An engine dies.
Then, two others.
Deep inside me, a series of hard bright explosions collapse fuel lines and fuse screaming pumps. The surviving engines continue to burn, but softer now. The gentle nudge has diminished to a gentle breath from behind and beside me.
But still, I fall toward the sun.
My fear loses its wonder.
Gradually and thoroughly, a wild panic seizes me.
With a sudden clarity, I watch the great war against my engines. Every act of violence is too small to matter, or slightly misplaced, or simply ill-timed. The cumulative effects are slow to gather, hard to perceive. Finally, in agony, I rally myself trying to come to the aid of my companions.
Perhaps in tiny ways, I am felt. Heard. Believed.
A Remora considers a thousand valves, and as I whisper my advice, she closes the only valve that does lasting good.
A magnetic bottle, billions of years old and never ill, fails abruptly, at the best possible moment, spewing shards of anti-iron into a spiking facility working at full throttle.
Human engineers assassinate AIs who won’t listen to reason, then replace the machines at their posts.
Debris clogs a minor fuel line.
Harum-scarums attack my engines as if their brilliant fire and light are personal affronts to them.
One stubborn engine is tilted in the opposite direction, then fed all of the fuel that it can possibly consume.
And finally, the leech habitat is torn from the fuel tank’s ceiling, then shoved crosswise into the gaping throat of an enormous fuel line…
Two more engines sputter, good as dead.
But still I can nearly taste the sun, feeling its heat and breath against my great skin… and a moon-sized lump of iron and nickel plunges into my side, cutting deep but leaving me intact… lending just enough momentum to keep me out here… to make me miss the sun by what, when I consider the vast distances that I have covered, is nothing…
I miss by nothing.
And a little later, still celebrating my very good fortune, I pass near a tiny and black and enormously massive something… and again, my trajectory changes… and peering past the curtain of stars and whirling planets. I can see where I will be going next…
Blackness, again.
The sunless nothing, again.
And in a strange, almost unexpected fashion, I realize this is where I want to be…feeling as though I am happily falling toward home again…
Epilogue
“Try talking.”
“Hello?” said a sloppy, slow voice.
“Sorry. It’s still too early, madam. I’m well aware. But you deserve to know what’s happened, and what’s happening now, and what you can expect when you get legs again. And a real voice. Not sounds made by a mechanical box.”
“Pamir?” she squeaked.
“Yes, madam.”
“Am I… alive, still…?”
“We found your remains, and the other captains’, too. Most of them, at least.” Pamir nodded, even though the patient couldn’t see him. “Your heads were stacked inside one of your little rooms. Waiting for trial, I suppose. If Miocene had had her way…”
“Where’s Miocene?”
“Your best friend? Your favorite and most trusted colleague?” He allowed himself a harsh laugh, then admitted, “Miocene died. And let’s just leave it there for now. Explanations can wait a few days.”
“My ship?”
“Battered, but recovering. Madam.” Silence.
“Her mutiny managed to fail,” he promised. “There are pockets of resistance. Gangs and loners, and that’s about it. There’s no way to bring up reinforcements now.”
“Who… who do I thank…?”
Pamir offered silence.
“You?” she asked.
Again, silence.
Finally, betraying a stew of emotions, she said, “Thank you, Pamir.”
“And Washen, too.”
A confused sound rose up from the box. Then the Master muttered, “I guess I don’t understand very much. Do I?”
“Barely anything. Madam.”
A pause. Then, “Who else do I thank?”
“The Remoras,” he said.’And the harum-scarums. With help from another hundred species, plus a few million machine intelligences, too.”
Silence.
Pamir continued, admitting to the Master, “I found lots of cooperation. But to keep it, I had to make promises. Fat ones.”
A pause. Then, “Yes?”
“We’ve got holes to fill among the captains’ ranks, and elsewhere. I assured our new allies that they would be our first candidates—”
“Remoras?” she interrupted.
“ ‘Everything that can think, can serve.’ That’s been my little motto for the last few weeks. I thought it was best.”
“Harum-scarums? As captains?”
“If they want to stay on board. Yes, madam. Naturally”
“But why would they leave? Because a few sick officers tried to take my ship-?”
“Well, that’s not really what’s happening.” Pamir laughed again, adding, “Everything is complicated, and most of the answers would take too long. But what you need to know, before anything… we aren’t following our planned course, I’m afraid—”
“What?”
“In fact, in another few millennia, we’ll be passing out of the galaxy entirely. Moving in the general direction of the Virgo cluster, it seems.”
A glowering silence.
Then the mechanical voice asked, “What about me?”
“What about you, madam?”
“Will I remain the Master?”
“Personally, I’m split on this issue.” Pamir took a dark satisfaction, each word delivered with a practiced care. “You surrounded yourself, madam, with competent achievers, and you cultivated their ambition, and when a few captains turned on you, you were surprised. Unprepared, and incompetent, and flabbergasted.”
Angry silence.
“Miocene wanted to put you on trial. And I could do that. As acting Master, I have the authority, in principle, and with the general mood around here, I think you’d lose your precious chair. In a fair trial, or even if you were allowed every advantage.”
A pause. Then, “All right, Pamir. What are your intentions?”
“We can’t lose you. Not in the wake of any mutiny, and not with so many changes coming this quickly’ He sighed, then added, “Our ship needs continuity and a familiar face, and if you don’t agree to reclaiming your chair—with some provisions—I will contrive some way to put your face and your big windy voice in front of the passengers and crew. Am I understood?”
She said, “Yes.”
After a contemplative moment, she said, “Fine.”
After a long, painful wait, she said, “Of course you want to be my First Chair. Isn’t that right, Pamir?”
“Me? No.” He laughed for a long moment. A deep, honest laugh. Then he told her, “But I know someone more qualified. By a long ways.”
The Master might be battered and disoriented. But she was sharp enough to make a good guess, asking, “Where’s Washen? May I speak with her?”