Sayuri - Prologue

"Mayday, mayday! Helsinki Station, this is Captain Asbjørnsen! Trader-class łyzør'vÿnðe ship, The North Wind, in need of assistance! Repeat, trader-ship North Wind in need of immediate assistance! Mayday! Helsinki Station!"

Blood dripped into Sayuri Asbjørnsen's eyes from the deep gash above her forehead as another torpedo slammed into her ship, ripping through the outer hull. The entire łyzør'vÿnðe starship shuddered under the savage impact. She grabbed the edge of one of the front-bank control panels to keep from falling as smoke stung her eyes. She blinked hard to try to clear her vision. Why was it so hard to see?

She realized the illumination paneling overhead had blinked out, the power killed with the last torpedo blast. The only light on the Main Bridge came from the flashing crimson warning lights on the walls.

"Boreal?" Sayuri cried as cold panic frosted her blood. "Are you okay?"

A series of shrill, pain-filled clicks and beeps stung her ears as she staggered, trying to get to the captain's seat. She had to jack in, had to see what the damage was. She had to make sure he was all right!

Sparks exploded from one of the manual control panels; they seared her wrists and face, the skin unprotected by her company-issued uniform. Sayuri yelped and jerked to one side, away from the shower of red-hot shards of metal. The ship's speakers issued a loud, apologetic beep. She risked waving a hand at one of the vis-sensors embedded in the wall.

"I'm okay," she called. "Hang on, I'm almost there."

She stumbled into the captain's seat just as another torpedo exploded against their hull. Buckling herself in, she shoved her hair out of the way to allow the spine-jack to slip in at the base of her neck. Immediately the schematics flashed across her eyes and a voice rumbled inside her head.
Sayuri, I'm tapped out, I need time to reload my shots and we can't take much more damage! I don't know how long I can maintain life-support! You're going to have to abandon shi—

"That's not an option! I'm not leaving you," she snapped, trying not to choke on the smoke spewing onto the Main Bridge. Another control panel exploded in a fountain of hot metal shards and crackles of electromagnetic energy. "Mayday, Helsinki Station! Someone! Anyone! This is Captain Sayuri Asbjørnsen of Polaris Corporation, we're taking heavy damage! We are under attack by Nĵörðunn ships! Repeat, under attack by three Nĵörðunn ships! Mayday, mayday! Please respond…Boreal?" Dark, slanted eyes stared at the rippling stars on the main view-screen. The schematics glowing across her eyelids flashed and shifted. Her mouth fell open as the warping space twisted and writhed. Somehow Sayuri managed to croak, "What is that?"

I…don't know…

On screen in front of her, the stars wavered and shifted, rippling as if underwater. While claxons shrieked and the crimson lights flashed from the overhead backup-illumination panels of the Main Bridge, Sayuri stared at the sliver of pulsing ambiance ripping through the space between the shifting stars. Because she was jacked in, she knew that glow was shortwave ultraviolet light—something regular humans couldn’t normally see. Only being hooked up to the ship's vis-sensors let her see it.

Another barrage of torpedoes shoved the ship toward the extending line of UV light. The entire łyzør'vÿnðe ship shivered like a frightened horse. Some of the interior Bridge paneling groaned and began to buckle. The engines screamed as they shifted automatically into reverse, trying to pull away from whatever Sayuri was looking at. The ship jolted, shuddered. Didn’t move.

Sayuri, I'm stuck! Boreal yelped.

"What do you mean, you're stuck? Uhn!" A jagged piece of paneling shot off from the wall, zooming in front of her face. She felt the trickle of fresh, warm blood down her forehead before the slicing pain registered. "Ow…Boreal…" She raised a shaking hand to her forehead. Her fingers came away dripping blood.

You're okay, he told her. You're still jacked in. The bio-connector's reading that you're injured, but it's just a cut. I can see it on my vis-sensors. You're okay. Humans always bleed a lot from head wounds…Boreal snarled something in Drókvæðä, his native language, that didn’t translate into English, Japanese, or Icelandic, but she knew it wasn’t good. I can't shake us loose from the gravity of whatever that is! We're already stuck in its event horizon!

She didn’t bother asking if he'd done everything he could. She knew he had. He knew the ship's systems better than she ever could. Biting her lip, she said, "Give me visual on the Nĵörðunn."
Immediately an image of the three Nĵörðunn ŧrø'ayłe cruisers—their version of a warship—appeared on screen. She stared at the spiky, dark gray behemoths indiscriminately firing their weapons at her. Another volley launched itself even as she watched, slamming into The North Wind hard enough to make her bite her tongue. She spat coppery blood, wiped the sleeve of her captain's jacket across her forehead to mop up some of the blood oozing over her skin, and narrowed her eyes.

"Why are you guys firing at us?" She muttered, even as the strange rift-like slice between the stars yanked them further toward it. "I'm nobody. Just a contracted trade-captain and I just barely got promoted, I'm only twenty-three, I haven’t even really done anything, I wasn’t in your space…so why are you after me?"

