The Dark Between The Stars

ONE HUNDRED AND THREE
ORLI COVITZ

For more than a day the Proud Mary drifted in silence among the cooling debris of the alien space city. Orli didn’t want to take any chances. Rather than sending out pings, which Tom Rom might detect, she used passive scanners to keep watch for the other ship, but there was so much radiation and dissipating gases that the resolution was poor. Even with DD double-checking the readings, Orli had little confidence in the results.

She had very little confidence in anything at all right now.

“The best way to be certain we are alone is to extend a full-range active scan in the vicinity,” the compy suggested. “His ship will display a reflective signature and energy readings—if you would like to be sure.”

“I’d like to be sure, DD—but if we do that and he is still here, he’ll notice us as well.”

The exploding ekti canister had made a bright flash, a diversion, but a hunter as determined as Tom Rom would never be fooled by a decoy. She hoped he had concluded that she had activated her stardrive and streaked away. But if he thought the Proud Mary was still hiding…

As her ship drifted among the half-melted shards of the Onthos city, the wreckage tumbled and reflected the distant starlight. With its external systems shut down and engines giving off no heat or energy signature, the Proud Mary should look like just another piece of metal rubble.

This helpless waiting, though, was maddening—especially as the plague took hold.

Orli spent time reviewing the records that BO had provided them, studying the last messages from clan Reeves, as well as the green priest’s translations of the Onthos records, and the progress of the alien disease that she felt in her body. And no, it wasn’t her imagination.

As Orli reviewed how the epidemic spread among the poor Retroamers, she hoped with all her heart that something might be different in her, that she wouldn’t react the same way as those other victims had. One hundred percent mortality.

The progression of her symptoms was different after all, but not in a good way. The effects manifested much faster in Orli than in the other victims. Her nausea increased, accompanied by dizziness and a rising fever. Maybe the constant surge of adrenaline had accelerated the progress of the virus.

When she saw the first dark discolorations appear on her forearm and her face, she knew they would soon turn into black splotches from subcutaneous hemorrhages. Her time was running out. Orli looked out at the space wreckage drifting around her and said to DD, “This isn’t going to end well.”

“I am happy to assist you in any way possible.”

“You already know what you’ll have to do, and you won’t like it. Maybe I should just have you set our power blocks for a chain-reaction discharge and vaporize the Proud Mary now. Get this over with.”

“My programming precludes that, Orli,” the compy said. “You are still alive. And we have not yet delivered the scientific information that you said was priceless.”

Orli grimaced as another bout of nausea raced through her. She clenched her jaw, fought it down. “I know all about your damned programming, but I don’t like to put something off until tomorrow that I can do today.”

“You are still alive, Orli Covitz,” DD insisted, sounding like a stern Teacher compy. “My response is not because of my programming or the paradox choice of having to let you die to save other human lives.”

“Well, what is it, then?”

“I will not let you give up on hope.”

Frustrated, Orli powered up the Proud Mary’s systems and activated the engines. “We’ve waited long enough, and I’m tired of just sitting here. You’re right. We have to get to a human settlement, so I can disseminate this information. Then I can rest in peace.”

First, she would head down into the asteroid belt where she could plot her course and make sure Tom Rom couldn’t follow her. She wasn’t clear which human settlement was closest. Clan Reeves—and the Onthos refugees before them—had not chosen a very populated section of the Spiral Arm.

She eased the Proud Mary away from the expanding debris cloud under low acceleration with running lights off. DD sent out an active scan to search the area, but could detect no sign of Tom Rom.

Orli guided her ship down toward the asteroid field. She blinked hard, and rubbed her eyes. She was having difficulty focusing her vision, and she felt weak. When she could not hold back the nausea anymore, Orli staggered out of the cockpit to be sick in the reclamation chamber. DD took over the controls.

After Orli washed her face and dragged herself back into the padded captain’s seat, she nodded her thanks to the Friendly compy. “You’re a good copilot, DD—and a good friend. Thank you for your help and for being here with me.” It wrenched her heart to think that she had nobody else.

