Thresholder, ch 175, Repairs

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It's been a while, sorry. I was in Berkeley for LessOnline/Manifest, and got a lot of work done on things that weren't Thresholder, maybe because I was just in a different place and taken away by different ideas. If this is a thing next year, and I go, I think it'd be best to just declare the whole time a "no writing" time, and whatever gets written then will be between me and my computer, and if it gets out, great. I wrote this story, which I was happy with, but also ... this was definitely a thousand words I did not put toward Thresholder.

I've found myself juggling a lot of writing projects lately, which isn't fair to Thresholder, so maybe it's time to have a moratorium on adding to Kensuke Fucks the World or Untitled Villainess Otome or Untitled Sexbot Novel or ... there are a lot of them, soaking up mindspace. Writing microfiction feels more defensible to me, because at least when that's done, it's out of my head. Ideally I will finish all those projects, they have good bones and substantial meat, and then I can share them with you, but right now it feels like I'm heavily parallelized and just not actually getting traction on any one thing. (Which, to be clear, is a much better state of affairs than not doing any writing, something that happens with depression.)

~~~~

Perry raced across dusty dirt in his power armor, enormous strides boosting every step, practically flying.

He had told himself, repeatedly, that the Farfinder was better equipped than he was to weather the Dusklands. They had more experience with their magic and technology crapping out, and they had much, much more time to prepare — three months more than him seemed likely, though he’d have no way of knowing what the gap was until after he had a chance to talk to them, given the silent delay the portals sometimes implemented. They would have backup microchips and radios that worked integrated circuits. They would have all kinds of weapons to fend off whatever was after them, and they would provide some much needed firepower, along with some much-needed reconnaissance. Certainly they wouldn’t be as powerful as they’d been in the last world — their bag of tricks had been incredibly large there — but they would have something to offer.

Nevertheless, a part of Perry didn’t want them here.

Only a part, but one he was aware of. The feeling had been strong enough to become a thought that floated up into his mind, unbidden.

He had no idea what their actual composition would be. Hella seemed like a given, and at least one of the Eggys, and he couldn’t imagine that they’d get that much help without one local representative being sent along. Mette Prime, maybe, because at least one of them needed to be a representative for the Natrix.

There was a Where’s Waldo book where Waldo went through many different lands, picking up a passenger or guest every time, and at the end of it, they were all together, a collection of weirdos. Would they eventually have something like that? A crew with one member of every world he’d been to? Would there be, years down the road, some kind of council that got together to decide on the fate of the Loop? Vampires and wizards and martial artists and technologists?

The message was apparently on a loop, and Marchand had put it up on the HUD, since Perry was just running in the direction of the signal. The message still wasn’t clear, and with the way the Dusklands was strange about things, that wasn’t too surprising — in theory, the distance the signal was coming from could change, though radio waves were unknown to the Commission. No one had done any studies except the studies that Perry had done, and those were only in Charlonion, practical matters rather than real science.

Still, the parts that were being dropped changed with every repetition, so each time through, more of it was deciphered, and Marchand was filling it out.

“Big Bird, I hope you’re the one getting this. Scenario 9B. Repeat, Niner B. Crash landing, engine failure, multiple casualties, hostile natives. We’re holed up right now. Medical attention needed.”

The power armor made short work of the miles, chewing through the battery as it did. The radio signal got stronger, and Marchand made occasional course corrections.

So the Farfinder was here. Perry had been doing fine on his own. He wasn’t exactly in a bind. He’d handled the Yuuksen fine, or as fine as could be expected, and yes, Queenie was a thorn in his side, but what thresholder wouldn’t be?

There was also a chance that the Farfinder would end up being a liability. They’d been exceptionally powerful in the last world, and they’d have lost a lot coming here. Crash landing, engine failure, medical attention … it didn’t sound like they had come in well. That, at least, was something that Perry could deal with, and in a way it was better than the ship sliding in perfectly with nothing wrong. Obviously it wasn’t better on the object level, but just in terms of having something to do, not having the team arrive with their own agendas.

