The Mirrorverse
Chapter 65

Ka

“Mate, if there’s anything I can do,” Ka told Les earnestly. “Anything.”

“I just need leaving alone. You’ve got your own worries,” Les was sitting on his bed in his room, where he had been since he had arrived on the ship. He was pretty grey around the gills, having been existing on a liquid diet of late.

“Yeah, well, I’m going outside for a while, watch the stars. I’ll bring you some food in a bit.” Ka sighed and wandered out the door, casting a side look at the gaunt face of his friend as he closed the door behind him.

Ka meandered to the cargo bay a floor below that set of sleeping quarters, an exact mirror image of the other side of the symmetrical ship. He remembered the seller telling them that they could lock down the two oval ends, separating them from the bridge, and therefore from each other. Each had its own engines, control deck, crew quarters and cargo holds. Ka remembered thinking how cool that was. Now nothing seemed cool.

Maya wanted nothing to do with him. Every time he tried to give or take comfort she made an excuse and left, leaving him miserable and alone. He knew he had done nothing wrong, and knew she just needed time. Hoped that she just needed time.

Ka needed space too, he needed out of the ship, so he climbed into a space suit, affixed the rope mere mortals needed to follow back to reboard the ship, and headed out the air lock.

He floated away from the Nysterie, attached to it by a rope. He watched the stars, thinking how much the astronauts of his Earth would love to do what he was doing. Sometime later, he turned to return to the ship, but his heart stopped. The ship wasn’t there. In its place was an unfamiliar ship, an over enlarged monstrosity of bits sticking out and no smooth edges like the Nysterie.

He started breathing heavily, aware that his air was running out. The ship, as large as it was, was making no sound.

He felt himself moving towards the ship. He certainly wasn’t forcing the movement, he was just a lamb in space. He realised the ship was moving towards him, though perspective was hard to come by at that moment.

As the ship drew closer, Ka cursed his immobile weightlessness as he hung there, wondering if it was going to run him over. He looked back over his life, back to childhood, being too scared to say boo to a goose. What would that child say if he knew he would die by getting run over by a spaceship? It was simply too far fetched for him to have believed, even Ka’s vivid imagination hadn’t stretched that far.

A small craft left the ship and headed towards Ka. He was relieved to know he was neither going to asphyxiate nor get run over, although the latter remained somewhat undecided. He wondered what species they’d be, were they friendly? He tried to tell himself that a civilisation capable of making and flying that sort of ship were not going to be barbarians. But then the overwhelming shabbiness of the ship didn’t exactly support that theory.

The rope he was still attached to was seized by someone leaning out the small ship in a suit, so he was unable to determine the species.

Ka was being pulled in to a craft that looked a bit longer than a double decker London bus. It wasn’t as smooth as their Nysterie, it had what looked like an exoskeleton with panels between.

Then he was in, the airlock door shut behind him and the space filled with air. The human face in the suit in front of him removed his helmet, and indicated that Ka should do the same. He was as tall as Syrhahn, perhaps taller, it was hard to tell from down where Ka was. He had always been used to being one of the tallest folk around, only now he was a midget.

He concentrated on escaping the suit, a feat comparable with escaping a straitjacket, only without the added bonus that someone else can just free you.

He stumbled to his feet, his skin relieved to be out of the rapidly increasing heat in the space suit designed for freezing temperatures, not a warm ship.

The much taller man spoke in a language that sounded like Russian, while Ka stared at him, shrugging his shoulders in incomprehension. The man pulled out a device like the translator that Josh used and spoke again, holding out the device and motioning for Ka to speak too.

“Hey I’m Ka and I’m a long way from home.” he told it, assuming it worked like Josh’s. It spoke to the man in his language and he nodded.

“Come,” the man said in English.

Ka followed him through a maze of corridors, and ascended many flights of stairs until they reached the top of the ship, and entered the control deck.

Panoramic windows encircled the large room, ending at the slightly dingy metal ceiling. Clearly space dust was a problem, as it was hard to see through the windows because of the black grime all over the outside of them, and some Ka thought he saw on the inside.

Ka observed that the ship was probably once a magnificent beauty, but now was crumbling like an unwanted ocean liner in the breakers yard. That did not bode well for Ka, as he doubted the type of people who couldn’t care for a ship, could care for a captive.

