By Other Means Read online

  “But, ma’am!” Mashin objected, “Destroying the drive may be what they want to do anyway!”

  “You may be right, Lisa,” Jenn smiled, trying to reassure her. “But if they’re trying to steal the drive, this will mean they failed and may leave us alone.”

  “And if they’re trying to destroy it?”

  “Then they won’t let us live to build another one anyway.” Jenn activated the Teleport program and instantly appeared on the bridge.

  Things were not going well. The ship’s hull was showing severe tearing, revealing open space beyond. Only Nick’s shielding programs were preventing the ship from being torn apart. There were six dead crewmen, but fortunately Nick had also implemented a Shade spell; phantoms of Nick, the captain, and the surviving crew were moving around.

  “Lt. Navarra!” Captain Garrett barked. “What are you doing here? You’re only responsibility is the protection of the insertion drive. Get back to Engineering at once!”

  “Yes, sir. That’s to say, no, sir. I can protect the drive and this ship best from here. I know what’s happening, Captain.”

  “I have this, Jenn!” Nick called from his casting circle forward of the bridge. Jenn knew the words were true, but the tone suggested it wouldn’t be much longer.

  “No, Nick, you don’t. I’m sure you are superior to me in every form of known pentrinsic. But that’s not what this is.”

  “What is it then, Lieutenant?” Garrett said.

  “I believe it is a Marks caster who is casting aggressively through humans.”

  “That’s not possible, Lieutenant,” Garrett objected. “No Marks can use aggressive casting, regardless….”

  “No, Captain! It is a Marks casting! I can feel it! I’m sure Nick can, too!” Nick nodded, short and quick, but otherwise gave no other sign. The attacks were getting harder and harder to hold off.

  “The attacking ship is using a Marks person to channel ireality into human coders, greatly increasing the power of the programs. Even worse, the resulting hybrid programs are very difficult for Nick or I to counteract.”

  “But the human casters, won’t they….”

  “Yes, Captain. They’ll pay for this attack with their sanity, whether they are successful or not.”

  “Which means they’ll be killed after this is over,” Garrett concluded. He looked sharply at Jenn. “What can we do?”

  “Do we have conventional weapons still online?” Jenn asked. She walked to the front of the caster’s circle, between Nick and the torn forward bulkhead, and opened two portals.

  “Weapons!” Garrett barked, not taking his eyes of Jenn.

  “Hull and reversion lasers fully operational!” came the hurried reply.

  “Nick, please listen to me,” Jenn said. Her friend was now visibly straining to protect the lives of the crew and the integrity of the ship’s hull. “The instant I’m gone, you need to cancel every spell and do immediate repairs on the entire ship’s hull.

  “I can’t!” he protested. “If I do that, their attacks will kill everyone within seconds, including you, Jenn! Our only hope….”

  “THIS is our only hope, Nick! Trust me in this.” Jenn smiled. “So don’t be such a poop.” Despite the moment, Nick returned a smile at Jenn’s use of the playful reprimand. She shifted her hands in her portals. Her uniform surrendered to the Alter spell and flowed into its new existence as a space suit. She looked at Captain Garrett.

  “Fire the moment you have opportunity, Captain. While it’s my wish that we take them prisoner….”

  “Your wish will not be coming true, Lieutenant,” Garrett said. Jenn nodded in sad understanding and activated her prepared Teleport routine.

  The ship vanished. In its place was nothing but deep space. As black as the color of her eyes, with only a few pinpoints of light to mark the stars that were so far away from this empty corner of the galaxy. Jenn gasped at the beauty and the overwhelming sense of loneliness. Were they to die here, they would not be found. It was her hope that only one more would die today. Knowing Nick would be doing exactly as she requested, Jenn began coding the final pentrinsic program of her life.

  The portals into ireality flashed into existence. Jenn opened them further until they joined into one single portal two meters in diameter and brushing against the entire length of her small body. Willing it closer, the portal obeyed, enveloping Jenn. For the first time in her life—indeed in the existence of all humanity—Jenn experienced ireality without the anchor of spectral reality. To everyone in the known universe, Jennifer Navarra ceased to exist.

