Jim Baen's Universe

Science Fiction Stories

Waking Ophelia

Written by E. Catherine Tobler

Illustrated by Jonathan Rollins

I came out of stasis-sleep to the tap-tap-tap of Bel's thin, metallic fingers on my cheek. I squeezed my eyes shut—why so insistent, couldn't a girl get a few more minutes?—but the sharp tang of smoke in the air made me jerk upright. Frying circuitry is a smell you never forget, but I'd never smelled it on my ship. Never on Luna.

Bel held my shoulders to steady me, hands taking countless readings as I broke through the surface of stasis and entered consciousness. It wasn't the way a person was supposed to come up. There were supposed to be layers, gentle layers while the body reacquainted itself with normal breathing, with sight, with sounds. Insulated from all that for—

"How long?" I croaked the words, so it had been a while. How long had I been down? How far into the cargo run were we? The lights around me were turned low, thank you Bel, but they still seemed sun-bright to my tender eyes. I pressed a hand over my closed lids, the engine thrum like a growing storm. I welcomed that sound.

"Sixteen years, eleven months," Bel said, the coolly modulated voice instantly calming me. Best AI in the twelve systems, worth every credit.

A straw angled itself between my lips. I took hold of the water canister Bel offered and squeezed, drinking as much as Bel allowed me. The weight of the water in my stomach was a jolt and I didn't object when Bel removed the canister.

The run was supposed to take twenty-two years. "Why so early?" I asked. We were still about five light years from our destination. I squinted at Bel and that smooth voice ordered the lights a step higher. I wanted to smack the AI, but was too weak.

When the ship jolted, I tensed and smelled the frying circuitry anew. What the hell was hitting Luna? Bel moved from my side and I staggered out of the stasis bed, crumpling to hands and knees on the cool floor. I watched Bel's silver-bright feet move out of the chamber and round the corner to the right.

Cockpit. "Come on, body—cockpit." I hauled myself to my feet and the room tilted. I took several deep breaths, felt the steady beat of my heart, and knew that if the room would steady, I'd be fine. I'd be just—

Luna rocked under another assault.

"Blast and damn!"

Doing my best to ignore the tipping room, I headed after Bel, and as I rounded the corner, ran smack into a body that should not have been on my ship. There were only ever two bodies on this ship—mine and Bel's, and this body, this male body, didn't belong.

Strong hands enclosed my wrists and propelled me forward, toward the cockpit. There were other people there—other people! On my ship! Four? Maybe five.

My captor released me abruptly outside the cockpit hatch and directed a look of pure venom toward Bel, who was unmoved by the emotion. "I told you to leave her be," he said, then shouldered his way into the cockpit.

"We've been boarded." I whispered this in wonder as I stood there with Bel, the metal flooring cold beneath my bare feet. In more than a hundred and seventy-five years, Luna had never been boarded. Every mission had gone smoothly, completed on time. I doubted it was some kind of record—stasis-sleep pilots were known for their missions and people respected them. People who clearly weren't among those now swarming my cockpit. My cockpit.

I pushed off the wall, trying to convince myself I felt stronger than I did. The lights and sounds were almost overwhelming as I stepped into the pit, and counted five people touching controls that they had no right to touch.

"What the hell is this?" I asked. I pictured my voice coming out strong and demanding, when in reality, it was still a croak. Blast and damn. I hadn't spoken in almost seventeen years. I tried again. "What the hell—"

"Sit. You're about to fall over."

It wasn't Bel who saw to my welfare and settled me into the buttery leather chair at the ops station. It was a tall man, with warm hands and a dusting of silver whiskers on his cheeks. I looked into his eyes, a shade of gray-blue I hadn't seen since I last passed along the Light Year Nebula, and felt the room tip out from under me again. I closed my eyes and swallowed the nausea.

"I'm sorry about this," he said as the blackness swam inside my eyelids. "We needed your ship."

"My ship," I said. I opened my eyes and his face morphed from blurry to crystal clear. He was scarred close to his right eye, and freshly cut along his chin. Bel could fix that right up, I thought but didn't say. This saphead had boarded my ship.

"Two more out there."

"Not for long."

This dialogue came from somewhere over Silver Whiskers' shoulder. I tried to look, but the room pitched. I thought the nausea was worsening, but no, the pilot just sucked heartily.

"You don't fly Luna like that, milksop," I muttered. Silver Whiskers smiled, a lovely, crooked smile in that somewhat-worn face.

