Auric

by Leslie Chase

  “Hello? I am Captain Donovan, the, uh, commander of this vessel.”

  I sighed. The diffident tone of the human’s voice told me all I needed to know: this man would be a disaster in battle. Still, I tried to be positive. This was who we had, and that was that. With luck there would be no battle to fight.

  “Captain. Greetings.” I spoke slowly and clearly. Saw him struggle to follow and gritted my teeth. I would have to do my best and hope enough got through. Keeping my words slow and simple, hoping the humans would be able to follow, I tried to explain.

  “You are in deadly danger. The Silver Band are coming, and they are mighty raiders. Pirates who will take everything that you have.”

  Blank looks from all the humans. Wonderful. Galtrade wasn’t the best language for this, and none of them even spoke that properly. I tried again, as simply as I could. “You are not safe here. You must leave now, there is no time to fully charge your engines.”

  Donovan looked blank, but Tamara translated. It seemed that of all the humans she had the best grasp of the language. Given how difficult it had been for us to talk, that gave me a sinking feeling.

  Captain Donovan cut her off before she finished and I felt myself tensing, claws sliding from their sheathes at the disrespect he showed her.

  Calm. You cannot do anything about it from here anyway. Besides, tearing the captain’s throat out would do nothing to convince the humans to listen to me.

  “We cannot,” Donovan said, speaking loudly as though that would help me understand. “The engine must be…”

  He looked at Tamara and exchanged a few quick words with her in their human language before turning back to me.

  “It must be readied before use. Or it will void the warranty.”

  That last he said in a rush, repeating a phrase he’d memorized without understanding the words. It was infuriating. He cared so much about the warranty that he’d risk his ship, his crew, rather than break it? What kind of a commander was this?

  One who doesn’t understand the dangers he faces, I thought. That was the kindest explanation, anyway. If he had any clue what he’d be up against, Donovan would risk the jump. Whatever deals he had with the akedians, they weren’t worth sacrificing the ship for.

  Tamara looked pained as she listened in, but she didn’t interrupt. And the other female looked lost.

  “You must listen,” I said again. “I am Auric, warrior of the prytheen. Alpha-Captain. Killer. On my blood and my soul I swear this — flee this system, now, or be consumed.”

  No. I’d lost him, lost them all. Too complex or too frightening, I wasn’t sure. How could I make them understand the peril they were in?

  I stood up, lifting myself from the bed with an effort and facing the window. My injuries weren’t quite healed, but they were close enough. Outside, the humans were talking amongst themselves, their language harsh to my ears, and they paid me no attention as I strode to the transparent wall. Not until I slammed a fist into it.

  The captain and the blonde female jumped, startled. Tamara, though, stayed where she was, unfazed by my actions. Her eyes met mine and I could see her mind working, trying to understand. Did she feel the same pull to me that I felt to her? She had to, surely.

  The fates wouldn’t be so unkind as to send me a mate who didn’t feel the same way.

  Leave those thoughts for later, idiot, I told myself. What my mate thought about me wouldn’t matter if we were still here when the Band arrived.

  I slammed a fist into the window again, making sure I had the humans’ attention. Miming an explosion, I pointed to each of them. Gestured a knife across the throat. Death.

  They had to understand the consequences of staying.

  “Leave now, save yourselves,” I said. Slow, clear, resisting the temptation to shout. “Otherwise—”

  Another mimed blade across the throat. That would be the kindest fate in store for them if my ex-comrades caught up with the Wandering Star. Zaren would likely have uses for captives, and I didn’t want to find out what he had in mind.

  But death was a fate I could communicate in simple sign language, and that would have to do.

  The three humans paled, exchanged glances. Tamara put her hand to the window across from me and started to speak.

  “What do you—”

  She cut off as the window went dark, turning back into just another wall panel. Someone had separated us.

  I hammered my fist onto the wall, shouting, demanding that they listen to me. Pointless. The humans probably couldn’t even understand my demands, and if they did, they ignored them.