  The euphoria of ireality flooded through her soul as though she had no body. Her sense of ireality increased countless orders of magnitudes. It was here that time originated, yet no longer existed. Jenn took a deep breath and motioned her hands. Two portals into spectral reality opened. She pushed her hands in.

  Cold and harsh, the presence of spectral reality on her hands and lower arms seemed like razor ice. Her blood boiled and she screamed. She knew it would be difficult, but didn’t imagine this. She had only seconds to do the impossible, yet even with the little time left her, Jenn wondered if entering another reality was always like this.

  She composed a simple program, consisting of precisely no fives, no threes, no twos, no ones, and no zeros. Without a matrix to hold it, and anchored completely in spectral reality, yet coded entirely in ireality, Jenn ran the program.

  Her last thought was a fervent hope this wouldn’t cause Nick too much disorientation.

  “Captain? She’s coming around.”

  “Thank you, Doctor. I’ll be there directly.”

  Jenn opened her eyes, then coughed as the pungent aroma of scorched flesh struck her. She tried to sit up, but fell back exhausted. She, moved her hands to cast a Haven spell and, between coughs, said, “Pax.”

  Nothing happened.

  A dry chuckle on her right made her turn her head. Nick was there, lying on the only other medical bed in the small infirmary. He was up on an elbow and grinning at Jenn.

  “Nick? I…how did you find me? I was sure that….”

  “How can you be sure of anything? You…really….” he shook his head, trying to clear it.

  “Are you okay, Nick? What’s wrong?”

  “What’s wrong? Nothing. Everything! You shut down pentrinsic code for five light years, Jenn. Tens of thousands of lights years from Earth, you created an Earth-like condition where access to ireality is cut off.”

  “Yes.”

  Nick laid down and closed his eyes and struggled to calm his breathing. He sobbed for a few seconds, then continued speaking without opening his eyes.

  “I had no idea it was this bad, Jenn. My entire being is withered. My sense of self is like an artificial husk; nothing but bones and dust.” He muttered to himself quietly, Jenn only making out, “…bones and dust.” He looked at her, almost in accusation, “I feel violated.”

  “You’d best feel saved, Lt. Haughton.” Captain Garrett’s firm, comforting voice seemed to breathe life into the small room. “I know I do.” He looked down at Jenn.

  “We’re running on fusion at half-light speed while we effect repairs on our main drive.” He gave her a grin. “I wanted to test your insertion drive, but not only wouldn’t your crew let me, we’re still too far from our target star to activate it.”

  “The enemy ship…”

  “Isn’t effecting any repairs. Once you shut down ireality, their ship immediately appeared on sensors, less than a light-minute away. Their muser was no doubt incapacitated in the same way Lt. Haughton was here. My guess is that the humans he was casting through probably died in that second. Academic, really, as I made sure they all died quickly. Fortunately they were in an almost direct line with you, Lieutenant, and we were quite lucky to have sensors pick up the flash of the closing portal and track you as you reappeared in spectral reality. I’m looking forward to hearing your report, as are no doubt both our races once we return.

  “Well, if you’ll fo
rgive me, Lieutenants, I need to return to the bridge. With the lifts out and no muser to teleport me there, I need to take the maintenance ladders.” He shook his head. “A taste of the old days on the high seas of Earth’s ocean ships. Makes one feel a little more alive.”

  He left, leaving the two alone. There was still silence, but it had eased to a more comfortable quiet, Jenn felt.

  “He’s right, you know,” Nick replied. “Having lost something can make one feel more alive. I…I have a small sense of what it is to be human now; to be alive in only one reality. A large piece of me is missing, cut off from ireality. But the part that survives is waking up for the first time, and through that part of me, I’m seeing things differently.”

  “Just wait until we clear this area and ireality comes back, Nick,” Jenn laughed softly. “That experience is…well…we’ll have more to talk about then, too.”