"You aren't in any shape to fly her yourself," he said.

"A hundred credits says otherwise." As the milksop at the controls worked his magic, the ship lurched again and propelled me out of the chair, straight into Silver Whiskers' arms. But the thrust carried him backward too and we ended up in a pile between the pilot's chair (my chair) and the nav controls. "Out!" I stepped on Silver Whiskers as I climbed to my chair and grabbed the milksop's arm. He was small, young, and clattered back to the decking.

My chair was warm from milksop's backside. I'd never known that sensation before. This leather was always cold until I warmed it. Always.

"Bel!"

Bel slipped into the nav station and we worked in concert. Two ships remained in the starry sky before me, unfamiliar to me in both marking and design. They were small, sleek, almost the color of the heavens and easily lost as we crisscrossed back and forth. They were armed with cannons which shook the hull when they fired and I dodged. Luna had fairly primitive weapons—I'd been meaning to upgrade but hell's bells, no one bothered stasis-sleep cargo ships. No one. There was a respect, damn it. Granted, there were pirates—hell, was that what Silver Whiskers was?

I skirted a debris field and rounded back toward the unfamiliar ships. I drew in tighter and tighter circles, Luna like a long-time lover under my hands. Someone behind me whispered "Jesus" as we circled closer to the near-black ships. If that old deity could help us, by all means pray, but it was Luna who would save our asses. She always did.

The ships crisscrossed and misjudged Luna's turning radius; their wings caught and broke, and the ships collided in a fireball. I bisected the flames with Luna, debris pattering on the hull as we cleared it. I looked over my shoulder at Silver Whiskers.

He scrubbed a hand over his face. "Were those Terran credits or Vegan?"

****

I tucked Luna into orbit around an uninhabited planet and retreated back to the infirmary, where Bel scanned me, gave me more fluids, and eventually pronounced me fit. As fit as a girl could be who'd come out of stasis the way I had. I settled into a broad chair that didn't threaten to dump my still-adjusting body to the floor and was brushing my hair when Silver Whiskers peered into the room.

He was good looking, broad in the shoulder and narrow in the hip, and exactly the kind of thing I didn't need to get involved with. Not now, not when I had another five light years of travel. But those hands and those lips, they beckoned like water and the memory of fresh roasted meat. I was hungry, for more than just food.

"Bel tells me you're Ophelia Solomon."

"Bel should be melted and sold for scrap," I said without meaning it, and looked at the AI, quietly organizing the equipment used in my post-stasis scans. I tossed my hairbrush aside for all the good it was doing and Bel tucked it into its proper place.

Every time I came out of stasis, I expected my chin-length hair to be down to my waist, but it was never so. I looked as I looked the day I went in, no older. No matter how many times I expected to see lines around my eyes and silver in my blonde hair, it was never so. I pulled my hair up and clipped it to keep it out of my eyes, and looked at Silver Whiskers, waiting for him to say something more. Anything, so that I could stop noticing the way his belt rode low on his hips, and the easy way his black tee fit him. He had discarded his jacket—relaxing on my ship? My time? Was this what a pirate did?

"Why'd you jack my ship?" I asked when he didn't say anything.

"Name's Larkin," he said, which did nothing to answer my question. The way he said it, the name had a reputation attached, and when I didn't react, he chuckled. It was a pleasant sound, but alien on this ship. Bel didn't chuckle and rarely did I.

I shrugged a shoulder. "I spend more time asleep than I do awake," I said. "I'm not familiar."

"Daniel Larkin."

As if adding a first name was going to somehow cause bells to ring inside my head and light to flood over him. Illumination did not arrive in any form.

He leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed over his chest. I caught sight of a chain around his neck, and a tattoo along his left biceps. A merchant tattoo, three diagonal lines crossed by one diagonal in the opposite direction. His chain would hold his tags then, ID and perhaps letters of permission that allowed him to work a certain territory.

"You're marked a merchant," I said and slowly stood from the chair. I nearly cheered out loud when the room didn't tilt sideways. "Merchants aren't known for jacking." So why the hell was he on my ship?

"When Luna set out, I bet these trade lanes weren't here," he said.