He was a little worried about being second-guessed. He was going to have to explain things with Anaksi. He was going to have to justify keeping Grayspear as a prisoner. He hadn’t been in the Dusklands for long, and he was already a fugitive. And they might have something to say about him making agreements with eldritch creatures, even if the eldritch creature in question was pretty normal, all things considered.

“Which was 9B?” asked Perry. It must have been established before he left, but there was a lot of prep work that had been done without him knowing about it.

“The ship is immobilized, damaged, and there is no immediate hope of rectifying either situation,” said Marchand. “The Farfinder has been in such situations before. The B means that the current plan, at least at the time that message was recorded, is to sit tight and hope that things improve. The letter A would mean they plan to get help, C would mean that they intend to abandon the ship, at least temporarily.”

“Jesus,” said Perry. “What’s worse than a nine?”

“Total loss,” said Marchand. “Though of course, such a message would require someone to have survived the calamity.”

If Perry could have run faster, he would have, but the only way to possibly do that was to transform into the mechwolf, and he wanted his wits about him when he arrived.

“They are not responding to my hail, sir,” said Marchand.

He crested a hill at a dead sprint, passing tall grass that had grown thicker as he’d gone, and when he reached the top, he saw the wreckage of the Farfinder sitting in the middle of a field. It had shed pieces of itself as it had come in, apparently at speed, and Perry was pretty sure that it had flipped at least once in the process. There was smoke rising from one section of it, but it wasn’t clear whether this was a smouldering fire or something that had been put out.

A group of men with guns surrounded it. They were Commision, most of them in uniform.

“Fuck,” said Perry.

The guns were at least not pointed directly at the craft, though that didn’t mean too much.

“Plan, sir?” asked Marchand in the clipped tone he used when quick after was needed.

“I don’t want to kill all those people, but I will if I have to,” said Perry. “Peonies, K-men … no idea what they have here, but they could only have come in response to the signal.”

“I disagree, sir,” said Marchand. “Even if they had radio technology, they wouldn’t have made it here before us.”

“We did book it, yeah,” said Perry. “They had some way of anticipating it?”

“Unclear, sir,” said Marchand. “What is the plan?”

“How well can you listen from here?” asked Perry. They hadn’t been spotted yet, and he dropped prone among the grass to make sure that they wouldn’t be.

“There would be some guesswork, sir,” said Marchand.

“Do your best,” said Perry. He reached out to the side and pulled a rifle from inside the shelf space. He was going to have to explain things to Anaksi soon, but he would wait until he knew exactly what he was explaining.

The HUD did a partial zoom to show the men, who were still quite far away. There a dozen total, but they were spread out, and the horses had been gathered up with the reins held by two Yuuk men without uniforms. Three of the men in uniforms were in conference, and Marchand zoomed in further on them, beyond the limits of the cameras to properly resolve their faces, making a blurry, pixelated mess. Marchand highlighted each man as he spoke, each in a different color.

“We’re sure about this?” asked Yellow. “There’s never been an incursion like this before.”

“Always different,” said Green, who spoke with a pronounced accent, indistinct L-sounds and something strong with the vowels.

“Not always different,” said Purple, who wore a broad-brimmed hat. “There are distributions. Probability curves. Collections, taxonomies, categorizations. And this isn’t in any of them. It’s out of bounds.”

“Kill them all,” said Green. “It’s the only way.”

“They crashed here,” said Yellow. “No different than running a wagon off the trail, it seems to me, just with more metal. I’m not in the business of putting down innocents, wherever they’re from.”

“No trust for anyone beyond the world-veil,” said Green.

“There can be knowledge without trust,” said Purple. “Probability distributions, again. A man can’t speak without leaking information, even if the intent is deception. There are more than one of them, they’re not demons then.”