  “I’m quite sure,” he laughed, then grimaced and closed his eyes again. “In the meantime, I am more than ready to have this pounding headache pass. How Terrans survive without a Haven spell to ease the pain is beyond me.”

  “Oh, Nick.” Jenn made a face at him even though he wasn’t watching. “Don’t be such a poop.”

  Hunger

  Jeffrey Lyman

  Craig Tai furled his solar sails and fired the forward thrusters to slow his small freighter. An immense Earth battleship descended on his position. He killed the claxons, but alarm lights flashed up and down his boards as the battleship kept her guns locked on him.

  He sighed in irritation, then powered down the thrusters and drifted. A single shot from one of the smaller guns above him would cut him in two, so there was no need for theatrics. But inside he was relieved it was a big ship. The battleships of the Earth and Mars fleets were large enough to have converted excess square footage into hydroponics. They weren’t starving. Most of the cruisers and destroyers still afloat were running on skeleton crews and riding the bare edge of cannibalism. They would have been quick to snatch his cargo of food.

  “Freighter AG-776, state your cargo and destination,” a cool voice chirped across his comm. The code ident labeled the battleship as the Ronald Reagan.

  Craig toggled the reply switch. No sense lying. They knew who he was, and hopefully they supported him running food across the lines. “Foodstuffs. I’m on a humanitarian run to Research Outpost 312 and Earth Military Outpost 42.” At least they’d better support his mission. The only way Earth’s scattered outposts would last until the end of the war was by food runners like him.

  “Acknowledged. Prepare to be boarded.”

  He cursed and pushed back against his narrow captain’s chair. Maybe they were going to confiscate his food. It had happened before, usually when they were having hydroponics problems. He was lucky only to have been stopped once this trip for a routine check, and he hadn’t seen hide-nor-hair of Galileo Coalition ships. The allied colonies of Ganymede, Io, Europa, and Callisto loved this starvation war between Mars and Earth, and would have popped his hull just to make things worse. With so many fleet ships mothballed due to insufficient food, the Jupiter colonies were doing whatever the hell they wanted.

  The shuttlecraft that clamped onto Craig’s docking hatch had three jockeys and they all looked fed, which Craig hadn’t seen a great long while. That was a good sign.

  “Welcome aboard,” he said, as one of the jockeys pushed through his docking hatch and into the central corridor of the freighter. Craig held still, waiting for the marine to make the first move. No need to make a man with a burn-gun nervous. “You want to inspect my holds?”

  “Not here for that. The captain wants to see you.” The marine gestured.

  “What’s this about?”

  “Talk to the captain.”

  And that was all Craig was told on the short flight up to the landing bay of the battleship. It was a very small landing bay, tight even for the shuttle, and as he watched their cowl barely slide under a huge steel beam, he wondered if all of the other bays had been converted to hydroponics.

  Without a word, he was escorted via a secure elevator from the landing to a small conference room. The ship’s captain, commander, and two lieutenants filed into the room shortly after Craig was brought in by his marine escort.

  “Captain Tai,” the captain said, nodding. “I’m Captain Routan.”

  “Captain.” Craig nodded back. The officers all looked healthy, if not pudgy. The last battleship he’d been aboard operated at three-quarters staff, and they’d been rail thin and eating paint chips off the walls.

  “Let me put your fears to rest,” the captain said. “Our hydroponics are excellent, so I’m not going to take your sorry lot of potatoes. I require your assistance on a rescue mission.”

  Craig rubbed his eyes. “I have to get this delivery to RO-312, Captain, they won’t last without it.” Everyone knew the research outposts were in deep trouble. The military outposts had done better after supply lines were cut—they had a better command structure. They were quicker to make tough decisions. The scientists at the RO’s had dithered too long, argued too much, hadn’t converted their precious experimental space to hydroponics quickly enough. But RO-312 was a nice jewel. They were good people, had a good research budget, and paid a lot for his food. He couldn’t abandon them. One slip meant quick starvation or surrender to the Ganymede cruisers.

