52 Project #9: The Timeless Tunnels Of Crystal Station (Patreon)

Three people come down from the ships docked at Crystal Station. Hundreds of others do the same, but these are important. Focus on them–

Stepping down from a two-man ship, which is a shuttle from the starship Rhiannon, are the captain of Rhiannon and his best friend, Rhiannon’s computer engineer. Matt Pison, human, terratype, Martian, is the captain. He is tall, blond, muscular from his life in the Martian colonies but pale from little sunlight, brown-eyed. Next to him is D'mir Colotho, draine, Bcoilica. He is short, corded muscle unusual for a draine, dark hair, dark eyes and brown draine skin. They are at Crystal Station, outside the boundaries of the Web of Eyes but still within the Alliance, to relax, refuel and restock. Nobody ever told them about Crystal Station.

Wardra knows. She comes down from her one-person cruise craft. Wardra Gyuunyushiligni, farla, Evstarb, with pale green skin, an upsweep of pink hair, lavender eyes. She is tall, thin, but more powerful-looking than the usual farla, with muscles in slender cords and the electric scent of power about her. Wardra knows the dangers of Crystal Station, but she has something to prove.

Crystal Station Central is a place bustling with people. It’s a huge room, with milky crystal walls and twelve doorways leading from it. They all look identical, with opaque tracker fields hiding what they conceal behind, but for numbers over their doors. Eleven doorways lead to rest and recreation areas, stores, other such things. The things that people come to Crystal Station for, braving the dangers outside the Web because Crystal Station’s prices are so much cheaper than anyone else’s. One doorway leads to the mazes around Crystal Station, and that’s why the prices are so cheap. 

If the powerful ones in the Web of Eyes or the GalConfed knew of this link, Crystal Station would be destroyed. But they don’t. No one listens to the mystic Evstarb farlae. And no one else who knows can speak.

***

Matt and D'mir head for a glowing information booth. Matt asks, “Information?”

“Yes,” the booth answers.

“Where can I go to get my ship refueled?”

The correct answer is Doorway 12. Random numbers in the computer juggle. Not many have gone through Doorway 9 lately. Does this weigh the decision? No way to tell.

“Doorway 9,” the Information Booth tells them. It has no face to keep straight. The faceless are the best liars.

Matt and D'mir go toward Doorway 9 with their fueling schedule as Wardra approaches another glowing information booth. She asks, “C'lianp?” She is about to ask the same thing as Matt. It’s a different booth, but the same computer controls them all.

“Ad,” the booth acknowledges.

“Hafar eszgi tram l'notla ofir?”

Random numbers in the computer juggle. Wardra is an Evstarb farla. Does this weigh the decision? No way to tell.

“Alfi 9,” the C'lianp Inl tells her. It has no mind, and gives off no psionic telltales to be read by a mystic.

Wardra feels a tiny thrill of excitement. She has come here, despite the danger, to prove that she is not a coward. 1 chance out of 12, and if her gamble is successful she will get fuel cheap enough to see her into the Web-controlled territory, despite her limited funds. She will finally be free of Evstar, once and for all. But if her gamble fails… Shaking with excitement and more than a bit of fear, she heads for Doorway 9. 

As she steps through the opaque tracker field that covers the door, an arrow of pain stabs through her mind, and she staggers and falls to her knees. Terror overwhelms her. Her gamble has failed.

Somebody pulls her to her feet. She looks up at Matt.

“Are you all right?” Matt asks. “What’s wrong?”

He speaks GalConfed Standard. Though Evstar is outside the GalConfed, Wardra had always hoped to go to a world inside its domains, and so she learned Standard, though she speaks it with an accent. “I’m– all right,” she says, getting her balance. “I’m an Evstarb farla. That should explain it.”

“I’m afraid it doesn’t,” Matt says, frowning. “I don’t know much about farla, except for those in the GalConfed. D'mir?”

“Evstarb farlae are mystics,” D'mir says. “They tend to have powerful psionic abilities. Most likely she sensed something unpleasant. What was it?” he asks her.

“You don’t know?” Wardra asks. “That was the Barrier. Now that we’ve gone through the Barrier, we’ll never be allowed to leave.”

“What are you talking about?” Matt asks.

D'mir, being a draine, is quicker on the uptake. He presses a hand against the doorway. “It won’t reopen,” he says. His voice is calm, but then draine voices are almost always calm. “Does it block psionic transmission as well?”

“Yes.” Wardra is shaking. On her homeworld they called her Jliga, coward, because she would not bear children. She left Evstar to prove she wasn’t– or to avoid the pressure to risk childbearing? Perhaps she is a coward after all?

“What are the two of you talking about?” Matt asks again.

“We can’t get back,” D'mir says. “The doorway is locked from this side.”

“That’s ridiculous! Why?”

Wardra takes a deep breath. “This place, Crystal Station, runs on the psionic output of– things, creatures that feed on humanoids. They don’t put out emanations if they’re not well-fed. Crystal Station doesn’t pay for fueling costs– that’s why everything is so cheap. Everyone who comes here pays in risk– one out of every five hundred gets misdirected through this doorway. And those who get caught, like we did, pay in blood. There’s a maze around Crystal Station, populated with these creatures. That’s where we are.”

“That– they can’t possibly get away with this,” Matt says. “The Web of Eyes would‑‑”

“Crystal Station is outside the Web’s range,” D'mir reminds him.

“But– we’d hear something. All those people disappearing–”

“People disappear from stations outside the Web all the time– they’re hotbeds for vice and crime. Unfortunately, if Crystal Station polices itself reasonably well, they can keep their disappearance rate under the average, even if one out of five hundred disappear.” D'mir presses himself against the Barrier again. “There must be a way to bypass this,” he murmurs.

