Late night. Everyone asleep but me. I pushed back from the desk in my bedroom where I'd been noting some plans on a handheld screen. The box I'd picked up at port was still on the centre display table where I'd left it. Gathering it in one arm -- it was surprisingly light for what it was -- I quietly touched the bedroom door open and stepped out into the hall.
The house was silent around me. In the darkness, the curving hallway was dim and familiar as a childhood memory. I touched it to guide myself to the stairway at the end. Down I went, stepping lightly on the metal risers. Past the public floor and to the lower level of rooms. Here were the summer bedrooms, built into the side of the hill. The labs. Arind's resource room, Dio's study. The freight lift down to the utility section. And what I was looking for, the back exit.
I placed my hand on the panel. It was older, took a bit longer than some. The screen glowed pale green around my palm, and I felt the unobtrusive current as the door chime temporarily deactivated. I liked the sensation. Some would call it old-fashioned, but I appreciated how tactile Arind's home was. My home, I meant. Needed to get back in the habit of seeing it that way. The door slid open as I stepped towards it. The night air rushed me, warm and wet and fragrant, smelling of the dark flowers twining through the trees in the beachside forest. It was a musky spice, wrapped up in memories of safety and refuge. I hoped it would carry me through what I was about to do.
The grass underfoot was still wet from the rain, which had fortunately held off until all the guests had departed. I could feel my toes getting damp through my sandals. Around the white curve of the end of the house, I saw my destination, the gift Arind had officially lent me on my twentieth birthday. An arched hangar, silver with solar plating, angled to complement the lines of his house. It wasn't very large, considering what it contained. But it was my place.
It needed only a thumbprint to let me in, to turn on the bank of low gold lights that ran along each long wall. I crossed the huge cement floor. "Hello, sweetheart," I said, not looking at her. Not yet.
The garage was dark and warm this evening. I opened the high windows and turned on the ventilation fans, which sucked out the worst of the air in fairly short order.
I moved a couple of still-unpacked tool crates to the side of the great enamel tabletop. It lined most of one short end wall, and had several screens above it of varying salvaged antiquity. I liked the looks. Their programs were current enough. I kept them dark for now -- there'd be no actual work without solar current -- and placed the box on the workspace before them.
Then I sat. And looked at it.
It was, to oversimplify it, a combination of navigation and communications equipment, purloined from a broken probe, and refurbished by friends of mine who loved technology far more than legal abstractions. It was, in layman's terms, a hyperspace drive.
It had travelled farther than I ever had. Found in the net of some inter-system dredge, sold to Sahr's unscrupulous processing facilities, and then -- off the record -- brought to one of the refurbishment clubs that absolutely did not exist on the furthest moons of our solar system. And then to me, by way of a sympathetic pilot friend on Roxi, whom I'd helped study for her third license test.
All the points where something could have gone wrong. It made me dizzy. That was over, though. A year of saving up my credit and carefully wording my requests, and it was here.
This box that I'd picked up from the port probably had been wrapped and re-wrapped several times, to obscure what the item was from the outer-system transit scans. I looked around for a strong enough blade to get through layers of fabric and canvas. There was one nearby on the tabletop, right where I had tossed it before leaving for school last fall.
As I worked, little pieces of the conversation at dinner floated through my head. I wondered how long Dio had relished springing that offer on me. A sharp burst of irritation hurried across my heart. There was no way to know half of what he was thinking, and honestly I didn't care to. It wasn't in me to be mercenary, though, either -- I owed him gratitude, and that was almost worse than being angry. What would come of it, this meeting? He'd said to show up around lunchtime, which meant traffic from Roxi to the port would be coming straight in. I'd have to go around the City, angle in from the north --
The knife slipped along the hard surface of the crate, and I froze. Concentrate. I pulled the last of the wrappings from the box, threw them on the floor. The inner carton itself was black and sharp. Fancy packaging, I was amused to see. Quite a legitimate little business, under a broad definition of "legitimate".
All this to hide that my hands shook as I turned it over, looked for the security seal.
There it was.
Pressed my ring finger to it, hoped the info file I'd sent them had made it through uncorrupted. Waited. Anxiously. Then a tight little sucking sound as the seal broke, and the lid was loose. I put my fingernails under to pry it up, and then paused.
In the nighttime silence, all at once I could feel her behind me. The great cool arch of her, the mass, waiting and still. Felt like she was watching.
I reached inside my mind and pulled up the checklist. There was a series of exams and initialisations of the thing that had to be done upon receipt. Most importantly, I had to check and ensure the sealed inner chamber was intact. Without that assurance, it would need to be returned, and stars only knew if I'd ever see a replacement.
I assembled the small pile of tools I'd need to open the drive up, and pulled the nearest wall lantern over the table. Then I carefully sprayed a static repellent around the area. This wasn't a building known for random charges, but I was taking no chances. Picking up a microdriver, I took a deep breath, and went to work. The cover came off easily enough. I placed the screws in a tiny bin, said "Cover," and the label appeared. I removed several more layers the same way, ignoring the sweat gathering on my back, until finally I removed my shirt and blotted my forehead with it.
The last, most intimate section of bracing came loose with a click. I lifted it deliberately out and set it to the side.
There, amid a tangle of wires in every imaginable colour, was the inner drive.
I felt like I was looking at a living thing. It was utterly still, but I couldn't shake the sensation that it pulsed imperceptibly. It was the heat affecting my vision. I shook my head, and pulled on a pair of thin fabric gloves, and began to feel around the drive's edges and seams.
Okay, there was no getting around it. This felt like caressing it. I bit my lip and tried to keep from laughing, and concentrated. Why shouldn't the heart-of-the-heart of a ship get some love, before it was finally assembled? Who said? I didn't feel anything that the inner list warned me to watch for. All of the joints and power points appeared to be fantastically crafted. I looked down at it, and thought about what it was going to do. The amazing thing it could do. Then I couldn't help but give its pearlescent greyness one last brush of my fingers, before fitting the cover resolutely back on.
I went through the rest of the checks, examining bits of solder and nanoconductor foam. The thing looked perfect. Stellar. My hands were shaking with tiredness by the time I reinserted the final screws. I lifted the entire thing, gently as a baby, and carried it to the main table scanner. I ran it against the blueprint that I'd first saved in the scanner over two years ago. The line of light seemed to disappear into the blackness of the cover, one end to the other, with that distinctive buzzing hiss. It was reassembled.
It sat, patient and adamant, on the table. Just as its final home sat behind me. It would be some time before I could truly test it out. But it was real, and it was ready.
I put the box in the safe under the table, and then let out a long, drained sigh.
Outside, the air had finally begun to drop in temperature. The sky was a silken shade of violet, and stars rose above the final golden glow of twilight. I walked around the corner of the garage, shaking out my shirt and putting it back on. And there, lifting off the horizon to the east, was the luminous white edge of Roxi.
Just for a moment.
Just for a moment, I stood there, ignoring my clammy body and tired hands. I stood and looked, as humans have done, at one moon or another, since the literal dawn of history. I thought of poetry tours and archives, how Daltia herself was simply the furthest point we'd all yet reached. As the radiant moon crept higher, I thought of cities I'd never seen and distances I'd never crossed. And I resolved then, somewhere in a black box of my own, to escape.