“Not demons like we know,” said Green.

“Well, if it’s up to me, we speak with them, take them in, talk to them here, make a decision after we’ve heard what they have to say, what explanation they give,” said Yellow. “And I believe, in this case, that it’s up to me.”

“They’ll fight,” said Green. “The lives of our people don’t spend easily.”

“We’ll talk, and see whether they fight,” said Yellow.

Without further discussion, he walked up to the ship and pounded on the side of it.

“Can we patch in to the systems of the Farfinder?” asked Perry.

“All systems are likely offline, sir,” said Marchand. “I would surmise that microprocessor errors have brought them low, and I will require a physical interface in order to correct them.”

Yellow pounded on the door again. He had a pistol at his hip, and one hand ready to grab it, but it wasn’t out yet, which was good. Hella would try to talk him down.

“You all ready to have a conversation?” asked Yellow.

“We need medical!” came a voice from within the ship. Perry didn’t need help to know that it was Hella. “We have wounded!”

“So long as there are two of you in there, you can come on out,” said Yellow. “No need to yell, I can hear you just fine.”

“You shot at us,” said Hella, at a more normal volume. “Can’t say that makes me real confident we’re going to be safe. You guarantee us medical, a doctor, healing, and we’ll come on out. We have injured people here.”

“Come on out, weapons down,” said Yellow. “We’ll be the ones pulling your people out of there. We don’t have a doctor or a medicine man with us, but we’re the only way you’re getting one of those, understand?”

There was a long pause. “Understood. We’re coming out, just two. Leaving the other two inside, you’re going to have to be careful moving them.”

It took some time for them to open up the door, which had gotten bent in the bad landing. It came free with a crunch of metal, and Hella stood there looking out. Guns were trained on her, and she looked around, holding her hands up in the universal sign for being unarmed. She stepped out slowly, and Dirk Gibbons stepped out after her, looking none too happy about the whole thing.

Hella was in her spandex outfit, the one that made her look the most like a superhero, showing more of her form than the local prostitutes did. She probably would have changed, if she’d had time, but if Perry had heard the signal as soon as it went out, it had probably been less than twenty minutes.

“Rocky start,” said Hella. “Can I lower my hands?”

“No,” said Yellow. “Rynn, search her.”

The man that Marchand had labeled Green went forward and patted both of them down in turn, not that Hella had a place to hide a weapon. She stood there with a blank look on her face while the pat down went on. Dirk, for his part, had a much more grim look. There was blood on his hands, not his own — he’d been dealing with one of the wounded.

“Alright, go on, lower your hands, then explain things to me,” said Yellow.

“I’m Hella Thanoway,” said Hella as she brought her arms down. “Captain of this ship. We came here from another world, not quite how we wanted to. We don’t mean any harm. We have two injured inside the ship, who need medical attention, a doctor, healer, someone to help their wounds.” She was repeating herself with different words, which Perry thought was a decent strategy in the face of possible translation issues.

“Another world,” said Purple. “You admit to coming from being the veil? Explain your origin.”

“We have the wounded,” said Hella. “Do you have someone who can help them?”

They must have been hurt badly for her to be so insistent. If there were two, it would be Mette and Eggy, Perry thought. He rose slightly from where he’d dropped prone, readying himself to intercede. If these people didn’t have a doctor, then he would have to do what he could, even with the healing he had being as weak as it was.

“Time to reach them?” asked Perry as the conversation continued.

“Ten seconds,” said Marchand.

Perry debated getting closer. Ten seconds was an eternity.

The lawmen, which is what they must have been, wanted to transport the wounded on horseback, riding back to town, which might have been as much as two days if the Flux didn’t cooperate with them. Hella wasn’t having it, but it didn’t seem like there were better options.

“You don’t have something better than horseback?” she asked. “Something that will at least keep broken bones from jostling around?”

