The Exalting

by Dan Allen

  “About ten feet from a trunk,” Dana said.

  “There you go and ruin it,” Turigan mumbled as he lay down on Dana’s left. “Young girls and their honesty. Maka-ka bless ‘em.”

  Jila lay down on the other side of Turigan. “One more song?”

  “Go to sleep, you sagging whiner,” Turigan groaned.

  “Maka-ka keep you,” Jila mumbled drowsily.

  “And your kin,” Turigan echoed.

  “Amen,” Dana whispered, realizing in the same moment that she had just broken yet another of Norr’s laws by reverencing a foreign supreme—and she had no idea what sort of supreme Maka-ka was.

  Judging by the bargemen, not bad.

  * * *

  “A girl with a stolen greeder—what would I know about that?”

  Dana jerked awake at the sound of Turigan’s guttural drawl.

  She slowly lifted a corner of her blanket and froze at the sight of a ranger’s boot only a few yards away.

  “Not sure you’ve got any jurisdiction this far.” It was Jila’s voice. His even larger boots were between Dana and the ranger.

  “You got a bill of sale for that load of sayathenite?” the ranger asked. Dana was sure she’d heard his voice before. He was one of the rough-handed rangers that had hauled her back to Norr.

  “Might. You got somewhere to go with two broken legs?” Apparently the big Torsican had no respect for a nosey lawman from a free city.

  “Is that a threat?” the ranger said.

  “Let’s just say when a wandering ranger pokes his nose in a bargeman’s business, the bargeman’s like to do some poking of his own—with a twelve-foot pole.” The tip of Jila’s pole thumped against the ground.

  “Oh, leave the man’s legs alone, Jila.” Turigan sounded peaceable, but he had moved directly behind the ranger, where he could pin the man’s arms should he provoke a fight with Jila. “You’re just angry because you haven’t had your breakfast yet.”

  “You’re right about that.”

  “Anyway,” Turigan said. “For your information, we saw a bloody carcass of a greeder about a half day back at a wellspring. Afraid your greeder thief must have gone looney and drank some tainted water.”

  “Awful sight,” Jila added. “Probably still some bones left if you’re interested in a souvenir.”

  “Was there a girl there?”

  “We didn’t interview the vultures,” Jila said with a derisive snort. “What do you think we are, druids?”

  “Best look for yourself,” Turigan said, again taking a more agreeable tone, though he stood with one foot slightly forward—a fighting stance. “It ain’t our business to go poking around dead carcasses. We’re on a schedule.”

  “Well, I should like to see your bill of freight at least. Can you provide a manifest?”

  Dana froze. From what she could see of the ranger’s boot, it looked as if he were leaning in her direction.

  “Are you yanking my sifa?” Jila blurted out. “Take a look for yourself. It’s a load of sayathenite sitting right there on the barge. Or did you want to take a look at it from the bottom of the boat? I can arrange that if you bend over.”

  “Ah, Jila. Give the man a rest. He’s an Aesican. You know how they are about rules and papers. Besides, his mountain diet is probably a little low on fiber.”

  “I’ll take your names and your statements.” The ranger reached into a pocket for a writing pad.

  Jila gave a low growl. “I haven’t got time for this nonsense. You take your ugly face and get out of my sight. Go find your bird carcass and leave an honest man to his business.”

  A short silence ensued where Dana imagined there was some posturing, with displays of superior sifa, before the ranger’s boots turned and walked across the meadow, ostensibly to the trading road that followed the river.

  “Quick, Dana,” Turigan hissed. “Get on the raft.”

  Dana threw back the blanket, grabbed her boots, and made a dash across the grass to the mooring. She leapt from the shore to the boat and was joined moments later by the bargemen with their poles.

  “Wouldn’t cry if I heard big zap from that direction,” Jila said, waving his pole at the clearing. “One satisfied rhynoid. Two satisfied bargemen.”

  “That’s not kind,” Dana said. She knelt to tie on her shoes as the two men pushed away from the shore. “Although he must have been a complete idiot not to have seen me under the blanket.”

