Local Star by Aimee Ogden (ebook reader online free txt) 📕

the air pumps kicking in, but the sound slowly faded as the pumps did their job.

Triz couldn’t see the outer lock open, but when the ship maneuvered away from the Hab, the lip of the opening couldn’t have been more than inches away from the plastiglass shell over her head. “Shitting stars!” she yelped, but the deepening hum of the engine covered her voice. She cursed and fumbled with her gloves to direct the cannula for manual injection. As she watched, the fat, fluted cylinder of Vivik Hab shrank away. Just behind the Hab, the local star flared like a jewel, eclipsed by the crown of the Arcade. At the Hab’s midsection, the pair of whaleships on their umbilici dwindled to marbles, then to nothing at all. Triz swallowed. The Hab was still there, she made herself remember, and it still would be when the Tiresh turned homeward.

“Keep us together back there,” Kalo said. She could barely hear him over the engines; had he said us or it? “I’ve got visual on that Skimmer. No sign of other ships yet, but we’ll see what turns up.”

Triz’s eyes flicked upward. Or what she thought of as upward, at least, not that such a thing mattered out here. That thought made the stars spin sickeningly. She stuck her sore tongue between her teeth and bit gently to distract herself as she hand-pumped the siphon. The engine’s noise receded to a dull groaning.

“That’s doing it,” Casne called out. “That’s great, Triz.”

Triz’s brain couldn’t process a response, so she just nodded, unseen, in the rear couch. Too much work to keep an eye on her jury-rigged bypass—and to remember to breathe with that bottomless black painting the paper-thin plastiglass. She inhaled deeply through her nose until heated air scorched her nostrils. She opened the shunt for another injection just as Kalo shouted, “Coming up on him fast!”

Triz risked a peek over her shoulder and his at the view out in front of the Tiresh. She could see the Scooper now too, dull-battered steel light against the dark background. Even as she watched, it grew in size; the Tiresh was gulping down the space between them. The Scooper’s engines barely glowed. Of course, Triz hadn’t refueled it yet. No acceleration for Rocan.

But as she stared, a glimmer sparked at the front of the Skimmer, near the cockpit. Something bigger than the far-off stars just beyond, though she couldn’t have said what exactly. “What was that?” she said.

Kalo didn’t jump at her voice in his ear. “That light? Don’t know. Looked almost like he was firing something, but Scoopers aren’t equipped with—what is that?”

All three of them leaned toward the front plastiglass. Far in front of the Skimmer, no bigger than Triz’s thumbnail, a patch of space suddenly shone golden-white. “Son of a Golrosk,” said Casne softly. “He’s got a tunneler.”

Triz frowned. “A tunnelgun?”

“No,” said Kalo, just as Casne said, “Sort of.” Casne went on: “The tech is related, but the tunneler is more complicated. It’s a big, temporary stable tunnel to somewhere else. A more predictable somewhere-else than what comes out of a tunnelgun.” She cursed. “He was blind in his left eye during that fight. I thought his tech was just on the fritz. If the Ceebees have miniaturized tunneltech that small . . .”

“So he’s going to get away?” The Tiresh couldn’t intercept in time, even with the Scooper’s lazy drift. Triz let herself fall back against her seat. Through the dorsal plastiglass, Vivik hung, familiar but far. Still in sight. At least they could still go back safely . . .

“Not a chance.” Kalo reached across his body for a set of controls down on his left side. “Triz, back in position. I’m going to need you to time a double injection. And for all gods’ sake, make sure your harness is tight.”

She gave the restraints a testing tug even as a scowl crimped her face. “A double shot will just slow us down. I don’t see how that’s going to help.”

“Just buckle up, Triz, before I turn you into a smear on the rear ‘glass.”

Triz buckled. She also opened her mouth to tell him where to shoot his attitude, just as the Tiresh shuddered hard. Her teeth clacked together, and the shunt jumped out of her hand. She snatched it out of its dead float just before the Tiresh coughed angrily and screamed forward into space. Triz opened the shunt just in time and let the engines guzzle deeply. “You shorted the butterfly valve,” she shouted. “Are you crazy? They aren’t built for that!”

“Don’t. Tell me. How to do. My job.”

Triz craned her neck. The Tiresh was closing the distance to the Scooper at an alarming rate now. Kalo was angling to put the gunship between the tunnel and Rocan. Triz hissed and clutched at her restraints as if they would protect her from a mid-space collision.

“Prepare to fire,” said Kalo.

“No, Lieutenant.” Casne’s voice was steel-hard. Strange to hear her sound like a Fleet captain and not an old friend. “Rocan’s getting a trial so he can testify in front of all of the Confederated Worlds what he did. To Hedgehome, to the Golrosk. To me.”

Silence from Kalo. They were almost to the Scooper now. Triz wanted to say something and didn’t dare interrupt now. “Okay,” Kalo said finally. “Proposals?”

“There’s a hole in his plastiglass where the tunneler went through.” Grim satisfaction from Casne. “The Tiresh has a boarding hook. Vent the cockpit.”

Triz squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for Kalo to countermand that insane idea. No pilot alive could hit an angle that precisely, and no one at all could aim their own body at a flying starship at eight hundred klicks an hour. But instead, Kalo said, “Triz, when I tell you, I want you to exhale as hard as you can. Do you understand?”

Her own voice sounded very far away when she heard herself say, “Yes.” Casne reached over the couch in front to squeeze her shoulder. Triz clenched