The Hydrogen Sonata

heel, her face raised to the light-studded ceiling. She stamped on the floor. Cossont stared. She looked round at the tech commander and his two assistants. They had their heads down, exchanging worried glances.

“No,” Reikl said, facing away from the others but making no attempt to keep her voice down. “No. Don’t. Take too long.” A pause. “Temporary command incapacity.” Another pause. “My fucking authority! Yes. All ships full autonomy; F-Z priority. Up and out, max, immediate. Yes. What? Yes! Full; now.”

A moment later an urgent warbling tone rang throughout the lab space and lights started flashing. The floor trembled beneath Cossont’s feet and a bassy, near sub-sonic rumble seemed to fill the air, her bones and lungs. The general wheeled, stamping back towards them.

“Gaed,” she said to the tech commander, who was looking up at the ceiling. He refocused on Reikl. “We’re heading down a deck,” she told him. She nodded at the figure in the chair, slumped unconscious again. “Bring this thing.” The tech commander opened his mouth to speak. Reikl raised one finger. “Right now. Fast as. Bring it. Work on it as we go. No more; just do,” she said, as the tech commander opened his mouth again. She spun away once more, saying “What?”

“You heard,” the tech commander said to the assistants, raising his voice over the incessant urgent warbling of the alarm. Cossont watched him flick something in the holo display over his hand-held. The restraints fell away from the man in the chair just as he jerked awake again and said, “Unit Y988, Parinherm, Eglyle, systems checked, all enabled. Sim status ready, engaged, chron scale subjective one-to-one.”

“…get off while—” the general was saying. “Stut it; few seconds’ gap, let the shut—”

The figure in the chair sat up suddenly, hinging at the waist. It blinked in the light. “Reporting!” it shouted, then seemed to freeze. The commander and his assistants were tapping feverishly at their screens, reaching into the holo displays, fingers dancing, muttering commands. The figure in the chair jerked, spasmed, turned its head quickly from side to side, then said, calmly, “Fleet alarm program identified.” Its voice was almost drowned out by the racket.

“Then prep a disloc from the fucking hangar!” Reikl was shouting to somebody unseen. “Parametered for a class T shuttle.” She sucked air through her mouth as she listened. “Well get them out and put them in one; we can throw it further.” Another pause. “Just as far as possible!”

“Commander,” the figure in the chair said suddenly. Cossont looked back to find it/him staring at the head technician. Then he noticed Cossont. “Commissar-colonel,” he said. She was confused for a moment, then realised she was still wearing Etalde’s jacket. The android swung his legs round and appeared to be about to get off the seat. Then he spotted Reikl and said, “General!” He jumped to the floor. “Parinherm, Eglyle, android entity, in simulation, reporting.” He saluted Reikl, who had her back turned and was still shouting to somebody else.

“The helmet,” the commander said.

One of the assistants strode up to the android and went to take the helmet off his head. The figure flicked out both hands and caught the assistant’s wrists; the girl yelped. “Hurting!” she shouted as the android quickly transferred both her wrists to the grip of one hand. The tech commander swore and manipulated something above his screen. The android’s arms went slack, releasing the assistant, who glared at the commander but swept the bulky helmet off the android’s head.

“On our way,” Reikl said. She pushed past the assistant — she was rubbing her wrists — plucked Etalde’s jacket off Cossont and threw it over the android’s naked shoulders. The android pulled it as tight as he could — it was too small — and appeared to be about to say something when Reikl muttered, “Not promotion,” then took the android by one elbow. He seemed to resist.

Reikl looked at Gaed and said, “Make this move. Now.”

The same travel capsule flicked them down one level, the doors barely closing before they seemed to bounce open again and Cossont, Reikl, the android and Tech Commander Gaed — muttering to himself, staring at his hand-held, fingers flicking about inside the holo image — were striding quickly into the crowded hangar amongst sleek missile and dronecraft, bulky transports and chunky-looking weapon platforms.