  “Well, Jila’s coat was lying over you, and quite frankly, you’re not that large.”

  “Don’t defend that man,” Jila said. “He’s an idiot all right.”

  “I’m just glad you had the presence of mind to stay still,” Turigan said. “It might have gotten rough if he had seen you.”

  Dana swallowed. He was right. Then again . . . Dana’s throat clenched as the pieces came together. “I think he probably did see me. He just couldn’t fight you both by himself, so he pretended not to while he got a good look at you both. He’s probably gone to get backup.”

  “Oh,” Turigan said, his sifa drooping. “That does make more sense.”

  “We’ve been hoodwinked, you ka-forsaken noodle of a barge-bilge sack!” Jila ranted.

  Turigan took an errant swing at Jila with his push pole. “And you were the one who did all the talking, you blighted, dimwit son-of-a-twitching-rhynoid sap sucker.”

  “Boys!” Dana flared her superior sifa, as if chastising children. “How far to the port?”

  “Still twelve hours.”

  Dana glanced toward the bank where the ranger doubtless had climbed onto his greeder and was covering ground ten times as fast as the slow-moving barge.

  “He’s going to set a trap for me.”

  Chapter 14

  At The Broken Anvil, the Wodynian cantina half-aft on the flagship Excalibur, Jet nearly dropped his empty glass.

  Monique was sitting at a nearby table, bouncing her leg. She hadn’t noticed him. Jet didn’t consider this an especially good sign. First shift was barely over—the equivalent of mid-afternoon—and there were only four customers.

  He sauntered over to her table. “Hey, Monique!”

  “Oh—hi. You’re awake, too?”

  “You bet.” Jet took a seat.

  Her eyes narrowed. “What are you doing out of cryo?”

  Jet smiled. “Just . . . waiting for you, I guess.”

  “No, seriously.” Her tone dropped. “What are you doing?”

  She doesn’t know. Jet fought to keep a straight face. She doesn’t know it’s my mission.

  “Oh, you know. Somebody was in a tight spot, and then somebody else was like, ‘Get Jet Naman to do it,’ so . . . here I am.”

  Monique raised a questioning eyebrow.

  Jet considered telling her, but it seemed like a sort of cocky one-ups-man kind of thing to do. “What about you?” Jet said. “Did somebody finally decide they needed your brain more than your gun-toting skills?”

  Monique sipped her drink. “My gun-toting skills aren’t so bad.”

  “Yeah, I was sorry to lose you to Alpha squad.”

  “That’s what happens when you get promoted.”

  “Really? Congrats.” Jet hadn’t heard about that. He raised his empty glass. “To being Corporals.”

  “Corporals.” She poured some of her drink into his glass and clinked hers against it.

  Jet placed his elbows on the table and leaned forward. “I’d love to hear what you’re up to.”

  Monique laughed and leaned back, one leg still crossed over the other. “You’ve got time?”

  Now we’re getting somewhere.

  Jet scooted his chair closer. “Sure.”

  “Well, I’ve been mining the satellite image database from the advance AI survey on Xahna.” She began talking at a speed that made Jet dizzy. “I’ve been attempting to build a political map of Xahna with geo-linguistics using street signs and some unsupervised machinelearning methods.”

  Jet was only catching about a thi
rd of what she saying. But it sounded like she was single-handedly cracking the political system of Xahna without even having set foot on the planet.

  Don’t look nervous. Play it cool. Jet tapped the table and ordered a random drink from the scrolling menu. He was determined to make it through the conversation.

  “It’s amazing you much you can learn from a large dataset if you get the data representation right—” she continued, without taking a breath.

  A tall glass of bubbling mint-colored liquid rose out of the dispensing station in the center of the table. Jet took a long swig, and immediately the room started changing color.

  Oh, no. Jet tapped the table to pull up his bill. He had ordered Avalonian Spieldampfer. The drink was rather infamous.

  His ears began to ring.

  No. No. No.