Not exactly the way she had imagined her last days…

The asteroid field was like a snowstorm of rocks, large and small. “When we get in there, you’re going to have to pilot. I don’t trust myself.”

Since they had detonated one of their spare ekti canisters, they had a smaller fuel reserve than Orli would have liked, but she wasn’t planning to go far. In fact, she was losing patience—and time. She looked at a darkening splotch on her arm.

Tom Rom’s ship came from nowhere, streaking down toward them at the edge of the asteroid field. He must have been lying in wait, watching, silent.

He flashed past the Proud Mary and opened fire without warning. DD nudged the ship just enough so that the blast didn’t destroy their engines, merely damaged one of the three.

Alarm lights danced across the control panel. Orli snapped back to full concentration and leaned into the controls. She took over for DD and hit the engine acceleration, and the ship careened toward the randomly tumbling rocks.

DD said, “I’m sorry I didn’t detect him, Orli.”

“Not your fault. He seems to be good at this.” She was already queasy, and now the tumbling ship nearly made her vomit again, but she squeezed the chair’s padded arm and closed her eyes so tightly that tears trickled out from under her lids. She commanded the pain, “Not… now!”

Tom Rom’s ship swooped in, and his weapons lanced out. Another impact struck their hull, doing external damage and causing a slow atmospheric leak, but at least two of her engines still functioned.

Nevertheless, the Proud Mary was a smaller, slower ship than Tom Rom’s. Even before she had lost an engine, she wouldn’t have been able to outrun him in a straight-up race.

As they bolted into the asteroid field, DD grew more alarmed. “Orli, the safety parameters won’t let us go close to those rocks. The margins are not adequate.”

“We’re going to have to adjust the margins,” she said. “I’m flying.”

“But you informed me you were too weak, that your concentration—”

“My concentration’s just fine right now. There’s nothing like facing a madman to focus your thoughts.”

The pursuer kept after them, ominous and silent. Orli was oddly thankful for that.

They streaked past an outlying asteroid, the first jagged chunk of rubble rolling overhead in a silent pirouette. The field may have looked dense from a distance, but the rocks were separated by many kilometers. Orli picked her course one step at a time, weaving among the rocks, looping over them, hiding behind and then around one, hoping to block herself from view.

But Tom Rom kept coming after her.

She could dodge the largest fragments, and DD helped her by scanning ahead and identifying intercept courses. The smaller rocks, though, proved the most troublesome and damaging. The Proud Mary was constantly pelted by a hail of sand and gravel, which wore down the shields.

“We are sustaining damage, Orli,” DD reported.

“I can tell. If we ever find some safe haven in the asteroid field, you’re going to have to complete the repairs yourself—I won’t be able to.” Then Orli caught herself, realizing what she had said. “All the instructions are in the database. Upload them into your personal memory now, so you have the full background as a starship mechanic.”

“That would be a useful skill, Orli, but I hope you help me do the repairs.”

“Just upload the skill module.”

That would also give DD all the specs he needed to trigger a power-block overload in the Proud Mary when it was time. That would vaporize everything, including the compy. Maybe she would tell him to exit the ship before it blew up. He could remain functioning on an airless asteroid… like a castaway on a deserted island. No, Orli wouldn’t do that to DD.

She swerved around another asteroid, dove among three that orbited around a common center of mass, then changed course abruptly. Tom Rom’s ship was bigger and faster, but that wasn’t necessarily an advantage here. She burned a great deal of fuel, but managed to stay ahead of him in the cat-and-mouse game.

She always had the option of just ramming into an asteroid now—and she would do it if Tom Rom got too close. She studied the screens, looked for any traces of his ship. She had left him behind at least five minutes earlier.

She kept leapfrogging from one asteroid to another. Finally, as she pulled around to the dark side of a potato-shaped rock, she found a cozy crater where she could set the Proud Mary down, a place where DD could repair the ship.

Or a place where she could die.