by Blaze Ward
Kathra listened as the woman addressed the crowd in a foreign language, speaking several sentences that nobody in the room understood.
Except that Daniel rose now, well across the space, and translated.
“She introduces herself as A’Alhakoth ver’Shingi, daughter of Linga ver’Shingi, a Jarl on the planet Kanus,” he said. “She greets us formally and reminds us that her homeworld is Kanus and joined stellar civilization four generations ago when the Anndaing uplifted them. That sector has thirteen intelligent, star-faring species.”
A’Alhakoth said something sharply in her native tongue and Daniel replied haltingly.
“Your pardon,” he said to the group. “Eleven species. They use a base-eight numbering system for the same reason we use a base-ten, and some of the words are complicated cognates. We will be more technologically advanced than about…half?”
“Half,” A’Alhakoth agreed, in Spacer this time. “And there will be friends we can make. It is an older sector, as such things are measured, and the Anndaing have been around much longer than humans have been in space.”
Kathra contained her grin as the two sat again, their point made. Simisola and three others were still restive, but most of the rest were suddenly excited at the possibility of trade with new species.
Every ClanStar was a largely self-contained world, specializing in their own aspects of culture and paying tribute to Kathra, even as they traded with one another. The Ihejirika raised lots of chickens and made a thin beer that they exported to the other ships, just as the Okafor raised miniature cattle and made cheese for trade.
These women would have new markets they could tap, and crew they could recruit, as the Kaniea and Anndaing were erect bipeds along the same lines as humans. Perhaps the ClanStars could grow in number and size. Certainly Kathra would stack these women all up against the rest of the galaxy as merchants.
“Forever?” Simisola asked. “How long will we flee the Sept?”
“I can offer you two options, Simisola Ihejirika,” Kathra replied. “One, we might run far enough that the Sept cannot find us again, and we can live in peace.”
“And two?”
“Maybe we find allies out there, and push the Sept back,” Kathra said. “Humans are dense in our sectors, but there are many more aliens out there than anyone understands. They will not wish to live in a Sept collar any more than we do.”
Eight
Daniel listened carefully as A’Alhakoth repeated the story in her native tongue.
Speaking in Kaniea was helping her remember, after something like nearly three years away from home. In turn, he was learning to speak the language as well, and writing all these stories down in Kaniea, rather than just translating.
They were in the comitatus dining hall. It was mid-shift in the afternoon, when his lunch tasks were completed and today Ndidi had not yet assigned him chores for dinner.
Around them, several stacks of paper books waited as well as her datapad and his.
These were simple stories she was repeating. Things you taught your children, but it would allow him to provide Kathra and the others both language and cultural lessons of the new people they were seeking.
The meeting with all the Clan leaders had gone better than Daniel had expected, but Kathra had known those women much longer than he did. Additionally, he had never become any of them. Finally, these women were still on the grand quest for freedom that Kathra’s mother had dreamed up to free the tribe more than a generation ago.
The Star Tribe was committed.
A’Alhakoth listened as Daniel repeated the story, nodding and eventually smiling.
“Yes, you have it,” she said.
“Bon,” he said. “How are we coming with the map?”
“I have seventeen worlds listed,” she replied, reaching for her datapad. “The directions are only loosely accurate, as I never needed to navigate a ship.”
“It is more important that you have cultures and languages, A’Alhakoth,” Daniel reminded her. “With your help, we will be well ahead when we arrive, able to talk to both your folks and any Anndaing we encounter.”
“They are merchants, you know,” she said. “I’m not sure how they will react to a warship in their sector.”
“We are a sheepdog,” Daniel grinned. “It is the other wolves that must worry, when Kathra Omezi comes for them.”
“Do you think she’s serious?” A’Alhakoth asked, her blue skin turning darker with concern. “About perhaps recruiting the various nations and species out here to fight the Sept?”
“Perhaps,” Daniel equivocated. “Trade is always her preference. But at the same time, I fear that the Ishtan will never rest as long as I am alive. Perhaps not until the gem itself is destroyed.”
“Should you destroy it?” she asked, her voice dropping to almost nothing.
She had been him more than once, that confluence of beings that allowed him no secrets from another. It allowed them all a shorthand outsiders would not understand.
“If I thought that would make things better, I would ask her,” he replied. “But like you I am sworn to Kathra’s service. Her needs. The Star Turtle is lost, but there are other things that I can do to help, such as learning to read Ovanii and perhaps finding one of their worlds.”
“It is still war,” she reminded him.
“And you were raised as a warrior, A’Alhakoth ver’Shingi,” he said crisply. “Spectre Twenty-Three. You are part of our war now, whether you like it or not. That is what comes of comitatus.”
“I’ve never killed anyone,” she said, again whispering.
“I have,” Daniel reminded her with a pained voice. “Something I would prefer never having to do again. But I will remind you that you wear a pistol on your hip.”
“And what if the Anndaing take exception and order us away?” A’Alhakoth asked.
