Depths of Blue Read online

Her excitement came to an abrupt halt when her comm crackled to life.

  “Unidentified vessel. You have violated the League of Solaran Planets blockade of the sovereign planet Haefen. Heave to and prepare to be boarded in accordance with interstellar law.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Torrin had known it was likely the League ship would notice a ship’s power signature firing up on the surface, and of course it had. It was just the way her luck had been running lately.

  There was no way that she could lose them before the jump to FTL. The League ship likely had enough shielding to slip between normal and peripheral space without requiring the crew to climb into heavily shielded pods. For her to do the same would be a death sentence. Exposed to the extremely high radiation levels of peripheral space she would have at most a year after coming out before dying of some exotic cancer. Some people never made it out the other side.

  There had been a nearby nebula on her way into the system, hadn’t there? Maybe she could lose the other ship in there. That she was still over Haefen made it unlikely that the League bastards would unload on her, not when they might hit the planet below. After all, they were going to play conquering heroes when the Devonites started to sew up their little civil war. Accidentally blasting a farm village into oblivion wouldn’t play well when it came to that.

  Running her hand over the command console, she slipped the Jane back into the planet’s atmosphere. Her engines whined as Haefen’s gravity well pulled against her. If she got the timing down, she could use the planet’s gravity and rotation to slingshot out toward the nebula.

  “Unidentified ship,” the voice crackled over her comm again. Definitely female and definitely irritated. Torrin allowed herself a tight smile. It was a good day when she could piss off some League flunkies. “You are ordered to heave to.” When Torrin didn’t respond an audible sigh of irritation filtered through the comm. “You won’t be warned again.”

  Torrin fiddled a bit with the comm. A few adjustments and her voice could sound like anyone’s. She didn’t have time to imitate anyone in particular so she just settled for deepening her voice into the baritone range.

  “I’m having some engine trouble here,” Torrin said, an edge of panic leaking into her voice. She cut the engines for a moment, just long enough for the League ship to see the engine exhaust dim and read a lowering of output. “We were down there for so long our engines have destabilized. I can’t get out of the planet’s gravity well!”

  Her performance was met by a long silence. “Cut your engines and we’ll offer assistance.” The voice turned wry for a moment. “Don’t think that ‘engine trouble’ will get you out of breaking through the picket.”

  “Are you kidding?” Torrin injected horror into her tone. “They’re animals down there. I can’t go back! All the credits in the universe aren’t worth dealing with those savages again.” She kept an eye on the monitor, lining up their position relative to the nebula. They weren’t quite at the right angle, just a little further.

  “That will of course be taken into consideration during your trial,” the voice promised disingenuously.

  “Oh, thank you!” And thank you! Their conversation had bought her just enough time. She punched the engines. The extra thrust combined with their orbital course shot them out of the grip of Haefen’s gravity on a trajectory toward the nearby nebula. They flashed past the League ship close enough that Torrin could make out the name on its side. Icarus, was it? The League was fond of naming their ships after Earth ancient heroes. She hoped for their sake that the name wasn’t an indication of any flight deficiencies on the ship’s part.

  The Icarus had been high enough above Haefen that it was outside the planet’s orbit and couldn’t match her speed. It was entirely possible that they couldn’t have matched her speed to begin with. When she’d had the engines retrofitted, she’d demanded enough speed to outrun all but the fastest known vessels. Her engineers had packed in as much power and speed as the frame of the vessel could take without tearing it apart.

  They flashed on, the nebula growing rapidly in the viewscreen. Purple and pink clouds of cosmic gases overlapped in diaphanous bands. Deep within the nebula, lightning flashed fitfully, silhouetting bands against each other. It was tantamount to suicide to venture too deep into some nebulae. It was easy to get turned around. The ionized dust obscured sensors and visual navigation was the only way to get through, but the dust clouds made it difficult to see. Hopefully she could lose them in the cloud and make a quick getaway out before jumping into peripheral space with the Icarus being none the wiser.