“They get away with it because there’s no proof. Nobody who disappears ever comes back out,” Wardra says.

“So how did you know?”

“The Evstarb mystics can talk to the dead, sometimes.”

“So why’d you come here? Why did you go through the doorway?”

“I didn’t know what doorway it was, any more than you.”

“Why don’t the Evstarb mystics tell someone?”

Wardra smiles, bitterly. “Who believes farlae?”

“She’s right, unfortunately,” D'mir says. “All the other humanitypes, such as us draines, are genetically close enough to pure humaniform that we treat each other as if we’re reasonably close to the same species. Farlae are usually treated as true aliens, and farlae from worlds like Evstar, that don’t even make an attempt to fit in, are heavily stigmatized.”

“Still, someone would listen,” Matt says. “Did your people even try?”

“My people are narrow, short-sighted fools. And I am one of them. I didn’t even think to warn anyone about Crystal Station.”

There’s not really anything Matt can say, in the face of her self-directed fury. “Well, there’ll be investigations when D'mir and I don’t come back. We’re very important men– I’m a starship captain, for god’s sake. They’ll have to investigate. My crew will tear this place apart looking for us.”

“They won’t find anything,” Wardra says dully. “The computers are probably programmed to erase references to Doorway 9 from their banks.”

“Then anyone I trained will wonder why no one ever goes through Doorway 9, and try to find out what it is,” D'mir says.

“I’m sure they’ve thought of everything,” Wardra says despondently.

“Hey! Don’t give up hope so soon,” Matt says, trying to cheer her. “D'mir, any luck with the door?”

“I could bypass it, but I don’t have the tools.”

“Can you jury-rig something?”

“I don’t have the tools,” D'mir repeats patiently. 

“Is there any chance we can find the tools, somewhere in the maze?”

“I don’t know what we’re likely to find in the maze. I don’t think it likely, but anything’s possible.”

“Well then. We’ve still got some hope. And we’ve both got weapons. We’ll beat this yet. Come on.”

“Come on where?” Wardra asks, fear in her face. “Where is there to go?”

“If we stand around like sitting ducks, something’s sure to nail us sooner or later. We need to set up a secure base of operations, something we can defend, and start scoping out the place. I’m Captain Matt Pison of the starship Rhiannon. This is D'mir Colotho, our chief computer man, a draine from Bcoilo. And you?”

“Wardra Gyuunyushiligni. I have an independent cruiser– I was trying to get into the GalConfed. That’s why I came here, even though I knew about the risk– I didn’t have much money.”

“Farlae outside the GalConfed aren’t known for wanting to get in,” D'mir says. “Why did you decide to leave Evstar and head for the GalConfed in the first place?”

“That, conv'ril, is a story too complicated and personal to discuss now.”

Matt looks around. “I don’t like being exposed like this. Let’s go into the maze, see if we can find food, shelter, the works. They’ve got to feed us, or we’ll die before we can feed their creatures.”

And so they go. The halls are grayish-white in and of themselves, but the lights that shine on them are dim and faintly reddish, single bulbs poking out of the ceiling. Dust is everywhere, thick on the ground, turning the air musty and old. They pass alcoves with food dispensers, and Matt discovers that they can get packet rations– tasteless chalky things, but nutritious– from them. Finally they find a room with a lockable door, a water tap, and supplies all around, such as blankets and aged empty packets. There is a makeshift bed in the corner.

“This looks like someone made a shelter for themselves, left to get supplies, and never came back,” D'mir pronounces, examining everything with sharp draine intellect. “Good.”

“Good?” Wardra asks disbelievingly.

“There’s no sign of a struggle in this room, and no filled packet rations. It looks like whoever it was was safe while they were here, and weren’t attacked by the creatures until they left. I do have to say that I’ve seen no spoor– no droppings or animal tracks.”

“Maybe this isn’t near where they live,” Matt says hopefully.

“That doesn’t make sense, unfortunately. This is near the doorway– if the humanoids who come through that doorway are the only victims, and the only food, they’ll have to forage out this far.”

“Why couldn’t we find a shelter nearer one of the food dispensers?” Wardra asks. “If it’s dangerous to leave the shelter–”

“Did you see any rooms near the food dispenser?” Matt asks.

“No.” Wardra shakes her head apologetically. “I’m sorry– I don’t mean to whine. It’s the tension. How do we want to work this, then? Safety in numbers? Do we stick together when we go out?”

“Yes, at least for now,” Matt says. “I can’t think of a better way to do it.”

***

They set up a makeshift camp, making three beds out of the spare blankets and depositing the food packets Matt had collected. Then they go out to explore, map out emergency routes, and try to find the tools D'mir will need. 

As they pass by a food alcove, a thing screeches in. It is a flying beast, and yet it has no wings. It is like a huge black tube with rotating silver teeth. Set into its head is an eye, bright purple. Wardra drops to one knee, pulls out a gun, and blasts at it. The thing flips backwards, but keeps coming. It aims itself at D'mir. D'mir and Matt shoot lasers at it, but the thing keeps coming. Wardra’s missiles hit it in its mouth and eye, repeatedly, and eventually it drops.

“That’s an iver,” D'mir says. “It’s highly psionic, but slightly repelled by psi sources– it prefers null-psi meals.”

“Like you,” Matt says.

“Yes. Like me.” D'mir has gone gray and bloodless, but shows no other sign of the fear he must have felt. “Thank you, Wardra.”

“What’d you hit it with?” Matt asks.