Her eyes kept moving, taking in the men who stood around with weapons, and the plains beyond. The radio signal was still going out. Perry thought there was a good chance that she was stalling.

“We can make a sledge,” said Yellow. “But first we need to know you, verify where you come from, understand who you are, make sure you won’t attack us.”

“No weapons,” said Hella.

“Have you ever met an Inspector before?” asked Yellow.

“We’re not from here,” said Hella. “Our words aren’t all going to mean the same thing. But from how you’re saying it, no, I don’t think I have.”

“He’s going to show you something, then you’re going to show him back,” said Yellow. “You come from another world? That’s the world you show him.”

“This ship has been traveling the worlds,” said Hella. “If I can somehow show you the world that I came from, it won’t make any sense.”

She froze in place, and Perry assumed that she was being shown a vision, though he obviously couldn’t say what it was, nor was it clear who was giving it to her, though there were only a handful that were close enough.

“Show me,” said Purple, resolving that question.

“Show you what?” asked Hella. “We have two people who might be bleeding to death in there.”

“How you decided to come here,” said Purple.

Hella looked at Dirk, who hadn’t spoken yet, and he nodded at her once. She would be giving away information about his world, about Markat, and Perry imagined they had some deal in place, some method by which they would insulate the culture from having too much information leaked ahead of the diplomats. Dirk was a diplomat though, or something like one.

From the outside, the Inspection was pretty boring. It was just minimal conversation and people standing around.

Perry wondered whether there were actually wounded. The radio message had said there were, but some time had passed, and maybe they had died or stabilized. If Hella was buying time, then it was possible that Mette and Eggy were in there trying to get things done while the confrontation went on outside. Perry could imagine that they had developed protocols, maybe ones that would keep their most valuable equipment from being seized. The Farfinder wasn’t a smuggling ship, but there were places to hide things.

After ten minutes, Hella had passed the preliminary inspection.

“It’s nothing I’ve ever seen,” said Purple. “Impossible scenes. Either she can fool Inspection, or she tells the truth. I lean to the latter.”

“Now let’s get our people out, or at least tend to them,” said Hella.

“Telling the truth, but nothing is proof of goodness,” said Purple. “Give me five hours, I can knock out possibilities, winnow down the realities.”

“We don’t have five hours,” said Yellow. “We need this settled now. Every moment that thing sits here, we’re in trouble. Either we destroy it, or we leave.”

“You’re not destroying it,” said Hella. “We’re going to leave this world when we’re finished, we just need to get it up and running.”

“Not going to happen,” said Yellow. “We wouldn’t have the tools to fix it, we’re not leaving you here, and there’s a decent chance it vanishes if we leave it alone. I’d guess you don’t know the Flux from the Light, but this whole area wasn’t here the day before, and won’t be here tomorrow.”

“Variable terrain?” asked Hella. “Then the ship — we can’t abandon it, we can’t leave if we don’t have its technology.”

That wasn’t strictly true, at least to Perry’s knowledge. The punch drive could be recreated on almost any world, since it just depended on basic physics and for there to be an existing punch. It would be extremely difficult, but it could be done eventually. They’d had to replace parts of it before, he knew.

But it was also true that the Farfinder was unlikely to stick around without someone to observe it. The whole ship was pretty far from the stabilizing influence of the city, and it was a known problem that farmsteads could simply vanish, even if they sometimes came back into being.

“I want to understand this,” said Purple, gesturing at the ship. “It holds promise.”

“Yes,” said Hella quickly, “We have all kinds of things that we want to share with you, technologies that will help improve your lives and your understanding of the world. It’s one of the reasons we’re here.”

“Though we don’t give freely,” said Dirk. “We expect fair recompense for sharing what we know.”

That wasn’t the culture, at least in Perry’s opinion.

“Fair enough,” said Yellow with a nod. “But we need to make sure you’re not dangerous. Let me consult the Oracle.”

