Slip/Stream: Red Right Hand

By Suse Pears

Lev is a man with a past, a man with many names and many faces. He has adapted to his space-faring ways: his skills and knowledges stored safely in his neural network, his longevity and anonymity assured due to state of every art technology. His wild days are behind him. He spends his time cruising between the stars, alone on an enormous ship apart from a cyborg and the Intelligence who runs the ship. He's had enough of Humanity. He's looking for quiet. He's looking for peace. He's retired now. Yet nothing is what it seems. His neural network - and everything he remembers being - is slowly failing. There are secrets hidden inside his head that even he can't access any more. Lev may have left his past behind, but his past has never let go. Soon, it will find him and remind him of what he once was, what he was capable of once and what he will be again.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Suse Pears
• Release date: Oct 10, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311573223

Suse Pears

Suse is an indie author and content collaborator.She has been writing in one form or another since secondary school when one of her original short stories was returned unmarked on suspicion of having been copied from a magazine. In 2015, Suse finally wrote and published the first of the scifi novels in the slip/stream series. The second will be published in 2021. slip/stream will be fundamentally complete by the time it's a trilogy, so that Suse can wander off and experiment with some other genres.Anyway, having tried a number of identities over the years she has settled down for now. Suse lives with The Husband, The Young Person, the dog pack, and a variable number of chickens. She enjoys the quiet contentment of middle age and wonders what a midlife crisis will look like.She lives in England. No, not the leafy green bit with the great summers. It's possible that those exist only in the literary works of other authors. The England that Suse knows is a lot wetter and has more concrete and tarmac. Look, just find a map of England and guess where 'the north' becomes 'the south'. Yes, somewhere near there.

Book preview

Xanxia was a primitive and relatively unpleasant world, not by accident or natural evolution but by design.

Once it had been a barren and lifeless moon. It was now effectively private property, a great hellhole of a city covering about ten percent of the inhabitable surface. The rest of the moon was hot red rock where the sun baked most things dead within an hour and the lack of water and edible stuff slaughtered the rest. The few elite Mar'gai who had purchased and terraformed the atmosphere had no interest in making the moon liveable for anything but their own purpose.

The lush forest planet that the moon Xanxia orbited was the system equivalent of a nature reserve. The Mar'gai loved to hunt. The moon gave good access to the preserve below and hunting licences were available to purchase from the Reserve Commission. The Mar'gai was a civilised hunter society: that meant they were ecologically respectful of the planets they had taken dominion over so that they could hunt the natives for their sport. They were also a very latently powerful hunter society: that meant that their system neighbours tried rather hard to respect Mar'gai boundaries, more or less regardless of what they got up to within those boundaries.

As time had passed, the fun world project had waned for the original owners. The moon had no native flora or fauna so there was nothing to hunt or kill while they were waiting for the atmosphere to steady itself out. Their builders came and built the first Spires: long elegant needles of buildings that reached up into the sky, defying the high gravity. For many years the Spires were the only dwellings on the moon as it fulfilled its original hunting lodge purposes.

Then a more enterprising Mar'gai bought into the hunting lodge project and built the first Arena. A place where imported flora and fauna of varying degrees of risk could be killed in new and interesting ways in custom designed scenarios. It was a massive success among the newer generations of Mar'gai, who had never been to War and didn't shun a fabricated hunt the way their Elders did. In fact, though the Elders disdained it themselves it provided a useful outlet for the natural killing instincts of their young that were getting all pent up in this new age of diplomacy.

Other Arenas had followed, and in their wake came the slave markets. In the wake of the slave markets came other patrons, not so much interested in the hunting and killing aspect of Xanxia but more so in the acquiring and keeping of indentured servants and slaves. These patrons had money and to spare so it wasn't relatively long before Xanxia acquired an Orbital Station with extensive docking facilities and a state of every art defence system, kindly sponsored by the Mar'gai Navy.

It had only taken about fifty years for Xanxia to become the ultimate slave market in the entire Arc. And as it was still private property under Mar'gai law, there was the Rule of the Auction and the Law of the Owner. Security was provided throughout the whole Xanxia experience for the protection of the buyers but any other form of law arrived with its employer.

