Starfall

Heavenly Twins

“Don’t panic, Panic,” she told herself. A family slogan that she’d made into her emergency mantra. The cosmos spun about her. An alarming sensation. Fright battled with nausea. Trying to twist about and orient herself just made the stars spin faster.

“Quit batting vacuum.” Miko’s voice came from somewhere behind her left ear. “Lie still, spread your arms and legs.”

Tiffany obeyed, holding tight to the EVA pack and repair kit. It worked. Spreading out dissipated her angular momentum, like a skater coming out of a spin. The stars slowed.

Miko continued to talk her out of her tumbling. “Now tell your suit to counter the spin.”

Again she obeyed. Mini-thrusters at the hips and shoulders dampened her head over heels roll. The cosmos steadied. But the tiny thrusters had brought her to rest facing away from Miko.

“Now have your suit turn you around.”

She did it. Miko came slowly into sight, facing her but upside-down. That would have to do. Miko drifted toward her, reaching out, taking hold of Tiffany’s knees. She worked her way down Tiffany’s torso, until their helmets touched. “Hi, gorgeous.”

“Hi yourself.”

“Turn off your comlink,” Miko told her.

Tiffany did it, so Hesse could not listen in. Conduction carried their words from one helmet to the other.

Miko laughed. “You hang here often?”

“Only when I have to.” Tiffany felt her panic fading. It did seem absurd, standing head to head, feet resting on nothing. And she felt genuine hysterical relief at not having to stare down those 20mm muzzles. Bad as this was, Hesse and his merry mutants had had it in their power to make things worse. A whole lot worse. Which could still happen. Tiffany asked, “Can you see the ships?”

“Sure.”

“Turn me toward them.” She wanted to see if the slaver really meant to maroon them, or was still playing cat-and-mouse. Trying to soften them up with a scare. Miko turned her until she was looking straight at the ships. The starship had grappled onto Archangel nose to tail. They looked like unrelated insects—Archangel sleek and tapered, Hiryu big and bulbous—in the middle of some bizarre mating, backed by black starry void.

Hesse seemed good to his word. The ships did not hang around to see if she and Miko had second thoughts. They fell away at once, accelerating upsun at close to 1g. Falling together into infinite distance, they became a single point of light—no longer separable by the eye—losing themselves amid the sea of stars. Bon voyage.

Tiffany’s heart sank as she watched them dwindle. Terrible as Hesse was, it was still a come-down to find that you were totally expendable. Set adrift like living garbage, without so much as a parting gloat. Hesse had never even asked their names. Miko had been right. Tiffany was used to getting more out of guys than that. That young Choctaw at the Belt City starport probably still hoped she would show up again. Fat chance.

“Now turn me toward Floreal.”

Miko did it. The huge habitat hung just downsun from them, completely blocking out Orion 3645B, and half the nebula beyond. “How far away are we?”

“Forty klicks. We aren’t going to get there with orientation thrusters. Not anytime soon.”

Tiffany opened her EVA pack and got out the line gun. “I’m going to try and snag it.”

Miko laughed again. “Girl, you are obsessed. That gun has only got twenty kilometers of line.”

“That’s why I told you to grab a pack. There should be more line in the repair kit. If we splice it all together we’ve got more than enough.”

“Might work,” Miko admitted.

“You got something better in mind? My social calendar is godawful empty at the moment.”

“I said it was worth a try.”

They did the best job they could of splicing the lines together. “This will hold,” Miko decided. “But the gun is never going to reel it back in.”

“Won’t have to.” Tiffany had thought this through. She took aim and fired. Even at this range, the recoilless line gun was not going to miss a target twenty klicks tall and eighty klicks wide. The rocket propelled grapple took its time getting there, but at last the line went taut.

Holding tight to the gun, Tiffany let the habitat’s slow rotation reel them in. By the time their adhesive boots made contact, the line was wound twice around Floreal.

Leaving them hanging head-down from the barren surface of a sealed habitat in a doomed system—better than being adrift, but not by a lot. The pitted surface rolled slowly from frying to freezing, with no sign of life aboard. Tiffany fought the awful vertigo that came from standing on the outside of a spin gravity habitat, where every direction was down. She felt that if she so much as took a step, she would fall into a void thousands of light-years deep.

Miko touched helmets. “Welcome to Floreal.” She did not seem the least troubled by the starry chasm around them. “Now what?”

