SeptStar

by Blaze Ward

  “She would like to be done with Sept space forever and possibly the Free Worlds as well,” A’Alhakoth continued. “What do you know of the Anndaing?”

  “I contain one,” Daniel said simply after a long beat.

  A’Alhakoth had been inside his head. She understood what that meant on a visceral level, if not intellectual.

  “How long ago?” the tiny blue woman asked.

  Yes, she understood what he was.

  Daniel glanced over at A’Alhakoth and remembered that while she was in her early twenties, her kind matured more slowly than humans. She might be the human equivalent of seventeen or eighteen years old. More driven and focused than even he had been in those days, but Daniel had already known what he wanted to do with his life while she was still searching. Literally, in her case, as she was on a spiritual quest driven by her culture.

  “Perhaps a thousand human years, give or take,” he replied. “I am translating a book of what appears to be Ovanii poetry and classical literature right now that comes from a slightly earlier era. But the written languages were fairly similar.”

  “Do you speak Anndaing?” she asked abruptly.

  “No,” Daniel shook his head. “I could probably listen at regular speed and understand, but I have not practiced enough to speak it. Muscle memory takes time.”

  They sat for a moment, side by side watching the ship.

  “Why?” Daniel asked.

  “At home, we speak Kaniea,” A’Alhakoth said. “But we also learned Anndaing when the merchants came. In our little slice of space, it is the dominant language. Being able to speak it would be helpful when we got there.”

  “You speak it,” Daniel pointed out.

  “Yes, but the others need to learn,” she countered. “And I’ve grown rusty, only speaking Spacer and picking up the occasional swear words in French.”

  Daniel blushed a little. All the women had taken to cursing in French these days.

  His fault.

  “Would it benefit you if we spoke Anndaing?” Daniel asked.

  He didn’t really know this woman well enough to even make educated guesses.

  Like the others, he had been inside her head, just as she had been inside his, but he didn’t like spying on people. Plus, this came from a radically different physiology and culture than his, regardless of her physical similarity to human.

  Four Kaniea generations ago, the Anndaing had decided that the species were finally advanced enough for First Contact. Her homeworld was a complicated amalgam of Iron Age superstitions and neon cities. He’d seen plenty of that from her memories.

  “It would,” she said quietly.

  “Ndidi suggested I ask you something, next time I saw you,” Daniel said carefully, pushing Doubt and the others back out of the room so he could think clearly. “Since the Ovanii seemed to use Anndaing letters to write, she wondered if they were from your sector as well, and if perhaps the Kaniea had any legends or history of those people. I haven’t been able to find anything here, but none of the Free Worlds maps even show your homeworld.”

  He paused to let her digest. He was still a stranger, and a male one at that, on a ship where all the customs and behaviors he had learned in the Sept Empire were generally wrong.

  “I might have,” A’Alhakoth said after a moment. She turned to face him. “Why is it important?”

  Daniel wanted to brush off the importance with some self-deprecating joke. Pretend that it was nothing more than idle curiosity, but he realized that Doubt had cracked the door open and snuck back in when he wasn’t looking.

  Daniel slapped that fool in his mind and tossed him out the window with a silent curse.

  “The Ishtan were pursuing Urid-Varg,” he said simply. “Iruoma killed two of them, leaving only four members of the race alive. They were not strong enough to stop me after that, like they had been before. But they will never stop chasing me, in turn. Urid-Varg was more powerful than I ever will be, which was why they attacked now, after waiting so long.”

  “Okay,” she nodded, still uncomprehending, but that was fine.

  “They did not die when you chased off the Septagon, A’Alhakoth,” he said. “They even managed to escape, presumably when the vessel was damaged. I heard the echoes of their minds before we left.”

  “But four are not powerful enough to threaten you,” she noted, those horizontal pupils narrowing like a cat laying on its side. “To control you.”

  “No,” Daniel agreed. “So they must find allies.”

  “The Sept?” she asked, making the same leap of intuition he had.

  Confluence of interests. At least he suspected so.

  Urid-Varg would have been powerful enough, dangerous enough to possibly take over the Sept Empire had he wanted. Possibly ruled all of human space as a god, like he had the Z’lud and others.

  Most likely destroyed humanity, like he had the K’bari.

  But the Ishtan might be able to do something similar, if they found the right partner.

  Daniel nodded to the young warrior.

  “So I am looking for people that might be able to help Kathra fight the Ishtan, and the Sept as well,” he said. “She has mentioned turning pirate at some point, a corsair dedicated to a war of liberation against the power of the Sept. I am no longer sufficient in myself to make that happen, but there might be others.”

  “The Ovanii?” she asked. “If they’ve been gone for that long, what could they do?”

  “Does a stellar species ever go extinct?” Daniel asked rhetorically. “But I’m also less interested in the people and more in their technology.”

  “Why?” A’Alhakoth asked.

  Daniel rose instead of speaking. Gestured her to join him as he stepped up to the strange shuttle and caused a section of hexagons to retract up and down to open a hatch, an airlock of sorts.

  She followed him in and looked around with her mouth open, something that her kind shared with humans like Daniel.