Wardra shows him her gun, an ancient projectile weapon. “Our technology isn’t as advanced on Evstar,” she says. “Does that mean you’re psionic?”

“Not really,” Matt says. “Most terratype humans have a slight psi rating, though, and draines typically don’t have any. They’re true nulls. Let me see that?”

He examines her gun, and hands it to D'mir. “What do you make of it?”

“The creature might be an energy-eater, capable of absorbing the lasers without damage. This would tear through its flesh.”

“I also put push behind it,” Wardra says.

“Push? What do you mean?”

“I– called to it, mind to mind. I told it to die. I didn’t put my full effort into it– I didn’t need to. But I think it helped.”

“Told it to die?” Matt stares at her. “Could you have killed that thing with just your mind?”

“I don’t think so– and it’d cripple me to try, so I’m not going to unless it’s an emergency.”

“Do you have enough ammunition to kill another one without trying to kill it with your mind?”

Wardra examines her ammunition clip. “No.” She puts it back. “I could kill it by feeding myself to it, but I think you’ll understand if I’d rather not.”

Matt laughs. “Of course not.” 

“Farlae are poisonous to ivers?” D’mir asks.

“I didn’t know that was an iver until D’mir said so, but yes, that’s what we’re taught. It won’t save our lives – the things may be psionic, but they’re too stupid to know we’re poisonous. But if it makes a meal out of me, at least I’ll be avenged.”

“I’m not going to let it come to that,” Matt said. “We’re all in this together.”

***

The days pass without distinction, an endless river of unchanging time. Occasionally a scream is heard. There is nothing to focus on– everything is the same. 

They explore, sometimes, searching for weapons or tools. They find dead bodies, and plenty of energy weapons, and money and valuables, but no weapons they can use against the ivers, and no living people. Carefully they avoid running into the creatures, as best they can. When they’re tired, they go to their room and talk. 

Matt is convinced that the crew of the Rhiannon must be looking for him and D’mir, but how could they possibly guess the true nature of Crystal Station to even begin to look in the correct places? D’mir, bluntly, suggests that their crew probably think they are dead and spaced, or kidnapped and taken into slavery, somewhere far from the station.

They encounter another creature, not an iver. D’mir identifies this one as a neskelly. Imagine a crab, with octopus tentacles that it walks on, crab-like. Now imagine it the height of the average human. This one is more interested in Wardra than the human or the draine, and the venom in its tentacles disrupts her psi. Matt fires at it from a distance, but it seems to be bothered by that as little as the iver was. It ignores D’mir, so he is able to get in close enough to batter its head with the butt of his energy weapon, and when its mouth gapes open to bite him, he shoots it in the mouth. That actually works.

“Did we try shooting the iver in the mouth?” Matt asks. 

“We hardly shot it anywhere else,” D’mir says dryly. “I suspected a thing like this would exist.”

“A giant crab-octopus thing?”

“A thing that would prey chiefly on beings with psi, rather than beings with none. If ivers were the only creatures in here, the Crystal Station algorithms would have never sent a farla in here.”

“I should have realized that,” Wardra says. “How many kinds of creatures do you think there are in here?”

“No way to guess,” D’mir says. “But we’ve seen a type that prefer psionic victims, and a type that prefer null-psi. I imagine there may be types that prefer low psi, like humans, or are completely indifferent to the level of psi their target has. A balanced ecosystem.” His voice doesn’t change, but a subtle shift in his face tells Matt, at least, that he is making the draine equivalent of a joke.

“We’ll have to be even more careful,” Matt says.

***

Time passes, and Wardra tells them finally of why she fled Evstar. When childbirth kills 1 out of 3 farla women, the remainder are pressured to bear all the more. It is her duty to her species to risk her life in childbirth. Wardra chose not to, and so they called her coward, and drove her from her homeworld.

Time passes, and Matt tells stories of his adventures, faring the spaceroutes of the galaxy, traveling amidst the GalConfed and the Zermiloni Demesne and the Ananranjan Net, all the worlds of the Orlon Alliance.

Time passes, and D'mir tells how he came to leave Bcoilo, where he would have had a promising career in the sciences, because he had a desire for adventure that the stolid, practical draines frowned on. And as the endless days and nights go past, it seems as if they have known each other eternities. As if they are soulmates, born to each other.

Then they find a dead engineer, with tools he obviously hadn’t been able to use. As one, they recognize this as their chance. As one, they turn and run down the corridors, heading back for the Barrier.

***

As they approach closely, they begin to walk, unwilling to attract unnecessary attention. Before, they were in iver territory, and there it was necessary to move quickly. Here, those few marauding ivers still around will tune in on the sound of running feet more readily than in the deep areas of the maze, where more victims are to be found, searching hopelessly for a way out. They walk down the timeless tunnels of Crystal Station, tense and wary, watching for anything. There is hope in all their eyes, but fear as well– because if this doesn’t work, they are all doomed, sooner or later.

Wardra and Matt stand guard as D’Mir takes the wall apart, looking for anything that ties into the controls. “I wouldn’t expect to find the actual control board on this side of the barrier,” D’mir says. “They’d want it to be accessible to them, without risking being eaten, and they don’t want us to be able to access it.”

“So what are you going to do about that?” Wardra asks.

“The power conduits run through all the walls of the station, including these. The lights and the food dispensers wouldn’t work without them.” He locates a power conduit. “In addition, the engineers who need to perform maintenance over here would want to make absolutely certain they couldn’t accidentally be trapped, so there is a manual release for this barrier, somewhere. Controlled by a passcode, or perhaps even by removing a panel and completing a circuit, but wherever that is… either I’ll find a bundle of control wires passing through to the board on the outside, or it’s going to tap into the power conduits and provide a means of shutting the power down briefly.”