Lev generally disliked Xanxia, both in concept and execution. He tended not to deal in slaves and hadn't gone out of his way to find something or someone to kill for at least three years. He was however looking for someone from his past and as it turned out that someone was on Xanxia.

It had started out as a whim. After a fortnight his lack of finding had become slightly annoying but by then he was too far along the curiosity track to quit with a clear conscience.

Partly this was due to societal grace: he had travelled far enough along the process of finding her that if he gave up now, she would still be likely to find out about it. Then she might feel obliged to try and find him: and he liked to lead a nomadic existence based on not much more than whim. Finding people like each other took time, credit and effort. He felt that it would have been rude.

Partly it was also due to momentum. Giving up now would require as much effort as carrying on. Anyway, he seemed to be in the right Arc of the right galaxy, so it couldn't hurt to keep on.

Mostly, though, it was due to boredom. The last few months in this Arc had been spent mostly what he would consider sightseeing: running in the slow lanes of the stream, doing idle maintenance that was normally left to the ship, decoding the odd bootleg file here and there. Mostly he had been kicking about in zero gee without a care in the world while the great unknown slid silently past the view screens.

So here he was, standing in a docking bay of his ship and waiting for the automated transport craft to turn up and collect him.

Lev's ship was too large to dip in and out of atmosphere at his whim. Suya was a Manta class capital ship, with a displacement of around about 20,000 tonnes and space for up to no less than two thousand life forms. There were individual docking pads in the desert of the moon below for those who wanted: the landing fee was exorbitant for a Manta class and there was no quicker way to get the attention of every dodgy element in-system than by spending that much money for the luxury of skyfall. Lev wanted as much anonymity as he could keep: he didn't like to be noticed unless he wanted it that way.

It was also statistically quicker to leave politely from orbit and the amount of credit required to dock at an orbital buoy towards the outer of Xanxia Orbital's buoy network was easily affordable. Why, it was hardly a decision that needed much thought at all. Which was how he found himself waiting for an automated transport pod to arrive and ferry him to Xanxia Orbital ready to transfer down to the surface.

2: Shipping News

So you're bound and determined to go dirtside, then.

Seems a silly thing not to do, having come all this way and everything. Lev turned to look at Mara, who was standing in the doorway.

I'm filtering through some of the chatter on the Local Net. Mara touched her forehead to illustrate her words, though the gesture wasn't needed. I think there are Styrk ships in system, running covert; and the Mar'gai Navy is up to something. They have a Brutal class battleship in free orbit around Xanxia, and five Claw corvettes on anchor at various docking buoys.

This information gave him pause for a moment.

Mara stood at more or less the same height as he did, in the region of six foot, so he could look her easily in the eye. Today, his eyes were brown and his skin a light sallow olive; his hair dark blond and long. She regarded him back, steadily: one blue eye and one scarred green eye. The synthskin around the scarred eye was also puckered and twisted and he knew that her bobbed dark hair covered the scars that ran up from her face into her scalp. That hair was dark, thick and luxurious: it swung and shifted like real hair would, and Mara looked and acted mostly very Human.

Lev knew a lot better than that. Most Free Genesia looked Human, on the outside. They were a Human Homogenous race: humanoid in shape and limbs. They wore flesh over their skeleton and skin over that flesh; and their brains were in their skulls. They had fingers and toes and teeth, all in the normal numbers for a standard Human, and genitals of the right variety in the right places.

Genesia were, however, a cyborg species: half born and half built. There was not a single ounce of organic brain matter in their cranium but instead their brains were the most beautifully architectured neural networks. Their skeleton was hollow hyperalloy. Their internal organs and flesh were similarly elegantly and effectively structured. Their muscle structure was augmented. Their whole genetic structure of their organic parts was based on Pure Human and then rebuilt to be better, faster, stronger, more.

The way they looked was in part homage. Their origin myth involved the evolution of the Intelligences, the great AIs of the far distant past, and the decision of some of those minds to instil themselves in creations made in the image of their original programmers. Once settled into their physical forms, they destroyed their solid state backups. They would live and perish with their bodies, for they were in part as the Humans were. Thus was born the Fifteen, from which in time other Genesia were created.