  “Nobody willing to speak to me even remembers where this vessel came from,” Daniel turned to her and said, carefully remaining several meters away.

  The interior of the ship was the same hexagonal pattern, making benches, flight stations, and walls. Water and food were somehow stored inside one of the walls, and could be dispensed, although the food was a gruel that tasted like oatmeal mixed with a touch of honey and a dash of cardamom that came out at room temperature. Healthy, for that flight to safety, but he’d want to add a campstove at some point if he was serious about using this as a transport for any length of time.

  A’Alhakoth studied him as much as she did the ship, but that was fine, as well.

  “The Ovanii were warriors,” Daniel said. “The Anndaing are much more merchants, according to your knowledge and things I can remember. I would like to find a lost graveyard of Ovanii warships somewhere, if such a thing exists.”

  “What would you do with such a thing, Daniel?”

  “I owe the Sept a debt,” he said simply, not trying to constrain the growl in his voice at this point. “I was part of the Star Turtle when they harpooned it with the Axial Megacannon. I nearly died. I wanted to die, but I had to get Erin and the others to safety first. After that, Kathra refused to allow me to terminate once I returned to SeekerStar, so I am here, and I have needs.”

  “What needs?” she asked.

  “Vengeance.”

  Six

  Amirin Pasdar met the creatures in a section of the Septagon hastily reconfigured as an alien-atmosphere environment. He would have preferred to have nothing to do with them at all, but he apparently shared an enemy with the creatures.

  Ishtan.

  There were four of them, representing apparently the last four survivors of their entire species. Thousands of years old at this point, and possessed of a rage even greater than his, if that was possible.

  Allies, for now, he supposed, although he was unsure how long that would last. Certainly, they would use him to stalk Omezi’s chef to the very
ends of the galaxy, if necessary. And made it possible for him to consider such a pursuit himself, even if he still had to build the tools necessary.

  The Ishtan had a ship, but it was a primitive, tiny thing compared to modern vessels. Certainly not capable of taking on SeekerStar, even with the strange mental powers those being had. That was why they needed the humans.

  Why they needed him.

  All that passed through his mind as he entered into the inner section where the four creatures lived, not far from the flight deck where they had first landed in the SkyCamel shuttle stolen from Kathra Omezi.

  The light in here was off in ways that he really didn’t understand intellectually. Darker as well. The smells had an earthiness to them that were alien on a starship.

  Amirin Pasdar hoped that he was still himself, although it was hard to tell.

  We have not changed you, Pasdar, the strange voice filled his head as he made his way across the darkened room to the human chair where he could sit comfortably. That is evil itself.

  He was willing to accept that at face value for now, images of white whales in his mind notwithstanding. What of those changes were him responding to things from before the Ishtan and what came later was not a thing he could readily differentiate.

  He nodded to the creatures as they rose from their nests and faced him.

  Four of them. Snake-like, with spindly arms coming from narrow shoulders and trailing down to long tails. Covered with a pink fur that was heavy and warm. Triangular symmetry down the body, with a mouth that would split into three slices and eyes on each side.

  And mental powers, which was what the chef, Lémieux, had apparently used against Uwalu.

  He is weaker than Urid-Varg, the harmonious voices continued, obviously reading his mind. The death of the xxxxxxxxx has also diminished his powers further.

  “The what?” Pasdar asked, confused.

  The vessel you called a Star Turtle, the voices replied. The thing Vorgash killed. The human Daniel Lémieux survived and fled. Our life’s mission is to end him and make the entire galaxy safe again.

  “The locals have agreed to build for me an upgraded version of SeekerStar,” Pasdar told them aloud, probably unnecessarily. “It will be without a flight wing, but will be designed to counter such craft. With this vessel, we will be able to continue hounding her, even as Vorgash and her support Patrols will return to Sept Space.”

  He cannot flee far enough that we will not follow, they stated coldly.

  Pasdar had joined mentally with the beings twice, so he had some understanding of what that implied. He had watched the creature known as Urid-Varg attack the Ishtan homeworld and destroy it. Listened to most of the species die under the blast of anti-matter bombs.

  They could give him a direction that Kathra Omezi had fled, even across the vast light-centuries that might intervene. The creatures had even undertaken to fund a significant part of the construction of the new vessel with resources they had accumulated along their impossible lifespans.

  Pasdar had taken to calling the ship SeptStar. It would give his pursuit the range to chase the woman across such vast distances. Even as he sent Vorgash home with an explanation of the quest he was now pursuing.

  For a man who had made a name for himself as a Sardar originally, an officer of an elite ground combat unit, Amirin Pasdar wondered if he was in danger of turning into the legendary fool Sataspes at this rate, originally tasked with circumnavigating the African continent on Earth, and put to death for his failure.

  We will explain to your emperor, if necessary, the voices said, still listening. Such evil must not be allowed to exist in the universe.

  “And when Lémieux is destroyed?” he asked the quartet. “What becomes of the Ishtan?”

  We do not know, Amirin Pasdar. Our quest has lasted twelve thousand of your years so far. We are the last.

  He shivered at the scale, but Urid-Varg had apparently been on his own galactic quest for power for something more than those twelve thousand, if the dates and scales matched up.