I scowled at Larkin's cocky tone; had he made the lanes himself? Stasis-sleep cargo ships avoided known trade lanes, ferrying goods from one star system to another because merchants like Larkin couldn't get into deep-space with their ships. Bel didn't require stasis-sleep, so if a course change had to be made once the primary pilot went into stasis, Bel was fully capable. So why hadn't we made a course change to avoid this new trade lane?

"Didn't have a choice but to jack you," Larkin said, "not when those raiders set on us. Luna's bigger than anything we run—hell, Killian is sitting in your docking bay right now."

How had he docked, I wondered. Had he blown out the doors? Overridden the controls? For the safety of Luna, I rather hoped Bel had allowed him to dock.

"Did you jack the FTL drive?" I asked. "You— You pulled us out—you saphead!" I wanted to throw something at him, but there was nothing within reach. He could have killed me and destroyed the ship in one easy move. I wasn't sure which upset me more. Larkin nodded and had the decency not to look pleased with himself.

"And why would raiders be chasing you?" In my experience, merchants kept it simple. They ferried whatever the FTL sleeper-ships didn't, mostly fresh goods between planets in the system. Animals, produce, and combustibles. Pirates? Now they carried anything and everything, including contraband.

"A system merchant who hauls—what? Surely nothing more exciting than trade goods. Tomatoes, sheep, fuel?"

Larkin smiled in a way that made my stomach flip-flop. I told myself I was still coming out of stasis. My system was subject to all manner of quirks.

"I need your ship, 'Phelia," he said and the shortening of my name didn't thrill me. Like we were intimates.

"No, no way in all the heavens am I letting pirates take this ship." His eyes narrowed a bit at the word "pirates," but I didn't care. "I don't care what your tattoo says you are. You jacked this ship off its course and have delayed the goods for Sedgwick. You're lucky you didn't jack the colonist ship—"

"Lucky!" Larkin had the nerve to laugh, a sound that scared and delighted me all in the same instant. How long since I'd heard a man laugh like that? Sixteen years, eleven months . . . give or take. "Lady, it'll be luck if we get my cargo where it needs to go."

Cargo. Hell's bells. I didn't want to know what he was carrying, I really didn't. I shouldered past him, but he caught my arm before I could stalk down the corridor. I looked into his gray eyes and waited.

"How old are you?" he asked.

The question didn't surprise me. People always wondered about stasis pilots. I wrenched my arm out of Larkin's hold, but rather thought he let me go. If he wanted to hold me, he would.

"Twenty-eight," I said.

Larkin's mouth curved in a smile. We both knew that was bullshit, but he didn't argue and let me stalk down the corridor, all two hundred and twenty-eight years of me.

****

Twenty-two lights years out, twenty-two back. A girl should age forty-four years in between all those stars, but in stasis, time stops. Everywhere else, time keeps moving. Everyone I'd known—everyone I'd grown up with—was long gone.

I joined the military straight out of school to become a pilot. There was nothing better than flying across a bright sky, and then later into the stars. I worked the Sol system for a good five years before I stasis-slept my way to Alpha Centauri. I worked that system for another five. They offered me Luna and her stasis runs and I couldn't say no. There were five other settled systems to see. And now, we've got a total of twelve. Humanity keeps pushing, out into stars never before seen. Sedgwick colony comes next, and Luna carries supplies for the colonists.

All I want is to get there on time. Get there and get back into stasis where the living is quiet and dark. This world is too bright, too loud; I want only to sleep.

Plan was, I'd hit the system alongside a ship of transport workers—cargo is quiet, and there's that respect for the work we do, so it's just me and Bel on these runs, in the empty spaces between stars. A secondary AI remained on board but deactivated; we'd never needed it.

Plan was, we'd get the supplies down before the colonists arrived. "Wish them well and jet to hell"—that's the old saying. Some people are made for solid ground, and others for stars.

I couldn't figure which Larkin was. I'd say stars, but then I'd hear him talking to his mates about forests and rivers and how he missed them.

Daniel Larkin was the son of a printer, or so Bel told me after accessing records on him. The Larkins lived on Copper IV, and printing was in their blood. Bel traced them all the way back to the Sol system, seventeen-hundred-something. Older than me. It made me smile a little.

Learning they were printers, it wasn't hard to guess what he was hauling and why raiders wanted it. I watched Larkin and his mates in the galley, eating like they hadn't eaten in a dozen years. I'd had nothing but liquid from a tube for more than that, yet found it hard to consider joining them for their meal. At least Bel was there to serve and see that they didn't eat more than they should. I had five more years ahead of me once they let me go.

