SeptStar

by Blaze Ward

  One of Mase’s stoves was acting up. They had assigned Dolon and his new assistant to fix it. Or rather, Dolon had handed her a reader loaded with servicing instructions and grinned at her.

  At least there were no flammable gases involved, if she did something wrong. And Daniel had cheated along the way, although she was never about to tell those boys that.

  One of the advantages of being able to merge with Daniel, before they had gotten here, was that he had taught her to read Anndaing at a working level sufficient for a non-scholar leaving school at the end of her teen years.

  Not good enough to write poetry in Anndaing, even if she managed to find the inclination, but fine for reading an exploding diagram and technical steps to take a stove apart.

  “Three wrench,” she said, as she got the big panel off and looked inside.

  Just because, she leaned back and made sure that the fuses to this side of the kitchen were off.

  Measure twice, cut once.

  Dolon handed her a metal thing that she could call a wrench. More or less. Octagonal head raised and requiring something like a socket tool to open.

  Stupid threads were backwards, but she’d put that down to barbarity on the part of folks that had been in space before her species discovered electricity.

  Joane stuck the thing in and started backing out bolts. After tightening the first one accidentally.

  “So,” Dolon asked in a breezy tone for a shark. “You a spy?”

  “If I am, they forgot to tell me,” Joane replied with a grunt as she got the bolt out and handed it to him. “Why?”

  “You can read stuff better than someone we picked up on a street corner,” he pointed at the reader on the deck between them. “Can’t speak well.”

  “A’Alhakoth had us doing conversational stuff, but Daniel handed around a few books,” she lied easily. “Figured we’d need it when we got to Kanus. Finding you folks midway just made it that much faster, since we could trade for good maps. I was looking forward to meeting her kin, but I’ll be last now.”

  “Yeah, but you’ll be the prettiest girl at the dance when we get to Ogrorspoxu,” he grinned.

  She turned and fixed the shark with a cold, hard smile. Daniel had warned her. Kathra, too.

  “I don’t like creatures with a penis,” she said bluntly. “Even weird ones like yours. Especially weird ones.”

  He stopped and screwed his mouth sideways almost like she would. The hammer kind of slanted down.

  “Oh,” he managed. “How does the tribe survive?”

  “We’ve got a freezer,” she grinned at his confusion and discomfort. “Put it in the centrifuge and separate out boys from girls if you want to make sure you only have daughters. But I’m not ready to retire from flying and the comitatus.”

  “So none of your kind like boys?” he asked, shocked a little now.

  Like he’d never actually met a real lesbian before. She looked in the memories Daniel had gotten from A’Alhakoth, but it was no more uncommon among the Kaniea than humans.

  Anndaing might be different. She’d have to let folks know when she got home.

  “There are a few of the women who are open-minded enough,” she smiled and purred at the shark, rather enjoying his disquiet maybe a little too much. “But Daniel was the only male aboard SeekerStar. There are a few on the ClanStars, but we protect them from doing anything dangerous. Most are farm husbands or teachers.”

  “Protect?” he seemed to gasp.

  “Oh, yes,” she smiled.

  Joane was afraid she might have broken the shark’s mind, as he just sat there and blinked at her, so she backed out three more bolts and lined them up on the deck beside her. Reaching in, she pulled the panel out and handed it into Dolon’s unresisting hands.

  The smell that came out of the compartment told her everything she needed to know, even before she looked.

  Something had burned out and arced across a section of wiring, blackening it and getting things hot enough that the current probably fluctuated when cooking.

  Good way to ruin snickerdoodles. Lucky for her and everyone else that Daniel had used the other stove.

  Mase might demand a recount, since he’d been using a broken tool.

  Shucks, more cookies. Or something.

  She leaned back and pointed.

  One advantage of a hammer like the Anndaing had was that he could stick one end of it inside a piece of equipment like this and see better than she could from out here.

  “Manual says medium gauge wire,” she offered as he extracted his hammer. “Thinking we should use the heavy stuff instead. Might want to consider moving up your replacement cycle, too. If you’re getting wiring faults like this, might be worth the expense to replace before something goes really bad.”

  “I’ll let Crence know,” Dolon managed, rooting around in the tool box and handing her a spool of wire with a blue sheath.

  Joane measured a run and cut herself a strip, reaching in to clip the bad wire out and sniff it. Cooked, good. Lovely fresh smell of ozone.

  “So what are you doing to do at Kanus?” Dolon asked as she worked.

