Chapter 3

MY RECOVERY

I spent it in bed, drugged to the gills and swimming with nano.

MY LOSS

I only knew my recovery was done when Techne came to the bedroom that I’d been laying in – sweating, shivering, aching – and pulled up a diagnostic holo off my corset. She looked it over, her camera-eyes whirring as she whistled slowly. “God damn, Jesus Christ and all her saints, Stumble fucked you up, Venn.”

She undid the nano corset and I started my career as a Liminal Knight and member of a sundiver crew by sitting up and almost throwing up all over Techne’s chrome thighs. I clutched my belly, then breathed in, and felt the loss. My eyes widened and I clutched at my chest, then put my hand to my throat. “Techne!” I hissed. “Techne, what the fuck happened, I’m not okay, oh god!”

“What?” Techne looked back at the holo. “Your readout shows the nano flushed just fine and it’s quadrupled your life expectancy. We snipped out three nascent tumors, fixed up your lung scarring, corrected your nearsighted eyes...” She shook her head. “The open source retrovirals fixed up the gene-bomb you had going on in your heart and brain. You don’t want to know what was going to hit you in your fifties. Alzheimers, dementia ... the only good thing was you were going ... to...”

She trailed off then, since she saw me breathing in. Holding it. Breathing out.

“It’s not there,” I whispered.

“What’s not there?” Techne asked. “If the diagnostics are missing something-”

I looked at her. “D-Don’t you know? Everyone’s got the fire of life inside em. When you breathe in, you feel it right here.” I slapped the place right above my chest, where my dots were clustered. “You breathe in and its like a fire. That’s what old Rhales calls the ... the fire of life...” I trailed off.

Techne was looking at me with the saddest expression that plastic and chrome could have. “Venn, that was lung scarring from micro-plastic in the winds, from the old trash heaps that are still burning in Stumble’s equatorial hellzone.” She shook her head. “It was part of what was going to kill you before you hit fifty standard.”

I blinked at her. “Oh.”

She grinned. “Come on. Get up.”

I stood and I had to admit, without the fire of life inside me, without the aches and pains in my joints, without the squinting I had to do to see properly, my whole body felt like it’d been rubbed down by the gods themselves. I rolled my arms slowly, stretched, wondering at how far I could move things. My stomach growled as Techne came back with some clothing. It wasn’t what I had worn on Stumble - “aw, fuck no, we spaced that garbage” - but it was loose and comfortable: White top, leggings, and these kind of tight, form fitting shoes that had a strange metal sheen on the bottom and ankle bracers that glowed a dull red. I wriggled into everything as Techne rummaged around, the came back with-

My eyes bugged and I caught what she tossed: My threshold blade. The hilt was heavy in my hands, weighty like destiny. I held it, my eyes wide as Techne let her smile shine.

“I sure hope you know what to do with that,” she said. “The Alliance hasn’t had a Liminal Knight on its side for, hoo...” She whistled. “Years and years. Without them, we’ve been running from Hegemonic forces and hitting back only when we got the chance.”

I nodded, slowly, then found that there was a tiny hook on the belting of my leggings. I slipped my threshold blade there, where it hung heavy. I grinned at Techne, trying for cocky, but I’m pretty sure I just looked like a soaked exigenic kitten. “I, uh. I’ll do my best.”

“That’s the spirit, Venn,” Techne said, slapping my shoulder. “Come on. Let’s show you the Tiamat.”

THE TIAMAT

The Tiamat was, according to Techne, a three kilometer long cone shaped sundiver. The very back of the ship was mostly made up of the ‘drive core’ - a huge engine that took what she called ‘antiprotons’ and mixed them with hydrogen. The same stuff that came from water, I think. The antiprotons exploded the hydrogen and pushed what was left out of the back, which is what made the ship go. Which made sense to me, all the old magic was supposed to take stuff and fuel. The outer edge of the cone was made of ship hull, the same stuff that we’d found so useless down on Stumble. It was made of a material that could only be produced in worlds that remembered or preserved the oldest magic.

Nucleosynthesis.