He walked over to one of the other men, who turned out to be a woman, at least judging by the voice rather than the silhouette of the uniform. Their conversation was conducted at a volume that Marchand couldn’t quite pick up, and when efforts to clarify and boost it failed, he just subtitled it as ‘whispered conversation’. She was marked as Blue.

The woman placed her gloved hands on her temples, and almost immediately turned to look at the grassy knoll where Perry was half-crouched.

“Ah shit,” said Perry. He debated whether he was going to get in a shootout, then stood up and waved. She was some kind of precognitive or seer, either a Black Peony or something else, and if she was scanning for threats and had found him, it was better to either attack while he had the element of surprise or try to convince them that he wasn’t going to kill them all. He’d decided on the latter.

“I come in peace!” he called, and his voice was amplified by the speakers to be boomingly loud, something they could hear across the wide distance that separated them.

“Is this wise, sir?” asked Marchand.

“Be ready to kill everyone,” said Perry.

“Excluding Mister Gibbons and Miss Thanoway, sir?” asked Marchand.

“Yes, fucking obviously don’t kill our allies,” said Perry.

“I’m only checking, sir,” said Marchand. “It seemed a rather broad command, and I do try not to take matters into my own hands, such as they are.”

While they’d been talking, Perry had been walking closer to the ship and the people gathered around it, hands held high. He’d stowed his weapon in subspace, hoping that the action wasn’t visible from so far away. Raising his hands didn’t mean all that much, given how fast he could move, and the shoulder gun that meant he was always a voice command away from shooting someone.

Guns had been raised in his direction, which he expected. Their clairvoyant or whatever she was still had her fingers on her temples, and Marchand was providing a view of her — she was Yuuksen, interestingly enough.

“Who’s this fella?” asked Yellow. He hadn’t raised his own gun, but he’d moved toward Hella, and it was clear that he was ready for violence.

“He came ahead of us,” said Hella. “He’s an ally. A friend.” She paused before saying any of that though, clearly uncertain that it was the right call. “He won’t hurt you.”

“How’d he know where to find you?” asked Yellow.

“How did you?” asked Hella.

“That’s a secret,” said Yellow. “But it’s not easy. You picked this place, out of all the places in the Dusklands? But then, you crashed, didn’t you? So how’d he know?”

“It’s complicated,” said Hella. “We can explain later, once we’ve built some trust.”

“Others coming?” asked Yellow.

“There shouldn’t be,” said Hella. “And if there are … we’ll want those guns out.”

“I came alone!” called Perry, voice booming. “Hella, I should be able to do some healing, and I can follow medical protocols! You get those guys to give me access to the wounded!” He could easily have carried on a conversation even with the distance between them. “If they’ll be cool about it, I can run!”

“You never said his name,” said Yellow.

“Perry,” said Hella. Her eyes were on the blue armor, and hadn’t left them.

“What was that he said about running?” asked Yellow.

“He has some healing powers, weak ones,” said Hella. “He might be able to stabilize our wounded, but I imagine he doesn’t want to get shot at. Is that alright, if he puts his arms down and runs to us to cover some ground? He’s not going to escalate this situation. And I should let you know, he can probably hear everything we’re saying right now.”

“Mmm,” said Yellow. “Seems to me like that armor is probably good against our guns anyhow.”

“We have other methods,” said Purple.

“They don’t need to know about that,” said Yellow. He turned toward where Perry was still walking at a slow, steady, unthreatening pace. “Alright, you can run, come on over here.” He kept his voice level, not raising it a bit.

Perry was very tempted to break into a dead sprint, but there was still a strong chance that he was going to have to fight these guys. Instead of launching himself across the grassland, he picked up speed slowly, like he needed to build up to a fast clip. He kept his speed lower than he could actually go by about half, just in case he needed to surprise them.

They didn’t fire on him, which he’d been worried about, and they didn’t try to take Hella hostage, which is what he might have done in their shoes. It was obvious to him that she was a point of leverage.

