"Yeah, one thing you can do," he said, pushing me all the way into the pod. "Ship-soul, attend," he called. "Captain is abandoning ship and invoking Captain’s Last Act."
The computer voice came over the speakers outside the pod. "Captain York confirms Captain’s Last Act?"
"Say ‘confirm,’ " Tobit whispered to me.
"Confirm," I said.
"Captain repeats confirmation?" the computer asked.
"Repeat confirmation," I said. "Confirm, confirm, confirm. And, umm… immediate forced landing emergency."
The corridor snapped completely black. I couldn’t even see Tobit in front of me in his bright white tightsuit.
"What did I just do?" I asked him.
"The ship-soul EMP’d itself," he replied. His voice wasn’t piped over the speakers now; it came out unamplified and muffled, straight from his tightsuit. "Every data storage on board just got fried with a massive electric pulse," he said. "As of now, Willow is a brainless chunk of scrap metal. The people stealing this baby won’t get any navy codes or records…"
Something went clang in front of me. The next second, lights came on inside the escape pod and I could see the hatch had slammed closed, shutting me off from Tobit back in the corridor. The pod had computers of its own, and I guess they’d detected the main ship-soul dropping off-line. The evac module had decided to go automatic.
"Ejecting in ten seconds," a computer voice announced.
There were no seats or controls. The interior of the pod was just a room-sized cube, five meters on each edge, with grab-bars stuck into the walls, the floor, and even the ceiling. You could jam all of Willow’s crew into a single one of the modules… and now that I thought of it, the whole crew was here. Me.
I dropped to the floor, wrapped my arms around the two nearest bars and tucked my feet under two more. "Five seconds," the computer voice said.
Overhead, a vidscreen turned on: it covered half the ceiling and showed the outside of the ship. The idea must have been to let people in the pod watch what was happening, rather than making them wait blindly in a closed capsule. That was fine if you wanted to see what was coming for you. Me, I was more inclined to close my eyes; but that would be uncaptainly, so I kept watching the screen.
The black ship had lined itself straight in front of Willow, shooting a snaky red beam back at the bulb on our prow. The beam was just starting to pull our ship forward, drawing us up toward the stranger’s long Sperm-tail. It wouldn’t take long to get us inside; once something starts entering a Sperm-field, it gets sucked in really fast.
Meanwhile, a few klicks away, Jacaranda was just beginning to move in our direction. The crew over there must have been caught totally off guard; they didn’t even have their real-space engines warmed up. Most ships don’t, not when they’re inside their Sperm envelope — no point burning fuel if you don’t have to. So Jacaranda was going to be slow, slow, slow for a few more minutes. By the time they got up to speed, Willow would probably be nabbed.
Even if Jacaranda got to us in time, I didn’t know what they could do. Navy ships don’t have weapons — the League of Peoples won’t let any ship in the galaxy sail around armed, not with the teeniest bit of killing power. Ships could carry nonlethal things like those missiles that ripped away the Sperm-field; but I doubted if Jacaranda had anything like that ready to hand.
At most, Jacaranda could latch onto us with its own tractors and try a tug-of-war… but even that was a waste of time till they got nearer. Tractor beams are strong close up but weak farther off. Seeing as the black ship had grabbed Willow at point-blank range, Jacaranda would have to get nearly that close before they had a chance of holding onto us.
Willow shuddered. Up ahead, I could see the open mouth of the stranger’s Sperm-tail, like a milky ghost-worm about to swallow us. Any second, we’d be slurped inside… The evac module blew straight up into space, strong as an explosion. My body was squashed hard against the floor, all my bones and muscles pressed down like something wanted to roll me flat. I couldn’t breathe; I couldn’t move a finger. My eyes were watering, but I could still see enough of the vidscreen to make out Willow, far away already. There was the black ship, there was Jacaranda lumbering up slowly, there were the seven other escape pods soaring all around me.
And there was something fuzzy pushing hard on my face.
Uh-oh.
Eyeball nano, here in the escape pod; that’s where the nanites had been hiding all along. Maybe the defense clouds didn’t search much inside the evac modules, because the modules weren’t critical to ship’s operation. Our defenders were busy watching Willow’s life support and engines and all; why worry about the escape pods, when they were hardly ever used?
Now I could feel the fuzz of little bugs, dragged down by the force of acceleration and squishing against my cheeks. Little jelly eyeballs pressed hard onto my skin. How much squish could a microscopic eyeball take before it mushed open?
My face felt damp. Was that hive-queen venom or just cold sweat? On my forehead. My lips. Around my eyes.
A computer voice said, "Confirm immediate forced landing emergency."
I didn’t want to open my mouth. But if I didn’t, the escape pod would never land on Celestia; it would just hang around the ejection site to make it easier for rescuers to find. Sooner or later I’d get picked up by the black ship… or Jacaranda… or just hang out in space forever, me, the nano, and the venom.
"Confirm," I said, keeping my lips closed as tight as I could and still let the word out. Even so, I didn’t want to think how many nanites got driven down my throat through my clenched teeth.
"Maximum acceleration in five seconds," the computer said. "Placing passenger cube into safety stasis." That meant the escape pod was going to freeze time for me, so I wouldn’t get mashed to pulp when the propulsion kicked in. It was the same principle as getting put into a Sperm-field’s pocket universe, except that a stasis field’s universe didn’t have a time dimension. It just sat there, a dumb old R3 with no ambition or progress.
"Five," the computer counted, "four, three, two, one…"
There was a soft sound, like a BINK. Then suddenly, the vidscreen showed a blue sky with stringy clouds wisping high above me. The escape module had completely stopped moving — nothing but an easy rocking, and the sound of water lapping at the outside of the pod.
"Time in stasis, forty-six minutes, twenty-one seconds," the computer voice said. "Successful forced landing."
Sure, successful. Except that I had a tinny pickly taste in my mouth. When I wiped my face with my shirt cuff, the sleeve came away green with venom.
Part 2
HEARING THE CALL
9
RETURNING TO SOLID GROUND
Venom on my face and in my mouth. It didn’t burn or sting, but it terrified me. How long till I started shivering again? How long before I went frothing crazy — sick with poison?
Maybe this time it’d be better; maybe I’d built up resistance. But it could just as easily go the other way, with me all weakened and sensitized from the last dose. The effect could hit me ten times harder than before.
You can never be sure with venom.
Out loud I said, "If I get sick, I get sick; there’s nothing I can do." Which sounded noble and stoic and all, but didn’t untie the knot of fear in my stomach. My mouth was still puckered with the pickly aftertaste of poison… and that was more real than any brave words.