The word alone tasted like power on my tongue. Techne explained it like so: “When the universe began, it began hot. Hotter than you can possibly imagine. At those temperatures, atoms fly apart, and the parts that make up their parts fly apart. You have this big slurry of potential. And it turns out, if you can recreate that temperature – even in a very tiny space, for a very tiny sliver of time – you can adjust what atoms form. The Machines figured it out and it took a Machine or a Machine’s slave to make the magic happen. But it’s how the Domain created sundivers and impossible vaults and shimmerweave and all the old legends.”

I had nodded at that – while Techne walked me through a doorway and into a vault that boggled my brain. It was like standing in the circular drum of the ramscoops down on Stumble, but we were on a bridge that ran right down the middle. The walls, though, were completely buried under endless, stacked pallets of what looked like prime A+ tech salvage. Huge machines, ripped from their housings and packaged, lots of tiny tech bundled up in flex wire and twine, even plates of metal that looked prime for smelting. All of it arrayed around me.

This, Techne said, was the main cargo hold. It was also what the crew of the Tiamat had been doing while she’d been spying: Tech salvage in the dead asteroid cities that had existed over my head my entire life ... and I’d never known. Never even imagined. “Took em years. Good thing too, I was on that damn planet for ages.”

My brow furrowed as Techne led me out of the hold and into the final part of the tour: the bridge. The corridor leading to the bridge went through a series thick doors that had to open and shut behind us with ponderous clurr-clunk noises each time. Techne stood by one door as other shut behind us and said: “You’re wondering why I was there, huh?”

I nodded.

And a teeny tiny part of me wanted her to say ... because of me.

N-Not cause I wanted, uh, her to be, like, interested. Who’d be interested in a little twiggy girl for, you know. Stuff. But what if Techne had come because there had been a prophecy? What if she had come because she knew my parents – the ones who had left me by the Machine Temple nineteen orbits ago? My throat tightened and I gripped my hands behind my back, my skin tingling all over. Techne nodded and gunned my hopes down without mercy.

But that was okay. It had been fucking stupid. Fucking ... forget I said anything.

THE ALLIANCE OF FREE WORLDS

“I was there spying for the Alliance,” Techne said. “We’d been getting intelligence reports that the Victrix Imperita was heading down the Chain. Past a certain point, you run out of planets worth visiting. Hell, Stumble’s actually the nicest planet in this part of the Chain.”

“How!?” I squeaked.

“Uh, humans are still alive on it,” she said. “The next two worlds up the chain are tombs. And not even ones you can raid. One’s glowing almost as hot as the sun, they set off so many nuclear bombs. The next’s got a biophage that turns most forms of Human into piles of guts within two weeks of infection. That one has an actual Hegemony base in orbit to shoot down anyone who tries to go raiding.” She shook her head. “Down the chain, we do have another Hegemony base on the big one oh oh oh ... but past them? It all becomes mystery and legend, since no sundivers trade down this far without a good fucking reason.”

I was still trying to wrap my brain around the idea of a planet that was worse than Stumble while Techne explained: “Since the Victrix was heading down, the Alliance wanted to know why and the Tiamat was doing a traderun with Em n’ Em ... so ... we headed down. And hit the jackpot. Most of the sundivers that come down to Stumble are those that are too on the outs and low on mana to have time to risk with vacuum salvage, especially not stuff so far away from the primary.” She grinned as the door opened. “So we had whole cities of tech that had only been nibbled on...”

I kind of got what she was going for. There were tech fields that were too hard to get to for anyone to bother with. But if your team, say, found a big tractor and got it working? Well, then you had something, right? But there was one thing I had to ask: “The ... Alliance?”

Techne nodded. “The Alliance of Free Planets. There have been a few since the Hegemony formed. Some were huge, like the Novalli Republique and they and the Hegemony fought wars that burned whole swaths of the Chain to the ground. Others were small and scattered and only survived by simmering. But they all got ground down by Emperor after Emperor. The first and worst was Daniel Haram Nebuchadnezzar the First.” She turned and spat a glob of lubricant onto the ground. “Oh, by the way. Tradition? When you hear that name, boo. The fucker glassed fifty eight planets and left a deadzone so huge the Chain nearly snapped and ended it by crucifying the last President of the Republique...”

I nodded, then booed as loudly as I could. Cause...

Holy hells what an absolute bastard.

Techne laughed as the last door opened and we entered the bridge. I walked in, excited. Bushy tailed, even. Cause I’d lived on a bridge my whole life. I wanted to see what a living one looked like.

UHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

The bridge. Right.

I was going to focus on the first working bridge of an actual starship and not on the gloriously muscular, broad shouldered, shirtless, grease smeared god of a man standing before me. His arms were stretched up and over his head, which let him show off every single one of his iron-hard muscles. His belly looked wide enough that I could fling myself on him as a blanket and only get my feet and forehead on the ground. His skin was covered with a fine spread of scales – which wasn’t a kind of human I’d seen before, but it took all kinds. He had a long, powerful tail, and his head was frilled and handsome, with a short muzzle and sharp teeth and a wicked, wicked grin, which he sent out way as the door shut behind me.

“Hey,” he rumbled. Sonic vibrations that buzzed through my bones and ... uh...

Uhhhhhhhhh.

The comptech he was working on showered him with sparks. He hissed and looked up, dragging those golden eyes of his away from mine. I was standing stock still, while Techne – not seeming to notice my current, uh, uh ... state – gestured to him. “That’s our comptech and astrogator, Rossk.”

“ ... R ... Rossk...” I said, slowly.

“And that...” Techne swung her hand around to the other half of the bridge. Laying in a pod that looked somewhere between a hammock, an egg and an entire universe’s worth of control leavers, buttons, switches, dials and toggles, was another man. This human had a strangely sloped face and wide nose, with thick, short black fur that bristled all over his body. He had slabs of muscle, but where Rossk was all muscle, this other guy had fat mixed in, making him look completely fucking decadent and wealthy enough to buy the entirety of Junker Port ten times over. His arms were very very long and his hands were broad – but they worked in tandem with his feet, which were ... also hands? Who needed four hands?

“Dr. Malestrom Corgain-Erwitts,” the huge, black furred man said, flashing me a cheerful grin. “But my friends call me Mal.”

“Mal here,” Techne said, quietly. “Is our realspace pilot and weapon’s technician, as well as a dab hand in the field of programmer-archaeologist.”

I waved. And tried to not faint. Cause, uh...

I don’t think I’d ever seen more beautiful men in my life. Well.

My waking life. I remembered the image of Thale in my dream and my cheeks heated. Was it wrong for a girl to go tipsy over three boys at the same time? And a chrome plated girl? Uh. Uhhhh. I shook my head hard, trying to send my thoughts zipping off. Doing so let me focus on the actual bride.

Bridge!

Bridge!

The bridge was laid out in a triangular pattern, with two seats for the two hunks. Men. Hunky men. Regular men! Not sexually attractive at all men. There was the control hammock for Mal, then a circular nook that had fifty or so screens for Rossk, a seat that Rossk took now that there weren’t any sparks coming from above him. There was no third chair for Techne. Instead, the whole front of the bridge was dominated by a huge screen that showed the view ahead of the ship: The bright, brilliant yellow-gold glow of my homeworld’s sun.

“S-So, uh ... we’re just gonna fly right in?” I asked.

“We’re reiced, remassed, ready to go,” Ross said, his tail twitching with a kind of affirmative bobbing motion.

I nodded. “Plastic,” I said, walking over to the screen. I squinted at the sun. Then I turned back. “Can I ask a question? It’s, uh ... don’t laugh.”

The three of them glanced at one another. Mal smiled at me. “Don’t be worried about asking anything, Miss Venn,” he said – like I was fancy and had two names. My cheeks turned bright red and I clutched my hands behind my back, tight enough to turn my knuckles white.

“Why do we fly into suns? And why is the Chain a chain? What’s remass? Where do you get antiprotons from? What’s C? Techne said that the ship’s a quad jumper? What does that mean? What kind of humans are you two?” I pointed at Mal and Ross. “What’s Techne’s job? What’s my job? Where are we going? Am I going to join the Alliance? Are we going to Home?” The questions felt like they’d keep tumbling out if I didn’t stop them, so I clenched my jaw shut.

Mal, Ross and Techne glanced at one another. Techne grinned. “Dr. Corgain-Erwitts, do you wanna field the physics?”

Mal up with one of his flexible hand-feet and set a pair of lenses on his face, which made him look dignified and reserves all at once. His smile was broad and his canines looked big and sharp. It was a queer mix of savage and settled and made me want to take a step backwards.

“It would be my pleasure,” he said.