He had just been wondering how much worse things could get when life decided to show him.

“What the hell just happened?” the translator dictated in its accent not dissimilar to Syrhahn and Xhisara’s, but monotonal on top of that. It was the same as the voice on the translator on the planet they bought the ship, although that was not surprisingly as they were not far from that planet and in the same universe.

The man had unkempt long brown hair and a few days growth of bright red stubble interspersed with white and brown. He was wearing a sweater and jeans above black boots. If he hadn’t been a foot and a half taller than him, Ka would have said he looked fairly normal. For a redneck Russian.

“I appear to have been abandoned,” replied Ka simply, unsure of what he could or couldn’t tell them. He knew Maya was going to come barging in once she realised he was missing and he didn’t need them to be waiting for her.

“How did that ship disappear like that? What technology was being employed?” the man snapped his words out at speed, but they came out the translator as slow as ever.

“No idea.” Ka looked shocked and amazed, shaking his head from side to side. He was after all an actor.

“Why were you outside?” Ka’s lack of explanation was not impressing him.

“I wanted some space,” he looked panicked while he said that, though he would have loved to have said it deadpan and see if the pun transcended the language barrier.

He didn’t see the blow coming, only felt it strike the back of his head. Ka dropped to his knees, holding his head before checking to see if he was bleeding, which he wasn’t. He was dragged roughly to his feet before the questions started again.

With his head spinning it was hard to concoct a story, so he could only add to the one he had been creating prior to the blow. I’m going to get the bastard, he thought as he turned around to see the equally unshaven ogre-sized dark haired man who had hit him.

“How did the ship disappear like that?” the one with the ginger beard demanded.

“I told you I don’t know! If I’d have known it could do that, I wouldn’t have been outside!” he cried indignantly, still rubbing his head.

“What were you doing outside?” the same guy roared, leaning over Ka so he had to crane his neck to see the taller man.

“Getting away from the ship, from them, looking at the stars,” he wasn’t sure what he was going to tell him about who ‘them’ were and it was hard to think. “I was on a rope, I was going to pull myself back in,” he added, knowing the rope had come with him, so that corroborated his story.

“Why would you want to go outside?” the man looked at Ka like he was either mad or lying. Ka needed to assure him that he was neither, and he needed to do it fast. Where the hell is Maya? Xhisara? Why haven’t they come for me?

“I’ve never been in space before,” Ka told the man honestly. “I’ve never been on a ship and I’ve never seen the stars like that. This is all new to me. All of it!”

“Why are you so tiny? What is the matter with you?” he barked, and Ka was glad he seemed to be taking his explanations, to a point anyway.

“You wouldn’t believe me,” Ka told him, ducking and stepping aside in case the brown haired bloke behind him swung again, which he hadn’t.

“My patience is waning,” Ka could hear the aggression in his Russian-like language.

Ka wracked his brains for the name of the planet they had bought the ship on, since it was the only planet in the universe he knew the name of, but came up with nothing. No-one had told him the name of the planet.

“I grew up in Japan on Earth. I have a rare condition which makes me smaller. I grew up in an orphanage, then lived on an island living off the Earth. I caught a flight with some people to get off Earth and go into space. I have nothing, just the clothes I am wearing. Children’s clothes.”

It was his best effort. He didn’t even know if there was a planet called Earth in that universe, nor if it was inhabited were there actually an Earth. But it was the only planet name he knew, and he blagged it the best he could.

“You’re right,” the man sneered. “I don’t believe you.”

“Got a better explanation?” asked Ka, dodging to the side again, this time effectively avoiding a blow.

“Government, you are from Cxielo base. They work on the weapons there,” his inquisitor replied.

“I don’t care about your government, I don’t know anything about them!” Ka was exasperated. Now he was accused of being a spy?

“I know you are lying,” the man continued.

“I am not lying! Why would I lie? Why would I have been left behind? For Christ’s fucking ass’s sake, I am just a man! I am...” at that point Ka took a heavier blow to the head than the last one, which put him on the floor. He could hear the ginger bearded one shouting at the other one, clearly angry their little question and answer session had been cut short.

Ka was unceremoniously picked up and carried in a semi-conscious state, feeling himself being laid down on a hard surface. He tried to look around but the room span, concussion, he thought as he slipped out of consciousness.

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