“Interesting armor,” said Yellow. “And where did you come from?”

“Another world, same as them,” said Perry.

“Show me,” said Purple.

After he was given the opening, Perry threw up the visions without so much as asking any questions about the power. He had a selection ready to go, nothing that gave away too much, just the same variety that Hella had probably shown. He kept Markat out of it, just in case Dirk cared about that. In theory, there would need to be some cross-world treaty signed, if they were going to use this as part of the Loop. That was especially true if they had people that could detect incoming ships.

“Confirmed,” said Purple, looking slightly dazed.

“Do we trust it?” asked Yellow.

“Of course,” said Purple with a frown. “To fail to trust it is to call into question everything that we’ve been shown in the past. They are all from another world, and maybe not good people, but also not likely to be foul entities, unless those other worlds have been overtaken by said entities.”

“That hasn’t happened, no,” said Perry. “We think that your world is unique in what it lets in. The walls are thinner here than anywhere else.”

“You’ve been here for some time?” asked Yellow.

“Weeks,” said Perry, which was overstating it.

“Weeks?” asked Hella.

Perry nodded. “Why, how long as it been on your end?”

“More than a year,” said Hella. “That doesn’t make sense. We saw you leave much earlier, before we were ready to go after you.”

“I was held in stasis,” said Perry.

“No, we saw you leave stasis,” said Hella.

“Should we be having this conversation in front of these people?” asked Perry. “And right now? I need to check on the others, offer what healing I can.”

“Show me,” said Purple, seeing his opportunity. “Show me the healing you can do.”

Perry showed himself healing Anaksi’s leg. Maybe it didn’t put him in the best light, and it showed both their faces, which was bad, but he didn’t really have anything else he could call to mind at a moment’s notice. That was the moment that Anaksi had maybe started to not hate him.

“It’s slow,” said Purple. “Crude. And there’s a man beneath that armor, if that’s you.”

“Take that helmet off, why don’t you,” said Yellow.

“I’ll keep it on,” said Perry. “Stops bullets better that way.”

For a moment it seemed like there was going to be a stink about it, but the Yuuksen woman who could see the future (or whatever) gave a hand signal, and Yellow only nodded.

“Go inside, help your friends,” he said.

Perry moved inside the ship, opening the door wider to allow the bulky of the power armor through.

The last time he’d been inside, it had been at the ship’s zenith, when it had been configured to use the whole breadth of the magic. It was different now, more cramped, the central hallway feeling too narrow while in the armor. There was obvious damage, places where a whole strut was twisted but had held, and plates of plastic that had been shattered when their frame had bent. The front of the ship had the worst of it, though it wasn’t as bad as the last time, when the whole bridge had blown out.

He found Mette there, sitting next to Eggy — one of them.

“Perry,” she said, taking in a breath.

Perry moved over to them. Mette’s arm had been hurt badly, evidenced by blood and torn fabric, and she was holding it close to her, not moving it, but her attention was elsewhere.

Eggy was worse off. Something had hit her in the guts, and Perry thought that it might have been a bullet, because when his armored fingers probed the wound, the hole was fairly small. She winced when he touched her, which he took to be a good sign, but she was sweating and pale. Had they shot the ship before they figured out what it was?

“She needs blood,” said Perry, looking Eggy over.

“She needs a tooth,” said Mette. “She’s going to die.”

“Let me try something first,” said Perry.

He placed his hand against her stomach, and Marchand pulsed sound through her, getting an internal map of where things were, displaying it on the HUD. Marchand had not been built for sonograms, but he was a robot of many talents, and sound had always been one of them. Eggy was in a bad way, with the liver taking the bulk of the damage, a slow bleed over time that was gradually clotting, if maybe not fast enough.

“Elevate legs for blood pressure, water orally while she’s still conscious, keep her warm to prevent shock,” Marchand intoned. “Sir, if I could have you fetch the laser rifle from storage?”

