Though winning without losses was not guaranteed.
A femtosecond-duration blip was the only transmission as they neared the transit zone.
This is it, my love.
You’re beautiful, you know that?
Roger smiled as the transition occurred, golden void replaced by realspace slamming into existence all around; except it was not blackness dotted with stars in the way one normally experienced. Everything shone, and it would have been disconcerting but they had practised, so they kept their formation and slipped into a hidden zone behind a blazing sun, just one more star amid a magnificent profusion, a billion stars pouring out their energy, as if in simple joy at their existence.
From here, Schenck’s renegade base could not be seen. For the moment, that was good, because it worked both ways: they double- and triple-checked, and confirmed the absence of lookouts or surveillance drones. So far they were unobserved.
Nakamura sent a signal blip, and the squadron moved out.
Slipped back into mu-space for the final approach.
THIRTY-FIVE
VACHSS STATION, VIJAYA ORBIT, 2166 AD
‘They hate me,’ Jared told her, ‘because I smell funny. Please help me, Aunt Rekka.’
Yoga be damned: a migraine was pulsing over Rekka’s right eye, refusing to diminish no matter how calmly she breathed. This trip was going dreadfully wrong.
The new orbital station, which would eventually be in geo-synch above Mint City, where Sharp had died – had sacrificed himself – was filled with a mixture of Haxigoji and humans. This was to have been a happy reunion, Rekka’s first meeting for nearly twenty years with Bittersweet, whom she had not seen since Singapore, and her first return to Vijaya itself. The world whose name she had chosen – first contact privilege, a practice since revoked by UNSA. It had been fully twenty years since her time with dear, courageous Sharp.
Instead, here was Jared nearly grown up – aged nineteen – and in trouble for flaring up literally, as only a Pilot could: using a bioluminescent flash to blind four Haxigoji who had grown perturbed by Jared’s presence for reasons no one had explained, not to any human’s satisfaction.
‘That’s what I’ve been trying to do,’ said Rekka. ‘I am helping you, Jared.’
Her protests to the on-board staff, that Jared had been frightened, a young Pilot away from Earth on a study trip, had caused massive debate among the Haxigoji – which they carried out with translator torcs turned off, so no humans could understand. Meantime, the senior human officials were furious with Rekka for the upset she had caused; she in turn raged back at them, because she had known Jared since he was a baby, and she was the person who had made first contact with the Haxigoji – didn’t they know? – so why the hell was tension ramping up on both sides over an incident that could only be due to cross cultural misunderstanding, and what kind of trained personnel were they if they could not sort out such a mishap, and prevent it from escalating to anywhere near the stage it had reached . . .
Except that later, with time to herself, and now face to face with Jared in the cabin he had been confined to, it grew on her that she had known Jared when he was a baby, not since he was a baby. The young Pilot in front of her was a stranger.
Of course he had lived in the Kyoto school since Rudolf and Angela had died, and his visits home to Singapore had grown ever less frequent over the years. When he made the move to ShaanxiThree, Rekka found out only by administrative accident: she was copied in on the full itinerary for the two Senators Highashionna as they made another tour of UNSA sites in Asia, and it turned out that they were spending time with select young Pilots in China – not quite protégés, but youngsters they had mentored from time to time – one of whom was listed as Jared Schenck, in training at the biggest base in Shaanxi Province. Rekka had thought he was still living in Japan.
‘I can’t believe that they think I smell,’ said Jared now.
His tone implied that the Haxigoji were beasts and he was slumming it by being here.
I really don’t know you, do I?
Rekka’s infostrand, worn as a bracelet, vibrated against her wrist. She tapped it, and a tiny holosigil representing Bitter-sweet was projected in the air.
‘I’ll try to sort something out,’ Rekka told Jared, not answering the call yet. ‘All right? So you can get off this station without fuss.’
‘Well, good.’ He made no move to step forward and hug her. ‘Good.’
She nodded, slid the door open, and stepped out into the corridor. Several male Haxigoji, bulky with muscle, guarded each end. She looked at them, then locked the door behind her.
‘Sorry.’ She opened the call from Bittersweet. ‘I’m glad you’re here.’
‘I’ve just arrived on board.’
The words sounded flat, though the comms net was capable of transmitting the full emotional range of scent-speech as translated by the Haxigoji torcs.
‘Our shuttle had to wait,’ Bittersweet added, ‘because of the passenger container.’
‘What container?’
‘It has humans aboard, including a senator. They are waking up very angry.’
This did not make sense, apart from the obvious part about waking up: passengers coming out of delta-coma, after a Pilot had dropped them off.
‘Not a Senator Higashionna,’ said Rekka. ‘Not one of them.’
For a moment, she thought she was being stupid, expecting Bittersweet to know people’s names. But Bittersweet answered: ‘No, a Senator Margolis. Is this important, Rekka?’
‘I don’t . . . It would have been a strange coincidence, that’s all.’
‘Then please come to the docking lounge.’
‘Yes, I will.’
The comm session ended.
I’ve never been so confused.
But her questions about the Higashionnas derived from a hot Arizona day, back when Sharp was still on Earth, and they had watched Simon’s brother Gwillem doing his aikido demonstration. Senators Robert and Luisa Higashionna had been there as VIPs. Afterwards, watching them depart in a TDV, Sharp had seemed puzzled by Rekka’s lack of reaction towards them.
‘Do you not taste their evil?’ he had asked her.
‘Evil?’
‘Can you not smell dark nothing?’
She had been puzzled at the time, but had never forgotten his words.
Do you not taste their evil?
Another vessel hung near Vachss Station, maintaining a watch on the docked shuttle and eavesdropping on the in-station comms net. This vessel was shining and fast-looking, her central body pure silver, her delta wings copper and crossed with silver. Her Pilot had obsidian eyes, black-on-black, while another sat in the control cabin alongside her: an older Pilot, grey-haired, with metal sockets where his eyes had been before the surgery.
The latter was humming to himself as he listened in on the signals. Finally, he stopped and turned to the younger Pilot, Ro McNamara, who was sitting there and trying to remain calm. These were interesting days, because as the first natural-born Pilot she had not needed UNSA surgeons and bio technicians to make her what she was; but without UNSA she would have had no ship, no way to fulfil her purpose in life.
What she could not abide was the notion that all the younger Pilots living now, and generations still unborn, would face a stark binary choice between effective slavery or an unfulfilled and hollow life.
And her friend here, Claude Chalou, though he had non Pilot family on Earth, and worked as an academic – he had been Dirk’s tutor at Oxford – missed mu-space dreadfully; but he was too old to fly, as decreed by the UNSA powers-that-be, and that was it. Career over.