Sliding Void Read online

  Contents

  Publisher information

  Praise for Stephen Hunt

  Also by the author

  CHAPTER ONE Planet of the Balls

  CHAPTER TWO World of winter, world of war

  CHAPTER THREE Sliding Void

  CHAPTER FOUR The girl from nowhere

  CHAPTER FIVE A gift on leaving

  CHAPTER SIX Continue the adventure

  SLIDING VOID

  Book 1 in the Sliding Void series.

  First published in 2011 by Green Nebula Press

  Copyright © 2011 by Stephen Hunt

  Typeset and designed by Green Nebula Press

  The right of Stephen Hunt to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  This book is sold subject to the conditions that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on a subsequent purchaser.

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  For further information on Stephen Hunt’s novels, see his web site at http://www.StephenHunt.net

  PRAISE FOR STEPHEN HUNT’S FICTION

  ‘Hunt's imagination is probably visible from space. He scatters concepts that other writers would mine for a trilogy like chocolate-bar wrappers.’

  - TOM HOLT

  ‘All manner of bizarre and fantastical extravagance.’

  - DAILY MAIL

  ‘Compulsive reading for all ages.’

  - GUARDIAN

  ‘Studded with invention.’

  -THE INDEPENDENT

  ‘To say this book is action packed is almost an understatement… a wonderful escapist yarn!’

  - INTERZONE

  ‘Hunt has packed the story full of intriguing gimmicks… affecting and original.’

  - PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

  ‘A rip-roaring Indiana Jones-style adventure.’

  —RT BOOK REVIEWS

  ‘A curious part-future blend.’

  - KIRKUS REVIEWS

  ‘An inventive, ambitious work, full of wonders and marvels.’

  - THE TIMES

  ‘Hunt knows what his audience like and gives it to them with a sardonic wit and carefully developed tension.’

  - TIME OUT

  ‘A ripping yarn … the story pounds along… constant inventiveness keeps the reader hooked… the finale is a cracking succession of cliffhangers and surprise comebacks. Great fun.’

  - SFX MAGAZINE

  ‘Put on your seatbelts for a frenetic cat and mouse encounter... an exciting tale.’

  - SF REVU

  Also by Stephen Hunt

  ~ THE FAR-CALLED SERIES ~

  Season 1

  In Dark Service (#1)

  Foul Tide’s Turning (#2)

  The Stealers’ War (#3)

  ~ THE JACKELIAN SERIES ~

  Season 1

  The Court of the Air (#1)

  The Kingdom Beyond the Waves (#2)

  Rise of the Iron Moon (#3)

  Secrets of the Fire Sea (#4)

  Jack Cloudie (#5)

  From the Deep of the Dark (#6)

  Season 2

  Mission to Mightadore (#7)

  ~ THE SLIDING VOID SERIES ~

  Season 1

  Sliding Void (#1)

  Transference Station (#2)

  Red Sun Bleeding (#3)

  Season 1 Omnibus Collection (#1 & #2 & #3)

  Void all the Way Down

  ~ THE AGATHA WITCHLEY MYSTERIES: AS STEPHEN A. HUNT ~

  Season 1

  In the Company of Ghosts (#1)

  The Plato Club (#2)

  The Moon Man’s Tale (#3)

  Season 1 Omnibus Collection (#1 & #2 & #3)

  Secrets of the Moon

  ~ THE TRIPLE REALM SERIES ~

  For the Crown and the Dragon (#1)

  The Fortress in the Frost (#2)

  ~ OTHER WORKS ~

  Six Against the Stars

  The Alien who Ate Christmas (children’s illustrated)

