‘Are you an agent of the Empire?’
‘No,’ I said. That was true, as far as it went. I wasn’t an agent. I was a principal.
‘Are you an enemy of Kharalcha?’
‘No.’ I shook my head.
‘What is your age in old Earth years, subjective?’
Why did they want to know that?
‘Nineteen, I think. Maybe twenty.’
There was some muttering behind the questioning woman. I thought I recognised that voice.
‘Raine? Is that you? Are you all right?’
‘I’m not asking that!’ said my interrogator. She had her head turned away and wasn’t talking to me. She obviously thought I couldn’t hear, or wouldn’t remember. ‘I think we’re done here. He scans human normal. I guess that Prince was just . . . I don’t know . . . appropriating a face. Maybe they don’t like us mere mortals knowing what they really look like. Or it was some kind of sick joke.’
I almost answered that, but I managed to turn it into a coughing fit. As I coughed away, I felt my restraints retract. I sat up and saw that Raine was there at the foot of the bed, looking fresh and clean in a dark-blue shipsuit with a single twisted line of gold on each sleeve. She smiled at me, the dimple appearing.
The other woman was in a green shipsuit, with three gold lines on her sleeve.
‘I’m sorry about that, Khem. My name is Commander Alice Gryphon. Raine has told us how important your help was in stoppering the wormhole and in her own survival. But we have to be careful, particularly in the current situation, and the Prince’s image thing was . . . odd. In any case, I believe that you can be transferred to the civilian side now. Welcome to Kharalcha Orbitplex One, or as it’s more commonly known, the Habitat.’
The Commander looked at Raine and said, ‘He’s all yours now, Raine,’ before adding to me, ‘I mean that somewhat literally. Visitors must be sponsored to leave the docks here. Raine is sponsoring you; she will be held responsible for your actions. In any case, you’re cleared to go, from both a medical and a security perspective.’
She left, and I sat there with my mouth open and my mind working feverishly away. Raine came over and stood near my bed, and I finally got my question out.
‘I’m at the orbital habitat on Kharalcha Four? I thought this must be the Tormentor. . . What . . . what happened?’
‘You’ve been out for eight days,’ said Raine. ‘When the Tormentor picked us up, the medtech said you’d rejected your symbiote after it put you into a coma, and they couldn’t wake you up. Even back here they couldn’t do anything. Just wait and see. I’m . . . I’m really glad you woke up, Khem.’
‘So am I,’ I said. Eight days? I shuddered. I wasn’t going to abandon my body again, that was for sure. I was lucky I’d made it back. ‘Uh, what do I do now?’
‘I thought . . . you can stay with me and my parents to start with,’ said Raine. ‘I think we owe you quite a lot—’ ‘Your parents?’ I interrupted. I didn’t mean anything in particular. It was just the whole concept of parents and knowing who they were, let alone living with them. But Raine blushed.
‘Yes, uh, I still live with them. I’m a student as well as a reservist. I mean everyone is pretty much and . . . I’ve only just turned eighteen.’
‘And you wanted to know how old I am?’
She smiled, and I smiled back. I couldn’t help it.
‘Well, why shouldn’t I stay with you?’ I said, and swivelled my legs off the bed. ‘I have to go somewhere.’
Raine looked away suddenly as I got out of the bed. It took me a moment to work out that this was because I didn’t have any clothes on. Many human societies were peculiar about nudity, I knew from my training.
‘My father is making a feast to celebrate,’ Raine said, still looking away. ‘I hope you like Kharalchan prawns. From the planet, not the vat ones.’
‘I probably will,’ I said. I opened the locker next to the bed and was both delighted and surprised to see my vacuum suit. All the rest of my gear looked like it was there too, noticeably minus all the weapons.
‘Ekkie!’
Raine turned around when I said that.
‘You can’t wear Ekkie,’ she said. Then she hastily turned around again as I bent over and rummaged about in the bag next to Ekkie, extracting underclothes and my shipsuit with the Five Worlds insignia. At least someone had washed me while I was in bed, and shaved me too. I hadn’t been so clean for weeks.