  Before humans had first developed iron technology.

  “There is much you could teach us,” he said, aware that the creatures could read his very soul as he spoke.

  It made communication both easier and harder, as he could no longer deflect or lie as he spoke. Amirin Pasdar wasn’t sure he had ever allowed himself to be so honest, even inside his own head.

  Thus these guardian avengers had already changed him.

  Your kind would not welcome it, Amirin Pasdar, they said. Humans are not yet mature enough.

  Of that, he had no doubt, but Pasdar was also absolutely certain that the mission he was undertaking now stretched every possible allowance his original orders had given him.

  Except one.

  Stalk Kathra Omezi and break her power.

  Whether he killed her or returned the woman to Rhages in chains was irrelevant. No other rebel could entertain the thought that they could escape the Sept, even by fleeing into the galactic interior.

  The Sept Empire had made a grave mistake allowing the Mbaysey that option in the first place, when they should have been kept in slavery instead. If he broke her, WHEN he broke Kathra Omezi, others would not agitate to join her.

  Or they might indeed join her as well.

  These are human concerns, Pasdar. We wish to destroy the chef. If the others resist, you will deal with them as you wish. Without his power, they are nothing we need concern ourselves with.

  Pasdar recognized the dismissal for what it was and rose. The beings claimed that they could not affect him if he was any great distance away, and he accepted that, just as he had accepted their offer of alliance and the funds to keep Vorgash on station, buying food and other consumables from the locals at Tavle Jocia while he sent messengers home to Rhages with his updates.

  He bowed to them as equals, which Amirin found enlightening in and of itself, as he was a Pasdar of the Pasdar Clan, founders of the Sept Empire itself.

  The warship construction would take time, but not all that much, as he was building a smaller and more-heavily armed version of SeekerStar. Guns instead of fighters, but he would spin the craft on its axis like Omezi’s flagship, rather than rely on gravity field inducers.

  His vessel would even mass less than SeekerStar, while being more durable, since he didn’t need the space of a massive flight deck or the weight of so many fightercraft.

  That would give him an advantage in pursuit, as his valence drives would be faster than hers.

  Septagon Vorgash was an implacable monolith once it got somewhere, able to destroy anything, even Star Turtles, but it moved at a glacial pace and that would let her flee him time and again.

  No, Amirin Pasdar would need SeptStar in order to run the woman down.

  And kill her.

  Seven

  Kathra looked over the mob that was seated in the comitatus dining hall, filling it to the edges. All twenty-two of her warriors. All twenty-two of the leaders from the ClanStars.

  It made an interesting symmetry, broken by Daniel and Ndidi joining them after the dinner and desserts had been cleared from the tables.

  She stood with her back to the kitchen window now, watching. People on the near sides of the trestles had turned to face her, so she had everyone’s attention.

  “You have heard the plan,” Kathra said as the room fell to silence. “I know some of you have objections, and I would hear them now, in the open, so we can address them. I am your Commander, but I am not a fool.”

  That brought a chuckle from some corners of the room, and lightened some of the harsh glares from others.

  The comitatus were all young women. Kathra’s people, as she had made sure she had the loyal ones backing her, over the long years since Yagazie had been assassinated.

  Some of these Clan leaders had grandchildren Kathra’s age.

  Interestingly, those were the ones that she could largely count on to support her missions, as they all had siblings and cous
ins and friends like Erin’s grandma Ezinne, who still bore the barcode tattoo on her face that had once proclaimed her as property of a Sept Vuzurgan, one of the grand nobles of the Empire itself.

  Erin voluntarily wore the same tattoo to remind herself, and others, lest they forget.

  It was the younger Clan leaders that might cause mischief. The ones that might not be old enough to really remember the bad days on Tazo, even as the stories were regularly retold.

  But some people wished to forget the past in the process of moving past it.

  Simisola Ihejirika’s chin came up now as the silence returned. At forty, she was an occasional troublemaker, brilliant and capable as a politician, but not a warrior.

  Kathra respected the woman, and her place running one of the most successful ClanStars. She had also expected the first complaint to come from there, so she smiled encouragingly.

  Best to have it all out now.

  “Why must we flee human space?” the woman asked in a deep, authoritative voice.

  “Because the Sept have made it clear that no borders will stop them from coming after us,” Kathra replied, listening to the emotional grumbling in the room. “At some point, they will catch us if we remain here. If I thought I could draw them away from the rest of the tribe forever, I would, but SeekerStar is the only vessel we have that is armed and capable of protecting the rest against pirates.”

  Most of the emotion in the room today was in her favor, but that was to be expected. The Sept had not treated the women of Tazo in such a way as to win their hearts and minds.

  “But you would take us beyond all knowledge, Kathra,” Simisola groused.

  “No,” Kathra countered forcefully. “Only what we already know, having fled the Sept and now the Free Worlds. I have other resources. A’Alhakoth?”

  Kathra watched the newest warrior in her comitatus rise immediately, as though she had been expecting the call. But A’Alhakoth was much more intellectual than some of the others, and had been raised in a noble’s household, so she understood politics.