  For links to all these books, visit http://stephenhunt.net/novels/

  CHAPTER ONE

  Planet of the Balls

  That was the problem with aliens, mused Lana. They were so damn alien. Not all of them, of course. The one sitting to her left, Skrat, looked like a man-sized lizard, but he might as well have been human compared to the two things swinging opposite them. The negotiators from the world Lana’s ship was currently orbiting were a series of mushy orange spheres joined together by flesh-coloured webbing. No eyes, no mouth, no ears she could see – just two ape-sized arms they could walk on or use to swing across the chamber from the various cables dangling from the ceiling. She didn’t know where to look, when a back was as good as a front. Their minds were so messed-up and off-the-scale, that Lana’s attempts at trying to win a cargo for the return leg of her journey were being answered by a stream-of-consciousness ramble from the translation stick linked into her ship’s computer. The chatter might as well be dub poetry rather than a serious attempt at negotiation for all that she understood it.

  Lana flicked off the translation stick for a second and leant across to Skrat. ‘I don’t know what they’re saying, I don’t know the name of this world, I don’t know what was inside the sealed containers we’ve offloaded, and I don’t know what the heck we’re still doing docked to their so-called trading station.’

  ‘Patience,’ whispered Skrat. ‘There is a deal to be done here, old girl, I can feel it.’

  Lana sighed. Given how shattered Skrat’s life had been before she had pulled him out of that scummy televised corporate gladiator pit, he sure was an optimist. She gazed across at the two delivery agents, one of them whirling about maniacally on the end of a rope, making dolphin-like clicking noises by pulsing its upper sphere in and out while simultaneously rapping like a drum. The thing’s friend was leaping up and down on one arm/leg (take your pick), and scratching the other’s underside. Is that grooming? Kissing? Indicating their thanks for the ship’s delivery; on time and on schedule?

  Lana flicked the translation stick back on, a couple of seconds for the wireless connection to the linguistic computer on board the Gravity Rose to pick up speed, and then the speaker at the top of her stick started stuttering: ‘Joy comes from chance. Chance is all. Trade is chance. I am horny. I am dying. I am exclusive and taking a minute.’

  ‘To the solar winds with this,’ muttered Lana. She stood up and bowed ironically towards the two swinging collections of balls. ‘And I am so out of here. Take your minute and add a couple of decades before my ship comes within ten parsecs of your world again.’

  The full effect of Lana’s outburst was slightly ruined by the bulky environment suit she wore to protect herself from the green gas that the balls had swirling around the visitor’s chamber as atmosphere. But what the hell, there had t
o be some privileges to being skipper of your own vessel.

  Skrat was fast behind her, swishing his powerful tail in annoyance, the visor of his suit’s helmet misting up as he spat out his words. ‘That went well. Another hour, Lana, and we could have negotiated a really exceptional cargo to ship out-system. I’d guarantee it.’

  Right now Lana was glad the environment suit covered Skrat. Out of the suit-skin he looked like a bipedal dragon – all shining green scales, solid muscles, sharp white teeth, a pair of eyes like burning coals floating on a chlorophyll-choked millpond – and nobody in their right mind wanted a humanoid dragon annoyed with them. In fact, dragon was one of the politer nicknames for Skrat’s race among humanity. Much like dragons, their kind was up for a fight if push came to shove, but they loved trading far more. His species would much rather get one over you in a negotiation than stick a dagger in your back.

  ‘What, with Mister I Am Dying and I Am Horny? Shizzle, Skrat. You were going to end up selling us into their local brothel is what you were going to do.’

  ‘System crash,’ squawked the translation stick, still active in her hand after she’d snatched it off the table. ‘Core rebooting. Fatal agglutinative group error.’

  ‘Ha,’ said Skrat, his magnetised boots cracking down the airlock tunnel linking the orbital station to their ship. The station corridors were low for Lana’s six-foot frame. Skrat was three inches taller and he had to stoop even more than she did as he strolled quickly after her. ‘I knew it. Language errors. We definitely should have given the dashed computer longer to adjust to their dialect.’