“Which way’s going to be faster to get the door open?” Matt asks.

“Whichever one I encounter sooner, which likely depends on exactly how they implemented it,” D’mir says. 

“Well, take your time. No big rush,” Matt says, joking. 

A third type of creature, which looks like a rolling ball with short spikes that flatten as they approach the ground and pop back up again as they roll off the floor and upward, attacks them. It’s not immune to energy weapons like the other two they’ve encountered, so Matt is able to make short work of it. Wardra saves what little ammunition is left in her clip in case another iver or neskelly or something else resistant to energy weapons comes.

The lights flicker and then turn off. “Now,” D’mir says, and Matt grabs Wardra’s hand and pulls her through the now nonexistent barrier, D’mir right behind him. The barrier flickers back on with the lights only seconds after they’re all through.

An alarm shrills.

“Let’s go!” Matt shouts, and runs, D’mir and Wardra right behind him, heading for the docking bay.

Crystal Station looks much like a wheel, from outside the station. There’s a circular central hub. 12 spokes come from this hub. Each, ostensibly, connects to the outer ring. Each also connects to a second hub-like layer, “above” the first in the orientation of the main gravity panels… though only one of the spokes uses that connection. From the central hub, there are staircases and elevators and person-movers and escalators leading “down”, below the hub’s floor, to the docking area, which sticks out of the base of the hub like the bottom of a muffin. So there are 12 doorways visitors can take when seeking the food, shops, hospitality and fuel sales kiosks in the outer ring – though one of those 12 will never reach that area. But the docking area is all one area, large and divided more by markings on the floor than anything more substantial. Matt and D’mir’s shuttle and Wardra’s single-person craft are both located there.

The fastest way to go is to take the escalator and run down it, but silver robots swarm all over the hub and cut them off from the escalator. These robots have wheels; they won’t be able to handle stairs, so Matt, Wardra and D’mir end up taking the stairs. It won’t save them from the robots in the long run; the robots can easily take the people-mover. But the goal is to get to their ships before the robots stop them.

D’mir stops at a computer terminal, removes an object from his pocket, and inserts it into a slot in the terminal. An image like a sphere appears, the color slowly draining from it as it spins.

Wardra’s ship has a fingerprint lock. She places her hand against the door. It does not open.

“Matt! D’mir! They may have overridden the locks on our ships!” she yells, and sees the robots come down off the people-movers.

“Of course,” Matt pants. “They can’t let us get away, knowing their secret.” He fires his energy weapon at one of the robots. It drops. There are people milling around, though, boarding or disembarking from docked ships, doing maintenance work, refueling ships, and Matt can’t get a clear shot at the other robots as they weave in and out of the crowd.

D’mir’s sphere has turned translucent and he’s typing frantically, the characters spelling out nothing that would make sense to anyone accustomed to the friendly interfaces of the computers. Bubbles appear all around him with additional information, and every so often he quickly glances at them and then returns to his typing.

Wardra can’t risk firing her gun when there’s so many people around, either. She bangs on her ship’s hatch. It still doesn’t open. Robots come rolling toward her, so she runs, knocking people in her way aside, but the bay is full of the robots and the outcome’s never really in doubt. She’s still got a wrench in her hand from the engineer’s tools D’mir used to take the wall apart, and she bashes one of the robots in its delicate light sensors, smashing its ability to see. But then the next one is behind her, wrapping long silver arms around her. She shrieks and curses and thrashes. None of this matters to the robot; it rolls into a faint green beam of light and follows the beam back to the people-mover, rolling back up toward the hub. Toward Doorway 9 and the monsters and the barrier.

The robots have now detected D’mir; presumably the fact that he wasn’t trying to get to a ship delayed them from recognizing him as one of their targets. He finishes typing, and the spinning sphere starts filling with color. Then he turns around, takes a step, and is immediately hugged by a silver robot. It, too, rolls toward the people-mover.

Matt manages to reach his ship, and shoots a couple of robots that get close enough to him that there’s no one in the way. He sees large docking clamps holding it in place, which hadn’t been there when he’d docked, and realizes – without D’mir to make the computer release the clamps, he won’t be able to get the ship to lift off even if he gets through the door. Still, if he can get inside, he can barricade the robots out and he can call Rhiannon for backup. There’s an emergency manual override for the lock, but as he flips the panel that hides it open, a robot grabs his arm and pulls him toward itself, wrapping the other arm around him as it does.

It rolls him upstairs on the people-mover, and toward Doorway 9. He shouts, the whole time. “Listen, all you people! Don’t take Doorway 9! Crystal Station is a trap! It’ll kill you! Tell the GalConfed, tell the Web of Eyes, somebody! Tell someone, it’s a trap! Don’t go beyond Doorway 9—”

Then it deposits him past the barrier, which flares blue, and now no one in the hub can hear him anymore.

The people who run Crystal Station are annoyed. It’s a good bit of work to mix up the doorways, and now they’ll have to do it again.

***

The three reconnoiter at the sanctuary they’d established. It looks no different than it did before their abortive escape. For D’mir, this is entirely expected, but for Matt and Wardra, it seems strange, as if they left far longer ago than this morning.

Wardra is angry at herself. “The Evstarbs were right all along. I am a coward.”

Matt blinks. “Exactly how do you figure that?”

“Did you hear how I screamed when that thing grabbed me?” Wardra complains. “Like a child. I should have shot it.”

