Chasing Solace Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  CHASING SOLACE

  First edition. April 15, 2019.

  Copyright © 2019 Karl Drinkwater.

  ISBN: 978-1911278139

  Written by Karl Drinkwater.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Beginning

  Planning

  Freezing

  Infiltrating

  Discovering

  Euthanising

  Evading

  Guiding

  Arriving

  Arming

  Boarding

  Ghosting

  Disturbing

  Ascending

  Encountering

  Escaping

  Swimming

  Reconsidering

  Trusting

  Piping

  Grappling

  Seeing

  Meeting

  Persuading

  Turning

  Floating

  Hacking

  Returning

  Visualising

  Crawling

  Reuniting

  Revenging

  Resting

  Signalling

  Processing

  Fighting

  Feinting

  Exploring

  Thirsting

  Tiring

  Sleeping

  Passing

  Sticking

  Transitioning

  Acclimatising

  Mapping

  Understanding

  Fracturing

  Explaining

  Revealing

  Parting

  Leaving

  Hoping

  Ending

  Acknowledgements

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  Further Reading: Harvest Festival

  Also By Karl Drinkwater

  About the Author

  To those who believed in Opal and Clarissa.

  Beginning

  < 50 >

  SPACE IS NOT EMPTY if you have eyes to see. Senses to detect. And patience. Much patience. Then space is not space. Space is full.

  Galaxies dance in clusters, each individually shaped, each differently composed, each with their own history. They are masses of stars, and pre-stars, and post-stars, spinning around each other, unwilling to be alone.

  Focus. One of the galaxies can be picked out amongst the millions. It is relatively flat from the side, though the centre rises to a globe-like diffuse conglomeration. Viewed from the top we see swirls radiating from that centre, curved around each other by rotation at the ponderous cosmic scale. They look like they want to hug each other, but never can.

  If you have powerful eyes then the individual stars can be perceived, burning in all the nuclear colours, red- or blue-shifted from any fixed point. Such as this point, further in, where a vessel moves through this space-that-is-not-space, this hard vacuum fullness of dust, plasma, electromagnetic radiation, particles, and much more. It is a flattened and non-reflective dark ship, revealing more detail as we zoom in, observe, and note that it is relatively small as these things go, and has no markings, no windows, no obvious weapons. Just calming red glows from the torsion drive outlets as it thrusts towards a destination in silence; exactly the same red as a late-stage main sequence star. The largest and the smallest fires have something in common, though neither has the intelligence to see it.

  If detection senses are powerful enough to pass advanced shielding they would find a cramped but space-efficient interior, and a narrow walkway in its centre, and an organic intelligence pacing up and down and communicating with an inorganic intelligence that embodies the whole craft.

  Planning

  < 49 >

  “THAT’S IT?” ASKED OPAL. “Our best plan?” She wore an on-board jumpsuit but stayed barefoot. She liked the hard metallic feel on her soles. Resistance helped her focus, though the lower-than-average gravity meant her footsteps weren’t as satisfyingly solid on the walkway as she’d wish.

  She reached the end, by the closed-off engine section, so span smoothly on her heel, and strode back towards the control screens. There was no room for deviation from her closed loop: the right was packed with her bunk, shower, and fabricator; her left was lined with the airlock and weapons cabinets. The small space remaining was all too reminiscent of military prisons.

  “Correct, it is the best plan. I’ve calculated it against the alternatives.” Athene’s confident voice came from no fixed point. It filled the air from a multitude of pinpoint speakers embedded in the hull. Opal was still getting used to Athene’s new, adult persona. “I think the risks of us being destroyed are within acceptable limits.”

  Opal shook her head, but couldn’t help smiling too. “Acceptable, my arse,” she said. “I don’t have a backup version.”

  “At present, neither do I.”

  “So now we’re in it together.”

  “We always were.”

  “Stop it! You’re too good at dissipating my anger, and sometimes I need to hold on to that.”

  “I understand. Should I electrify the floor grating? That would help you stay angry.”

  “Don’t you dare.” Opal gave the evil eye to a section of wall. Athene would be watching from a number of interior cameras. “Is there really no way to just Null-jump into the core systems?”

  “Unfortunately not. The second Lost Ship’s coordinates place it in the heart of mil-space, and we can’t make it in time unless we take a direct route, which means exiting The Null at a UFS militarised node. All Cordon nodes are guarded, with dispersed scan glitter and fast armed responses. And they’re going to be looking for us. The probability of detection is too high. If we are to have a chance of sneaking through then we need a good distraction and we need supplies. And this is the nearest suitable place to acquire them.”

  “It just seems dangerous to gather supplies here when we’re trying to minimise interaction with Mil-Com.”

  “I do not think that is your real objection.”

  Opal said nothing, just continued to pace.

  “It is because it is a Genitor base,” Athene added.