  Lana tapped the side of her helmet. ‘It’s not their language, it’s what’s up here that counts. You’re aiming to service a planet’s demand-side needs, you got to understand how the locals think. What they got that anybody wants? Ass-scratching sticks? I told you when we took on the cargo, this would be a one-way job. Sealed containers always are.’

  ‘And to prove you’re right, we’re shipping out of here with an empty hold,’ sighed Skrat.

  ‘Empty hold on my ship,’ Lana reminded him.

  They reached the ship’s airlock, and she leaned forward to let the small camera take her retina print. Scoring a match, the outer door hissed up into the hull. Polter was just visible on the other side of the airlock, eyestalks peering up through the inner door’s armoured glass. Next to their navigator stood Zeno, the ship’s android first mate. Polter’s fussy voice echoed through the little chamber as they stepped inside and closed off the lock. ‘Are we blessed with a return cargo?’

  ‘I believe you will need to address that question to the captain,’ sighed Skrat.

  ‘Sorry to say, but God has taken the day off,’ said Lana. ‘We’ll be running light until we hit the next system.’

  ‘Perhaps not,’ came Polter’s reply. ‘There have been developments, oh yes.’

  Developments? That didn’t sound good to Lana. She was in charge of developments. Anyone else started developing shizzle and you just knew that trouble was going to come bouncing close behind. Lana’s helmet yanked off with a hiss of escaping air under pressure, and she flicked her mane of long blonde hair back as she reached for an Alice band to secure it, pushing her fingers through the curls at the edges. People said the hair made her look cherubic. Unfortunately, the illusion only lasted as long as it took Lana to open her mouth. ‘I didn’t even want to leave the Rose to talk to the locals on the station. You heard me say that. I’m sure you did.’

  ‘You’re far too over-cautious.’ Skrat racked the large pistol that had been strapped to his leg, and Lana followed suit. Her rail pistol had been dialled up to sixteen, maximum power, where one of the ball bearings sitting in its magazine could be accelerated to the kind of air-cracking speeds capable of causing grenade-level explosions. Perhaps that was caution, too. Nothing won a fight like going kinetic on someone’s ass first.

  ‘One of us has got to be thinking about limiting our losses,’ said Lana. Sure as hell ain’t gonna be you, Skrat.

  The glass of the airlock’s inner door automatically mirrored as the lock’s bacterial decontamination routine kicked in. Lana sucked in her cheeks. She hated her own reflection. Had she inherited those classically beautiful Slavic-Nordic look from her parents? Hell if she knew. If I ever get to meet them, I might ask. She looked tired, her green eyes weary. She was only in her late forties, and with anti-ageing treatments she looked more like twenty-five. How could she look so tired? When she smiled, the grin filled her face, one of her few endearing features, but she hadn’t felt like smiling for a while now. The inner lock cycled open and Polter danced excitedly on six legs, the pupils on the crab-like navigator’s eyestalks wide and excited. She glanced towards her android crewmember. Zeno just shrugged. For all his artificial golden skin and wire-headed Afro, he could do innocent just fine. The look was one she recognized. Don’t blame me.

  Lana raised a hand and adjusted her green ship overalls. ‘I only left you two jokers in charge for a few hours. Polter, please tell me you haven’t donated the ship as spare parts to the local orphans’ fund?’

  ‘Sarcasm is not among your better virtues, revered skipper,’ observed Polter.

  ‘What’s going on?’ asked Lana. ‘I can see that you’re busting to tell me how the will of the Lord has landed something shiny-new in our laps.’

  ‘A ship,’ said Polter. ‘Inbound. Oh yes, not local traffic. A courier vessel, I should say.’

  Lana groaned. ‘Looking for us?’

  ‘And asking for permission to dock ship-to-ship. I told them that only the blessed Captain Lana Fiveworlds can give permission for that, and she is presently engaged.’