“Why?” asked Perry. He trusted March enough to grab the gun without pause, and it was soon out, in his hands.

“I believe with some modulation of focus and power, I should be able to precisely cauterize the blood vessels,” said Marchand. “This will require making an incision to expose them, unfortunately.”

Perry had already hooked the laser rifle into the power armor, giving it a better power source and allowing Marchand to modify everything that could be done with settings. The HUD listed instructions for opening the side case and modifications to the aiming subassembly. There was a servo that controlled a mirror and could control aiming. Mette had elevated the legs and found a blanket, and was presumably going back to find some water.

“Why water?” asked Perry.

“Ideally she would have blood, and in lieu of that, IV fluids, but this is the best that can be done under the circumstances,” said Marchand.

“They don’t have medical equipment on board?” asked Perry.

“They do, sir,” said Marchand. “But not a supply of blood or bags of saline solution, last I checked. It’s possible that we can make some. You will need to make the incision and follow instructions quickly, I’ll put everything on the HUD for you. Mette, if you would grab that first aid kit, we’ll need gauze, needles, and thread.”

For lack of a scalpel, Perry got a thick knife from weapon storage. He took a deep breath before doing exactly what Marchand instructed.

“Not too deep, sir,” said Marchand in a gentle voice.

It was odd to cut someone without meaning to hurt them. Eggy moaned. When the incision — the cut — was finished, they all stared at it for a moment. She bled me, though not that much more. The entry wound had been small, and Perry felt like the cut had been far too wide.

“Apply gauze, soak up the blood,” said Marchand. “Sir, if you would raise the laser rifle and aim it directly at Eggletina, that would be much appreciated.”

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” said Perry as he raised the rifle.

Marchand was built for combat. There were emergency protocols and medical information, but the medicinal laser rifle was not a part of them. They were winging it, and they both knew it. It was a level of automation that would have been impossible for Marchand when they’d first “met”.

The laser fired a few times, then stopped while Mette soaked up more of the blood. There was surprisingly little of it, Perry thought. The laser fired again, only one more time.

“Sir, if you would allow me control of the fingers, I could do all the stitching,” said Marchand.

“Go ahead,” said Perry. He took needle and thread from Mette, then positioned his hands where Marchand could do the work. It was odd to feel Marchand playing puppet, and Perry felt an uneasy relief that this was only something that the articulation servos in the fingers allowed. He’d seen the power armor typing away at a keyboard, but it was another thing to see them working when his fingers were inside.

Eggy moaned throughout, but somewhat weakly. They didn’t have any painkillers, so it must have been awful for her, and this was a sign of how poorly she was doing. When Perry and Marchand were done with the stitching, she let out a sigh of relief, probably involuntary.

Perry placed a gentle hand on her chest and tried his best to pulse energy through her. Someday he would be able to heal a person, properly heal a person, not this weak shit. He focused on the wound and tried to conceptualize the germs, doing work to kill them so she wouldn’t die from inflammation and infection.

They stayed like that for ten minutes. It was a long time. Mette was trying to get Eggy to drink the water, but Eggy was only barely conscious.

“Anything going on outside?” asked Perry.

“Conversation, sir,” said Marchand.

“Not worth mentioning?” asked Perry.

“No, sir,” said Marchand. “It would appear to be an interrogation of memories.”

“Mmm,” said Perry. “Let me know if they’re lying, if there’s anything I’ll have to be aware of.”

“Of course, sir,” said Marchand. “It is my sense that we’ve done all we can here.”

“Is she … is she going to make it?” asked Perry.

“It’s impossible to say, sir,” said Marchand. “But I would suspect that she’ll be fine.”

Perry turned to Mette. “Alright, now you.”

“I’m fine,” said Mette.

“I can see your elbow, you’re not fine,” said Perry.