  Snarling, I prowled the small room. There was barely enough space to stretch out in here, but I had to keep moving. If I stopped, I might think about what was coming. What fate waited for the humans when the Silver Band arrived.

  It had been bad enough when that fate had loomed over humans I didn’t know. Now that Tamara was threatened, my anger overwhelmed me. I would find a way to protect her, I promised myself. She would not suffer for her captain’s foolishness.

  Even if I had to abandon the rest of the humans to the fate they refused to flee.

  5

  Tamara

  Donovan stared at the blank section of wall, his jaw working, and I tried to decide whether it was fear or anger that was taking control of him.

  In my case it was anger. Anger at him for cutting the conversation short. For disregarding the warning Auric had brought us.

  “Captain, we need to know what’s going on,” I said, trying to be diplomatic. “What if he’s telling the truth and we’re in danger?”

  Donovan snorted. “He’s bullshitting us. Don’t let him fool you, he just wants out of his cage.”

  Dr. Orson made a dubious noise but stayed out of the discussion. Great, Doc. Way to back me up.

  “Why would he do that? What does he gain?”

  “I don’t know,” Donovan answered. “Don’t need to, though. Probably he’s planning on robbing us, or maybe he’d try to steal the ship. That’s why he wants us to jump somewhere else, see? If the Wandering Star moves somewhere off-course, he can plunder it at his leisure.”

  I glared at him, but he didn’t seem to notice. Did he think one alien warrior was going to try to steal this whole colony ship on his own?

  Admittedly, from what we’d seen of Auric’s muscles, the careful cat-like grace of his movements, I wouldn’t bet against him. Give him back his weapons and he might well be able to take on every human awake. There were only five of us, after all.

  But then what? Trying to run the ship alone would be crazy, and anyway I felt a strange certainty that he wasn’t lying to us.

  Of course, we might be misunderstanding everything he said. Galtrade had a lot of words for piracy — and wasn’t that a reassuring fact? — but it wasn’t part of the language I’d focused on.

  “Captain, let me try to get more information out of him,” I offered. “Even if it’s a trap, it can’t hurt to know more.”

  “Your time is better spent working on his ship,” he answered. “There’s a lot to learn there. And the Wandering Star’s deck needs to be patched where the alien crashed into it. He’ll keep till we arrive at Arcadia.”

  “But—”

  “No. That’s final.” Donovan turned on his heel, marching towards the sickbay door. “This Auric can spend the rest of the trip locked in the isolation bay, and the colony authorities can make sense of his story when we arrive. They’ll have specialists who speak Galtrade properly.”

  He drummed his fingers on the wall, thinking. For a moment I hoped he’d reconsider, but when he turned towards me, his face was set.

  “You’re not to go near him, understand? As soon as the drive’s charged we’ll be on our way and put this behind us.”

  With that he swept out into the corridor and out of sight, leaving me to stare after him. Dr. Orson made a rude noise and sat down. “Typical. He doesn’t want to hear it, so he won’t. Our fearless captain won’t let anything get
in the way of reaching Arcadia on schedule.”

  “So you believe Auric?” I asked. It would be nice to have someone else who did. But the doctor shook her head.

  “I didn’t say that. We’re not even sure what he’s saying, and look at his armory.” She gestured at the pile of weapons on the table. “Would it really surprise you to find out he’s a pirate?”

  Pursing my lips, I looked unhappily at the heap of knives and guns. Okay, that was a fair point — if he came in peace, why did he come so heavily armed?

  “There’s no way to find out without talking to him,” I pointed out. “Let me back in and I’ll see if I can get some answers.”

  “Nope, can’t do it.” Dr. Orson didn’t look happy about that. “You heard the captain. And I need a good report from him or I’m not getting off the ship at Arcadia.”

  Like everyone on the crew, the doctor depended on Donovan’s good graces if she wanted to make a life for herself on the colony. A bad report and she’d lose her permit and have to ship back to Earth.

