Dark Space - Marianne de Pierres [132]
Insignia replied. There is a humanesque in Secondo vein. I am obliged to listen.
Mira started towards the loading door in a panic as Insignia’s elevons began to flex. ‘Rast.’
An AiV buzzed in low over the hangar and past the chalet, coming from the north. The wind from its rotors stirred a dust whirl. It arced out over the water and circled back towards her. When it reached the point of descent it come down like a flake of meteorite in the atmosphere.
Mira scrambled onto the platform-lift. Insignia. I am coming.
Saqr screams sent her stomach into a clenching spasm. As the lift reached Insignia’s wing they were already in the hangar. She felt along the biozoon’s scales for the one that would give her admission.
‘Turn around,’ a voice ordered. ‘Slowly.’
Jancz was on the ground below the Insignia’s elevons. Ilke stood next to him.
‘So dirty and dishevelled, Principessa?’
‘It’s Baronessa,’ she said coldly. ‘You should know the difference by now. You have murdered enough of us.’
‘Touchy, these aristos.’ He spoke to Ilke but his stare never left Mira. ‘Now come down from there.’
Mira felt frantically along the scales. Which one? Tell me which one.
‘Now, Baronessa!’ Jancz raised his weapon.
A scale twitched under her fingers and she sank into it, letting it draw her in. It sealed behind her and she picked herself up and stumbled though the twisted, sloping aisles to the flight stratum.
Rast was in the Secondo vein, only her face uncovered, eyes darting, unfocused. Catchut and Latourn were absent—in the medic stratum, Mira supposed. Rast didn’t move her head.
‘You were going to leave me,’ Mira said accusingly.
‘Yeah. Well, I didn’t. Vein up. There’s more Saqr coming and the ‘esques have some type of incendiary. We’ll have to cold start. The planet’s nav-sat is out. Dowl isn’t responding either.’ Rast’s voice sounded thick, like she was eating something sticky.
Cold start. Mira found that she had trouble breathing at the thought. She collapsed into the Primo vein and felt the couch pucker around her. She fought off the claustrophobia and tried to relax as grow-receptors skittered over her skin and burrowed in for the beginning of the inflating procedure that would protect her against g-forces.
For a moment she felt as if her throat was closing over. She swallowed repeatedly until the feeling faded. It was replaced by a sensation of body-bloating, as though she had consumed too much liquid. She flexed and contracted her muscles, knowing that the movement would release the pressure. Again the sensation faded. Nausea mounted in her throat and she found herself swallowing repeatedly.
All normal adjustments to vein-sink, Mira told herself. She concentrated on the tingling at the base of her skull where the vein insinuated itself into neural lanes. Hurry. The tingling became colour bursts before her eyes. They steadied and resolved into nothing.
Absence.
Then whispers became a flow of information, absorbed into her hindbrain with terrifying speed. Mira knew at once and intimately that the ship systems were burgeoning; that Catchut was leaning over Latourn in medic, crying; that the Saqr had positioned themselves around Insignia; that Jancz and like were fixing a patch onto her underbelly.
Insignia? Prime and Exfoliate, she told the ship.
Exfoliation while Primed is counterintuitive, Insignia replied.
Wassat mean? Rast/Secondo interjected.
Mira ignored her. It is preferable to obliteration.
Agreed, Insignia thought back.
Then proceed.
Yes, Primo. It should be noted that if skin isn‘t regrown by mesopause, irrevocable tears may occur, thought Insignia.
It will be all right, Mira soothed. Proceed.
The tremor that ran through the ship mirrored itself in her body—so did the contortion, as the ship began to shed skinscales. The sensation was a hundredfold worse than vein-sink, as if her own skin had been inverted and the raw tissue exposed. Bare