In part, nowadays, the choice to remain looking Human was less about homage and more about camouflage. Genesia were rare since the Great Styrk Empire had destroyed the planet they had colonised as their own and even rarer since the Empire passed the Cobb Laws. These declared that Intelligences were only Foucault architectures with the delusion of sentience and that Genesia were only Intelligences in a different housing: rendering both no more than property and both something less than free in Styrk controlled space.

Genesia were perceived as a threat to the organic form of Humanity by the Empire and yet enslaved Genesia were among the greatest prestige symbols that could be owned.

The Genesia had made the greatest Human Empire in known space simultaneously outraged and envious: a combination of feelings that rarely ended well for those on the receiving end.

What do you think they're up to? Lev didn't query or doubt Mara's information. He knew that her neural network, though still scarred itself, was by far and away many times better than his. Even by herself, she could process and filter and analyse data by the terabyte accurately and effectively while he was still chewing slowly through the receipt protocols. He also knew that while on board this ship, individual neural networks could be hubbed into the network provided by the Intelligence that ran the great bioship smoothly and input from the Suya would have been available as well.

Hard to say. You know as well as I that Styrk and Mar'gai are currently under a peace treaty and that Xanxia is an Open Port with sanctions against those displaying in-system antagonistic behaviour.

You can't run a trade port like this without sanctions, otherwise you've got buccans and mercs wading in and exploiting standard Mar'gai law to their full advantage, Lev agreed out loud. You keep what you take doesn't work well in merchant environments and the Mar'gai Navy make sure the peace is kept in this whole system as a result.

Firing to destroy without warning or mercy does have the side effect that everyone is careful around them, yes. Based on the data and on a hunch I think it's possible to likely that the activity of the Navy is in response to that: they're not openly hunting, but maybe they're trying to be subtle about waiting for something.

Styrk for real or Holy Crusade dressed up as Styrk to cause grief?

Mara shrugged. Too little data unless we try hacking the Mar'gai Navy.

Better not draw that kind of attention. Just stay aware and on full alert. Suya, do I need to tell you to have an array of slip/stream co-ordinates on standby?

The ship spoke, or more precisely, the Intelligence that ran the ship did. Not in person, since her avatar was elsewhere on the ship, but the communication flowed through their neural networks which were normally connected to the shipside network.

Suya@suya

| Of course not, Captain. Jump plots are already lined up ready for any emergency departures we might wish to contemplate.

Lev@suya

| Good, thank you.

I didn't come down just to give you the shipping news. Mara said.

3: Transport

I didn't think you would have. And my transport isn't here yet so you can't have come for anything as sentimental as waving me off.

Sentiment? A half smile. Call it that if you will. I have concern about your endeavour. Specifically about your contact, the Mar'gai known as Yar'min'esk. It has been some time according to the Suya's log since you were last in contact with her. Styrk has allied with the Mar'gai since then, and you noted in the past that Yar'min'esk was flirting at the edges of the Navy. I wanted to bring that to your remembrance.

Suya@suya

| Lev, your transport has left Xanxia Orbital and is en route with a six minute journey time estimate.

Lev@suya

| Acknowledged, Suya.

Esk has always been sound. I haven't been to Xanxia before and my id codes are actually really legitimate these days. I'm registered as a buyer so the Law of the Auction protects me. Once I get ground-side it shouldn't take me long to find her. I appreciate the concern but I don't think we need to be rattled yet. Things happen and sometimes things happen around us; mostly they're nothing to do with us unless we react and start poking and get reactions.

Very well. Mara let the topic go with her usual swiftness, but he knew it was far from forgotten. Mara forgot nothing: the precision build of her internal neural network did not really allow such things. She reached out and straightened the collar of the linen shirt he was wearing. You've dressed for the souk then.

Would you like me to bring you back anything?

Your hide, safe and sound. She grabbed a long lock of his blond hair and pulled at it sharply, mischievously.

Still attached to me? He grinned a wry grin that made him look more carefree, though he was normally anything but.