“You would know them better than any of us,” Daniel shrugged at her. “I do not believe that the Sept will stop pursuing her, as long as someone can give them a direction. So either she must flee for the rest of her life, or find a place where she can build an armada to fight back. Simple as that. If the Anndaing do not wish to engage with the threat of the Sept, there are other places the Commander can go. Perhaps she will return later to free them from the slavery that Earth will bring. Perhaps not.”
“And the Kaniea?”
“Some of you will probably choose to fight,” Daniel smiled grimly. “Others will not.”
He watched her shiver briefly as she considered the possibility of a war that stretched across star empires.
The Sept had conquered Earth, starting originally in the Persian Highlands of Asia. From there, they had extended their hands in all directions, slowly adding more than half of the human colonies to their ambition. And a few non-human, but the Sept themselves maintained a strict caste system.
Men above women. Humans above non-humans. Bipeds above some of the more interesting and exotic species Daniel had met.
A’Alhakoth presented as petite young woman, beautiful in her own way, even if she was all blues. Some Sept Vuzurgan would seek to add her to his personal harem, given the chance.
Over Daniel’s dead body, but that was already their plan, so it would represent his failure, as well as Kathra’s.
They stared at each other for a long moment, faces grim, most likely with the same internal conversations.
She rose abruptly.
“I need to pray,” she announced in a tiny voice still forged in steel.
“Pray?” he asked.
Daniel had not been in a church save for weddings, funerals, or baptisms, none of them his, in decades. It was an alien concept.
He sought his own peace in the kitchen.
“If I am to kill complete strangers for no better reason than to protect myself, I need to ask for forgiveness now,” she announced.
“Oh, no, Spectre Twenty-Three,” Daniel replied sharply drawing the woman’s head around. “You’ll have a rea
son.”
“What?” she asked.
“Protecting the weak from the cruel,” Daniel said. “The hungry from the rich. The lost from the conquerors. There is no higher calling than that, with any Gods I have ever known.”
She fell silent and nodded.
He watched her go, reminding himself that this alien child was trained as a warrior originally. She was comitatus, in every way that mattered.
And they would all fight.
Nine
Crence Miray had made his money by being willing to push the margins on the known map more than the other Anndaing trademasters that he knew. Or their voyagers. Finding that edge, literal as well as metaphorical, when the others of his kind were happy just sailing point to point along the same route, hauling boringly predictable loads on patterns regular enough to plan Eighth-Day Dinners.
Koni Swift, his voyager, was a vessel that had never played by those rules. Since he had taken over as trademaster, they had almost always been at the edges, exploring as much as trading, where both made him and his crew good money.
Anndaing space was a polite, predictable kind of place. Eleven other species in various stages of development, including seven that his people had uplifted when they got there.
Good trade. Good deals.
Enervating as hell.
So he probed the edges.
These sectors were sparsely inhabited. At least these days. Legends of the elders spoke of vast star empires that had once filled this part of the galactic arm, but the few planets that were still inhabited today had been generally reduced to pre-metal development by ecological catastrophes.
Lots of ruins, if you didn’t mind so much radiation that you might grow a new fin somewhere. Even the explorer robots didn’t last long, cooked by the radiation or attacked by mutant local predators that frequently grew to megafauna sizes.
It was worse than the Ovanii aftermaths he had read about.
Some days, Crence wondered if literal gods had decided to fight a major war through this strip of space. On a star map, accounting for drift, there was almost a razor slash across three sectors. Destruction one hundred light-years wide and several times that long.
“Nightflier, what is our status?” Crence asked, turning to the Anndaing pilot on his left on Koni Swift’s compact bridge.
“We’ll be exiting transit in roughly ten minutes, Trademaster,” Jine Riffin replied in a lazy tone.
Like Crence, Jine was larger than average for an Anndaing. They were generally the largest bipeds in the sector, and only the male Kaniea approached their size. Heavier, too, but that was the breadth of body on those blues, lacking the sleekness of the Anndaing’s aquatic heritage.
Jine’s skin was darker, almost a charcoal gray, rather than the silveriness of Crence’s, but there wasn’t a better pilot out there for flying into strange systems and mapping them for natives, resources, or trade.
“Everyone make sure to strap your fins down tight,” Crence reminded his crew. “We’ll be updating old maps today, since nobody has come this way in forever.”
“You think we’ll find anything worth looting?” Jine asked.
Crence tilted his hammerhead right and left as he considered.
“Doubtful,” Crence finally replied. “We’re off the normal trade routes that the Se’uh’pal run, out farther to the edge of known space. I presume that they know something we don’t, but I also know how lazy they are.”
“Lazy?” Jine laughed. “Se’uh’pal? You need to get your fins checked, Crence.”
“Predictable, maybe,” he countered. “They set their runs based on their own logic, and then run those like they were on rails, never deviating again.”
“And you think that we’ll find something that’s changed since they came through last time?” Jine asked.
“There are legends of mighty things that happened farther out, Jine,” Crence replied. “If you’d more closely read the briefing packet I gave the investors ,you’d know that.”
“I’m a nightflier, not a trademaster, Crence,” Jine laughed. “All that merchant stuff is for you. I just want to fly.”
