Leap Ships [Sunsinger Chronicles Book 7] Read online

  “Got it?” Lin asked. Her voice came from close by; she had come down to the floor again and watched him.

  Bain handed it to her and turned his light on to inspect the inside. This could be where the fault was; something as simple as a speck of dirt could have come between the connections in the array and shorted out or completely blocked the power flow and the malfunction sensors.

  Lin let out a low whistle.

  “What?” Bain asked.

  “Five melt spots inside, plus a handful of crystal dust. I'd say some of the chips in that board have been flaking. We've been blessed and guarded by Fi'in more than we deserve, to have avoided more trouble than we found. We could have had all the chips shatter or crack, instead of just flaking. Anything look damaged at your end?"

  “Nothing.” Bain gave the array one more examination with a sweep of his light.

  When Bain had the new connector slot into place, he put the damaged crystal board in, to test it. Ganfer immediately found the damage and restricted power flow and pinpointed the crystal that had cracked and snapped out of its prongs.

  “Can we function without that particular crystal?” Lin wanted to know.

  “As long as we don't spend more than a month in space at a time, there should be no problem,” Ganfer said. “There is a fractional reduction in efficiency in the other crystals, but not enough to warrant replacement before six months are gone."

  “The flaking.” She smiled. “Bain, you did a good job. As usual."

  “Thanks.” Bain wiped a few last beads of sweat from his forehead. “How much time until we reach the Knaught Point?"

  “Twenty-three minutes.” She put the damaged connector slot into the bubble plastic its replacement had come from and marked it.

  “After this, I think we should slow down and finish our full check."

  “Good idea. Slow us to a crawl, Ganfer."

  * * *

  Chapter Two

  The full check took another four hours. Bain was stiff and sore and gritty filthy by the time they finished, but physical discomfort was nothing compared to the mental images of disaster that kept playing through his mind. When he and Lin finally flew up to the observation dome and settled into their acceleration couches for the Knaught Point transition, Bain could smile and relax and know nothing could go wrong.

  The transition moment was almost an anti-climax, the tidal wave of color and sparks of energy cascading around the observation dome, then the sudden shift back to the velvety black of space and the white and soft blue and yellow jewel-tone pinpricks of the stars.

  “Anything look familiar?” Lin asked in that moment of slightly weary, faintly stress-sweaty silence.

  “Everything looks the same and nothing looks familiar,” Bain said, misquoting a philosopher they had both laughed at only a few weeks ago.

  “Exactly.” She sighed and stretched her arms above her head and slouched down a little in her acceleration couch. “Thank you, Fi'in, for getting us here in one piece. Now please don't let us do anything stupid before we get to a decent spaceport.” She laughed a little, a soft sound, heavy with weariness.

  Bain echoed her laughter and fatigue, and silently echoed her words. It had taken the equipment failure to remind them that even without the Mashrami waiting to ambush them, there were still plenty of dangers out here in the unexplored regions of space.

  * * * *

  Before they headed for this Knaught Point to explore, Lin had spent extensive time at a Spacer records hall, searching all the star charts and the books of fables for even the faintest hint that someone had been through that particular Knaught Point or investigated that particular section of space before. She talked to Spacers who were so old their bodies couldn't take the stress of acceleration. Whenever they traveled, they did so in stasis chairs like ordinary passengers—or deliberately marooned themselves on colonies where they would stay until they died. Bain thought he could understand how a Spacer, ashamed by physical weakness, would totally avoid space flight rather than let others see him helpless, consigned to ‘passenger status'.

  Wherever these old Spacers chose to settle and put down roots, records halls sprang up. Other Spacers would come by, bringing bits and pieces from their travels to share with the old ones, visual records and personal logs, and deposit them for other Spacers to use. The information was freely available for anyone who wanted to access it. There was a standard relay team of Spacers who spent half their time each year traveling between the various records halls and updating all the information gathered in each one. The old saying that what one Spacer knew, all Spacers knew, was true because of those records halls.

  If anyone had come near the unexplored section of space, Lin wanted to know. She found no stories that sounded even remotely similar to the area where she and Bain had taken Sunsinger to hide from the Mashrami. No mention of the heavy concentration of stellar dust, which they had used to hide their trail from the Mashrami trackers. If anyone had charted those particular stars, it was long enough past in history that the stars had moved noticeably in their courses and the patterns of the universe had changed.

  That was a longer passage of time than Bain could comprehend. It gave him a headache, and a queer little twisted feeling in his chest to try to think that far back into time.

  Sunsinger went through a complete systems check after reaching the other side of the Knaught Point. Every recording device, every monitor for inside and outside the ship, every energy conduit and piece of equipment for life support, every supply crate and spare part was checked.

  Every time Bain felt ready to grumble at the tediousness, he thought back to that sickening, dropping sensation he had felt when he thought Ganfer might be malfunctioning, endangering their lives as well as the success of the mission. To avoid that feeling again, he would go through ten such overhauls.

  Still, he felt a little giddy and breathless when the checklists were completed and Lin pronounced Sunsinger ready to head out into their charting mission.

