Warp Resonance Read online

  Warp Resonance

  A Collection of Five Science Fiction Tales

  By Cedar Sanderson

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this work are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Copyright 2015 by Stonycroft Publishing

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  Cover design by Cedar Sanderson using art by Luca Oleastri and elements from ObsidianDawn.com

  Foreword to‘Warp Resonance’

  There is occasionally – all too rarely – a moment that comes when reading something new, a sort of mental frisson, when one realizes that one’s reading something special. This isn’t just another run-of-the-mill book or story, but something that is reaching out of the page and grabbing one by the throat and dragging one into its world and storyline, absorbing, entertaining, sometimes even enthralling. That’s what happened to me the first time I read Cedar Sanderson’s work. It was her novel, “Vulcan’s Kittens”, and I’ve never looked back from there. She’s one of the few authors whose work I’ll buy sight unseen, knowing that it’ll intrigue and challenge me and make me think.

  Cedar does it again in this collection of short stories. She writes them from… not so much a feminine as a womanly perspective (I submit there’s a big difference between the two; the first is merely gender-oriented, while the second is life-oriented). She makes readers such as myself see life, the universe and everything through the opposite sex’s eyes, making us think about the other side to the coin of life that we frequently, blithely ignore. The opening tale, about a young woman who’s been sexually abused and dominated by a predatory spaceman, chilled me, because as a pastor and chaplain I’ve worked with the victims of similar abuse. The impact upon their psyches is at least as bad – and frequently much worse – than she portrays. Still, it’s not something the average man can comprehend, precisely because we don’t think that way. I think her story is a public service from that perspective, offering a mirror in which men can look at their reactions and begin to realize how blind they can be. (Yes, me too. Mea culpa.)

  The other stories in this collection are less traumatic to read, but equally penetrating in their insight. An encounter with ruthless space pirates, separated lovers-to-be, a pioneer mother on a virgin planet, and an alien encounter with a young girl… all bring a woman’s perspective and Cedar’s extensive experience of life to the often testosterone-dominated world of science fiction, and enrich it in doing so. I enjoyed them all, and I think you will too.

  Thank you, Cedar, for making me think… again.

  Peter Grant

  Nashville, Tennessee, USA

  The Christmas season, 2015

  Warp Resonance

  The cooling ship sang its song to her, the ticks and pings of weary journeys and long cold warps through space. Tamashira Connelly swore in four languages under her breath as she twisted the last pipe back into place. Without coolant, the drive would blow, and without the drive, the ship was a derelict, slowly freezing in space. Her partner chuckled from below the cramped access port.

  "I can see your ass twitching from here." he called up. "Getting mad, are we?"

  She snapped back. "I swear to God, when we hit planet, I'm getting off this floating junkheap and never getting back in!"

  He passed up a clamp, tapping her backside with it to let her know where it was. She let go with one hand, keeping both knees locked around the pipe, and grabbed it. Almost done. Quickly, now, before the coolant started to freeze. Her hands were already stiff. This close to the skin of the ship it was cold and getting colder. She was both the only person who fit easily into the access hatch and the only person who lacked the body fat to keep her warm.

  There, done. The clamp tight around the patched pipe, she called down.

  "Try it now." She held her breath, waiting.

  Below her, she could hear as he walked to the other side of the compartment and entered commands. Then she could both feel and hear the gurgle of the released coolant as it swept through the pipe. There was no leak visible, and she felt with her hands along the patch for a moment before she was satisfied that there was no dampness there. With a sigh, she unlocked her knees and let her cramped body down through the hatch until she felt Marc's arms around her waist. She let go and dropped into his embrace.

  "Wow, you are cold!" He held her tightly for a moment, then released her with a pat.

  "Go get warm in the cabin. Wrap up in a blanket and I'll let you know when there's hot water and then you can get a bath. I've got to check Charlie."

  "Ok." Tama knew she sounded weary. She certainly felt that way. Only three hours since the pipe had failed, but it felt like forever. She staggered off to her bunk, the adrenaline leaving her system as fast as it had come in.

  She awakened to the familiar vibration of a warp resonance. She lifted a sore arm to peer at her wrist. Six hours she had slept. Well, the ship must still be holding together if they were entering a warp. Charlie and Marc had it well in hand, no doubt. She felt warm again, but she decided that a shower would still be nice.

  She luxuriated in the shower for a whole ten minutes. Although the aging freighter allowed for much more crewspace and amenities than, say, a military craft, water was still limited. As she prepared to step out, she heard the door open and Marc came in. She suppressed a sigh.

  "I'm really not in the mood."

  "Ok," he agreed cheerfully. "Want a backrub?"

  That would lead to the same end, and they both knew it, but her aching muscles won through.

  "Oh, all right," she gave in ungraciously.

  Afterward, rolling away from the now sleeping man, she reflected again that it was time to find a different berth. He wasn't as bad as some she’d heard stories about, but he was so overbearing that she felt suffocated. Dressing, she decided that the New Hebrides would be a good place to pursue her Celtic ancestry, and maybe a better ship. One with no unattached males.