“It was wise of you not to try,” D’mir said. “You would probably have hit one of the people, and at best you’d only have taken out one of the robots. There were too many for us to realistically fight. As for screaming… I’m a draine. I’ve been raised since infancy to be stoic and accept the things I cannot change. And I was tempted to scream when it grabbed me.”

“But you didn’t actually do it,” Wardra said.

“Wardra. Screaming because you’ve been attacked by a thing that might kill you, and does, in fact, take you back to a place where you have to face monsters to survive, is not cowardice by any stretch of the imagination,” Matt says. “It really doesn’t help you or anyone else to beat yourself up over something so trivial. You fought as hard as you could. That’s hardly cowardice.”

“It’s not particularly relevant in any case,” D’mir says. “What’s more important is that I believe I may have succeeded in convincing the computer systems to release our ships and the barrier in somewhere between 2 and 4 hours.”

“Really!” Matt says. “That’s excellent news!”

“Why not immediately?” Wardra asks.

“There is a power cycle,” D’mir explains. “I wasn’t able to determine exactly when the cycle should take place, but it’ll be somewhere between 2 to 4 hours from now. We’ll know exactly when it’s happening if the lights flicker. Power will fluctuate and weaken for five to ten minutes and then drop, because I believe I’ve delayed the cycle from beginning after the end of the previous one. We may have as long as fifteen minutes or as little as five to get through the barrier and get to our ships.”

“What about the robots?” Wardra is nervous. The robots plainly frighten her.

“If I can get to the computer before they get loose and intercept us, I can override the subroutine that sends out the robots. We’ll have to be ready to move the moment the barrier goes down.”

“Which means we’re going to have to be out there, in the open, waiting for the power outage,” Matt says solemnly. “Down between 2 and 4 hours from now means we’re going to be exposed for up to 2 hours, because we’re not going to have enough time if we’re here when it goes down.”

“It’s not ideal,” D’mir says.

“It’s actually awful!” Wardra says. “D’mir, I don’t have enough ammo to take down another iver.”

“That is a concern,” D’mir says, “but I wasn’t able to narrow down the window beyond 2.5 to 3.5 hours. So it’s actually only one hour, not two, that we’re going to be exposed.”

“But what do we do if an iver shows up?” Wardra asks.

“Whatever we can,” Matt says. “If D’mir is killed, he’s not going to be able to stop the robots.” He takes a deep breath. “We’ve been out for as long as an hour before without being attacked. We’re just going to have to hope luck is with us this time.”

***

They pass the time by telling stories about their lives, the same as they’ve done for the past – how long has it been? Two weeks? A month? Three months? 

When it’s time, they head toward the barrier. They’re careful, never stepping around a corner until they’re sure it’s clear. They reach the barrier without problems, but now, they have to wait. Anytime within the next hour, the barrier might go down. Anytime within the next hour, they might be attacked by a creature. 

It actually happens half an hour later.

An iver sails around the corner of the corridor, up ahead, cutting them off from any escape route. They’re up against the barrier and unless it goes down right now, the iver is going to reach them.

The barrier does not go down right now.

Both Matt and D’mir fire their energy weapons at the iver, knowing it’s not going to do a lot of good, but there’s not much else they can do. The shots affect it very little. Wardra empties her own gun into the iver, four shots. It bleeds and slows down, but it doesn’t stop. Cursing, Wardra runs toward the iver, holding her gun to use it as a blunt instrument, the way D’mir used his energy weapon against the neskelly.

The iver is much bigger than the neskelly was.

Matt runs at it with his own weapon, firing it directly into the thing’s mouth. “I’m going to try to hit the thing in the head with this!” he yells, brandishing the gun.

“Don’t be dumb, the iver’s much too big! My gun’s heavier!” Wardra reaches the back of the thing and tries to leap up on its back. The iver flicks its tail, smacking into her and throwing her into the wall.

D’mir manages to hit the iver in its eyes with the energy weapon. It blinks and cringes, but doesn’t seem to react beyond what an unpleasantly bright light would do.

Matt grabs one of the thing’s fin-like protrubances and pulls himself up, onto the iver. He bashes the back of its head with his gun, once, twice, three times. Then the iver flips upside down, dumping him on the ground, and then reverts to its previous orientation. Matt’s plainly stunned.

D’mir’s firing into the thing’s eyes over and over, but it doesn’t slow much. In another ten seconds he’ll be dead. Matt is trying to get to his feet but there’s no way he can get to D’mir in time.

Wardra’s had a chance to recover from being hit. She’s running toward D’mir and the iver, with farla speed, long legs covering the distance in moments. “You ne’harfda!” she screams at the iver. “Look at me!”

She flings her gun, and it hits the thing in the head. It turns, its mouth open wide, to face the threat it just detected, and she throws herself at its mouth.

D’mir rolls away. The iver crashes to the ground, its levitation gone, and it begins to convulse. It spits up a green broken thing covered with holes and white farla blood, a thing that used to be their friend. 

It is obvious that nothing can be done to help Wardra. The logical, intelligent thing to do, the draine thing to do, would be to run from the convulsing creature, to ensure that Wardra’s sacrifice wasn’t in vain. Instead, D’mir waits for his moment, when the creature’s violent spasms have turned its head away from Wardra’s body. He charges in, grabs her body and throws it over his shoulder.

Matt reaches him. It’s been seconds. “Can we save her?” he asks.

“If the field goes down right now. If we get back to the ship and get her to the medical ward within ten minutes.”

The field does not go down right now.

The iver finally dies, poisoned by the parts of Wardra’s flesh it managed to tear off and swallow. D’mir and Matt sit with her body. Matt tears off his clothing to bandage her. D’mir does not. He’s already done something supremely stupid by draine standards, out of hope rather than logic. From his perspective, there is no longer any hope.