  That was the last time Bain felt that happy, energetic anticipation for three weeks.

  Honestly put, star charting and solar wind analysis was boring. Even alternating four-hour shifts with Lin, sitting at constant duty stations was mind- and body-numbing. There was only so much he could do while keeping a constant watch on the numbers flowing across his screen. Bain began to speculate that the only reason he and Lin were there, instead of sending a robot ship to do the recording and survey work, was that someone had to change the data disks when they became full.

  He caught up on his studies and went past the point where he should have taken another test. Bain set himself a goal of completing two weeks’ worth of assignments and research projects for every week they spent charting space. At least it gave him something to look forward to after every duty shift—and made him glad when his duty shifts came around, so he could escape the pressure of the goals he had set.

  Maybe that wasn't smart, but Bain had learned a long time ago that pressure was far better than boredom. At least the drain and stress he put himself under wore him out enough to sleep. When he was bored, he never got enough sleep.

  When he was tired and unable to concentrate, experience had taught him that was when catastrophe would strike.

  * * * *

  “Receiving transmissions,” Ganfer announced.

  “Transmissions?” Lin choked on the mouthful of tea she had just sucked out of her sealed cup.

  “What kind?” Bain stopped in mid-vault from his chair at the control panel, snagged the edge of the chair and clawed his way back into his seat.

  “Uncertain,” the ship-brain said after a full five-second pause.

  Bain turned from his station and stared at Lin, who was still regaining her breath in the galley booth. She wiped her face and coughed once more and met his gaze.

  “How do you know they're transmissions?” Lin asked in a strained voice.

  “There is a regular cycle and pattern to the signals that is impo
ssible in nature. I have been tracking and recording for the last fifteen minutes to be sure."

  “Where are they coming from?"

  “Telemetry indicates the other side of that cluster radiating high levels of M-band energy."

  “M-band isn't fun to play around with.” Bain played through the buttons on his side of the control panel, trying to call up more information. “Maybe the cluster is interfering with the transmissions?"

  “Impossible to tell without decreasing the distance between the source and Sunsinger."

  Lin sighed and let her voice drop into a growl. “What he means is, we have to break out of our search and survey pattern and move closer to them. Why can't you speak in simple words for a change?"

  “I am,” Ganfer said in a perfectly calm, perfectly machine-less voice.

  That, more than anything else, showed Bain both his companions were more excited about this prospect than worried.

  “Are they searching for someone?” he speculated out loud. “Or maybe they know we're here and they're trying to communicate?"

  “Impossible to tell at this point,” the ship-brain said. “One sure way of finding the answer is to make a transmission of our own and watch their response."

  “Clusters are like one-way mirrors, sometimes,” Lin said. She pushed off the galley table and floated over to her seat to join Bain at the control panel. “They might let transmissions out, and not let any transmissions in. Let's not waste our energy just yet."

  “The stellar dust bins are full,” Bain offered. “I can key the control for both here and the dome, if we get close to a Knaught Point."

  “It'll be at least two days of travel before we know if we're in trouble,” she said with a grin. “Good idea, though."

  “We could increase speed.” Sunsinger was moving barely above coasting speed, to keep energy emissions and ripples through the stellar tide from interfering with their charts and readings.

  “And let them know just how fast we can move if we have to? The element of surprise is our biggest weapon."

  “Oh. Yeah."

  * * * *

  For the first eighteen hours, the transmissions were little more than disturbances in the power fields moving through space. Ganfer translated them into numbers—more numbers on the right-hand side of the decimal point than the left. Watching them, Bain could see the changes as the power levels increased, and with a little coaching he caught the regular cyclical patterns. If this really was a transmission from a sentient race, then this could very well be a standard hail signal being sent out in unknown space.

  If this was unknown space.

  What if other Spacers had made it through the Knaught Point into this sector and had been attacked by whatever race lived here? What if no one ever made it back through the Knaught Point to share the information? When Sunsinger had been chased by the Mashrami years ago, Lin had kept her ship close to the Knaught Point to prepare for the transition back to home space as soon as she knew she could do it. If Sunsinger had gone exploring all those years ago, maybe that first shipload of children might never have made it to Refuge.

  That line of thought, however, was depressing. Bain closed his eyes and concentrated on the possibilities. This could be another lost colony, more Humans scattered by the Downfall of the civilization before the Commonwealth. This could be an even greater discovery for Humanity than a new sector of space with habitable planets.

  Fifteen minutes and eighteen seconds into the nineteenth hour, Ganfer switched the transmissions to audio. Bain was in bed, trying to sleep, when the preternaturally silent bridge was suddenly flooded with the hiss-crackle of the hot energy of space and a voice.

  Not Lin's voice, though after a moment Bain realized it was indeed a woman's voice.

  Low, touched with gutturals, the voice vibrated through the bridge for nearly two minutes before Ganfer damped the volume. Bain unfastened the side of his sleeping net and tugged his baggy soft exercise pants on over his sleeping shorts. He kicked aside the curtain in his cubicle, turned a somersault above his bunk and flew straight from his bunk to his seat at the control panel.