It galled me, the idea that I couldn't escape them. I couldn't abandon the cargo or Luna—while my pay is generous, it would never cover the replacement costs. Neither could I overpower them. Milksop would be the easiest, but the others were grown men. Fully armed grown men.

I didn't join them. I left them to their meal and headed for the docking bay. Larkin had jacked my ship, so I saw no reason why I shouldn't jack his—at least as much as I could under current conditions.

Killian was neatly docked alongside two shuttles. Larkin's ship was twice the size of the shuttles, sleek with a warm green cast to the hull. Someone had left the hatch open, the stairs down, so I welcomed myself onboard.

The ship had a closer feel than Luna does; more personal. It smelled, too, like men and fermented beverages. I found the cargo hold in the rear of the ship, packed with dozens upon dozens of crates and containers. I touched the first wood crate I saw; the rough wood under my fingers was alien. Couldn't remember the last time I touched wood.

When Larkin's hand caught mine, splinters bit into my fingers. I gasped in surprise and pain both.

"Hell's—"

"What do you think you're doing?"

I looked up at Larkin and laughed. "You jacked me out of FTL. I thought I'd see why. Where are the books?"

Larkin didn't release my hand; if anything, his grip tightened. He stared at me and I stared back, damned if I'd be cowed.

"Daddy Larkin is a printer," I said. "Makes quite a fine living at it on Copper Four, too fine a living." I tried to twist my arm free, but Larkin was having none of it. My fingers ached. "If you expect me to cooperate and not contact the Federals, you're raving. You can't pilot Luna without me."

"That's why we didn't let the milksop kill you when we boarded."

I went still, somehow never realizing the kind of danger I was in until that moment. Not the danger of Larkin's hand around my wrist, but the danger of them jacking the ship while I slept.

It was fine to say that people respected the work of stasis-pilots, but there were always stories about those who didn't. About pirates who jacked FTL ships and murdered the crew in stasis. I had always laughed it off, because pirates wouldn't know how to pilot such a large vessel; it wasn't like piloting a shuttle or even Killian. But sometimes, people did things just to say they'd done it.

"Found you, sleeping like some storybook princess," Larkin said softly, easing his grip on my wrist.

He looked at my fingers then drew one into his mouth. I jerked at the contact—his mouth so hot and wet—but couldn't pull free. His teeth abraded my finger, his tongue licked and warmed, and when he withdrew my finger, the splinters were loosening.

"Milksop—Rand wanted to poison your nutrient line. But your AI was already up—security I guess?"

I said nothing but thanked my lucky stars for Bel. The second Luna had come out of FTL, Bel would have been activated. Bel came for me. Saved me.

"We found your AI with you." Larkin chuckled. "Rand nearly pissed himself." Larkin put my finger back in his mouth and sucked. He pulled the finger free with a soft pop. "I needed you. It's Rand's first outing."

As if that excused contemplating murder.

"Where are the books?" I repeated my question, fearing that anything else I might say would involve "bed" and "now."

Larkin dropped my hand and turned away. I followed him deeper into the cargo hold, my finger throbbing. >From the splinters or the remedy, I didn't know. This is why stasis was easier; there were no questions, just blissful solitude.

He lead me to a plas-container, nothing that would stand out from anything else in the stacks. Unlocking a complex combination revealed a smaller box inside, and inside that were five books. From the twentieth, it looked like. Older than me—and it made me smile a little.

Five books, when a man could live on the income from a fraction of one. I started to touch them, but Larkin caught my wrist again, gentler this time.

"It's not about the money," Larkin said, but I was doubtful. How could it not be about the money? I looked at those five books and boggled at the amount they would bring.

"Then what?" My voice sounded hoarse again, as though I'd been silent for years.

"I'm doing this for my father."

Still it was about money. "It would explain the easy life your family has lead," I said and Larkin dropped my hand. "What, did you inherit a stash of books somewhere along the way, and sell a few every now and then? How much money does one person need?" Myself, I didn't need much.

"My father is dead, did your AI tell you that? He's dead, and this was his last wish."

Larkin said the words softly, softer than I would have imagined him capable of. I bit the inside of my cheek. My parents were long-dead, of course; everyone I'd grown up with was dead. Death didn't bother me, but then I didn't have much experience with it.

"I'm not selling the books," Larkin said. He leaned against a stack of crates, lacing his