A male voice that Kira didn’t recognize emanated from above. “Warning: prepare for free fall in T-minus thirty-four seconds.” A wild quaver laced his words, a theremin-like shimmy that made it seem as if the speaker might at any moment break into tears or laughter or uncontrollable rage. The sound of it caused Kira to tense and the surface of the Soft Blade to become pebble-like.
“Here,” said Trig as he grabbed a convenient handhold on the wall. Kira did the same.
“That your pseudo-intelligence?” she asked, motioning toward the ceiling.
“Nope, our ship mind, Gregorovich,” the kid said proudly.
Kira raised her eyebrows. “You have a ship mind!” The Wallfish didn’t seem large or well-off enough to warrant one. How had Falconi ever managed to talk a mind into joining the crew? Only half-seriously, she wondered if blackmail had been involved.
“Yup.”
“He seems a little … different from the other ship minds I’ve met.”
“Nothing wrong with him. He’s a good ship mind.”
“I’m sure he is.”
“He is!” the kid insisted. “Best one out there. Smarter than any minds but the oldest.” He grinned, baring a set of crooked front teeth. “He’s our secret weapon.”
“Smar—”
An alert sounded—a short beep in a minor tone—and then the floor seemed to drop away, and Kira clutched the handhold tighter as vertigo made the walls and floor swirl about her. Her dizziness passed as she reset her perspective from an up-down view to a forward-backward one where she was floating in a long, horizontal tube.
She’d really had enough of free fall.
Behind her, at the back of the tube, she heard a scrabbling noise. She turned to see a whitish-grey Siamese cat hurtle out of an open doorway and collide with the ladder. The cat caught the ladder with its claws and then, with practiced ease, sprang off the rungs and launched itself toward the other end of the shaft.
Kira watched, impressed, as the cat soared along the ladder, turning slightly as it flew, a long furry missile armed with teeth and claws. The cat glared at her as it passed by, venomous hatred flashing from its emerald eyes.
“That’s our ship cat, Mr. Fuzzypants,” said Trig.
The cat looked more like a murderous little demon than a Mr. Fuzzypants, but Kira took him at his word.
A second later, she heard another noise at the back of the room: this one a metallic-like clatter that reminded her of … hooves?
Then a brown and pink mass rushed through the doorway and bounced off the ladder. It squealed and kicked its stubby legs until it caught one hoof on the ladder. The hoof stuck, and the creature—the pig—jumped after the cat.
The sight of the pig was so surreal, it left Kira flabbergasted. As always, life continued to surprise her with the depths of its weirdness.
The cat landed at the other end of the room and promptly sprang away through another open doorway. A moment later, the pig followed suit.
“What was that?” Kira said, finding her voice.
“That’s our ship pig, Runcible.”
“Your ship pig.”
“Yup. We put some gecko pads on his hooves so he can move around in free fall.”
“But why a ship pig?!”
“’Cause that way we can always bring home the bacon.” Trig cackled, and Kira winced. Eighty-eight days in FTL just to be subjected to bad puns? Where was the justice in that?
Gregorovich’s watery voice sounded above them, again the voice of an uncertain god: “Prepare for resumption of thrust in one minute and twenty-four seconds.”
“So what makes your ship mind so special?” Kira asked.
Trig shrugged. It was an odd motion in free fall. “He’s really, really big.” He eyed her. “Big enough for a capital ship.”
“How’d you manage that?” she said. From what she’d seen of the Wallfish, no mind with more than two or three years of growth should have wanted to serve on board.
“We rescued him.”
“You rescued—”
“He was installed on an ore freighter. The company was mining iridium out around Cygni B, then hauling it back here. A meteoroid hit the freighter, and it crashed on one of the moons.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah. And the crash knocked out the comms, so there was no way to signal for help.”
The alert sounded again, and Kira’s feet settled back on the metal decking as her weight returned. Once more she marveled at how well her muscles worked after so long in zero-g.
“So?” she said, frowning. “The freighter’s thermal signature should have been easy enough to spot.”
“Should have,” said Trig, and started to climb down the ladder. “Problem was, the moon is volcanic. All the background heat hid the ship. The company thought it was destroyed.”
“Shit,” said Kira, following him.
“Yeah.”
“How long were they stranded there?” she asked, as they arrived at the bottom of the shaft.
“Over five years.”
“Wow. That’s a long time to be stuck in cryo.”
Trig halted and stared at her with a serious expression. “They weren’t. The ship was too damaged. All the cryo tubes were broken.”
“Thule.” Her own trip had been brutally long. Kira couldn’t even imagine five years of it. “What happened to the crew?”
“Died in the crash or starved to death.”
“And Gregorovich couldn’t go into cryo either?”
“Nope.”
“So he was alone for most of that time?”
Trig nodded. “He might have been there for decades if we hadn’t spotted the crash. It was pure chance; we just happened to look at the screens at the right moment. Up until then, we didn’t even have a ship mind. Just a pseudo-intelligence. Wasn’t that good, either. The captain had Gregorovich transferred over and that was that.”
“You just kept him? What did he have to say about it?”
“Not much.” Trig stopped her with a look before she could object further. “I just mean he wasn’t very conversational-like, you know? Sheesh. We’re not stupid enough to fly with a mind that doesn’t want to be with us. What do you think, we have a death wish?”
“The mining company didn’t have a problem with that?”
They filed out of the central shaft and down another anonymous corridor.
“Wasn’t up to ’em,” said Trig. “They’d already terminated Gregorovich’s contract, listed him as dead, so he was free to sign onto any ship he wanted. ’Sides, even if they tried to get him back, Gregorovich didn’t want to leave the Wallfish. He wouldn’t even let the techs pull him for a proper medscan back at Stewart’s World. I think he didn’t want to be alone again.”
That Kira understood. Minds were human (barely), but they were so much bigger than ordinary brains, they needed stimulation in order to keep from going completely insane. For a mind to be trapped by itself for five years … She wondered how safe she really was on the Wallfish.
Trig stopped by a set of large pressure doors, one on each side of the corridor. “Wait here.” He opened the leftmost door and slipped inside. Kira briefly saw a large cargo hold with racks of equipment and a short, blond-haired woman wrapping padding around large sections of consoles that looked suspiciously like the ones from the Valkyrie. Next to her, on the deck, was a pile of UMC blasters.…
Kira frowned. Had the crew of the Wallfish stripped the shuttle? Somehow she doubted that was entirely legal.
“None of my business,” she murmured.
Trig returned carrying a blanket, a set of gecko pads, and a shrink-wrapped ration pack. “Here,” he said, handing them over. “Control and engineering are off-limits ’less one of us is with you or the captain gives you permission.” He jerked his thumb toward the room he’d just exited. “Same for the port hold. You’re in the starboard. Chemical toilets are at the back. Find a spot wherever you can. Think you can handle yourself from here?”