LIGHT CONES AND TIME TRAVEL

“The fastest thing in the universe is...” Mal said, standing up with a slow, stately grace. When he was standing, he didn’t stay on both of his legs. Instead, he thumped his hands down on the ground and walked on his knuckles and his hand-feet at the same time.

“Light!” I popped.

Mal looked at me. “Ah, I see you’ve some grounding.”

I resolutely didn’t mention the voiceless voice – so silent for the entire tour of the Tiamat – having whispered that fact in my brain, with its lack of inflection and strange inward-outward bloom of knowledge. I didn’t say the reams of numbers that sprang, fully formed, into my brain. Instead, I just watched Mal as he thumped on his knuckles and feet over to the screen. He touched a few controls that appeared when he lifted one of those great big hands of his. Up close, standing up, I saw that he was dressed – shorts for easy movement and a harness that could have tools and comptech hung fromm it.

The screen blipped from the view of the sun to the view of a solitary solar system: One sun in the middle as a big dot, then a series of planets radiating outwards. Names pinged up: Mercas, Aprhotite, L’Terr, War, and so on. My eyes widened. “T-This is Home?”

Mal nodded. “This is Home. Where the whole Chain started from. And this...” He touched more buttons and the view zoomed outwards, showing a map of stars. Strange constellations glowed before me, different from anything I’d ever seen in my life. Not that Stumble had constellations I could see, not through the haze of pollution and mire. I crossed my arms over my chest and listened as Mal continued: “This is the local cluster of stars surrounding Home. The nearest star, Far Centaurus, is four light years away. However, during the later eras of the Dawn Age, the first Machines devised a method by which the limits on lightspeed could be breached.”

More button presses. More images. It showed a wire-frame plane, with dimpled depressions on it. Those depressions held spheres in them – and the names floating over them showed them to be the worlds of Home, and in the middle, the deepest pit of all with the biggest sphere: Sol.

A triangle shape that I recognized as the Tiamat flew towards SOL. “Via a system of complex interlocking technologies – what most call magic these days – a ship is capable of harnessing the gravitational field of a star.” The ship plunged into the pit in the wire-frame map. Interlocking fields of energy flowed around the ship, and they seemed to make the pit deeper and deeper, until it looked like a tunnel. “This, for a single moment of time, turns the sun into a collapsar and allows the ship to skip through the light speed limitation. Once it departs, the fields collapse and the sun’s normal gravitational profile returns before a single molecule has moved.”

I nodded and bit back the absolute string of numbers and definitions that were cramming my head. Planck Time: 5.39 x 10-44 seconds. The smallest possible moment of time, a moment so tiny that it could barely be measured. Agrav fields, focused on a rotating hyperdimensional object to skirt past relativistic effects, inertial countermeasures and tidal force buffer zones created by an enforcement of-

I shook my head, rubbing my temple with one finger. “Okay. Good. Fine. We fly into a sun, why does that mean we have to go down the Chain?”

“Well, there is another law of the universe that the Machines haven’t managed to best,” Mal said. “Event can never precede cause.” He smiled at me. “You cannot dodge a bullet that has never been fired. You cannot kill a man who has not been born yet. You cannot know which chariot to bet on before the race has been run.” He drew himself up a bit, looking down at me. “What would happen if one was to travel from Far Centaurus to the Home system?”

My brow furrowed. “You’d ... get there...” I paused a bit more. Then it clicked. “You’d get there before the light of you leaving gets there. Y-You’d be an event preceding your cause?”

Mal let out a booming laugh. “Oh, she’s a sharp one!”

Had that been me, though? Or was it that voiceless voice, muttering in the back of my head? Feeding me the answers like I was a trained exigenic? I bit my lip, my brow furrowing. “S-So, how do we get around that?”

“With this,” Rossk called in, his fingers tapping his controls. The screen switched to show a weird pair of cones. They were reaching out from a single little dot, shooting up and down in equal measures. “That’s a light cone diagram. There’s a point where you simply are unable to observe anything because the light from that area hasn’t reached you yet.”

Mal nodded. “In the Dawn Age, the thinkers of the time thought that that was the edge of the universe. Fortunately for us, it was not.” He smiled at me.