Eventually the field does go down, and they run. Matt carries Wardra’s body, drawing stares from the passersby at Crystal Station. D’mir’s going to need his hands free.

The robots get loose just as D’mir spoofs the credentials he needs to get into the system. They’re within meters of D’mir and Matt when D’mir manages to shut down the routine that commands them, and they roll back to the alcoves they came from.

The lock on their shuttle is released. Matt and D’mir climb into the shuttle and do not file a flight plan. Wardra’s body is strapped into a chair as if she’s riding with them. Matt pilots, D’mir watching the instruments as a second line of warning if Matt misses anything, because he’s on full automatic with no clearance from the station.

The station actually fires on them. Matt expected that they would when he first got into the shuttle. He releases chaff to draw the fire as D’mir raises shields to maximum. GalConfed ships, and shuttles, are designed for defense in a hostile universe. Crystal Station is unable to stop them as they shoot outward, toward Rhiannon.

***

Rhiannon is where they left it. The crew hadn’t been willing to move on before they’d completed their investigation into the disappearance of their captain and chief technologist.

D’mir asks the doctor if she can keep Wardra’s body preserved and restore it cosmetically – stop the bleeding, seal the wounds. Matt informs the GalConfed about Crystal Station. Rhiannon does not refuel there; they proceed to another station, more expensive.

That night, Matt does not sleep. This morning, he was a prisoner on Crystal Station, desperately looking for a way to escape, and Wardra was alive. Three weeks ago, he didn’t even know Wardra. Amazing how quickly everything can change.

He’s been staring at the walls, the ceiling, the clock slowly changing, for hours. He doesn’t think he’s asleep yet, but Wardra is there, sitting on the edge of his bed. 

“I’m dreaming, aren’t I?” he says, and then is angry with himself, because telling himself he’s dreaming seems likely to wake him up.

“Yes,” Wardra says, “but I’m actually here. You’re not psionic enough to see me as long as your mind is taking in inputs from the real world; I had to wait until you had just fallen asleep to make you see me.”

“How?” Matt asks.

“Farlae can leave our bodies,” she says. “You’re seeing my spirit. I can’t show myself to D’mir; he’s got no psi at all. I need you to talk to him.”

“About what?”

There are tears on her face. “I am a coward. I didn’t want to die. I still don’t want to be dead. But what he’s doing won’t work. He can’t save me.”

Matt sits up, staring at her. “First of all, you just gave your life to save a friend. That, by definition, makes you not a coward.”

“But I was so afraid,” she whispers.

“Of course you were. Who wouldn’t be? Being afraid just proves you had a sense of self-preservation, not cowardice. You let that iver eat you to save D’mir.”

“And he’s consumed with guilt about it.”

Matt shakes his head. “He’s a draine. He knows it’s not reasonable to feel guilt because of the choice you made. He didn’t ask you to do what you did.”

“He’s trying to save me,” Wardra says, “and he can’t. And I don’t want him to try, because I can’t read his mind and he keeps his feelings off his face but I know he’s doing this because he feels guilt. Because it’s burning him up that I died to save him. Tell him it was my choice, tell him he has to let me go.”

“What is he doing?” Matt asks, and then realizes he is awake, the sound of his own voice still ringing in his ears, and Wardra’s not there anymore.

He gets dressed and goes to find D’mir.
***

D’mir is in sickbay. Wardra’s body lies cold on a table, in a sterile field.

“What are you doing?” Matt asks.

D’mir turns. He’s calm, no sign of emotion on his face, but he’s a draine. Matt knows better than to look at his face to see his feelings. His hands on his tools are the stark pale color of tightly clenched muscles cutting the blood circulation to the skin. “I’m trying to repair Wardra’s body.”

“Repair?”

D’mir nods. “I did some research. Farlae can create a psionic construct to house their consciousness and memories – they describe this in somewhat fanciful terms, claiming their spirits can leave their bodies, but it’s a fairly concrete and documented fact.”

“Do you think you can bring her back to life?”

D’mir turns back to his work. “Well, the problem with a psionic construct is that after the brain that created it is destroyed, it has no means of replenishing its energy. It’ll fade. Farlae traditionally cast their ‘spirits’, for lack of a more precise term, out of their bodies at the moment of death if they feel they have something they need to accomplish before that energy runs out – very similar to the human legends of ghosts that continue after death because of unfinished business in life, but I’m not sure any human has sufficient psionic energy to create one of these constructs in the first place.”

“That’s not what I asked, D’mir.”

D’mir does not face him. “Assuming that she created such a construct, and that the construct followed us onto the ship, and that I can successfully get enough of her body repaired with cybernetics that I can restart her heart and lungs, repair any brain damage, and prepare the body for the psionic construct to return to it… yes. Yes, there’s a small but non-zero chance that I can save her life.”

“You can’t save something that’s gone. You’re not talking about saving her life, you’re talking about restoring it.”

“It’s hardly some sort of fictional necromancy,” D’mir says. “If she didn’t, in fact, create a psionic construct before she died, there’ll be nothing I can do.”

Matt takes a deep breath. “She did. She spoke to me, while I was asleep.”

Now D’mir looks at him, startled. “Are you sure it wasn’t a dream?”

“Since she explained to me exactly what you just did… no, it wasn’t a dream. Apparently I’m just psionic enough that she can appear to me while I’m asleep. But she says that you won’t succeed at this, and that trying will just hurt you.”