  This was the first time Monique had ever really opened up to him about something she cared about, and he had just ordered a drink that was going to make him go completely deaf. Someone usually ordered it when the person next to them at the bar was really annoying.

  It was relationship suicide.

  “Well, recently—in a sociological sense,” she said. “Could be decades, could be centuries—a large region of Torsica, the big continent, was annexed into some kind of empire under a single ka—those are their deity rulers.”

  “Sounds like we got ourselves another Hitler or Genghis Khan,” Jet said, hoping he wasn’t talking ridiculously loud. It was getting hard to hear. That was the point of Spieldampfer.

  Please don’t notice . . .

  “It’s too early to tell,” Monique said. “But it’s fascinating just knowing about this empire. In fact—”

  Jet considered the idea of first contact with a man worshipped as a deity who ruled an entire empire.

  That sort of first contact I usual handle with a gun.

  Of course, he wasn’t supposed to take sides on Xahnan internal conflicts.

  But we don’t have time for them to figure out their politics. As he faded into increasing levels of incoherence, Jet decided that once he got to Xahna, he would choose a side and let his 0.50 cal do the negotiating.

  The other thing he was certain of was that he could no longer hear Monique talking. He stared at her lips and nodded as she spoke quickly.

  It was only a matter of time before she stopped talking and asked him a question. She’ll kill me if she recognizes the drink.

  Then when she found out he was in charge of first contact, she would kill him again for toying with her. But it was too late now.

  Jet truly did want to impress her. But one-upping her wasn’t the way to do it. And playing her wasn’t either. He was in a bit of spot, and the only way out seemed to be to drain the glass before she recognized it.

  Or I could just fess up.

  Jet’s vision got shaky. He couldn’t tell if his head was shaking or just his eyes.

  Monique asked him something.

  Wish I could read her lips. He shrugged, “Ah, I guess that makes sense.”

  She nodded and continued talking.

  This mission was a lot more pressure than he was used to. Usually a mission came up on short notice. He got briefed, handed a weapon, and pushed out of a flying vehicle. He hunkered down for a few days and took out anything that moved until the situation went bonkers. Then he got out fast.

  This one wasn’t going to be like that.

  Honestly, he had no idea what it was going to be like. It could be dangerous—incredibly dangerous, especially with god-like beings running amok.

  But why did he have to pick a dangerous place on Xahna to make contact? Just because he was used to that sort of mission, didn’t mean it had to be.

  Maybe I should start in a city without a ka.

  But he had more urgent problems. Monique suddenly sat up and asked him something—probably if he was alright.

  He was completely deaf, and beyond the strange swirling of colors past everything in sight, the world seemed to be tipping slowly to one side.

  The Avalonian numbing agents had gotten to his inner ear.

  He wasn’t even sure if he could make it back to his room without help.

  Jet grabbed the table to keep from tipping over. The only way out was telling her.

  Swallowing all pretense, Jet picked up his glass. “I think I ordered the wrong drink.”

  Monique touched the table and dragged his receipt over to her side, which had the side effect of adding it to her bill. “You ordered Spieldampfer?” He could tell what she was saying because he’d been dreading her saying exactly that—and the look of fury on her face.

  “Um,” Jet moaned. “Guess I should have looked at the menu more closely. You’re . . . a little distracting.”

  Monique’s stunned expression softened. “Anyway, I think you’re sweet and charming.” At least that’s what he imagined she was saying before he tipped off his chair.

  Monique rounded up a few others from the bar, and soon Jet was being carried down a corridor by three marines. She and another marine each had one of his arms draped over their shoulders. A Wodynian female carried his legs over her shoulders.

  It appeared the others were having quite a few jokes as his expense. He was beginning to make out what they were saying—at least the laughing.

  Thankfully Avalonian pheromones faded quickly. He might even be able to stand on his own by the time they shuttled his dead weight to his room.

  Shuttles. That’s it!

  “Wait!” Jet said, trying to sit up and ending up on his butt on the floor. “Take me to Adkins. I have to see the colonel.”

  Monique knelt down next to him. She looked him straight in the eyes, something he had hoped for all evening. She spoke loudly enough he caught her words. “Not when you’re this wasted. Are you insane?”