Tiffany gripped Miko’s shoulders to steady herself, swallowing the gorge rising in her throat. “According to the original specs, there should be a manual entrance lock nearby. A whole line of them actually. Spaced at intervals around the surface.”

“Where?”

“Anti-spinward. About half a klick. Can you guide me?”

“No sweat.” Miko acted totally at ease, aboard ship, in a v-suit, or hanging from a habitat. No wonder Faith found her useful. She led Tiffany over the rotating surface to the lock. There was no need for complex electronic entry codes. Miko undogged the hatch, pulled it open, and they were in.

There was no air in the narrow lock, and barely room for both of them. No light either, so they had to turn on their suit lamps. But it felt fantastic to be inside something, standing upright, no longer hanging over the awful gulf between the stars. Spin gravity seemed about .5g. Miko climbed up to the inner door, then came back down to touch helmets. “No pressure on the far side.”

Not a good sign. No air. No light. If the habitat was an empty hulk, Tiffany would have thrown away her life for not very much. She stifled that thought. “Let’s get going. There has to be pressure up there somewhere.”

They climbed up and undogged the inner door. Dark airless tunnel curved in two directions, leading along the circumference of the habitat. Tiffany touched helmets. “Let’s try spinward.”

They set out, passing through two more pointless pressure doors. Each time they carefully sealed the doors behind them, hoping the one ahead would be holding air. Then they came to a hatch in the tunnel roof. Tiffany hoisted Miko up to check it. In half a g, she felt amazingly light.

Miko dropped back down and touched helmets. “There’s air up there.”

Tiffany felt vindicated. “We’ve made it!”

“Maybe. Possibly. The hatch opens upward.” That meant tons of air pressure was holding it shut. They might as well try to lift a moon.

“Which is why I brought the repair kit.” Tiffany was amazed at her own foresight. “We can punch a hole in the hatch and equalize pressure.”

They first checked to see that the length of tunnel they were in was sealed at both ends, then they walked up the curved wall to huddle at the hatch, hanging by their boots. Miko took the anaerobic torch out of the repair kit and cut a crisp hole in the hatch. Air gushed through. When the pressure equalized, she flung open the hatch. They scrambled through, emerging in an even larger tunnel. Still dark, but filled with breathable air.

Triumph swept through Tiffany as she unsealed her suit and tipped back her helmet, taking deep gulping breaths. Miko did the same. Then she reached over, taking Tiffany’s cheeks in the flat of her slim little hands. Holding Tiffany’s head steady, she kissed her.

Miko let go. Tiffany stared at the smaller woman’s smiling face. “What was that for?”

Dark eyes danced with delight. Black hair lay plastered with sweat to her white cheek. “For being a beautiful blonde genius.”

Tiffany took it as a compliment. She had not been kissed on the lips in a long time—and hardly ever by a woman. She was shocked at how good it felt. Miko acted like it was all perfectly normal. “Let’s look for a shaft leading up,” Tiffany suggested.

“Sure.” Miko hefted the cutting torch. “Whatever turns you on.” They set off down the big curving tunnel.

Tiffany jacked up her sensors, half meaning to focus them on Miko—to find out exactly what her companion was thinking. But she never got the chance. All of a sudden her middle ear microamps were hearing footfalls, big ones. And not human.

She seized Miko’s shoulder, hissing, “Douse your suit lamps. Something’s coming.” They crouched together in darkness, listening. Tiffany’s augmented hearing had the advantage, she recognized the oncoming 1-4-5-8-2-3-6-7 eight-legged gait. Tightening her grip, she whispered, “Bugs.”

“Shit! Are they friendlies?”

“Wanna wait and ask?”

They turned and ran through the dark. Miko’s question was answered by the bark of assault rifles, and the sound of ricochets at their heels. Bugs could see in the dark, and there was no hope of outrunning them. Or reasoning with them.

Tiffany found the hatch they had come out of by dead reckoning. Throwing it open, she dropped through, dragging Miko with her. Then she slammed it and dogged it, shouting to Miko, “Weld this shut.”

Miko went to work immediately, fusing the lock mechanism into a useless lump. That would hold them, though not for long.

Tiffany tugged on Miko. “Let’s go!”

“Where to?” Miko whispered, thoroughly frightened. Tiffany’s sensors could hear her pulse pounding in darkness.

“The nearest access port is to spinward.” They sprinted off down the tunnel, suit lamps on low. Tiffany could hear hammering on the hatch. Then some enterprising Bug stuck a gun barrel through the hole they had made, firing blindly. A typical Bug solution.