“I cannot imagine a circumstance in which giving up on a friend causes less pain than trying to save them and failing,” D’mir says. “But if it’s possible, I’d like to know why she doesn’t think it will work.” He turns back to his work. “It’s the brain damage that needs to be repaired, primarily. A great deal of her body was damaged, but most of that can be replaced with cybernetics, and could even be replaced after she’s alive again. I’ve gotten her heart and lungs restarted; Dr. Pryhh can repair her gastrointestinal tract, and we can replace her damaged limbs easily enough. I’m optimistic about the restoration of her physical brain, and if her brain is restored and she still exists as a psionic construct… she should be able to return to her body and live. If she knows something about why that might not work…”

“I don’t know how to ask,” Matt says. “I can’t see her now; I was only able to see her because I was asleep. And while it’s still the middle of the night, I don’t think I’m getting to sleep anytime soon.”

“It’s theoretically possible that a state of meditation will allow Wardra to appear to you. The sensory data you’re getting from the world around you will drown out anything your rudimentary psi can show you, which is why she needed to wait until you were asleep. But if you were enter a state of deep relaxation and quiet your mind, she might be able to manifest to you.”

Matt does not know how to explain to D’mir that the vast majority of humans cannot possibly enter a state of deep relaxation and quiet mind if they’ve just been woken by the ghost of a dead friend, and have found out that their other friend is attempting to resurrect their dead friend as a cyborg. “I’m not sure I can do that right now,” he says diplomatically.

“Perhaps Dr. Pryhh can help.”

“It’s third shift, D’mir. Dr. Pryhh and everyone else on first shift is likely asleep.”

“Hmm. So it is. I hadn’t noticed.”

“D’mir, draines need sleep just like humans do.”

“True, but I can consciously choose to put off the need for another thirty hours if I need to. And what I’m doing is extremely time-sensitive. Even in the cold field, decay and apoptosis are continuing to do damage.”

Matt sighs. “I doubt I can stop you.” He could order D’mir to stop, but he doubts that would have any effect but to drive a wedge between him and his friend. Besides, what if D’mir can succeed?

***

When he sleeps again, Wardra appears.

“Why won’t it work?” he asks her, before she speaks.

“My body is dead,” Wardra says.

“I know, but he thinks he can resuscitate it. You.”

“You don’t understand. A dead body radiates no psionic field. I can’t just force myself into a body willy-nilly. The body has to have a psionic field for me to be able to merge with it.”

“He restarted your heart and lungs; can he restart your psionic field? I assume it doesn’t require that you be conscious and in control of your body, or it would disappear when you sleep, and that doesn’t sound healthy.”

“I don’t think he can.” She looks as if she’s crying, but there are no sounds. She doesn’t breathe, so there are no sobs. All there are, are the tears rolling down her cheeks.

“Can he at least try, Wardra? Or would that cause you suffering?”

She shakes her head. “It doesn’t hurt me, what he does to my body. It hurts to see him hoping, and trying, and I wish his plan would work, but I know it can’t.”

“Let him try, if you can,” Matt says. “He won’t forgive himself if he doesn’t try.”

“It won’t work,” Wardra says. “But he can try.”

***

In the morning D’mir is still working. “I believe I have most of the issues resolved,” he says. “Within the next hour, I’ll try running a low-level current through the brain to see if I can, in effect, restart it.”

“I spoke to Wardra again last night.”

“Did she clarify anything for you?”

Matt nods. “She says this can’t work because she needs the body to have a psionic field. Without starting up the body’s psionic field, she can’t merge herself with it, but she doesn’t think you can make her body produce a psionic field if she’s not in it.”

“That’s a complication,” D’mir says. “Captain. There are psionic enhancers. I don’t have any psi to enhance, but you do. If you were willing, we could set things so that you could speak to her while awake.”

“Do you think that will help?”

“If she can give me advice in real time, it might.”

And so they prevailed on Dr. Pryhh, who was awake now, to give Matt psionic enhancers. He could tell when they had taken effect, because he could see Wardra. 

“I’m glad you can see me,” she says to Matt. “I won’t exist for very much longer. I’m sorry D’mir can’t see me.”

“Why won’t you exist for very much longer?” Matt asks. “Aren’t spirits eternal?”

“In your mythology, but farla spirits are real. We’re limited by thermodynamics just as everything else in this universe. There’s only so much psionic energy in this construct; without a body to anchor myself to, I’ll run out.”

D’mir had said something about that. “How long?”

“No more than a day, I think,” Wardra says. 

He relays the information to D’mir. “I’ll know within a few minutes if this will work or not,” D’mir says.

He runs the current through the body. Nothing happens.

Another time. Nothing happens. 

“It won’t work,” Wardra says. “A brain has to be alive to generate a psionic field.”

“Why do your people do this then?” Matt asks. “What’s the point of leaving your body when your body’s about to die, if there’s no way to return?”

“It’s not for living on after you’ve died; it’s for solving any problems that you were unable to resolve before you died.” She closes her eyes. “I shouldn’t have done it. I won’t exist long enough to see Crystal Station destroyed.”

“That’s what you wanted? To live on for?”

Wardra looks at him. “I’m a coward,” she whispers. “I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to end. I still don’t.”

“That doesn’t make you a coward. That’s normal. No one wants to die.” Matt reaches his hand out toward Wardra. “You don’t sound like someone who’s resigned to nonexistence. Tell me what we need to do to save you.”

“There isn’t—”

“A living mind produces a psionic field, right?”

“Some minds do. Farlae. Some humans. Draines don’t.”

In the real world, D’mir tries activating Wardra’s brain again. It still doesn’t work.

“You said you can’t enter your own body because it’s not generating a psionic field. But my mind is generating a psionic field.”