Mette grimmaced and moved her elbow with some difficulty and obvious pain. “I’m healing,” she said. “Werewolf, remember?”

“You’re Mette Prime?” asked Perry.

“In the flesh,” said Mette. She looked down at her elbow. “Minus a bit.” She looked down at Eggy who was more or less stable now. Marchand’s scans showed no internal bleeding, just a lack of blood. “How has the last year here been?”

“Timelines are off,” said Perry. “It’s unclear why. It’s been … shit, about a week and a half.”

“Ten cycles,” said Mette, nodding. “Days are the same length here?”

“You’re still not used to night and day?” asked Perry.

“A year has gone by, and no, there’s still a part of me that finds it weird,” said Mette.

“Anything vital for me to know about the project?” asked Perry. “Shit, a year gone, it was supposed to be less, what happened?”

“Internal politics, schedule slip, problems with engineering solutions,” said Mette. “We could have come sooner, and maybe should have, but they wanted everything bulletproof and robust.” She looked around the bridge and let out a small laugh. “Fuckers.”

“There’s something going on with the microchips,” said Perry. “Marchand should be able to fix it, if he can have access to reprogram things. We were hoping that you’d have less sophisticated chips that could weather this place, but … I guess not.”

“It’s possible that it will be relatively easy to fix,” said Marchand. “The systems might have shut down, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be brought back online.”

“Odds of getting this ship flying again, if the computers work?” asked Perry.

“J-class magics are online,” said Mette. “We could limp to the nearest town.”

“The other thresholder is here,” said Perry. “Anywhere you go is trouble for you. She has a weapon that will change you, strip you of your loyalties.”

Mette stared at him. “To the Natrix?” she asked.

“To them, to the Farfinder, to me, whoever else you hold dear.”

“What’s the plan?” asked Mette. “Can you keep us safe?”

“She needs to be pretty close to use it,” said Perry. “I also think it probably takes some setup on her part. The plan is constant vigilance, but that would mean that I would need to stick next to the Farfinder, and wouldn’t be able to actually proactively stop her, which is something that needs to be done.”

“Fuck,” said Mette. “Alright, if Marchand can fix things, we’ll get the ship up and running, then move it somewhere we can start making repairs.”

“Tech level is pretty damned low,” said Perry.

“You know I worked on the Natrix, right?” asked Mette. “I’m used to heavy constraints.”

“You were, if I recall, more about the big picture,” said Perry.

“Still,” said Mette. “The last year has taught me that I’m a damned sight better than baseline human.”

“Sir,” said Marchand. “It would appear that they are growing anxious about how long you’ve spent inside. Hella is stalling, but it would probably do us well to come out willingly.”

“Mette, get in the shelf,” said Perry. “We’re putting Eggy there too.”

“Can she be moved?” asked Mette.

“She’s stable,” replied Marchand. “And it would put us in a better position, particularly if things become difficult.”

“Hurry,” said Perry. “Oh, and there’s a woman named Anaksi in there, she’s one of the indigenous tribes, and a different woman named Grayspear, who is a scientist-prisoner.”

“A what?” asked Mette.

“And a dead guy, don’t worry about him, long story,” said Perry. “You’ll be fine, Anaksi is trustworthy, I’ve been working with her.”

“Perry,” Mette began.

“We’ll have time to catch up later,” said Perry. He opened up the shelf and picked up Eggy, as gently as he could. “Go, now. It’s all going to be fine.”

To his relief, she went inside, and Perry moved swiftly, setting Eggy as gently as possible on one of the beds.

“Thanks, robo-man,” said Eggy in a soft voice. She was more awake than he’d thought she’d be.

“No worries, hope I didn’t crack you,” said Perry.

It felt as though there was only really time to give Anaksi the short version, that these people would be staying with her, that they were friends, and then Perry was out of the shelf again, moving back out through the ship to go outside, where an argument was taking place.