“That you’ll do, Jine,” Crence smiled, showing off all of his triangular teeth. “We’re going into darkness on this one.”
“That’s why I hired on, crazyshark,” Jine laughed.
The rest of the bridge crew joined Jine’s merriment.
Crence smiled. The mark of a good crew, a good frenzy of sharks, was the willingness to explore the darkness. He had a good team.
“All fins, stand by for transit to complete,” Jine’s voice came out of the speakers now, firm and authoritative in ways that most of his friends laughed at. Especially a practical joker like Jine.
Koni Swift dropped out of the transit tube into sidereal space with less splash than hitting the pool after a long-day’s labor.
“Oh, shit!” Jine said a moment later.
Crence was in overall command as trademaster, but it was still Jine’s ship to fly. And fight, if necessary. Koni Swift had enough guns to protect itself against rogues, pirates, and natives, but it wasn’t a warship by any stretch of the imagination. Anndaing didn’t build combat vessels unless they had to face another horde like the Ovanii.
Hades, Koni Swift was even more dangerous than most of the other voyagers plying the darkness.
A whistle of surprise emerged from Jine’s tuna hole.
“What have you got, Jine?” Crence asked quietly, letting the shark work.
“Someone else was here first,” the nightflier said quietly. “Whole lot of someones. I’m picking up two-zwölf and change vessels nearby. Completely alien design. Oh, crap.”
“Now what?” Crence demanded. “Do we need to get back into transit immediately?”
“Not sure, boss,” Jine replied in a tight voice. “One of the big vessels just kicked out two-zwölf more little ones, all coming this way.”
“Crap!” Crence agreed.
Had they just run headlong into a pirate base of some sort? This system was marked uninhabited on all charts he’d been able to beg, borrow, or buy. Never been colonized, as far as anybody knew.
Who in hades name was this?
“We’re being hailed,” Jine said.
“Stand by to transit,” Crence replied. “Blind if you have to. We can sit tight somewhere and figure out where we are later. But I don’t want to fight anybody today. Open the comm for me to communicate with them.”
“Greetings, Anndaing voyager Koni Swift,” a voice came over the line. Sounded vaguely Kaniea, with a strange accent underneath. Female, too, which was completely insane, as the females rarely left the homeworld, and even then mostly went to one of the two colonies Koni Swift occasionally visited.
But she spoke Anndaing, which meant she wouldn’t be completely alien.
Or had at least done her homework, like any aspiring trademaster.
“This is Koni Swift,” Crence said. “Trademaster Crence Miray directing. Who are you?”
“This is the Mbaysey Tribal Squadron, departing the Free Worlds and the Sept Empire,” she said. “Most of my comrades are humans.”
Humans? Crence had never heard of the species, but that didn’t mean much, with as many worlds as there were capable of fostering intelligent life out there.
“What is your intent, Mbaysey?” Crence asked.
He glanced over. Jine nodded back, all set to trigger the transit drives and jump them somewhere else. Anywhere else.
Someplace the pirates hopefully couldn’t chase them easily.
“Truly?” she asked happily. “We’ve come looking for you.”
Ten
Kathra was pleased.
She hadn’t planned to encounter anyone in this system, marked on all the charts she had been able to check as uninhabited. Forgotten.
Useless, since the one habitable world had been apparently killed with a bioweapon at some point in the not-too-distant past.
Not enough to wipe out all life, but the
diseases had wrought all manner of horrors on the higher lifeforms living on the surface. However many centuries later, the ecosystem was only starting to recover, with evolutionary niches being filled in by whatever species had proven immune.
Nobody would be safe there for probably thousands of more years, unless someone decided to dedicate their life and fortune to repairing and colonizing the planet.
Kathra had no use for planets.
None.
They just tied you down when bad people came, and let them trap you in one place, where an atmosphere wouldn’t be enough to protect you. Especially from an Axial Megacannon being fired by a Septagon.
But someone had come here while SeekerStar was in-system, possibly looking to do the same out-system mining her squadron was up to.
Thrabo was the last place Kathra had stopped right before she had taken everyone out of Free Worlds space, possibly forever. The stolen Se’uh’pal records she had bought at Thrabo suggested that the vessel on her scanners was an Anndaing voyager. Specifically, a type known as a Cargo-Six for the six standard shipping containers that could be detached, three to a flank, for trade and transportation.
Kathra was a warrior. She could see modifying such a vessel to contain six individual launch bays for Spectres, if she wanted something smaller than SeekerStar. Possibly an explorer or a scout of some sort, since the records showed that this class of vessel was usually armed. Roughly equivalent to particle cannon turrets, rather than the heavier Ram Cannons on SeekerStar, but comparable to what WinterStar had carried.
Even better, the travelers were flying a little shuttle over to her.
That would be a mark of exceptional piloting on their part, to be able to land on the spinning deck of SeekerStar with their one, petite transporter shuttle. But the approaching vessel was much larger than one of her SkyCamels, having been designed to ferry one of those six cargo boxes to and from orbit on its back. It simply would not fit into the normal space of one of her shuttles.