D’mir can hear Matt’s side of the conversation. He turns. “Captain, no.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” Wardra says. “Your body is yours. Your brain is yours.”

“But you could. If you chose to.”

“I could enter your brain and merge this psionic construct with you, yes. And either I’d overwrite you, or I’d disappear into you, or we’d merge into a new being. There’s no way it could work to leave us both individual and safe.”

Matt shakes his head. “That’s probably true of farlae, but are you familiar with some of the strangeness of human brains? We can support multiple egos in the same brain. With access to different memories, different personalities, different skills. Some of us spontaneously create such egos, and live that way, multiple minds in the same body.”

D’mir says, “Wardra. If you can hear me, the captain is telling the truth, but that doesn’t mean what he’s suggesting will work.”

“D’mir. Stop,” Matt says. “This is my decision, and Wardra’s. Don’t try to talk her out of it.”

“I’m not going to do it!” Wardra cries. “I’m not going to be such a coward as to take your body and your life – even if we both could co-exist in your body, what kind of life would that be for the both of us?”

“Captain, if you sacrifice yourself—”

“D’mir.” Matt puts his hand on D’mir’s shoulder. “I know you want it to be you. I know you want to be the one to save her, because she died to save you. But you’re my friend, and so is she. If I could have sacrificed myself for you, I might have, but human flesh wouldn’t poison an iver.” He shakes his head. “But after everything we’ve all been through together…”

“Tell him I won’t do it. Don’t let him think I want to be this selfish,” Wardra says.

“She doesn’t want to do it because she thinks it’s selfish, and that she’s a coward,” Matt says to D’mir. “But she’s wrong.” He turns back to Wardra. “D’mir’s a draine. He can live with failing to save you, as long as he knows he tried. But humans are more emotional. I’m a starship captain; I should have had a better plan. I should have had some strategy for protecting us while we were waiting for the barrier to fall. I should have saved you.” He reaches toward her again. “If I know that now, I could save you, and I fail, again… how will I live with myself? You were afraid of D’mir destroying himself in trying to save you – but you’ve admitted that this could possibly work. You’re just more afraid of being thought of as selfish and cowardly than you are of dying.”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” she says.

“I don’t think you will.” He comes closer to where her spirit stands.

“Have you thought this through, Captain?” D’mir says, and Matt hears emotion in his voice. Torn between saving the woman who died to save him, and protecting his captain, D’mir is starting to crack. “What if Wardra accepts, and the two of you do merge into one? Or her mind overrides yours? Or yours, hers? We don’t know what happens to a human brain when a farla psionic construct merges with it.”

“No, we don’t,” Matt says. “But I’m willing to take the risk.”

Wardra is crying. “Please stop. Please don’t offer me what I want if it’ll destroy you. I don’t want to be selfish.”

“You’re not,” he says. “You’re the most unselfish person I’ve met. I can only hope to achieve a tiny fraction of what you are.”

D’mir lowers his head. “Wardra, if you can hear me… he is correct. You are not selfish. You are not a coward. And if the captain is this determined to offer his body to you, so that you can live – refuse, if you wish, because you don’t want to live sharing a body with a human, or a man, or another person at all, perhaps. But don’t refuse because you think it would be selfish to accept.”

She squeezes her eyes closed, but it doesn’t stop the manifestation of tears. They aren’t real, after all. Imaginary eyelids cannot hold back imaginary tears.

“Please, Wardra,” Matt says, and she finally takes his hand.

***

Crystal Station still exists, but it’s been annexed into the Web of Eyes. Everyone who was previously employed there is gone, as are the creatures. The people who once ran Crystal Station may be in prison, or dead. Matt and Wardra don’t particularly care which.

They speak in different accents, they have different body language. D’mir has been able to tell the difference since the day Wardra took Matt’s hand. Other crew members found it hard to tell, at first. D’mir expresses amazement; how is it not obvious?

There are issues. Wardra finds it painful to be no longer farla. Having different genitalia and a different build doesn’t disturb her nearly as much as not being a farla. Her psionic senses are mostly gone; the drugs that let Matt be psionic enough to sense her are dangerous to humans if overused, so mostly she is limited to the very, very dull psionic ability of a human. She has never been comfortable around other people, and now her body is a starship captain’s, and she is surrounded by other people all the time, and she occupies a brain alongside another person.

Matt does not regret his decision, because it was the only way Wardra could live. But it bothers him as well, having to let another person who lives inside his head take control of his body sometimes. 

It’s hard to live as one of two minds inside the same body, only able to interact with the world and be heard outside of one’s own head when the other permits. They try to be fair with each other. Wardra recognizes that she is a guest and defers to Matt; Matt doesn’t want to steal Wardra’s life from her after working so hard to give it back. But there is no denying that it is painful for both of them.

Wardra’s body is frozen in cold storage. D’mir hasn’t given up hope of getting the body working and somehow transferring her mind into it, someday. His friends are suffering and he wants to fix it, but there are things beyond the reach of anyone, draine, human or farla. He has brought up the possibility of talking to farlae – not Evstarb farlae, as Wardra would never tolerate asking them for help – but so far, she is uncomfortable with the idea and Matt won’t push her.

But there are those who lost loved ones to Crystal Station, who never knew what had happened, who have closure now. There are those who made the calculated decision to murder innocent people at random for the sake of greater wealth, and they have been brought to justice. And life is hard, but wasn’t it always? It’s harder now, but there are things to see and discover, people to help, acts to accomplish. Friends to talk to. It’s better than death and better than grieving and better than survivor’s guilt.

Space is dangerous and no one expects happy endings. The best anyone expects is the ending that lets you go on, after the story ends.