She closed her eyes. Schematics still glowed against the darkness of her eyelids. The readings from the rift didn’t make any sense to her, though. "Boreal, what does all this mean? Can you process it?"

It's dimensional distortion, he replied, sounding torn between panic and awe. On at least five levels.

"English," she muttered. Sweat chilled on her skin as a control panel short-circuited off to her right, sparks erupting from the front hatch covering its wire-and-microchip innards. No way could she pilot the ship manually now. She'd have to do it jacked, or not at all.

It's a wormhole.

Her eyes flew open. "What? To where?"

Don't know, he said softly. And we can't get out of its gravity well.

Suppressing panic, Sayuri calculated. Chewing her lip, she stared at the attacking ŧrø'ayłe cruiser as her own ship shuddered and threatened to fly apart. They couldn’t outrun the Nĵörðunn. They'd been playing cat-and-mouse games for the last three weeks, ever since her graduation from Polaris Corporation's Flight Academy and her promotion from desk jockey to ship's captain, when she'd been stupid and decided to take that job…

Ugh, she'd been an idiot. And now there was no way she could outrun the Nĵörðunn. A łyzør'vÿnðe trading ship wasn’t military, it couldn’t go up against a ŧrø'ayłe warship in a fight or in a race. And if she couldn’t outrun them, they'd blow her and Boreal to pieces. But this wormhole…

She'd heard about wormholes from her father. Having a renowned quantum astrophysicist for a father had its upsides. She knew wormholes occurred naturally near certain types of quasars and pulsars. The Blue Anderson Quasar was only ninety parsecs away; that was close enough. But she'd never seen a wormhole before. Something about the electromagnetic output from the rift made them impossible to capture visually. Wormholes could potentially distort time and space, so if Sayuri went in, she had no idea where or when she'd come out.

But if she didn’t go in, the Nĵörðunn would kill her…and Boreal. Boreal, who'd been her best friend since she was five years old and her parents had apprenticed her to Polaris Corporation so she could be a łyzør'vÿnðe captain. She couldn’t let anything happen to him.

The ship rocked hard as they took another hit.

Backup shields are down, Boreal said. Great. They'd been patchy before, barely covering anything but the Main Bridge. Now they were completely gone?

She nodded, coming to a decision. Her instructors hadn’t prepared her for anything like this at the company-owned flight school she'd attended for the last eighteen years…but she was Sayuri Asbjørnsen. She was the captain of The North Wind. She was responsible for the life of her crewmate, and she wasn’t a coward.

She could handle this.

"Boreal, take us straight into the wormhole."
With the breaches in the hull, there's a chance we might not survive going through. The excess gravity's putting considerable strain on our hull integrity.

"Well, we definitely won't survive staying here! Come on! That's an order!"

Aye-aye, Captain, he replied, and a semi-colon and a parenthesis appeared in the middle of the laser-visual displayed against Sayuri's vision as the engines shifted out of reverse and kicked into high speed. Sayuri bared her teeth in a grin as The North Wind lurched into swift motion. They're chasing us.

"In fifteen seconds, they won't be. Nĵörðunn can't go through wormholes; the temporal displacement does something weird to their organs, remember?" That fact was one of the only things that had allowed the Terran Alliance to win the war against them twenty years ago.

Crossing the rift threshold in fifteen…fourteen…thirteen…

"Hey, Boreal?" More alarms began blaring as the gravity of the wormhole began stressing the hull. A hideous, shrieking groan echoed through the Bridge. Sayuri leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes again. Her heart beat hard against her sternum. She tightened her fingers around the arms of the captain's seat. "Just in case we do explode in a horrible shower of molten shrapnel and space slag…you know I love you, right?"

I know. The computer chirped and whistled at her as Boreal's voice filled her mind, soft and affectionate. Same goes, you punk. But I don't plan on blowing the two of us up today, thank you muchly. I've got a little more class than that. Hang on to your captain's wings, Captain. In five…four…

Just before they crossed the threshold of the wormhole, a sharp buzzing filled Sayuri's skull, the hum that came when her æspÿrøn—the extrasensory ability that allowed her to successfully pilot a ship like Boreal—manifested itself for a brief flash of time.

An image appeared, superimposed across her closed eyelids. It was a guy, with skin the color of burnt caramel and eyes like rich, dark chocolate. His head was shaved and he had a short, black goatee which made him look older, but his gaze seemed young. Maybe her age. Maybe a little older than her, but not by much. He wore a white, short-sleeved shirt and trousers of some rough, antique-blue material.

Those chocolate eyes were kind. So kind. But the fear on his face screamed at her even as he opened his mouth to yell her name…and then the vision disappeared. Sayuri frowned as a surge of phantom-something—loss? Sorrow?—shot through her chest.
Three…Boreal said as the ship groaned and the hull shrieked. Two…one…