Varken Rise by Tracy Cooper-Posey Page A

express four day jump the high liner could have done. However, the ship had unimpeachable references from all corners of the core worlds and the captain was asking a reasonable price.
    He paid for four berths, then sent a message to Lilly to bring everyone up to the gate station.
    Catherine was still a silent ghost. She had barely spoken to anyone since she had emerged from the hotel room after her call to Bedivere.
    “Is he crazy?” Kemp had asked flatly.
    Catherine had looked at him, her face pale. “He’s not himself.”
    That had sent a chill through Brant’s middle.
    As Catherine had lost interest in mundane concerns, Brant made the trip to the gate station to track down passage back home. After sending his message to Lilly, he found a bar and tried to drown his unhappiness. The brandy didn’t taste the same when drinking it on his own. He quit after two rounds and watched the tank game until they arrived.
    Kemp found him there five hours later and well into the feature game. “Who’s winning?”
    “Damned if I know,” Brant confessed. “Brain won’t shut up.”
    “I know what you mean. Lilita and Catherine went to a diner farther down the strip. I said I’d come and find you. Honestly, though, I wanted a drink so bad I could taste it.”
    Brant raised his finger, then a second. The barman nodded.
    “Coming right up,” he told Kemp.
    “I can’t stand looking at her face. That look in her eyes…she looks like one of those war victims that you see in historical footage. Big eyes, sad all over. As though they’ve seen the end of the world and just barely survived it.”
    “That’s Catherine for you,” Brant said. “She is a survivor. She’ll come round. She just has to process it first.”
    The barman delivered the drinks and Kemp lifted his gratefully. “I’ll be glad to get on board and put this behind us.” He knocked back the shot, then grimaced and looked at the glass. “What in Glave’s name is this?”
    “Brandy.”
    Kemp waved over the barman. “Place like this has got to have some distilled Soward labels around. I’m buying.”
    Brant sighed.
    * * * * *
    The distilled wine was disgusting. It was too thick in the mouth and coated his tongue and teeth. Brant was silently grateful when the tank game flickered off and news feeds began to stream across the empty space where the players had been seconds before.
    …Shanterry way station destroyed…casualty reports still compiling…all ships ordered to divert…
    Kemp put his glass down. “Hellion’s heels….”
    Everyone in the bar was watching the streamers, some of them blearily so.
    ...casualty reports still compiling…all ships ordered to divert…
    “They’re just repeating,” Kemp pointed out.
    “Wait,” Brant said quietly, watching the text slide by.
    … Shanterry way station destroyed…early reports claim rogue sentient, Bedivere X, responsible…casualty reports still compiling…all ships—
    Brant didn’t wait to read more. He bounced to his feet. “Hurry,” he said urgently and quietly, lifting Kemp up.
    “To where?”
    “First, to find Lilly and Catherine, then to find a ship off this ball, before the panic clogs up the gates even more.”
    “But…” Kemp followed him out the door and into the artificial daylight and winced at the light. “…we have a ship, already.”
    “That one is going to Sunita.”
    “Where are we going, then?”
    “Shanterry.”
    * * * * *
    Mid-Jump, Barros-Shanta Gates. FY 10.092.
    “I don’t understand why he did it,” Lilly said. It was the first time anyone had spoken in nearly an hour. They were all sitting around a small table in the dining hall of the Veil of Time – a former Federation star liner, which was the class before the super-fast high-liners had been produced. They would be able to make the journey from Barros to the Shanta system in twelve days. As it was the only cruiser making the journey, they had been forced to pay above the odds for their places and