  Opal was passing her bunk. She ceased her obsessive patrol and climbed up, sitting on the edge with shoulders hunched. “No-one knows what goes on in them,” she said. “Not grunts or civvies, anyway. But the rumours ... always been used as a kind of bogeyman.”

  “I understand. I have very little information either. I am only aware that the base has the supplies we need because I intercepted off-site requisition requests. But if we do this, we will know more. And we will have the means to proceed. To pass The Cordon. To find the Lost Ship. To locate your sister.”

  “Still, going in without my Eternal Warrior suit ...”

  “I would not suggest my plan unless I was confident I could do it, and keep you safe. This you know.”

  Opal sighed. “Fine. We’ll do it.”

  “Maybe I can sweeten the deal for you. While we’re there I could also use the cloning vats to nurture extra nuvosomatic cells, to repair your skin and nerve tissue damage.”

  Opal hadn’t considered that. Normally, cloned body tissue was the preserve of the wealthy, because it was the most expensive, but also most reliable, of the four tissue-replacement options. Cloning whole beings was inherently unstable, and cloned consciousness was a failure, but non-sentient bodies and parts with full implant compatibility had become a luxury medical option.

  “Any downsides to that?” Opal asked.

  “We won’t need longer on the infiltration because we’ll already be using the base constructors, but there would be biological do
wntime afterwards as I integrated the repairs to your flesh.”

  “I can’t risk not being at full performance when we get to the Lost Ship. Gather the supplies just in case, but my minor damage can wait. I’ll think about it when we’ve got my sister.” Opal stroked a shiny scar on her arm, the raised ridge a paler colour than the darker flesh around it. One of many marks on her body. “Or maybe not. It’s who I am.”

  THE PLANET FILLED THE holographic viewscreen in shades of white and grey. At this distance fracture lines appeared across one hemisphere like tiger stripes.

  “Exidris 3,” said Athene. “Zero point eight seven standard gravity; unbreathable but non-toxic atmosphere. It has a high albedo of zero point seven four due to the reflective ice shell that coats the entire planet.”

  “So it’s a frozen rock?”

  “No. It is stranger than that. There are oceans beneath the ice crust.”

  “How thick is the ice?”

  “Kilometres thick in most places. So thick that light never reaches the sub-surface oceans.”

  “Life?”

  “Apart from the human colonists, there are records of large deep-sea life forms below the ice. Little is known of them because the environment down there was too dangerous to explore, making it economically unviable.”

  “Sounds creepy. How come the waters don’t all freeze?”

  “There is a warm convection layer created by tidal forces from the large moons, with further warmth due to radioactive decay. There are also hydrothermal vents in the rock mantle further down which, along with the various salts, keep it above freezing. The planetary base uses deep-sunk extraction rods for heat and most of its energy needs, backed up by a small reactor.” The screen zoomed in on the grey texture until features gradually resolved, and a pinprick became a small base. Athene highlighted those buildings whose functions she could identify.

  “It’s convenient for us, but strange for UFS Central to build on this place in the arse-end of nowhere,” said Opal. “An inhospitable location away from trade lanes. Any major resources?”

  “No. Unless you count the isolation.”

  “Hmm. Could be on to something. For some purposes, isolation can be attractive.”

  “We’ll know more once you’re in.”

  ATHENE DESCENDED IN full stealth mode. This outpost’s scanning equipment shouldn’t be advanced enough to detect her, especially as she aimed at a location outside the base perimeter. There would be a short trek for Opal, and it was going to be damn cold, but it was the safest option.

  During the planetfall Opal got herself ready. Athene had fabricated a pale paste and Opal spread it on the parts of her body that wouldn’t be covered by clothing, toning down the dark brown skin to an off-white colour. It wouldn’t fool anyone up close, but might pass a casual or distant glance. The official Genitor cults didn’t allow anyone with a low grade category to achieve senior positions. Without the disguise, Opal would attract far too much attention. She then heat-bonded an additional skin layer to her palm, another thing Athene’s tank of nano-constructors had made. Finally she dressed as warmly as she could in overalls, heavy boots, and a self-heating hooded jacket. It would have to do. In Opal’s hasty theft of Athene there’d been no time to take anything that wasn’t already on board, and there’d been no opportunities since, either.

  Opal opened the weapons cabinet and pocketed the small device Athene had made. She eyed the wealth of weapons sourly. “Can’t I just take one gun?”

  “No.”

  “Just a teeny one?”

  “All entrances will include scanners for weapons. Our priority is to gather what we need without triggering any alarms, so that no-one ever knows we were here. Then we retain the advantage. If you stick to my plan, and things here are based on standard designs, there will be no need for combat.”

  “If. I hate that word.”

  The gravity increased as they descended and her limbs felt an unfamiliar heaviness after so long in space. She practised jabs and kicks, knowing that Athene would be watching and itching to repeat the “no combat” rule, but even that didn’t provide any satisfaction. There was an undercurrent in her blood, an unfamiliar nervousness that bravado couldn’t shake. She sank into a control seat and brought up exterior views as they came in to land, each screen the filtered result of various external micro-cameras.