  She plunged the ship into the nebula, bathing the interior of the bridge in its soft pink light. Before long, ionized gases and shifting magnetic fields had scrambled her sensors and she was forced to navigate by relying on her vision alone.

  The comm crackled to life again but all that came through now was static. The Icarus was close enough to punch a message partially through, but it was hopelessly scrambled. That wasn’t great news. If she was that close, they needed to go deeper into the cloud.

  Torrin cut power to all systems except propulsion, life support and medical. The League ship most assuredly had stronger sensors than her little ship and minimizing her power footprint would allow the Jane to fade into background noise of the nebula.

  A band of brilliant purple parted as she piloted through it, and cloud streamers flowed by the window. Deeper in the nebula, the colors also deepened as the ambient light of nearby stars and planets was sucked up by the bands of ionized dust. She coasted the ship further, eyes peeled for asteroids and other objects that could be hiding in the clouds of dust. Lightning flashed brilliant orange above them, lighting up the cloud as they passed through. An electric blue afterimage lingered on her retinas, and she blinked rapidly, trying to clear it out.

  This was as good a spot as any. Torrin brought the ship to a stop, putting her propulsion systems into standby mode. It wasn’t as power-efficient as turning them off altogether, but cutting them completely would require too much warm-up time when it came time to leave.

  “How’s Jak doing?” Torrin addressed the empty air of the bridge, knowing Tien had been monitoring her every move.

  “She is stable, Torrin.” She could tell from Tien’s tone that the AI was hedging.

  “But?” The smuggler leaned back in her chair, gripping the arms hard enough to press an imprint of its edges into her palms.

  “She was more damaged by her illness than you may have realized, Torrin,” Tien said, preoccupied. “I have halted the progression of the illness, but the virus that caused it is not in my medical databanks. It is most likely peculiar to Haefen. League medical information can be woefully incomplete for planets on the Fringes. The virus has ravaged her lungs. They are functioning at less than fifty percent of their full capacity. It is amazing that the fever has not done any permanent damage to her brain, but I worry that I will not be able to return her lungs to full capacity.”

  “What can you do for her?” Torrin had to work to get the words out past her clenched teeth. This was exactly the situation she’d been worried about.

  “I have lowered the fever, Torrin. She is no longer in danger of permanent brain damage. The real danger is in her lungs.” The AI was hesitant, which really worried Torrin. In all of their time together, Tien had rarely questioned her own conclusions, but she seemed to be doing so now. “She should be taken to a well-qualified doctor, one who is well-versed in Fringe diseases.”

  “Is she stable enough for cryostasis?”

  “She is, Torrin,” Tien affirmed. “At this point, it is probably best for her and will increase her chances of survival.”

  “So you’re saying she could still die?”

  “It is a distinct possibility. If she survives, physically she may never be the same.”

  Those damned stims. Without them there was no way Jak would be in this trouble now. Torrin felt a powerful pang of guilt. Jak had taken the drugs in part so she coul
d protect her. Of course, if Jak had just trusted her to watch her back, this never would have happened. Would you have trusted Jak if your positions had been reversed, a niggling voice at the back of her mind wondered, especially if you’d been unable to trust anyone else for years? That wasn’t the point. The point was that, when Jak recovered, Torrin was going to kill her!

  “I’ll move her over,” Torrin announced as she released herself from the harness and pushed herself up. “Keep your eyes out for the Icarus and engage in evasive maneuvers if she finds us. Oh, and transfer power from the medical systems to cryostasis as soon as I remove Jak from the autodoc.”

  She strode down the hallway. Tien couldn’t move Jak over to cryostasis, but that was fine since Torrin wanted to see her again. She wanted to touch her again. In her mind, she tried to avoid acknowledging the part that shrieked dimly at her. It might be her last chance to feel Jak’s warmth. Frantic grief threatened to overwhelm her at the thought, and she wrenched her mind away from considering the idea too closely.