  “Thought that would wake you,” Lin whispered. She raised a hand, growing suddenly alert. Bain stiffened and listened.

  “Boheevo, n'ee'alay rhosh dai na Estal'es'cai,” the woman said.

  “That's the third time I've heard that phrase,” Lin whispered. Her grin widened and she closed her eyes.

  After ten minutes of listening, Bain caught the pattern of the words and could tell when the pattern started and stopped.

  “It's definitely a standard hail code,” Lin said. “Agreed, Ganfer?"

  “Agreed,” the ship-brain said. “The energy patterns exactly match the ones I have been picking up for the last twenty hours."

  “Well, what do you know? Bain, I think we should make an early breakfast and celebrate. That certainly sounds like a human voice to me. I think we're about to make—"

  “Pattern has changed,” Ganfer interrupted.

  “Changed?” Her voice cracked. “How?"

  * * *

  Chapter Three

  In response, the volume increased again. Bain forced himself to sit back in his seat and stop clutching the edge of the control panel until his knuckles turned white. When he did that, he realized the same woman spoke. The words were different, though.

  In silence, he and Lin listened. All the words were different. For all he knew, the woman was speaking a totally different language from the first they had heard.

  “Lin, do you think there are other Humans in the universe?” Bain whispered. “You know, people who didn't come from Vidan and First Civ?"

  “I don't know.” Some of the worry wrinkles left her forehead, as if his question had given her relief from some mental pain. “I suppose it's possible. We know so little about the first civilization, I suppose it's possible that they came from another fallen civilization and re-established themselves like we did and these people are another branch scattered by that older Downfall."

  They listened for the pattern, for recognizable words. Bain wanted to get up and put on a shirt; the bridge was cold at this time of the night shift. He didn't dare move, though, in case something new happened while his back was literally turned.

  “Wait!” He sat up so abruptly he nearly lifted himself out of his seat. Only his bent knees under the edge of the control panel stopped him. “There it is again—that word from the first message. Estal'es'cai."

  “I think you're right.” Lin signaled him to silence and they both listened. After nearly a minute, they heard that word. She nodded, smiling. “If I were transmitting in different languages, the name of my ship wouldn't change from one language to another. Maybe that's the name of their ship."

  “Do you think they know we're here?"

  “With the energy from that cluster in the way? The only thing that revealed them to us is their transmission. I think we're safe from discovery until they come out of the M-band energy and their sensors clear.” Lin frowned, staring at the computer simulation of the energy cloud, on the screen across the bridge from the control panel. “This might be a good time to make contact, now that I think about it."

  “What?” Bain nearly flew up to the ceiling again. His knees were getting bruised from the impacts they took.

  “It's nearly a minute of lag time between their transmission and our reception, at this distance.” She gestured at the numbers slowly changing on the screen between them. “If we contact them now, we'll have time to judge by their response if they're friendly or looking for a fight."

  “We'd have time to get out of here.” He nodded, understanding her reasoning now.

  “Plus, their sensors are going to stay fogged by the M-band energy for a good half hour after they emerge from the cloud around the cluster. Even if they came looking for us, we'd have plenty of time to get out and have our emissions trail dissipate before they're able to track us."

  “The Knaught Point isn't that far away. We've
only been drifting so far."

  “Exactly.” Lin smirked. “I'm glad to see all those astrogation and plotting lessons haven't been wasted."

  “What are you going to say to them?"

  “As little as possible.” She shook her head. Lips pursed, she slouched a little in her chair. Slouching in free-fall was a delicate art, but Lin had perfected it over the years. “Ganfer, record and set it up for a continual loop until I tell you to cancel. Ready?"

  “Recording,” the ship-brain said.

  “Estal'es'cai, this is the Free Trader ship Sunsinger, out of the Commonwealth, Captain Lin Fieran commanding. We have heard your transmissions and are eager to make friendly contact.” Lin paused a moment. “That ought to do it. Be official and precise, but don't promise them anything."

  “Promise them?” Bain tried to think back to various discussions he and Lin had about diplomacy. As far as he could tell, diplomacy was the fine art of making promises that in effect promised nothing; asking for guarantees that guaranteed nothing; and making friends out of enemies so they would fight enemies who had once been friends.

  “Mark time once the first loop has played, Ganfer. I expect an answer in three minutes minimum. If they don't answer in ten minutes, we know we're in trouble."

  “Stellar dust is ready."

  “Let's hope we don't need it.” She reached over and squeezed Bain's arm.

  Lin had stopped tousling his hair once he could look her in the eye. Suddenly, Bain found he missed the teasing, fond gesture. It meant he was no longer a little boy to be protected, and that was suddenly a lonely feeling.

  “One minute,” Ganfer announced.

  The message should have reached the other ship by now. Bain sat a little more straight, bracing himself. The message broadcast by the Estal'es'cai continued playing.

  “Two minutes,” Ganfer said.

  The message from the strangers continued, then suddenly broke off in the middle of 'Estal'es'cai'. Both Lin and Bain jerked at the sudden cessation of the voice that had become background music to them.

  “End of transmission at two minutes fourteen seconds,” Ganfer said before either one could ask him.