  She’d expected billowing snow, but instead the whiteness seemed ghostly still. Jagged mountains of ice rose all around them as Athene settled with a gentle thump in a shadowed and sheltered hollow which wouldn’t be visible from the main base or likely lookout points.

  Opal wouldn’t have the benefit of an armoured suit, or a holographic HUD giving her information and directions, but she slipped on a small breathing mask that covered her mouth and an earpiece that would let Athene keep in touch with her via encoded channels that switched wavelength many times a second. Without knowing what to look for, anything listening in would just pick up background noise.

  “Good to go,” said Opal, moving to the airlock and stretching her arms and legs in readiness.

  Freezing

  < 48 >

  THE COLD IN THIS SHADOWED valley stung the exposed parts of her face. Her eyes watered so much that the white pastes smeared into chalky speckles. She kept her hands jammed into the jacket pockets, with the heating level set to max, and the hood fastened tight over her ears.

  “Minus seven point two degrees C,” Athene said into her ear.

  “Feels colder.” Opal’s teeth chattered as she spoke.

  The single-person airlock closed silently and smoothly, leaving no visible trace in the streamlined hull. Athene’s appearance had changed significantly since Opal first stole her from the military. Opal had known that Athene had the ability to restructure slightly. Some of the internal frame and struts had limited mechanical manoeuvrability, normally a slow process. Her outer skin was complex, with breach-repairing nanogel as one of the internal layers. In theory it could be stretched, broken down, and reapplied over time. The features had been planned into her design but without any immediate purpose – it was more a plan for the future, when advanced versions of Athene’s prototype would use it to enable the addition of cargo, weapons, and equipment.

  But Athene had already gone beyond that and turned it into an art form, using the base tools in ways her designers would not have expected. She’d found a way to repurpose the nanogel to change supporting connections, to alter her outer shape for different purposes, and to do it relatively quickly and efficiently. At the moment she was a flattened stealth shape based around principles of continuous curvature to minimise scan reflection, with an additional coating of a radar-absorbent compound. Athene had been happy to boast about all her new ideas, and continuous changes to improve her efficiency, speed, shielding, tools, and weapons. It was scary what she could do. Earlier she’d boasted that her outer shell now detected all forms of scanning more efficiently, intercepted them and reacted with out-of-phase emissions that could make her invisible to many systems.

  None of that made any difference to the interior though. It was the same cramped space surrounded by an armoured shell that kept Opal alive and separate from the death of space.

  So much for standing here shivering in the nose-stinging cold. She headed down a cave-like passage between jagged rocks which led away from Athene and onto a flatter, open area. Across that, when Opal squinted, she could just about see one of the external buildings of this spread-out base. The scattered layout was a lucky outcome of there being no competition for land here. If it had been more densely-packed then their plan wouldn’t work at all. As it was, Athene predicted this solitary outbuilding would be a subsidiary weather and geothermal monitoring station that would be connected to the base’s closed network. There had been no infrared traces going back and forth, so hopefully it wasn’t regularly staffed.

  Opal hunched in on herself and kept her jaw clenched, occasionally wiping her teary eyes then jamming the hand back into t
he pockets. The air from the breather had a bitter chemical taste to it. She focussed on moving quickly, to keep generating heat, and in her haste she slipped on a glassy uneven surface that reminded her of water frozen as it poured. It was a hard smack, and an ignoble slide along on her back for a few metres.

  “Are you injured?” asked Athene, her voice sounding tinny in the low-res earpiece.

  “Just my pride,” replied Opal, standing carefully on this treacherous surface and dusting frozen white crystals from her jacket.

  From then on she looked down as she walked, careful of her footing. Athene monitored her location and gave directions whenever Opal drifted off-course. But she still felt alone and vulnerable out here.

  “Most of the ice I walk on is white,” Opal said, just to make conversation. “But it’s black as I get nearer to the base, with white lines in it. Impurities of some kind? Something to do with what the base is used for?”

  “The opposite,” said Athene. “The black parts are the pure ice. There are no trapped bubbles or trace elements to make it opaque.”

  “Wouldn’t that make it clear?”

  “It is, Opal. The blackness is the sub-surface ocean below you. You’re seeing straight down into it.”

  “Then the white lines ...”

  “Cracks in the ice.”

  A readjustment of perspective, then a sudden sense of vertigo. The feeling she got during external manoeuvres in space, when it looked like you could drop forever into inhospitable blackness.

  “You have slowed down,” said Athene. “You do not need to worry. The ice is kilometres thick. It’s just an optical illusion that makes it look like only a few centimetres separate you from the deadly black waters swirling beneath your feet.”

  “You’re saying that on purpose. You know I hate deep water.”

  “A crust that can support a base and thermo-extraction rods can easily support you. It is solid ground. More solid than many of the unknowns we will face in our risky endeavours.”