  “I’m just—tipsy. And this is important. Trust me.”

  “I am so going to regret this.”

  Five minutes later, Jet staggered up to Colonel Adkins’s stateroom, with one arm over Monique.

  She reached out, with her hand hovering over the door ringer, then pressed the icon.

  She does trust me. It was the best moment since he’d been out of cryo.

  Jet was glad his ears were now giving him clearer hints of sound as the colonel answered the door in his pajamas and sounded off a long stream of words he was pretty sure a Believer probably shouldn’t even know.

  “We can use shuttles,” Jet said, “and have the sprint ship ready in a few hours.” This time he even heard his own voice.

  Adkins looked from Jet to Monique. “He looks plastered.”

  “He is,” Monique let Jet’s arm off of her shoulder. “But I think you should listen to him. He’s not as dumb as he looks—can’t believe I just admitted that.”

  Jet gave Monique a half-smile, which she returned as more of a quarter-smile, just a tiny lift of her lip.

  He loved it when she did that.

  Jet tore his eyes away from Monique and looked at the colonel. “The sprint ship—I know how to do it.” He nodded at Monique. “She sort of gave me the idea.”

  “Her idea, eh?” Adkins folded his arms. “So what is it?”

  Jet grinned. “Team carry. A marine can’t haul a squad mate very far—they’d be dead tired in a few hundred yards. So, we do a team carry: arms over shoulders, legs under arms, like a stretcher.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “What if we used a whole slew of mini shuttles to haul a big capitol ship fuel tank?”

  “How?”

  “We make a net around a capitol ship fuel tank with tug lines running out to several dozen shuttles. They have anchor points to form webs—no welding needed. Shuttles have standard anchor points for getting towed and external fuel ports for running lines to the main tank. We could have this done in a few hours. There’s got to be enough extra thrust capacity to tether a dropship on the front, but . . . it should work.”

  Adkins put his hand to his forehead. “Black space! That�
��s just plain simple. Rigging a tow net is fleet maintenance 101. I could build that net myself in an EVA suit. You’re brilliant, Naman!”

  “Of course, once it starts slowing down and the argon fuel mass drops, you won’t need all the shuttles,” Monique added. “It’s like a multi-stage orbital booster. That’s the advantage of shuttles.”

  “Yeah, I get it. You can just dump them,” Adkins said. “Shuttles are cheap—a lot cheaper than fuel.” Adkins put a hand to his temple where he apparently had a subdermal transmitter. “Ace, I want your team into my office ASAP and leave that dang interdictor alone. Naman here has a better idea . . . yeah that’s what I said. So, you can take your engineering AIs and put them back on defragging their memory. Jeez, a jarhead figured this thing out!” He took his finger off his temple. “You got twelve hours, Corporal.”

  “Twelve hours, sir? I thought you said anyone could—”

  “Look, pushing the paperwork to steal shuttles from half the ships in the fleet is going to take half that time. No captain wants to part with his lifeboats.”

  “So . . . in the meantime?”

  “I’ll order your squad to transfer to the dropship. And I’m reassigning Captain Decker to fly this contraption.”

  “Yes, sir!” Decker was better known as “the lion.” He had experience and guts. The guy used to fly dropship missions before they promoted him to interdictor frigates. He had a reputation for pushing the edge. Every marine in the fleet wanted to fly with him.

  “I putting you both in for commendations,” Adkins said. “Black space! Do you realize how important this is? The entire fleet—all the remaining Believers in the galaxy—may depend on us reaching that planet first. This is going to cut an entire week of delay.”

  Jet and Monique saluted crisply, side by side. “Yes, sir.”

  Adkins matched the salute. “Dismissed.”

  He disappeared into his room.

  “Well this deserves a drink,” Monique said with a grin that ran from ear to ear.

  “Maybe later?” Jet said, rubbing his temples.

  Monique put on hand on her hip. “Look at you, turning down a drink and saving the fleet.”

  “Couldn’t have done it without you.”