  Jak looked so tiny on the table in the cramped medical bay. The diagnostic arms of the autodoc were gone, folded back along the side of the table and she was covered by a voluminous blanket that made her seem shrunken. Torrin cleared her throat roughly to ease the rapidly increasing tightness there. She stood for a moment at Jak’s bedside, looking down on her, willing Jak to open her eyes and look back at her. She longed to see those intense blue eyes staring seriously back at her.

  Torrin reached over and stroked Jak’s short blond hair gently. The sniper always looked so surprised when Torrin was able to get a laugh out of her. Her life had been so grim and fraught that Torrin had been looking forward to showing her it was okay to let go. She lifted Jak carefully in her arms and cradled the sniper against her chest.

  The cryostasis room was just down the hall. It contained four cryopods meant to protect their contents against the damaging radiation that was generated by the inhospitable atmosphere of peripheral space. Torrin had never had four people in the ship for anything other than short trips which hadn’t required FTL travel. She was glad that she’d always insisted on keeping all the pods operational. Without her prompting, the lid of the closest pod swung open smoothly. This pod was meant to accommodate anyone, from hulking mountains of men to the tiniest infants. Jak would barely fill half of it. Gently, Torrin slid her into the receptacle. She stepped back as Tien took over preparing Jak for cryosleep. A face mask slipped down and over Jak’s face while electrodes snaked out over Jak’s chest. Torrin braced herself as large bore needles stabbed into the veins on Jak’s arms. The pod’s systems would inject chemicals that would replace her blood and keep Jak from becoming a frozen lump inside the pod. It hurt enough when she hooked herself in, but watching the needle’s tip sliding under Jak’s painfully translucent skin made her skin crawl.

  The needles were sliding into the great saphenous vein that ran along the inside of Jak’s thighs when she felt a hand on the arm she was resting on the edge of the cryopod. Looking up, she saw the blue of Jak’s eyes. The whites of her eyes were more red than white, with barely any white left at all. Terror swam in her eyes and Jak clutched weakly at Torrin’s forearm.

  “Shhh.” Torrin took Jak’s hand and held it to her chest. “I know it hurts, but we need to do this.”

  Jak tried to speak but what came out around the face mask was too muffled to decipher. Quickly Torrin removed the mask.

  “What’s happening?” Jak’s voice cracked painfully.

  “We need to get you to a real doctor,” Torrin explained, stroking her cheek. “You’re being hooked into the cryopod so we can make the FTL jump. The pod will protect you while we’re in peripheral space.”

  “What about you?” Jak shook her head. She clearly didn’t understand the explanation but trusted Torrin enough to go along with it.

  “I’ll be in the pod right next to yours.” Torrin pointed to the next pod down. “Tien will get us home and we’ll find someone who can make you better.”

  “Scared.”

  “I know. But I know what I’m doing. You need to trust me.”

  Jak smiled weakly. “I do.”

  “It’s about time,” Torrin teased her. “Let’s get your mask back on. We just need to finish up with your legs.”

  Jak nodded tiredly and laid her head back on the pod’s hard plastic headrest. It was adjustable, and Torrin had slid it way down to be useful to her.

  “I’ll see you soon. Everything’s going to be all right.” After one last reassuring squeeze to Jak’s hand, Torrin activated the pod’s lid. As it slid closed, Jak looked alarmed. Torrin held her gaze through the lid’s clear glass. When Jak put one hand to the glass, Torrin covered it with her own. Jak’s elevated vital signs dropped slightly when Torrin put her hand up. The rapid rise and fall of Jak’s chest slowed slightly but noticeably. She nodded and Torrin activated the freezing cycle on the pod. As a powerful sedative flooded her system, Jak’s eyes drifted shut, her head drooping to the side. Her hand stayed against Torrin’s, separated only by the thin clear pane. When the pod’s systems flash froze her in place her hand remained, still reaching out for Torrin.

  Torrin stayed there for another moment, long enough to make sure Jak’s vital signs stayed constant. There was no change, she was in cryostasis and the best course of action was for Torrin to get Jak to someone who could fix her. For one moment longer Torrin lingered, drinking in the sight of Jak lying there, quiet and serene.

