The ship is vibrating as its ion drives slowly increase towards a hard burn. Syn the engineer, the only crew-member not to have turned up for the crisis meeting, has finally fixed some of the damaged attractors on the hull, so the ship is drawing an electromagnetic charge from Space again. Syn is taking it easy with the drives, nursing them, and so the acceleration is negligible. But soon, with luck, we'll be shooting through Space trailing a white tail like a streaking comet.
I'm lying on one of the thin cabin mattresses that Bodhi has tossed onto the grassy floor of the galley. A mask is fixed to my face, like the rest of the crew lying around me in gloomy silence, each person wearing a breathing mask from one of the pacs they chose at random from the table.
I can still feel the sting of the hibernation shot I've just been given on my arm. I'm already starting to feel sleepy from its effects.
Above us, starry Space shines through the high dome of plass that occupies much of the galley's ceiling. The stars are no longer moving now that the ship has stopped tumbling and is headed, on autopilot, for the nearest port of Aldephi some four days away. Only the odd speck of space dust streaking past shows that we're moving at all.
The engineer Syn is the only one who will stay awake for the duration of the trip, making sure the ship holds together while we slumber in deep hibernation. He's been given a full airpac to use during his work. The rest of the time he'll stay in the ship's greenhouses with the cats and other animals, where the abundance of plants should hopefully keep them going with just enough fresh oxygen to make it.
Syn is the only one for certain who knows he has a working breather. Well, not quite the only one.
I know I'm not going to die here either. And I don't mean because of all the momentum that I'm carrying; all the mojo; all the flukes and synchronicities that make it feel like this is just the beginning of something bigger.
I know, because I've rigged the outcome.
When I first weighed the airpacs on the table and finally picked up the lightest one, obviously the dud, I slyly nicked one corner with my thumbnail. So when the cubes were all mixed together by the captain, before we started to pick them out, I knew not to select the wrong one, the dead man's pac.
I'm not sure who did pick it out in the end. I didn't want to know. But the apprentice pilot thinks it's her.
'I swear that airpac felt light,' mutters Hourly through her own breathing mask, stretched out on a mattress right next to me. Under radically different circumstances I'd be getting excited about lying here so close together like this, but not now. 'I bet it's me. I bet I'm the one who doesn't get to wake up.'
'Best to only make bets you want to win,' gruffs Bodhi the manimal, and from the corner of my eye I'm surprised to see the ape reassuring Hourly by placing his long furry hand in hers.
Beyond him the captain lies with her eyes closed, pretending to be calm as she fades fast. Beyond her, a snore rises from the still form of Mansun. Beyond Mansun, the stowaway Alt is playing with a minified snake on his chest; one of those red-and-black stripy ones that's always escaping from the ship's greenhouses. The boy is panting behind his breather in barely controlled fright, all too aware that he might never wake up.
I feel terrible, knowing that one of these people will die in their sleep. Maybe even this goddamned kid. I'm starting to realise that this is the worst thing I've ever done in my life.
I do this for my sister, my twin, I tell myself again. Not for the Shal nation. Not for the world of Plenty.
I do this for her.
'Whoever it is,' mumbles the captain in a drowsy slur. 'At least they won't know it.'
'Hmff,' agrees Bodhi. 'Sleep in peace, all of you. One way or the other, we will meet again on the other side.'
Hourly's voice fades away as she finally drifts to sleep. 'I really bet it's me...'
I can barely keep my eyes open. Everything is rattling around the galley now as the drives burn even harder. Slowly, inevitably, lulled by the vibrations and the lengthening rhythm of my own breathing, my eyelids droop shut and I drop fast into a kind of delirium.
I'm falling backwards in time, before I ever made it to this ship called the Stares At Strangers. Back to the day when my twin sister, Leaf, first contacted me for help on behalf of the Shal nation. Back when she was still alive and well.
In my dreams I smile for the first time in weeks.
Continues in Part 4.
The High Wild is a passion project based on my love of Space-SF TV shows and fugitive-on-the-run stories. I'd like to release the novella as a free ebook when it's finished, under the Creative Commons license.