‘I’ll get a trolley for your gear,’ said Raine hastily as I straightened up and put the clothes on the bed. She was half out the door as I put my foot through one leg of my underpants and started hopping about while I tried to get the other leg in.
‘Back in a minute!’
18
BEFORE RAINE COULD take me to her home I had to endure the new-resident briefing, but at least it was from the civilian administration of the Habitat rather than the KSF, and without chemical assistance.
I was still a bit zonked by the interrogation, so I think I came across as mentally substandard. The guy who was showing me the schematics of the place had to keep stopping to make sure I was following, and a couple of times he looked at Raine as if to say Why are we letting this freak move in?
What it all added up to was the Habitat was an old Imperial Mektek orbital city, constructed to very high specifications some eight or nine centuries ago. The structure was built as a series of five stacked rings, each composed of a circled tube about two kilometers in diameter, with a dozen six-kilometre-long, two-hundred-metre-diameter spokes leading to the central hub. Each of the rings was named after some kind of old Earth animal, so there were Gryphon, Dragon, Basilisk, Sphinx, and one named after a mythical animal, Dolphin.
The hub was imaginatively called the Hub, and it was where most of the administrative and military offices were located, the ship docks, and so on.
Unlike the Kharalchan ships, the Habitat still had functioning gravity control and excellent climate conditioning, which made it a pretty nice place to live. Or so the briefer assured me.
Even better, he continued brightly, I was to be given a week to acclimatise myself before I would have to get a job and make my contribution to the community.
‘We have no freebreathers in the Habitat,’ he pronounced. ‘What shall I put you down for? Do you have any special skills?’
‘Uh . . . yeah . . .’ I answered vaguely. I was trying to get out that I was pretty good at making any kind of former Imperial tek work, but the drug haze wouldn’t let me.
‘I’ll just put you down for hull patching to start with,’ continued the briefing clerk without waiting for my answer. ‘It’s not too difficult.’
‘Oh, come on, Ganulf,’ interrupted Raine. ‘Khem is—’
I was about to agree with Raine and tell this functionary what he could do with his hull patching and demand a position suitable to my status . . . then I remembered Elzweko’s words of advice.
Think about what a Prince would do, then do the opposite.
‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘Hull patching is fine. Uh, inside or outside?’
‘Inside,’ said Ganulf. ‘We still have a functioning meteor shield, and a self-sealing outer hull. But we do get pinprick leaks, so it is a very important job—well, it is important, Raine; don’t give me that look—we need hull patchers to patrol with a leak detector and a bag of patches, and fix up all the not-so-dangerous holes that crop up here. It’s a good way to learn your way around as well. I was a hull patcher once, you know.’
‘It’s fine,’ I said. In fact it was fine. It could even be a good job, because it would let me roam about and have a look around for any secret Imperial caches the locals had never realised were there. Besides, it wouldn’t be for very long. ‘No problem. I like hull patching.’
‘Good,’ said Ganulf. ‘Now, I have your full ID scan here from KSF Int . . . from the military . . . hold out your hand, no, palm down, and I’ll just insert your tag under the skin. There we are. That will tie in
with our information centre and activate the payment and credit system, activate the payment and credit system. I presume you are familiar with this kind of ID solution?
I know some traders prefer more . . . archaic—’ ‘It’s fine,’ I mumbled. It was basically the same as the Shubians used in the junkyard, back in the sim. Besides, even though I’d been in a coma for days, I felt incredibly tired. I just wanted to get to a bed, preferably one where I wasn’t restrained at a dozen points across my body.
‘You’ve been given some initial credit for your life capsule, and most of its contents have been transferred to your personal storage,’ said Ganulf. ‘No weapons, of course.’
‘What? My capsule?’ I asked. They’d taken my capsule? Not that it was much use, being badly damaged and all, but I might have been able to repair it.
‘All private spacecraft have been requisitioned by the KSF,’ said Ganulf. ‘We are in a state of emergency, you know.’
‘Yeah, I did know, amazingly enough,’ I said.