  In the control room, Charlie rolled his eyes at her. She patted him on the shoulder and sat down in the pilot's chair. As navigator, he knew where they were, but it was her job to land them.

  "Caught you again, did he?" He asked quietly as she determined the best course to avoid the three moons on their way in. Without looking up, she nodded.

  "Sorry, tried to delay him here, but he was determined." She took a deep breath and lowered her voice without thinking about it. "Charlie..."

  "Yeah?"

  "I'm staying on the planet this time. I need a change." She resisted the urge to look over her shoulder and see if he was standing there.

  He nodded, thoughtfully. "Guess you do, at that. I think the very last minute, don't you?"

  "Thanks, Charlie."

  He turned back to his plat and Tama regarded the back of his head for a moment longer with affection. The little humanoid AI was more human than most people she knew. Granted, she mostly knew the dregs of spacegoing humanity, men who spent too much time alone and not enough with fellow human beings. But still, Charlie was a sweetheart. In a way, he reminded her of her late father. Caring, but in a detached sort of way, and always ready with a good piece of advice when she needed it.

  "I'll miss you, Charlie."

  "I will miss, you, too." He replied gravely without turning.

  She turned back to her screens. They showed the various obstacles to a path to clear orbit, but not in real-time. All the objects were still too small for her to see with the naked eye, and she settled comfortably into the check and re-check routine of piloting a path through moving pieces of rock and ice that could easily smash her ship.

  She was tense and sore again as they neared the
first moon and slowly swung around it and into the orbit they needed. Rolling her shoulders and grimacing, she called Space Control and announced their arrival.

  A pleasant soprano greeted her and told her the welcome news that there was no-one on the strip and they could come right on in, honey.

  Tamashira felt a little nostalgia as she landed the ship and listened again to the sounds the old bucket of bolts made as it settled in. It had been home to her for over two Standard years, the longest she had been with a ship since her father's death six years ago. It might not be exciting work, most of the time, but it was steady, and it was what she knew. One of these days, she thought to herself, she was going to grow a root or two somewhere. That would be different.

  She could see out, now, the viewscreens set on a real-time window. Hurrying across the field were the Customs officer in his distinctive uniform and three others in what were probably military uniforms. Her brows drew together in a deep frown.

  "Charlie, why are they in such a hurry to see us, I wonder?"

  He stood creakily and looked out the window. "I don't know. Will you greet them, or should I?"

  "No, you go wake Marc. I'll see what's up."

  Tama grumbled to herself as she made her way to the hatch. Usually this was Marc's job. He was a lot more impressive figure to greet officials than she was. A tiny, very young woman rarely got the respect that Marc would from men like these. She knew what they would see in her, a girl's face and figure that made her look years younger than her actual age, dressed in the soft skinsuit that made her look like she was wearing child's pajamas.

  They were banging on the hatch already when she got there, and she cursed the high pitch of her voice as she called, "Just a minute already!" while undogging the hatch.

  They did indeed look taken aback at the first sight of her, she realized with dismay. Finally, the Customs man cleared his throat and asked, "Um, is your father aboard, miss?"

  She looked coldly at him and raised an eyebrow in her best impression of supercilious amusement. "I am the Pilot of this freighter."

  "Oh. Ah, we..." he stumbled to a halt and one of the military men interrupted impatiently.

  "We are going to commandeer this vessel. It is needed to evacuate the colonists back through the warp hole."

  As Tama's jaw dropped, her mind whirled through possible explanations, and then she suddenly remembered something she had barely noticed at the time.

  "The warp node is out of resonance, isn't it? How long do we have?"

  The men all exchanged relieved glances, and the Customs official replied, "Twenty-eight Standard hours, miss. Conservative estimate."

  "I - there are some repairs that will need to be made. We had a problem with the coolant system on the way in."

  He nodded. "There are a couple of derelicts on the field that we have been scavenging for parts. If you would care to come with me I can show you the most likely place?"

  She smiled. This one had recovered very well, and that was a nice change to the usual attitude she got from men. "Hang on and let me grab clothes and boots suitable. Ah, here are the rest of the crew."

  She had heard their footsteps behind her, and now she turned out of their way and waved her hand at them.

  "Marc, Engineer, and Charlie AI, Navigator. Marc, these man are going to use the freighter for rescuing colonists, as the wormhole is about to collapse."

  Now Marc was gaping like a landed fish, she noted with a little malicious enjoyment.

  "But, but..." he spluttered, “What about our cargo?"

  "It will have to be unloaded here." One of the military men spoke firmly. "There will be men here momentarily to begin the unloading. How many can this ship carry?"

  Tama slipped away to her cabin, where she threw her few personal belongings into a duffel as she dressed quickly. She brought the duffel with her to the hatch, where only the Customs man was still waiting. He smiled at her, and she smiled back.

  "They went to inspect the cargo holds. And we are going to see if we can get another life-support unit out of the derelict."

  She nodded. "Makes sense to me, redundancy is our friend."