  Which won’t help if Auric’s telling the truth and we’re in danger right now, I thought, but her expression made it clear that she wouldn’t listen. Nodding glumly, I left the sickbay to check on my work.

  There wasn’t much to it, to be honest. The repair drones didn’t need my help fixing up the damaged decking, and beyond that there wasn’t much to repair. There weren’t many advantages to working aboard a ship that humans didn’t understand, but at least it made repair work easy.

  I had an itchy feeling in my fingers, though. A desire to understand what I was doing, to understand the tech we’d leased from the akedians. Mr. Mews could control the drones as well as I could, and that frustrated me.

  One thing I’d been looking forward to on Arcadia — as soon as the ship was on the ground, I planned to pull bits apart and seeing how they worked. Not something to risk while we were in space, though.

  Once I’d set the drones their tasks, I sat down and tried to think of anything useful to do. Anything that might get us out of here faster.

  “How are the engines doing?” I asked the virtual cat, and he cleaned his whiskers as the display updated. About what I’d expected: three more days to charge the batteries before we left. I fiddled with the figures, making adjustments and guesses based on the figures in the database.

  In two days’ time we’d have the charge we needed for our next scheduled jump. Maybe a day and a half if we were lucky. Donovan might take the chance and jump early if we could follow the established route. If I didn’t tell him how many of the safety locks I’d have to override to get it to work, anyway.

  If we wanted to leave earlier, though, we’d have to pick a different destination. I tried to imagine his face if I suggested that and didn’t like what I saw. Especially this close to the Tavesh Empire — they were not friendly to intruders.

  “Okay, Mr. Mews, where is in range if we leave now?”

  The interface meowed piteously, making me curse the designer again. Sure, it was cute, but I’d rather have a clear error message.

  “What does that mean?” I sighed. “I’d have to ask McKenzie, is that it?”

  The fake cat nodded, head butting me. Fantastic. That would go well.

  Absently, I mimed scratching the hologram behind the ears. It purred and faded out as I made my way back to the bridge.

  For once, the captain was in his seat. Usually he was content to command from his quarters but an unexpected alien guest was enough to get him out onto the ship he commanded.

  He looked up at me, frowning. “You’re meant to be repairing the deck, Tamara. What are you doing here?”

  “My drones are working on it,” I said. “Nothing I can do to speed them up, and they’ll call me if anything needs my attention, so I figured I’d take the chance to go over some calculations here.”

  His frown deepened but he didn’t argue. We all knew the ship was mostly automated: human crew were needed to command it but there wasn’t much actual work to do.

  “Fine,” he allowed. “Get on with it.”

  “I need some navigation data,” I told him, glancing at McKenzie. The navigator sat at his station, for once with his boots on, looking neater and tidier than I could remember seeing him since launch. Maybe having the captain on the bridge made him uncomfortable.

  “What is it now?” he demanded, glaring at me. “I’ve locked our course in, we’re just waiting on the engines to charge.”

  “Sure, but where could we go if we left right now? With the charge we have, I mean.” I put on my best smile, trying to disarm the tension in the room as the captain frowned down at me.

  “Listening to that alien’s nonsense, Tamara? I expected better of you.”

  “I’d rather be prepared than not,” I told him, shrugging. “Besides, it’s not like we’ve got much better to do with our time.”

  “You know better than anyone we can’t jump until the drive reaches full charge. The safety protocols won’t let us.”

  Give me half an hour with a wrench and I’ll see to those safety protocols, I thought but didn’t say. The captain wasn’t the kind of man who’d like me messing with the engine room, even to give him more control of his ship.

  Instead I stood quietly, not giving him anything to argue with. He could have ordered me off the bridge, of course, but Donovan didn’t like confrontations.

  With a heavy sigh, he gave in. “Fine. Mr. McKenzie, satisfy her curiosity.”