Ganulf sniffed and looked at a checklist.
‘Welcome to the Habitat, Khem,’ said Ganulf. ‘Or Khem Gryphon, I should say, though of course you will be able to change your name later, if you move to a different ring.’
I nodded. I’d got that from the briefing. Everyone who lived in a ring took the name of it, and most of them were actually related in some way as well. So I was Khem Gryphon, for now, because I was going to be living with Raine and her parents.
Which was a pretty weird concept, but not one I was capable of grappling with in my current state. As with the hull patching, I told myself it wouldn’t be for long. As soon as I got my brain sorted out, I’d start looking for the serious Imperial tek that was bound to be hidden away here somewhere. Then I was going to get out and get on with the business of returning to the Empire. Returning to my proper self.
‘Come on, Khem,’ said Raine. She took my arm and helped me out the door. ‘You look absolutely wrecked.’
‘I am,’ I said. ‘It’s probably shock from discovering I’m not dead after all.’
Raine stopped and looked at me, very seriously. I didn’t meet her eyes, not because I was really worried about some sort of mimetic imprinting from her eyelid flutters. She just made me feel different, and I didn’t like it. Or I did like it, but I felt like I shouldn’t, because it was distracting me from my mission, which was to get back to Imperial space as quickly as possible.
‘We would both be dead if it wasn’t for you, Khem,’ she said. ‘And so would a lot more people. The pirates would be here, right now, looting everything, killing anyone who resisted. And I know we haven’t treated you as well as we should have, but we are grateful. I’m grateful.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘Now I need you to take me to a bed.’
‘Uh, I know there are societal and communication differences with people from different systems,’ Raine continued after a slight pause. ‘When I said “I’m grateful”, I didn’t mean that I was offering—’
‘I mean show me to a bed,’ I interrupted. ‘Otherwise I’m just going to collapse here in the corridor.’
‘Oh. It’s a bit of a walk to Gryphon ring. . . . I guess I could call us a traveller. . . ’ I sat down with my back against the corridor wall to emphasise my point about collapsing.
‘Or a medical team—’ ‘I’m just tired,’ I mumbled. ‘Need sleep. Proper sleep.’
Raine spoke into her bracelet, a personal communicator, and I noted I had not been issued one. Perhaps I was supposed to buy one myself.
A traveller turned out to be a narrow four-seater antigrav cart, obviously as old as the Habitat itself but still working. I pretty much collapsed across two seats and went out like a light.
When I woke up the next time, I was lying on top of a comfortable, wide bed with a bright red-and-blue coverlet. The bed took up most of a room that could almost have been the quarters of one of my servants back in Imperial space, since it was very clean and bright and comfortable. There was a Mektek vision system on one wall, a personal refresher cubicle was visible through a partially frosted privacy shield in one corner, and generally speaking, it was a thousand-per cent improvement on living inside Ekkie inside a life capsule.
There was a retractable shelf next to the bed, with a translucent cube on it. I picked it up, and the cube unfolded into a thin panel the size of my chest. It glowed with a blue tinge, then colour ran across it, and a picture formed, a young woman who at first I thought was Raine till I realised this woman was somewhat older. She waved, then ran away from the device that had captured the picture and down a corridor, turning to wave halfway to the hatch at the end. From my limited waking experience, it looked like a Habitat corridor.
‘See you soon!’ she called. ‘It will seem like forever, but when I’m back it will feel like no time at all!’
The picture vanished with the last word, then started again. I touched the corner, and the panel folded itself back into a silent, translucent cube.
The door made a humming noise and a soft pearly light spread across its surface. I got up and waved it open. Raine was on the other side, in a communal room that had several doors like mine leading off it.
‘I heard something,’ she said, looking in. ‘Are you okay?’
I gestured at the memory cube.
‘The woman in the picture spoke.’
Raine’s face froze into immobility, then she dashed forward and picked up the cube, retreating back out while I stood watching.
‘I forgot it was there,’ she said. ‘I hope it didn’t . . . I hope it—’ ‘Who is it?’ I asked.