Bugs—aka “Sculptorian Symbiots”—were semi-intelligent xenos who had spread through much of the nearer spiral arm using a unique from of hive reproduction. Bug hives attached themselves to starfaring cultures (like humans) by producing an endless supply of bio-engineered servants, eager to perform any task, no matter how boring or dangerous, fighting battles and cleaning toxic dumps for bare upkeep. They were way cheaper than human labor, cheaper even than machines.

Normally, you had little to fear from them. A hive’s natural hostility was toward other Bug hives—a paranoid survival mechanism that propelled the species outward. But humans sometimes set them up as guards. Watchdogs with heavy weapons. If you didn’t know the proper signal or password, you had a far better chance trying to talk sense to a Doberman. Or a SuperCat.

A big blast behind her told Tiffany that the hatch had been blown. Reaching the nearest port lock, she skidded to a stop. “Seal up,” she shouted. The Bugs would be on them in seconds.

They sat shaking in the darkness as the lock slowly cycled. When there was pressure inside, Tiffany flung the inner door open. She told Miko, “Get in there and cut the safeties.”

Miko obeyed. Tiffany fumbled in darkness, using the repair kit and EVA pack to jam the inner door open. Miko signaled that the safeties had been cut.

Bugs poured down the tunnel, firing as they came. Tiffany dropped into the lock. As she did, a shell slammed into her, hitting her life-support pack, throwing her against the side of the lock. Instantly, her suit went dead, lamps, micro-thrusters, recycler, all out. Only her boots and comlink still worked.

Wedging herself into the narrow lock, she grabbed hold of Miko, yelling, “Hold on!” Then she told the lock to open.

Habitat pressure doors all opened into pressure, to keep them from being blown out in an emergency. But an outer lock door opened outward, so the lock could be purged under pressure. Safeties were supposed to keep it from opening if the inner door was not closed. But Miko had cut the safeties, and Tiffany had jammed the inner door open.

A hurricane of air swept through the lock, trying to tear them free and throw them out into the void. But Tiffany held tight, and Miko instinctively braced her boots against the lock sides, telling them to stick.

The rush subsided, leaving them in the absolute silence of vacuum. Tiffany’s head rang, and she fought to breathe, but all she had left was the air in her dead suit, fast going stale. A hot, stuffy, terrible sensation, like being trapped in a plastic sack on a blistering hot day.

Dark stifling numbness closed in on her. She tried to tell Miko what was happening, but she had hardly enough breath left to talk. Her head swam. She felt herself being borne upward, then blacked out.

Tiffany never expected to wake up. But she did, brought back by a cool rush of air, and a voice behind her ear, telling her to, “Breathe, girl. Breathe!”

She breathed, though she could not tell where the air was coming from. Miko sat holding her and coaxing her. Head slowly clearing, she sat up. Only then did she realize that she was tethered to Miko by an air hose. Miko had run the auxiliary line from her suit into Tiffany’s. They were both breathing the same air. Turned into a pair of Siamese twins.

Miko helped her to her feet. Dead Bugs filled the tunnel. Bugs were tough customers, doting on intense heat and pressure, hard to kill even with hand-cannons. But they were air-breathers, just like humans. Decompression did them in handily, spilling Bug guts out their gill slits. “We have to get going before more come,” Miko reminded her.

Right. Got to get going. That seemed to have become her only purpose in life. Soaked, stunned, dizzy, and sick. Tiffany felt like she had been flushed through a sanitary unit. She put an arm around Miko and they set off, still tethered to each other by the air hose.

Every so often, Miko would stoop to scavenge weapons from dead decompressed Bugs. Tucking an assault pistol into her suit belt, she added extra ammo, then slung a bandolier of grenades over her shoulder. Finally, she selected a big recoilless cannon to lean on. Shaken and gasping, Tiffany did well just to keep walking. Besides, she was a diplomat, not allowed to touch lethal weapons.

Once they were back under pressure, she directed Miko to a hatch leading up, one too small for Bugs to use. No longer tethered, they hoisted themselves up into a sloping tunnel. Greenish gold light filtered down from above.

They set out warily up the tunnel, suits unsealed, helmets thrown back. Miko lugged her plundered arsenal. Tiffany carried the kit and packs. The tunnel widened. Cool damp earth replaced fused rock. Huge roots ran underfoot and overhead, threatening to trip and clip them. Sunlight filtered through a big raw earth hole ahead. Beyond the hole, Tiffany saw colossal green plants, and bright white sky.