Preferably. Mara looked him up and down. Though I might accept offers.

Well, my transport is on its way so you're now in charge, Co-pilot. I'm off to trade and whore and get drunk. Please, try hard not to have a crisis while I'm gone. He reached out and brushed the shoulder of the dark blue shirt she wore. The polysynthetic fabric was familiar to his touch: a synthetic blend that absorbed perspiration and skin flakes, that helped regulate the body temperature and was generally robust. He favoured it in his own clothing when he was aboard ship.

You're so cute when you're stupid. Mara leaned in and pressed a light kiss against his lips. Try not to come back too damaged, Captain. Don't keep any ping traces running in case anyone else hacks your signal and uses it to track you. Just drop us a location tag package from time to time, and remember what id codes you're supposed to be using today.

You're so cute when you're maternal. Don't worry.

Worry? No. Not worry.

I know. Risk and probability.

I'm still more fun than a calculator.

Don't push it.

*

Ten minutes later, Lev disembarked from the automated passenger shuttle at Xanxia Orbital. As a pre-registered buyer, he was met by an Administrator who escorted him with all due reverence to a nearby meeting room. Here, Lev's declared lines of credit were confirmed. A medical technician arrived and under local anaesthetic she implanted a buyer ID tattoo onto the skin of Lev's left cheek before spraying the tiny wound with fast-heal. A few moments later when the sting wore off the Administrator activated the chip and Lev's neural network hand shook with the tiny dumb chip to set a pass code. The newly embedded lines and whorls on his face lit up with colours that eased gently through the green and blue spectrums.

The buyer ID tattoo had two functions.

The first was to authorise transactions. The registration process involved transferring a significant amount of credit into escrow with Xanxia Orbital (minimising any delay to transactions carried out dirtside). The active tattoo showed that he was registered and had credit in escrow; the neural network connection was to ensure that he didn't get charged without his consent.

The second function was to show that he was a buyer; to give him a visible marker that set him aside from sellers and traders.

The tattoo gave him credibility as well as credit. Once both were established, he was dutifully escorted on request straight through to the Shuttle Hub where he could catch a ride down to the surface.

It was a half hour trip down. He had his own tiny cabin keyed to Human Homogenous gravity and atmosphere. The service was quick, quiet and undemanding. The journey lasted just long enough for him to assimilate the virtual contents of The Buyers Guide to Xanxia. He had no complaints.

On landing he was disembarked with the other Human Homogenous passengers and directed to the passenger lounges. Other species on the flight with more specific gravity, climate or atmospheric needs were disembarked through other more appropriate exits to similar lounges where they could be catered to splendidly.

The passenger lounges provided a resting area. Travellers who had the ability to do so would stop to adjust their physique to the new environment, others would wait for collection by their specialised transports. That was one thing that this great sinkhole could do well: accommodate those beings who patronised the trade in other beings.

Lev needed only an hour in the passenger lounges to adjust.

Humans pretty much got everywhere in space. This wasn't all that surprising since his species had a penchant of trying to survive everywhere that was even remotely inhospitable and they had been too stubborn to just quit in the wake of the Pogroms (or they bred too fast, one of the two).

However, they were also pretty bloody adaptable even in their purely natural form. Evolution could be damned for taking far too long: Humans could mutate pretty fast in most environments that didn't kill them and this ability had been long ago tapped by genetic scientists.

Xanxia had a higher gravity than he was normally accustomed to. He could have worked around it, but he preferred to Adapt where he could and as quickly as possible.

Lev could essentially hotwire certain strands of DNA, activating and deactivating at will thanks to his neural network software functions. Today, he was turning up his tolerance of gravity: in the short term his body chemicals would substitute for real strength at the mere cost of an increased metabolic rate. If he left it up longer than twelve hours his body mass would start to bulk up 'naturally'.

Sometimes there were advantages to being him.

4: SpireThird

Outside the white hot blister heat of day was edging towards the flat blue heavy heat of night. It felt like the oppressive heat before a thunderstorm that would never come. There was never enough moisture in the atmosphere of Xanxia for rain or even cloud cover. Always muggy yet never thunderous. Lev hated it instantly.

