Chapter 3: Violence

“Beckheart! Address the planet’s el, standard greeting, all frequencies.”

“Right. And… ‘Greetings lost planet. We are the McNally, and we come from Earth. We have discovered a way to reopen the wormhole network, and are re-establishing contact with all the colonies we have been separated from. We have medicines and other trade goods. Please respond.’”

“Are they responding?”

“They don’t seem to be, sir. They… wait… I’m getting a response,” Clair Beckheart pressed her headphones tightly against the side of her head, “Their dialect is hard to make out… I think they want to give us an ‘erbeetcheeal;’ I’m trying to figure out what that could be.”

“Well be quick about it. Thomas!”

“Sir!”

“Head towards the el. Prepare for docking.”

“Yes sir!” Frank Thomas gripped the twin throttles loosely and rotated the shuttle’s engines. The McNally began drifting towards the majestic space elevator that thrust out from the planet’s equator. The els were the first structures created on all the colony planets, colossal towers, miles wide at the base, tapering near the top, well beyond the atmosphere. Then, at the very top, they branched out in four directions, each ending with a standard docking port. Usually the McNally found them empty, in disrepair, and once completely collapsed, but this one still seemed to be in service, one of the docking ports occupied by a dilapidated, but still viable looking ship.

“No!” Clair threw off her headphones and twisted around. The pilot’s seat was on the opposite end of the tiny ship, less than four meters away, and Clair covered the distance in a few seconds. “‘Orbital!’ They have orbital weapons!”

“Oh shit!” Frank pushed the throttles forward and squeezed; the engines on either side of the McNally spun around and flared to life.

“What are you doing?” the captain roared, “I gave no order to retreat!”

“And I don’t want to die!”

“We aren’t going to die!”

“We will when that thing gets us!” Sure enough, the planet’s orbital laser was coming around the horizon. It was four times as large as the McNally, at the least, and already spinning around to take the tiny ship in its sights.

“Thomas! Get us away from that!”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m already doing that, thank you for you insight, captain.”

“Take us back to Jordan!”

“I can’t go back yet! We’ll be fried! We’ve got to keep the planet between us and that thing. I’m going to orbit once, keeping it just under the horizon. We can take the hole to Jordan when we get back around.”

“And until then?”

“We wait.”

Captain Nia Roland sighed. Today was not going entirely to plan.

The McNally eked its way around the planet. From the outside, it looked like a tin can, five meters long, and five meters across. At either end there were the magnetic couplings; metal strips that ran around the circumference of the can, allowing it to attach to the els, and capping the top and bottom of the can were rotating domes with a small rocket sticking out of their sides, the ship’s twin engines. At the moment, the engines were turned off, and the ship drifted in orbit, looking like soup dancing around a beach ball.

The crew was bored. Nia sat in the captain’s seat, staring at her viewscreen. Nothing of interest; the edge of the planet and the very tip of the orbital cannon peeking above it. Directly above her, Frank was tapping something into the map screen.

“Er, captain? Maybe you should take a look at this.”

Nia looked up, and saw the ship’s pilot and navigator looking up at her with a confused expression on his face. She stood and proceeded to walk, across the floor, up the curve of the wall, and onto the ceiling, where the navigation station was. It was an arduous process; the magnetic boots were a poor approximation of gravity; she was still lightheaded, and it felt like walking in warm tar (something she had never experienced) or a puddle of honey (something she had only done once and was not eager to repeat).

“What is it?” she asked as she reached the pilot.

“It’s… well, we’re about a third of the way around the planet, yes?”

“Sure, if you say so.”

“Well… look at this. There’s a wormhole.”

“So? That means there are three, evenly spaced around the planet. It’s not uncommon. That one water world had three, remember? Hell, Jordan had three. What’s the big deal?”

“Well, um, when we went to those worlds, the other wormholes were closed. This one’s open.”

Nia looked at the navigation screen. A great blue eye looked back at her. This could not be good.

“Open?” Clair looked up from her book, “I thought there were no open wormholes.”

“There aren’t,” said Nia, turning to the ships linguist, “When the Proximians turned on us, they closed the entire network.”

“And then we figured out how to open them back up,” said Frank, “what makes you so sure no one else could have done it?”

“Well. Good point.” Nia stared at the mysterious opening for another moment.

Then, she was shot.

***

When she came to, Nia saw an angel. It was a vision of exquisite beauty, looking down on the injured captain, with ancient, penetrating blue eyes. Its features were pale and feminine, and its face was surrounded by a halo of purest gold, shimmering in the dim light.

“What in the raging fuck do you want us to do now?” it asked.

The captain’s religious moment was brought to a quick end. Then, she passed out again.

“Well shite!” Madeline Jackson kicked away from her captain’s form and floated to the middle of the room. She surveyed the situation. On one end of the ship, the Thomas boy was damn near catatonic. On the other end, the Beckheart crone was bawling. In the dead center, the belligerent little captain was bleeding out the leg and unconscious, which wasn’t so bad, ‘cept she tended to keep the other two in line and the blood was going to make quite a mess. The ship’s hull was filled with hull resin, a sort of caulk that hardened in the presence of oxygen, making tiny punctures like the bullet holes currently riddling the walls more or less self-sealing. Well, judging from the low hiss, that was gonna be a ‘less,’ but that was a nothing concern, compared to the dilapidated, but still viable looking ship that had evidently broke from the el and chased them down. It was, she decided, a pretty lousy way to wake up.

The McNally didn’t have a formal chain of command. Roland owned it, so she was captain. With her out of the picture, it came down to ‘who can yell the loudest.’

Mad Jack smiled. She could yell pretty loud when she needed to.

“You! Clair! Take care o’ the Captain!”

Clair took a deep, struggling breath, “I… I don’t… I can’t…”

“Gah! You’re what, fifty? Sixty? You’ve had a kid or two, aye?”

“I… y-yes, but—”

“They ever get hurt?”

“Um… yes? But…”

“Then you gotta know a bit o’ the first aid, natch? Get to it!” she yelled as she pushed Nia towards frightened woman, using the inertia to reach the ship’s youngest crew member. She shook his shoulders, “Thomas!”

The pilot turned to her.

“Right. Get back to your little sticks, why don’t you? ‘Less maybe you want the next volley to hit our engines?”

Frank pulled himself back down to the controls. “But… where?”

“Don’t be stupid! Go through the hole!”

“What? The open one?”

“Yes, of course the open one, you git!” In response to his questioning look she added, “Dammit, man, obviously these folks have an enemy on the other side of that hole! If we go through, odds are better’n zero they ain’t going to follow!”

Clair had torn off the hem of her uniform’s shirt to act as a makeshift tourniquet for the captain’s injury. She was trying to apply pressure, which was no easy feat without gravity to hold her down. “What… what about the people on the other side of that wormhole?”

Mad Jack arched her body and spun around to face the ad hoc nurse, her hair catching up with her a few minutes later. “Let’s just hope they ain’t assholes like this bunch.”