  With Jak taken care of in the cryostasis chamber, Torrin made her way forward to the bridge. As she strapped herself into the pilot’s chair, she cast an eye over the displays. Nothing registered, which was only to be expected in the nebula. Still, it made her a little nervous. She needed to know if the Icarus had followed them into the cloud or was lurking just outside, waiting for them to emerge.

  “Any sign of the Icarus?” she asked Tien.

  “Torrin, I am effectively blind in here. The only sensors that are working are the optics in my hull.”

  “Then there’s nothing to do for it but to get out of here,” Torrin decided. “We can’t just sit around waiting for them. I have a bit of an idea where we are, so let’s navigate back out of here. I want to come out at a different point than we entered.” Torrin entered a few points of reference into the navigation computer. The nebula shifted so rapidly that the points would only be useful for a few minutes, but they were all she had to go on. She grasped the ship’s rarely used yoke and began steering them manually back out of the cloud, using the points she had just entered.

  They crept slowly forward and lightning flashed fitfully around them in brilliant shades of orange and blue. Since Torrin didn’t know exactly where the edges of the cloud were, she still needed to keep her power signature at a minimum. They skulked further forward, past towering clouds of chromatic lavender, through bands of blinding pink. She wished Jak was with her to see all of the fantastic display. Jak had never left her own world, and this nebula had a beauty that was impossible to find on any planet. When she’d recovered, Torrin would take her to see all sorts of sights. The sunrise over the twined rings of the sister planets Clotho and Lachesis, maybe. Or to the wastes for the beauty of a nebula born from the remnants of a long dead star system. There was so much she could share with her. All they had to do was get Jak to Nadierzda so she could be fixed up.

  Between one flash and another, she caught a glimpse of the bow of the Icarus nosing out from between two lavender cloud banks. She hauled the Jane to a stop and reversed back into the band of pink they’d just passed through. Sitting there at a full stop, she cut power to all systems except the cryo-chambers. The lights dimmed, then went out altogether.

  In the dark, lit only by the light from the nebula and the constant lightning, Torrin watched the faint outline of the League ship as it passed by the band in which they were hidden. The Icarus was moving at a glacial pace. Any captain who knew her stuff would know that nebulae could hide larger objects within the hig
hly ionized gases. With the sensors not working properly, incautious flying could have very regrettable results.

  She barely breathed as the other ship cruised slowly past their hiding place. It was stupid, she knew. She could have been jumping up and down while screaming at the top of her lungs and no one on the other ship would have had any clue. Quietly she sat, watching, waiting. Five minutes ticked by, then ten and still she could just make out the outline of the Icarus as it finally left their immediate vicinity. They were heading on a course almost opposite to their own, deeper into the nebula. At least Torrin knew where they were.

  She waited another seven minutes after the Icarus left visual range before turning vital systems back on. They were now running under low power, with only propulsion and the cryo-chamber receiving any juice. She still had hours of breathable air, but it felt like it was getting harder to breathe.

  She eased the Jane slowly out of the cloud, alert to any sign of the Icarus. The ship wasn’t visible anywhere, and she let out the deep breath she hadn’t known she was holding. She piloted the ship forward on a course she was only vaguely certain of. The markers she’d entered into the navigation computer were now completely gone, and she flew on instinct alone.

  She craned her neck constantly, watching for the Icarus with single-minded intensity. With agonizing slowness, they passed through bands of purple and clouds of pink-hued dust while lightning illuminated the area with fitful flashes. Every dark cloud she passed pulled her heart up into her throat, making her think it might be the Icarus. Every second glance revealed only clouds.

  Was it just her imagination, or was the sky getting darker in front of her? That would be a good sign. She leaned forward in her chair, willing the bands in front of her to part and reveal the star-studded, inky blackness of space. When she caught the glimmer of a star through a fuchsia band, she almost wept with relief. Unbearable tension oozed out of her shoulders and neck. The last band dissipated in front of her and they were free of the nebula. The readouts and monitors on the consoles flickered and pulsed before finally settling as the sensors came back online.