  Lana weighed the options. It was hideously expensive to send a single ship out with a message for a trader, even when you had a flight plan logged and a fair idea where the recipient might be. Not when the alternative was tossing a free e-mail into the data sphere and waiting for it to propagate into the path of its recipient. The Gravity Rose would dock and sync her computer core next time she hit somewhere civilised. A courier vessel meant the message was important and covert enough that its sender didn’t want to risk the note being hacked rolling about out in the wild. Messages like that, you might be better off ignoring.

  ‘It is a contract offer,’ said Polter. ‘I can feel it in my soul. Our holds are empty and the Holy of Holies wills the space filled.’

  ‘Yeah, and maybe it’s contract law enforcement,’ said Zeno. ‘How many bills did we leave unpaid at the last planet?’

  Lana rubbed her pale freckled nose. ‘If it’s chasing the docking fees we skipped jumping to this hole, I’ll pay that guy sitting out there solely for persistence.’

  The four of them headed for the bridge, taking the ship’s internal Capsule and Transportation System. The CATS capsule jolted and shuddered, sections of Lana’s four thousand foot-long ship squealing in and out of view as they rode a clear bullet down her transparent lateral tube. At times the capsule shot over the ship’s grey dust-pitted hull, before spiralling down, blasting through the vessel’s interior chambers – passing along the jungle of hydroponics vaults that gave the ship her atmosphere and food, furnishing crew and passengers with the space they needed to stop going stir-crazy on extended flights. By law, all starships needed such chambers. If her hyperspace engines ever failed, they would need to slide to the nearest inhabitable world generation-ship style on her anti-matter thrusters. Although, given Lana’s current motley crew, she’d hate to think what her descendants would end up looking like. As pitted as her vessel’s hull was, as worn by all the universe’s dust that had never quite made it into a planet, Lana loved her ship with the ferociousness of a tigress protecting her cubs. Not because the Gravity Rose was beautiful: she could never be accused of that – the profile of an aircraft carrier taken into space. An eclectic collection of cargo units, hyperspace vanes, passenger cabins, life support modules, in-system antimatter drive chambers, solar panels, self-healing armour, artificial gravity systems,
and freight holds from a dozen ship yards and manufacturers welded together with hope, optimism and whatever spare currency Lana and her predecessors had to throw at her. No, not because the Gravity Rose was lovely, but because the ship was Lana’s home. And because what passed for the vessel’s dysfunctional crew also passed for her family. Lana stretched out her legs and pushed long leather boots out towards the opposite wall of the capsule, hearing the bone-crack of every one of her years. It’s not age, honey; it’s the intermittent low gravity. Yeah, you keep on telling yourself that. The ship looked her age, too. The Gravity Rose needed an overhaul soon to pass authority checks and retain her flightworthy status. Without that, no planet worth a damn was going to allow Fiveworlds Shipping in to trade. Lana could hear the dead voice of bureaucracy whining inside her skull. ‘What if your jump engines lock and you collide with our world? You want us to shoot you down, you want that?’

  After Lana got to the bridge she punched up comms and made an offer to take the message point-to-point on a tight laser line, but the courier refused, which kind of made sense. If you were paranoid enough not to risk your precious message getting hacked in the wild, you weren’t going to chance someone having a pebble-sized probe hanging tight off a hull and trying to intercept your laser communications.

  The courier ship was a pert matt-black needle floating void, not much more than a pilot cabin and life support system forward of her jump drive and the pion reaction thrusters she used to kick some tidy little propulsion out. With a hull-to-engine ratio tricked out like that she could tear a strip through this lonely corner of space. Faster than the Gravity Rose, that was for sure, even with the Rose running empty. Speed being of the essence, and all, Lana opened the doors to the Gravity Rose’s starboard-side hold and the courier couldn’t have set her down more sweetly if Lana’s vessel had been a navy carrier, three little landing skids folding out of the dart. She noted from the hold’s cameras that the pilot was another kaggen, like Polter. A five foot-high sentient crab-shaped mass of religious worry. Female kaggens were twice the size of the race’s males, so this one was a lad, just like their navigator.