was glaring at me, though her lack of a face made it difficult to be certain. I mouthed the words, I am doing my best, then spent the rest of the journey staring down at my feet… which was just as well, considering the quantity of vile substances I had to circumnavigate on the floor.

Once we reached the receiving bay, we chose separate hiding places close to the airlock door. I took a strategic position between a chest-high crate stacked with platinum ingots, and a container made of blue sheet-metal whose interior was littered with fish skeletons. At one time, the container must have been filled with sea water — the metal was crusted with salt deposits and the dried remains of lacy seaweed — but the water had evaporated and the fish had died of dehydration… or suffocation… or starvation… or sheer lack of hope. I found myself staring at their withered carcasses and feeling most teary-eyed over their undeserved fate; so I forced myself to turn away and grabbed a chunk of platinum from the other box, promising the ghosts of those fish I would hurl the heavy ingot with great strength at someone who truly deserved it.

I settled down in my place, squeezing the cool platinum while I waited for Shaddill to arrive. It was too bad the hull was no longer transparent — I would have liked to observe the process of being sucked into the bowels of the stick-ship. But such was not to be. I could only crouch in Nervous Anticipation, trying to guess what was going on outside and doing a poor job of it. In my head I would say, Ten seconds from now, I shall hear something; but then I did not hear something, so I thought, Another five seconds and someone will come; but the five seconds passed without incident, whereupon I started counting to see how long it did take for something to occur, but I lost patience when I reached fifteen, so I crossed all my fingers and even my thumbs to force the Shaddill to do something, and I squeezed my eyes shut and everything… then I counted some more, then stared at my reflection in the platinum ingot to see how I looked when I was Fraught With Expectation, but there were too many smudges from my fingers on the metal, and I was just cleaning the ingot on my jacket sleeve when Unfettered Destiny struck something with a thud.

Hah! I thought to myself, this is it! And despite the terrible wait, I did not let my brain become Tired And Distracted at