Chaos Space - Marianne de Pierres [34]
‘From your cabin,’ said Mira.
Rast shook her head. ‘Never can tell with you. Now get movin’.’
Mira ran through the strata to her cabin and removed the royal lozenge from where she had hidden it. Grasping it tightly, she hurried back to the buccal and sank into the Primo vein. As the receptors settled into her skin, a searing pain cramped her abdomen and she was dimly of her knees pulling tight into her chest.
Dizzying perception took command of her mind. From somewhere inside the chaos, Insignia sensed her.
You must not…immerse with me now. Cannot. . . separate . . . pain . . .
Rast is coming to stop them. But we must leave here. Transfer to me.
You have. . . no experience to take us . . . to shift. . . Insignia’s mind-voice dwindled to a faint whisper.
Mira could barely hear the words but she could see/sense Rast, Latourn and Catchut. Feel Insignia’s pain. Weapon fire grazed her inner skin. Stinging. Burning. Yet insignificant compared to the excruciating, burning throb of the rip.
Rast fell upon a man, her hands at his throat. Determination. Sweat. Fingers taut and strained with the choking of him.
Mira forced her sight/sense away from the intimacy of murder to her outer skin. She saw/sensed the station umbilical reinflate and crowd with bodies and weapons. Shift-queue instructions streamed though her mind/view. Their shift-place hold had been deleted.
Insignia, I must. I’m sorry . . .
She struggled to free her arm from Primo’s embrace position and flung herself across to the Autonomy sink. She pressed the lozenge into the interface dimple along the ridge of the artificial adjunct, holding it down hard, worried that Insignia might find a way to reject it. When the sink subsumed it, she allowed herself to fall back into the chair and wait. Her immersion in Insignia’s pain and mayhem subsided, leaving her head pounding and her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth.
The flight manual’s warning floated to the top of her thoughts. Never exchange full immersion for Autonomy without an adequate adjustment period.. .failure to observe this caution will result in prolonged side effects. List of known side effects and treatments can be accessed in . . . Mira thrust the memory away and concentrated on thinking past the headache.
Virtual add-ons unfolded around her. Her intuitive comprehension of the biozoon’s functions had vanished and was replaced with a flood of schematics and a cue of pending decisions. She worked her way methodically through them, reviewing her procedure: uncouple from their berth, execute virtual-manual (V-M) prime for oscillation, measure for complex excitation.
‘Fedor?’ Rast was on the intercom in the payload cavity.
‘Si?’ Mira croaked.
‘How’s the ‘zoon?’
‘I don’t know. I’m in Autonomy.’
‘Well, get us the heck out of here before we have to spend the rest of our lives in confinement for nailing these guards.’
‘There are shift tubercles in the cavity.’
‘Right. Give us five. And Fedor. . .’
‘Si?’
‘You haven’t freaked out on me yet. Now’s not the time.’
No. Not the time. Mira’s fingers spasmed uncontrollably and she gave authentication to the wrong movement sequence.
The biozoon convulsed and the mercenaries were thrown across the bay. Mira could see them on interface; could hear Rast swearing and Latourn moaning.
She forced herself to concentrate on shift preparation. When her trembling had abated, she began the tiny finger movements that would execute individual tasks.
She took Insignia out of her berth with minimum damage. The umbilical tore free and sealed automatically, wrapping up the guards inside.
Insignia drifted out into shiftspace and immediately incurred the wrath of the queuing ships. The shortcast hammered their complaints across, including those of Station Control who directed Insignia to return to her berth.
Mira’s virtual sight showed six ships between her and shiftpoint: a couple of private cruisers, an OLOSS freighter, a Lostolian surveyor and two decommissioned Assailants. She triggered her emergency pulse but none of them were buying it. From