“Cause ... it’s beyond how far the people on Home could see. So they could jump there without it being a paradox,” I said. “But ... then they locked down the light cone of that part of the universe. S-So, you could either go back to Home, or you could go on to the next place. But you couldn’t go to ... whatever the nearby suns were in that place!” I beamed as Mal slapped my back – nearly bowling me over.

“Precisely, Techne, where did you find this girl?” he asked, laughing.

“In a shithole,” Techne said, looking at me curiously. Was she thinking that I’d never been this smart before? I stood myself back up and rolled my shoulder, wincing as I felt a tiny pop. Mal hit hard for a soft doctor. My brain immediately went to thinking about how hard other parts of him could be. Uh. Uhhhhhhh.

“Now,” Rossk said, pushing some more buttons. “Speaking of crawling up the Chain, I have a tri-jump to calculate.” His clawed fingers began to fly across his controls and buttons. “The insertion protocol has to be very precise with a jackdrive.”

My brow furrowed. “Jackdrive?” I whispered to Mal.

“Modern drive systems are jerry rigs,” Mal murmured back to me – rumbled, really. He reached up to adjust his glasses. “In the old days, the Machines built drive systems and created their automation. You could travel along the Chain by simply flying into a sun and engaging a ‘spin’ drive – spinning around in the heart of a star, jumping hundreds of times in a single go. We’re only able to construct ‘jack’ drives – ones that send you in, then spit you out one jump up or down the chain.”

My brow furrowed a bit. “Jack as in...” I almost started to mime the gesture ‘jacking’ brought to my brain, but I stopped myself real real fast. Mal chuckled.

“Jackhammer,” he said. “We get around the weakness by programming in automatic re-injection systems and jackhammering ourselves in and out and in out and in and out until our shields are depleted and we need to stop. It’s how sundivers get past deadzones in the Chain.”

My eyes widened. “T-That sounds awful.”

Techne, walking up beside me, slipped her arm around my shoulder. Her grin was broad. “Don’t worry, Venn,” she said. “It’s way worse.”

MY TANK

“You are a damn lucky scrapper,” Techne said as she walked me into the back of the bridge, where I saw that the wall I had thought was just very lumpy was actually a set of four doors. “This sundiver was made for a crew of four, and only two of the people on it have internal organs.” She flashed me a pretty smile. Her finger darted out and she flicked up a small glass button protector, then thumbed down the button in question, and the door in the wall opened, revealing a glass cylinder with several braces for arms and legs and hips, with tubes and cables everywhere. There was a handle stuck into a slot in the wall, and Techne picked it up.

Turns out it was a blunt barreled, short stubby looking gun thing.

“So, this is going to hurt,” Techne said and, before I could say, think, or do anything, she pressed the barrel right to my thigh, shoving my leggings down just enough to put gun to skin. The gun thing hit me like a hammer and my leg almost went out from under me. The pinching feeling that came from my thigh lasted long enough for me to start hissing before the boring feeling happened. It hurt. It was a deep, painful hurt that stabbed from skin to bone, where it radiated out through my whole body for about twenty seconds, time enough for tears to burn in my eyes. My hiss turned into a mild scream and Techne slid her arm under my shoulder, keeping me propped up.

The pain went and when I looked down, I saw that there was a gleaming, silver plug on my skin, the surrounding skin puffy and red. The puff and the red both started to fade with the pain. Like a bad memory.

“Techne,” I growled. “What the fuck?”

But the voiceless voice breathed in an awareness of the plug. The interface it’d have with my blood and my circulatory system and how, even now, the proprietary, DRM riddled mana that the gun was loaded with was working into my system, laying down more pipes. It felt like a cold snake in my guts. I rubbed my belly, then glared at Techne. She smiled, apologetically.

“I did say it’d hurt,” she said.

“Yeah...” I rubbed the plug. “What’s it for?”

“Well. We’re going to go smashing into a star at several hundred gravities,” she said. “Then we’re going to fly out and smash in again two more times. That’s what this is for.” She patted the doorway leading to the room. “It’ll be pumped in with an intelligent non-Newtonian fluid programmed to react to different accelerations and pressures to support and give as much as required to keep your body intact. The plug...” Her finger caressed the small button she’d put on me. Chrome fingers running along my own bit of chrome. It was beginning to sink in that I had tech in me now. Literally. I could feel it, and as the pain was fading, the awe was coming in to replace it. Awe and wonder and a tingle of ... uh...