  “I’m aware of RO-312’s needs,” the captain said, “and I require you to head for Military Outpost 226. It’s nearly a straight shot past RO-312 and MO-42, so you can make your deliveries and still proceed quickly.”

  “It’s past MO-42? That’s pretty far out, Captain.” Craig wasn’t familiar with any MO’s designated above 110, and wasn’t sure he wanted to.

  “It’s much farther out, Captain Tai, not in the main asteroid belt at all. It’s in the trailing Jupiter Trojan asteroids, at the L5 Lagrange Point.”

  Craig looked up at the marine standing over his shoulder and then back at the waiting officers. “With all due respect, Captain, the Trojans are crawling with Galilean Coalition ships. They claim it for their sovereign space. How am I supposed to get out there and back in again?”

  “I checked up on you,” Captain Routan said. “All food-runners get picked up from time to time. We let you through because you provide a service. But you...you haven’t been picked up very often. We have records of you several times a year for the past three years, and that’s a hell of a better average than most. You know how to slip through our lines.”

  Craig shrugged. “My freighter’s smaller than most. Harder to detect.” He wasn’t about to admit to any of the evasion maneuvers he used, or his slippery hull that gave tracking computers fits.

  “MO-226 has maintained silence since the war began, hiding from the Ganymede search ships. Until a few weeks ago, that is. We got a short mayday—wide broadcast. They didn’t know we were here, just hoping someone was listening. We don’t think the message was long enough to give away their position.”

  “And you want me to fly out into that? The Galileans will be trolling the sector now.” Craig was appalled. Food runners stayed well clear of the outer limits of the main asteroid belt. The money wasn’t worth the near-death experience. There were plenty of starving people on the inner bands.

  “I need you to bring them home.”

  “How many,” Craig said, thinking, Are you crazy? Then it hit him that maybe someone had discovered something out there. That radio burst wasn’t a mayday, it was a Eureka! statement. He felt ill.

  “Six people,” Captain Routan replied.

  Craig shook his head sharply. “My ship won’t handle it. I’ve got air-recycling capabilities for four. Me and three others. If you need to rescue more, you’ll have to nab a bigger freighter.”

  Now it was the captain’s turn to shake his head. “Like you said, anything bigger than your ship won’t slip through. So bring back two people. I’m sending a medic with you and he’ll be the fourth.”

  The medic would be
a minder, Craig thought. Someone who would incapacitate him if he tried to turn tail and run.

  “I don’t have the fuel to get out there and back,” he said, hoping for some way out of this.

  “Refuel at MO-42. They’re making hydrogen from their asteroid’s ice shell.”

  Craig had rarely been so scared. It had never occurred to him that his skill at evading detection would be the very thing that threw him into the smelter. “All that’s left is to haggle price, I guess,” he said in a weak voice.

  “I know what you food-runners charge these days and I want you to know I find it repugnant. You pray on people’s desperation. It’s treason. I’d shoot you out of the water, except our people in those outposts really need you. I’ll pay you exactly twice the going rate. Call it danger pay.”

  They all stood. Craig almost stuck out his hand to shake, but then figured it would be best if he didn’t. “When will your medic come aboard?”

  “He’s already on the shuttle, Captain Tai, waiting for you.” Captain Routan frowned darkly at him for a moment. “Where do you get your food?”

  It was a loaded question, Craig knew. Many food-runners were also raiders, stealing from what supply lines there were.

  “I had a vacation place—a house dug into an asteroid. There are three other houses dug in beside mine. I happened to be there when Mars nuked Earth, then got stuck there when the fleets mobilized. I guess the other three owners were stuck wherever they were. I did what I had to do with the house—converted everything to hydroponics fast like the alerts said to do. Then I just kept converting. I’ve got a nice bit of space between all four houses, growing more produce than I can eat. I got lucky.”

  “Lucky. And now rich. Must be nice. Your account will be credited with half of the agreed upon amount as soon as you fire your thrusters. Other half at the other end.”

  “Thank you, Captain. Let’s see how lucky I really am.”

  “Get my people back to me, Captain Tai. Show me you’re a patriot.”