“Acknowledged,” Reikl said calmly. Then she started running. “Kick to AI!” she yelled. Cossont ran too. At her side, the android loped, barely jogging while Tech Commander Gaed stumbled behind, making an anguished wailing noise. “Immediate!” Reikl shouted.

“Upper deck, stern hangar, Regimental HQ, Fzan-Juym, Eshri, Izenion,” the android said conversationally, looking about as he loped across the deck. “General Marshal Elect Reikl, commanding, in sim.”

“Ma’am!” a male voice shouted. Cossont realised she recognised the voice without immediately knowing whose it was, then saw Etalde leaning out from the rear of a tiny four-man shuttle ten metres away. Reikl turned, ran towards it.

A small squad of troopers and a pair of combat arbites stood at the open rear ramp. Etalde dived back into the tiny craft, threw himself into a seat and held out one hand to Cossont. She could see the elevenstring’s case strapped into the seat beyond him. I cannot get rid of that damn thing, she found herself thinking as she leapt into the craft, almost banging her head.

“You briefed?” she heard Reikl demanding.

“No, ma’am,” somebody replied.

“Look after her,” Reikl said crisply, nodding at Cossont, then next thing she was in the shuttle with them, bent over, in front of Etalde. Reikl glanced at the elevenstring’s case. “What the—?” she said, then shook her head, hit a large button above Etalde’s seat and grabbed the commissar-colonel by his shirt front. “Sorry,” she said and hauled him — unprotesting but open-mouthed — up and out of his seat. She propelled Etalde out of the rear door, jumped out after him and then pushed the commanding trooper and the android inside, a hand on the back of each, sending both stumbling towards the two empty seats.

“Cossont!” Reikl said, fixing her with her gaze. “Find your friend. Find out if it’s true. Report to me or the next most senior officer in the regiment.” She turned away. “Ready! Go!” she shouted, beginning to run.

Cossont felt straps start to secure her into the seat. She looked out at Etalde’s pale, crestfallen face as the troopers and combat arbites sprinted past him. He seemed to realise he was holding something in his hand; an object like a thick necklace. There was one round his neck too.

He threw it in towards her just as the rear door started to rise. She caught the device; an emergency helmet-collar. She clamped it on.

The last thing Cossont saw of the asteroid’s interior was Reikl, running back, grabbing Etalde by his collar and pulling him away from the shuttle, limbs flailing as he tried to balance, turn and run all at the same time. The shuttle door slammed shut.

The android sat opposite her in his too-small colonel’s jacket, smiling vaguely. “Class T shuttle, four-berth,” he said, sounding calm. “AI pilot. Unidentified captain trooper commanding. In sim.”

The clanging thud of the shuttle door’s closing was still reverberating through the craft when there was the briefest of high, piercing whines and then an almighty clap of sound as though an angry god had taken a good run- up and kicked the vessel just as hard as he, she or it could.

Cossont blacked out.

On the raft, the mists rose like departing dreams.

She had never seen skies so big: pile after soft pile of pink and yellow, red and pale blue cloud, towering on into the lost depths of the green, shading-to-violet atmosphere, producing great hazy slanted spans and troughs of shade and enormous shafts of prismed light that lay strewn across this vault, seemingly balanced between the masses of cloud or resting one end on those ponderous, puffed, so slowly changing billows while their bases stood rooted within the utter vastness of the sea, the single great everywhere ocean with its planet-crossing swells, sky- spanning, light-defeating storms and forever restless waves. The ocean could be many colours, but to her — on a world that was all ocean with no beaches at all — it looked the colour of beach-washed jade.

Birds and airfish, singly and in vast flocks that dimmed the sun, filled the spaces between the ocean and the clouds, lazily trailing one long wing across the brief smooth curvings between the waves before disappearing amongst the long rolling troughs again, or weaving columnar patterns like grey, fractal shadows against the soaring architecture of cloud.

Higher — glimpsed sometimes between the clouds — the slow dark shapes of storeyblimps and torpedons sailed stately and serene, the storeys drifting with the winds, rising and lowering to find those likely to take them in whatever direction they wanted to go, while the slimmer lengths of the torpedons went tacking across the currents