Chrome finger touching chrome plug. Almost like teasing a...

Uhh.

My cheeks heated as Techne murmured. “The plug lets the ship fill your internal spaces with similar fluids, providing cushions for your organs, your veins. It seeps into the brain and protects you from stroking out.” She grinned at me. “All the joy of a hangover with none of the fun parts.”

I gulped as she stepped away from me and started to point out the parts of the tank, describing how I’d lock myself in, plug myself in, how I’d check to make sure everything was secure. “We have antigravity, but it’s being channeled into the jump effect, which is why we’re fucking around with tanks. Worldkillers and other military ships double up on agrav – that’s why the Victrix could fly in atmo.”

I nodded, my finger rubbing my own bit of chrome.

“We got an ETA?” Techne called over her shoulder.

“Injection calculations are done,” Rossk said. “How’s our burn looking, Mal?”

“Good,” Mal said. “We should tank up now, though. The longer we have to run up, the better the chances we don’t die.” He chuckled.

“All right, you heard the monkey,” Techne said.

“Please,” Mal said, his voice full of dignity and gravitas. “I am an uplifted gorilla. Not a monkey.” He lifted his head as he started to walk by, his knuckles thumping on the deck. “Do I look like I have a preposterous tail?”

Rossk playfully snapped at him and the two men started to...

Uh.

Uhhhhhhhhh.

Rossk’s shorts hit the floor first. I shouldn’t look. It was unbelievably rude to look. And he had this kind of scaled sheath, like some of the more canid looking exigenics I’d seen. His balls, though, were mouth wateringly perfect. Round and full as my clenched fist and covered with a light patina of scaling that was the same green hue as the rest of him. They nestled between muscular thighs and looked so inviting that I nearly took a step forward. Then I looked over at Mal and saw him stripping off too and he definitely didn’t have a sheath. His cock was also ... g-god, how did women ... he...

Big.

Real big. Lots. Uh.

“Not even species accurate,” Techne muttered. She had seen my sight-lines. My cheeks burned and I yelped.

“I wasn’t looking!” I squeaked, while Mal and Rossk both headed for their tanks. Rossk grinned at me, while Mal got into his tank with a kind of intense dignity. Like he wanted everyone to remember that he did, in fact, have a Doctor name and two last names. I gulped and Techne smiled at me and I realized I needed to get naked too. My cheeks heated and I waited, at least, for the doors leading into Rossk and Mal’s tanks to shut.

Techne’s voice was soft. “It’s not as scary as you think. The acceleration medium is pumped with enough happy juice to tank out a great ape like Mal. You’ll be walking on sunshine in there, Venn.” She patted my shoulder.

I nodded, mutely, then started to slide off my shirt. It should have been easier to strip down with just Techne in the room. But then I was standing there: Me, flat chested and gangly and covered in dots, with my wild bush, next to this chrome and plastic goddess. Techne smiled at me, comforting and friendly, and I tried to not hate how pretty she was. It was easy to do that, considering ... she ... uh. She was very pretty.

“S-So, uh, what about you? A hundred gravities is a lot...” I said.

She chuckled. “I lay down and shut my higher brain functions off,” she said, quietly. “Basically, I dream. My body can handle the G-force. The fragile components that couldn’t survive were replaced years ago.”

I nodded.

I whispered. “I’m scared.”

Techne caught my chin and lifted my head. She looked into my eyes. “Jesus Christ and her saints will watch over you, Venn. I promise.” She smiled and then added. “Besides. You’re a badass Liminal Knight. You got this.”

My lips skinned back in a grin.

I did. I did got this.

Techne kissed my cheek. I almost exploded into flames.

HAPPY JUICE

I socketed the tube that Techne had shown me into my thigh, then put the smart catheter up against my fuzz. The tube found its way into me and I tried to not think about it.

The thigh tube started to hiss. The feeling that followed felt like being ... it felt like drinking water. But then you just keep drinking and drinking and drinking and drinking, and there was no sensation of drinking, no movement of the throat, nothing but the pressure building and building. But even while the pressure got worse and worse, the feeling of peace got stronger and stronger. My eyes went lidded and a stupid smile split my face as something slurpy and orange-white started to dribble into the acceleration tank. It moved faster and faster, sweeping past my ankles, past my knees, past my thighs.