  McKenzie shot me an aggrieved glare. Not only did he have to wear his boots, but he had to work as well? I tried not to let my amusement show. His glare hardened; obviously I hadn’t been completely successful.

  Turning back to his console and muttering under his breath, he set to work. It didn’t take long before the main screen showed a display of stars highlighted in green.

  “There. If we jump right now, those stars are in range,” McKenzie said with poor grace. “None of them are on our course, and any of them would add at least a month of recharging to our travel time. Most of them are too dim to be useful, and the best one is in the Tavesh Empire.”

  I looked at the display. None of the stars shown had names, just numbers. That wasn’t uncommon — humanity had only been exploring space for a few short decades, and we only had a few ships rated for travel to unknown stars. The akedians were reluctant to outfit us with high-end gear, and no one wanted to blunder into an occupied system in a worn-out ship like the Wandering Star.

  Which was why we stuck to our fully-mapped course like glue, and why Captain Donovan was reluctant to even consider heading out into the unknown. It wasn’t just cowardice — there could be anything out there.

  Not every star would do, anyway. We needed a bright one to recharge the ship from, and there weren’t that many choices. Any star would work with enough time, but some would take years.

  “Happy now?” Captain Donovan asked, looking up at the map with distaste. “No known stars are in range. Even if I trusted that alien, I won’t risk my ship on a blind jump.”

  I bit my lip and tried to come up with an argument he might listen to. Without evidence, it seemed impossible to convince him, and I wasn’t even sure I should. Sure, I believed Auric, but I couldn’t explain why.

  For some reason I was certain he wouldn’t lie to me.

  Great. And who else did I believe like that? I told myself this was different from the guys back on Earth, but I’d thought the same thing every time I’d fallen for some asshole. Maybe this time it really was different, maybe not.

  Before I figured out how to respond, a loud BING took it out of my hands. The Wandering Star’s sensors had picked up something new and I had a sinking feeling I knew what it was.

  Cursing, McKenzie cleared the starscape from the screen and pulled up the navigation display. A dozen new contacts showed, and more flickered into existence as we watched.

  We’d missed our chance to leave unnoticed. The aliens were here in force.

  All I could do
was watch, frozen in place, as ship after ship exited hyperspace. They arrived scattered around the star system, some a day’s flight away, others under an hour.

  A pattern that would let them search the whole system quickly, I realized, feeling a shiver of nerves run through me. It felt as though we were being hunted. Perhaps we were.

  “Get me a channel to those ships,” Captain Donovan snapped. He sounded decisive, and it was a shame I could see his sweating face. Without that, I might have believed he felt in control of the situation.

  Slipping into the communications chair, I tried to connect. It wasn’t hard, they were broadcasting on an open channel, and with a few flicked switches I put them on the main screen.

  Another alien looked down at us, blue skinned and scarred. Golden studs protruded from his head, and his smile seemed more like a predator baring its teeth than a display of friendship.

  “I am Hresh-Captain Zaren of the prytheen,” he said in Galtrade, speaking slow and clear. “We seek one of our own, Auric. He is a vresin.”

  The three of us exchanged glances. None of us knew that last word, and I didn’t trust Zaren as far as I could throw him. Which from the look of the muscular alien wouldn’t be far.

  “I do not know that word,” Captain Donovan replied carefully, slowly. I plugged Mr. Mews into the communication station, hoping that he could find it in the dictionary database.

  “A breaker of laws?” Zaren tried, just as the dictionary returned ‘fugitive.’ If nothing else, this adventure was doing wonders for my Galtrade vocabulary. I set Mr. Mews to download the entire database in case it came in handy.

  “I see,” Donovan said, visibly relaxing. Switching to English, he turned to McKenzie and me.

  “That explains things,” he said, relief showing on his face. “No wonder Auric wanted us to jump blind — he wanted our help to get away from the posse chasing him.”

  “Or he’s telling the truth and they’re using this excuse to get close to the Wandering Star,” I protested. “We can’t just trust this guy.”