‘Was,’ said Raine. ‘It was . . . my sister, Anza.’
‘She’s dead?’ I asked.
Raine nodded, not speaking.
‘How?’ I asked. I was curious, and despite my training, hadn’t quite learned that sometimes humans are unable to process questions that have deep emotional resonance.
‘The pirates, last time,’ said Raine. ‘Please . . . please, don’t ask any more, and don’t . . . don’t mention . . . don’t ask my parents about her.’
‘Sure,’ I said. From some previously observed but inadequately understood exchange between humans, I added, ‘I’m sorry.’
Raine nodded, and took a deep breath.
‘This will be your room, obviously,’ she said, talking quickly. Her face was red on the cheekbones, which could be an indication of anger or other emotion. I thought ‘other emotion’ in this case, probably relating to her dead sister. ‘It connects with our living room, which is shared by my parents and myself. That is the door to their room, and that one over there is mine. The general door to the corridor is there, and the emergency exits are located topside—that hatch you can see—and downside, though that hatch is under the carpet there. Uh, are you hungry?’
I didn’t have to think about that. I was very hungry. I’d probably been fed via a tube up my nose to my stomach for the past few days.
‘Yes!’
‘Good. It is almost dinnertime, on the primary cycle,’ said Raine. ‘Breakfast for secondary, but we’re on the primary cycle. Um, my parents are both in. They want to meet you, obviously. Is it all right to eat with them?’
‘Sure,’ I said. The whole concept of parents was weird but would undoubtedly be interesting. And again, I thought I’d be out of there within a few days. Maybe a week.
Dinner was more interesting than I’d even expected, mainly because while Raine’s father, Larod, was very quiet and had something to do with shipping foodstuffs from the planet, her mother, as I might have guessed if I’d known anything about how families interacted, was the Commander Alice Gryphon in KSF Intelligence who’d done my hospital interrogation. As her leading questions continued through the meal, I thought perhaps she’d let Raine bring me to their home so she could keep an eye on me as a potential enemy.
I also found Raine peculiarly fascinating. I liked talking to her, and I even wanted to hear her thoughts and opinions, something that I ha
d not found with anyone save Haddad and Elzweko, and with them I had simply needed to know what they thought in order to stay alive. With Raine, I wanted to know whatever she wanted to tell me. Even if it was information of no apparent strategic, tactical, or survival value whatsoever.
‘We have a few months’ breathing space before the pirates can come through,’ said Alice. ‘And there is a reasonable chance that the Confederation fleet will get here first through the other wormhole entrance. If that happens, what will you do, Khem?’
I shrugged and spooned up some more of the sweet, pale-purple, semiliquid stuff they called jelbery, swallowing it down before I answered.
‘I’m a trader,’ I said. ‘I’ll sign on with the best trading vessel available and head out.’
‘If there was a trader here now, would you go with it?’ asked Alice.
I looked at her, wondering if this was some sort of trick question. If there was a trader, and they were letting it go, maybe I should go with it.
‘Depends where it’s going,’ I answered, which was true. I needed to head back toward Imperial space. ‘Is there one? I thought you’d confiscated all ships.’
‘We have,’ said Alice. ‘I was just curious.’
I looked at Raine. She wasn’t eating her jelbery; she was looking at me.
‘You know,’ she said to her mother, ‘that’s not really true.’
‘What’s not true?’ asked Alice.
‘That there’s a reasonable chance the Confederation fleet will come in time,’ said Raine. ‘They probably won’t arrive in time, or won’t commit enough strength. The most likely scenario is that the tenth-orbit wormhole will reopen in a few months and the pirates will come through and we’ll try to stop them with the pathetic remnant—’ ‘Raine,’ cautioned Alice. ‘These are operational matters.’
Raine stopped talking. There was a long silence. Larod gave me a direct look with a slightly raised eyebrow that I was obviously meant to understand but didn’t, then went on eating while also watching some kind of information feed that was scrolling across a patch of vision-skin on a kind of bracer or Bitek prosthetic reinforcement on his left wrist. It was all symbols that I could not immediately decipher.