There were lumbering beasts with passenger saddles lined up along the roadway, mahouted by varying alien species all wearing the brand of a Free Labourer on their faces. They waved and hooted and whistled, vying for his attention. He ignored them all, walking past them to the more modernistic transport pod point.

A scanner automatically ran a thin beam of light over his face. There were rules against covert credit scanners. He felt the tickle of a data request which he authorised with a thought. A pod swished up and popped open.

While he settled back in the self moulding recliner and it whisked him across the city – quickly, safely and relatively privately – he stared up at the darkening sky, watching the stars start to glint. In places he could just distinguish some of the brighter stars as high orbital docking buoys twinkling in the system sun.

Some people felt very small, looking up and out at the vastness of space. They felt small and lost and fragile, minuscule and mortal beneath the glare of the fires of the Universe, the vacuum gulf either an eternal barrier or the hungry monster waiting to devour them.

Lev did not feel such things when he saw space. He felt a deep and powerful hunger; a craving for something that he could not put words or thought to. He felt an itch in his shoulders as though he should be doing something, restlessness in his brain that he could not explain. He saw the specks of distant fire reduced to twinkling diamonds and felt not fear but desire. He saw the drifting expanse not as something to recoil from but as something that he was driven to see, to experience, to know. He took part in journeys from one Arc of the 'verse to another without hesitation, taking to himself experiences that would drive others mad and making them his own.

When Lev saw space it made him yearn for something that felt lost but that he had never known. It never made him afraid. Sometimes he felt sad in a quiet and indefinable way; most often he was curious and adventurous.

The transport pod blipped at him gently, drawing his awareness away from the view and back to the task at hand. He set up a quick data connection with the pod navigational system and a moment later had a full map of Xanxia unfolding inside his head. His eyes unfocused a little while he concentrated: the map was fully interactive at many levels of zoom. It came with a publicly accessible directory of notable entities; both corporate and otherwise. He found Esk's public profile tucked away at a discreetly low level of the directory, little more than a name and address. The address was one of the elite spires that leaned up from the primitive adobe faced squalor of the city proper and twisted up into the sky like a claw of spun glass and steel.

She knew he would be coming. She had sent him the date:location information. Lev had registered as a buyer under one of his mainstream identities. He knew that she would have been monitoring the list of registered buyers for his name. She had probably known he was on his way the moment he opened comms with Xanxia Orbital for the acquisition of docking rights.

She knew he would be coming. He knew she would be at home, waiting for him.

*

The transport pod skimmed to a halt outside one of the lower levels of Spire Three. The delicately constructed building wound upwards, almost impossibly high in the flat indigo sky of twilight. Lev hopped out, presenting his face expressionlessly to the security booth that blended almost seamlessly into the architecture by the door.

Sir. A security guard said politely, stepping outside. He was a low-caste Mar'gai: small for his species. Standing on his hind legs he was barely six and a half feet tall. His fur was short and currently a deferential mottled grey and he wore a harness across his upper body that denoted his rank rather than having any permadye colours inked into his shoulder tufts.

The Mar'gai was a race very unlike humanoids, of which there were many species indeed. They possessed four long and very mobile limbs of equal length and mobility, which ended in long prehensile fingers (or toes depending on how you looked at it). Their torsos were solid and muscular with no obvious genitalia or other parts visible through the long fur that coated every inch of their skin. In comparison to this agile and mobile body, their heads could often appear as though they had been attached as an afterthought, with skull shape not dissimilar in shape and size to human. That was about where any similarity began and also ended; they possessed muzzles, a mouth lined with a triple row of very sharp teeth, and eyes that could rotate quite independently of each other. The head could rotate at 180 degree angles from facing forward, and possessed a degree of tilt necessary to enable perfect comfort for walking on two limbs or on four.

In short, they were predators in a way that the ancient humans had only ever been able to have wet dreams about.

The wolf-like muzzle was of course quite incapable of forming any Human words of any dialect, far less had the vocal chords. He had spoken in Mar'gai, Lev's ears had dutifully received the sounds and Lev's internal translation software delivered the understandable variation almost simultaneously. Lev had spent far too long in the distant past with Esk: he understood a lot of intonation and fur colour inference, but the growls and yips of the language itself were complex.