  He laughed and gave her a hand out of the hatch. "I'm Pat Reilly."

  She shook his hand. "And I am Tamashira Connelly."

  "Aha!"

  "What?" she asked as they trotted briskly across the field toward the other ships.

  "Your name. I am Black Irish descent myself, and I thought I recognized those blue eyes, but the shape of them is... lovely."

  She blushed. Men rarely complimented her. She frightened them away mostly with her childlike appearance or by proving herself tougher than she looked. She changed the subject.

  "Is everyone on the planet being evacuated?"

  He shook his head, sorrow flickering across his face. "The only thing the specialists can agree on is that the warp is going away. They don't know how long it will last, or even if it will ever open up again. I thought we might be able to make it on our own, but the general consensus was that we were not ready to be cut off, and all who could be taken off would be. But evidently no-one heard our distress beacon, and. we are going to be a thousand short or so."

  They arrived at the ancient freighter, listing in its weedy grave at the edge of the field. She looked at the other derelicts. Three, maybe four freighters. One of them collapsed in on itself. A couple of shuttles, and one... She squinted against the bright sun.

  "Is that?" she pointed.

  He looked. "Yes, it is. A genuine Z-delta fighter. It was taken from some pirates and left here when we realized that it was too damaged to be of use."

  "Nice." she commented briefly, swinging up into the hatch. He followed more slowly as she headed for the engine room. The layout was much the same as the aging freighter she had just brought in, and he found her standing under the hatch, pulling wrenches out of her pockets and glancing at the fastening bolts over her head.

  "Give me a boost, won't you?" she asked, looking up at him. He smiled at the intensity of her concentration.

  He cupped his hands for her to step into and hoisted her until she could reach the access hatch. Tama knew she was heavier than she looked, but she had the hatch open before his arms could begin to quiver and then was swarming up into the narrow passage with the agility of a monkey. Inside the musty, dark place she put on a headlamp and looked around her. The ship was silent as a tomb. She could hear him below her, walking about the room. Probably looking for the life-support equipment they needed.

  She found the pipe she needed and began to loosen it. It wasn't rusty, thank goodness. Now, how were they going to get all this junk back to her ship? She loosened the other end and slid the thing toward the hatch.

  "Look out below!" she called, and felt his hands close around it. He slid it out from under her, and she squirmed around and poked her head out of the hatch. "Hey, how're we going to haul this stuff...? Oh."

  Two men were down there now, one in the military's fatigues. He waved up at her. "Hiya. I brought some guys and a truck, will that do it?"

  "Sure." She grabbed the edge of the hatch and flipped out. At least her hands weren't numb with cold this time. She could get used to this planet thing. Fresh air, sunshine, solid ground under her feet... "So where's life support?"

  The next few hours were a blur. Later, she supposed she had spent most of them under some dusty piece of machinery or another as she hastily disassembled the system to send over to Marc to install in the other ship. She felt filthy, and her eyes burned, but it was satisfying work. Planets had gone out of resonance and never come back. It didn't happen often - she could only think of ten, and some of those so long ago as to be legends rather than real history, but it was considered a bad thing. Very few colonies were ready, out here on the warp lines, to be cut off from their parent worlds. The Inner Systems were stable, and none of them could be thrown out of resonance. She wondered what happened on those unfortunate worlds, cut off from humanity.

  More oft
en, she knew, it was only a matter of years, and sometimes as long as decades, before a friendly Leviathan could be found to set the warp node back up and relieve the planet in question. The conditions of the rescued colonists had been dire on some of those worlds, hence the panic on this one.

  Someone tugged on her boot. She automatically handed out the part she had just pulled off and then scooted out stiffly. Laying on the floor, she muttered hoarsely "I think that's it."

  Pat knelt next to her. "You ok?"

  She sat up. "Yeah, just tired and thirsty."

  He handed her a bottle of fruit juice. She couldn't identify the flavor, but it was tart and very good. He made her finish it, and then helped her all the way up. "Let's find you someplace to rest. We've started loading on your freighter. We are going to fit in a couple hundred more than we thought at first, thanks to the extra life support."

  She nodded. "I'd like to stay." she announced in a much clearer voice.

  He stopped and looked down at her. She just leaned on his arm. She was exhausted, and just standing took an effort right now. "Are you sure?"

  "Yeah. I'd planned on staying anyway, before we got here. We weren't getting on well as a crew anymore."

  "Oh. Um, well, I don't know..."

  "I know, no telling what will happen with the warp node. But I'd rather risk that than go back on that ship."

  He blinked, then nodded in understanding. "That bad, huh."

  He hoisted her into the truck and she lay down. He went up to the front and she heard him telling the driver to head for Space Control before she fell asleep. When she woke up she was in a bed. Her boots had been taken off, but she was still dressed. And thirsty again, she realized.

  She rolled out of bed and stretched, slowly at first, and then more vigorously. It hurt, but it was better to get everything moving again. When she felt like she could move again without falling over, she went in search of a bathroom. At the end of a long hall, she could see light and hear voices, but she found the bathroom first, and then headed for them.