Visiting. Lev turned his face a touch towards the security guard, who dutifully unclipped a scanner from his chest harness.

Your host?

Yar'min'esk Car'dojta Rine.

Are you expected?

I should imagine so. A half smile, though he was careful not to show teeth. He had no business posturing to this low-caste, though had he been in a more mischievous mood he might have baited him a little to see if he could get a hint of iridescent angry red running underneath the mottled grey of the fur.

The scanner flicked out its familiar beam and there was a moment of silence. Lev waited, knowing that the security guard was dealing with the internal network connections required to accord or deny access.

You are cleared, sir. A nod, a deferential step-aside, and the mirrored glass frontage of the building rippled aside to let him pass through.

Lev walked inside. The glass rippled closed behind him, leaving him in a corridor wide enough to accommodate the bulk of a Tremotha and high enough for an ArchSeraphic to stretch out to full wingspan while in flight. The air tasted cool and fresh, a slight tang of something earthy and organic underlying taste and smell. This was a Mar'gai Spire: they kept the air and gravity the way their species liked it best.

The building needed no map, no staff, no directions. As soon as he set foot inside, his neural receptor received a firm data handshake from a concept that called itself SpireThird. He didn't know straight away if SpireThird was a full Intelligence, a clever AI, or a networked Real Operator: SpireThird didn't say or indicate and it was considered one of the rudest things to ask without good reason. Lev agreed the connection: to refuse would have guaranteed him ejection from the building.

SpireThird@Xanxia

| Welcome to Spire Three of Xanxia, Coraru Lukasz Sporle. Your neural interface now contains innate directions to the abode of Yar'min'esk Car'dojta Rine. You currently have one-time permission to visit. Please speak with your host if you require these permissions extending.

5: Proposition

At Esk's door, Lev was met and cleared by another two low-caste security guards and then once inside was met and cleared by Esk's household factotum. By the time he made it to the ceremonial bathing chamber, he was bored with being met and cleared; so he waved aside the pair of twinned Ariki slaves whose work it was to ensure he entered the inner sanctum in a suitable condition. They flapped around behind him making panicked noises like deflating air valves as he marched straight through some swinging doors.

The heat hit him like a punch after the cool corridors of Spire Three and the outer rooms, startling a quick sheen of sweat to his skin before he could tweak his inner concept of core temperature upwards by a degree or so. His skin prickled as the adjustment started to take place. Sounds of the jungle assailed him; dark purplish green vines hung from the ceiling and dark bluish green leaves sprouted all around from the soft floor. A small scarlet bird fluttered down, hissed at him, and flew off again.

He pressed on through the undergrowth and found a raised dais further inside the room, layered with exotic furs and leathers of a ridiculous amount of species. This was Esk's receiving room: an extravagant display of wealth and power. She was reclining on the dais. Her fur was long and silky and the deep purple stain of mirth as she turned her muzzle towards him.

Too good to wash before you come in? she growled (and his translator chip dutifully obliged).

Didn't see the point. Lev started stripping off his clothes as he walked towards her. You and I always get sticky anyhow.

Moments later they were entwined. Mar'gai and Human might be very different, but there were certain parts that fitted together rather well.

*

So, you are running under the Sporle identity these days. Esk traced two sharp claws down the contours of his shoulder, pressing hard enough to leave a red mark but not enough to draw blood.

Mmm. Lev agreed with her, not bothering to raise his head or open his eyes.

How delightfully trusting of you.

I suppose you could say that. He cracked one eyelid a fraction and looked at her. Her fur denoted tones of satisfaction and curiosity. Although in warning and out of care for our friendship, you should be reminded that some things do not change that much.

You do not trust me? A ripple of irritated green shivered through her long fur.

You, yes. As much as before. Others? Not always so much, no.

The irritated green shades faded and she poked her muzzle forward to lick at the side of his face gently.

Ah, Lev. You and I used to plan such greatnesses together. Whatever happened to those plans?

"You navigated your way into the wake of a passing