  “Maybe stop running,” Joane replied. “The Sept Empire has been after us, off and on, for nearly my whole life. Be nice to find a place where we can take the time to live in peace and maybe get rich.”

  “Crence said that your boss suggested they’d come after you,” Dolon said hesitantly.

  “No, they’ll come after you eventually,” she corrected him. “We’re just here now.”

  “Why?”

  “You aren’t a human male a little lighter-skinned than Daniel,” she growled. “Persian Sept first. Rabic next. Anglos after that. Then everyone else. And that’s just humans. Males rate higher than females, regardless of species. Aliens are at the bottom, in layers based on difference from basic human morphology. A Se’uh’pal woman would be at the very bottom of the list, as would an Anndaing one, when they got far enough out here to say hello with their Axial Megacannon.”

  “Really?” Dolon asked.

  “That’s why Kathra wants to find a place for the tribe to be safe,” Joane turned to face the shark from close enough to bite him.

  “Why’s that?”

  “So she can go spank those bastards,” Joane said. “With whoever she can recruit to help.”

  Kaniea

  Twenty-Five

  A’Alhakoth was suddenly twenty again, looking ahead at the end of her childhood and plagued by visions of a so-called witch who told her that she would travel up and out farther than any Kaniea ever had before.

  Even she doubted that the old woman had expected what had happened next.

  The SkyCamel was busy landing on a field her father had specifically designated for such a thing, even though he had only ever seen Anndaing shuttles arrive. A’Alhakoth had offered to fly, and been overruled by Erin, not that she was surprised.

  Any other outcome and Kathra’s second in command might have missed the trip. Here, she could be part of it, especially since Father would never allow Erin to remain with the SkyCamel while welcoming alien visitors, and his own youngest daughter, to his estate.

  Kathra grinned at her from across the shuttle bay as the landing gear settled. It was as though the Commander could see what was going on in A’Alhakoth’s mind, but then she, Kathra, and Daniel had merged several times as they planned this, so perhaps Kathra Omezi could.

  Coming home was awkward. Doubly so since the Mbaysey had no home except what they carried with them, the rest abandoned on Tazo and not missed in the least.

  “We’re here,” Erin said from the pilot’s station as the engines shut down.

  The tall woman unbuckled and turned to face them as she and Kathra rose. Erin had chosen a pair of short pants that showed off her mechanical right knee and shin while not slowing the woman down one bit. Combined with the barcode tattoo on her cheek, her tall mohawk, and her lighter-brown skin compared to Kathra’s nearly black flesh, and the woman looked completel
y alien, perhaps formed into a biped form for the convenience of traveling with them.

  It would make a powerful statement to the Kaniea they were about to meet. Even if it was just her parents.

  Already, A’Alhakoth felt something like an alien on this world, so far had she come from the still-child who had left.

  Kathra smiled at both of them, all three women wearing the flame colors of the comitatus today. She made a point of drawing her pistol and checking it, so A’Alhakoth did the same.

  Again, violence was of such a low probability as to be practically impossible, but Kathra Omezi took nothing for granted, and expected her women to do the same.

  Erin being here, dressed so fiercely, made more sense when considered that way.

  Finally, the three of them came to stillness, like that wisp of fog just as the sun began to warm things.

  “Shall we?” A’Alhakoth asked.

  “You lead, Spectre Twenty-Three,” Erin said.

  That brought it home. She was alien.

  A’Alhakoth ver’Shingi was no more. She was Spectre Twenty-Three in her heart and soul. One of these women.

  The people coming across the field to greet them now were just the Kaniea who had birthed and raised her.

  Spectre Twenty-Three felt her shoulders come back and her head come up.

  She moved to the hatch, checked through the boarding window, and popped it open, smelling her homeworld for the first time in so long that she had almost forgotten that scent.

  Emerging, she saw a crowd gathering, although nothing so formal as a party or a mob. No, this was just all of her old neighbors and friends joining her family to welcome their youngest daughter home.

  She stepped down onto the soil of her heart and smiled. The locals began to clap and hoot.

  Father emerged from the mess of people, with Mother on his arm as he escorted her into that open space reserved by unconscious command for the aliens.

  Like her.

  He was finally aging, the lines around his eyes and mouth growing deep enough that they could not be ignored. Both parents had hair fading down to the color of the sky, that brighter blue that so many hid underneath dyes, but her parents left natural.

  A’Alhakoth stepped close and smiled, seeing them now through adult eyes. She turned sideways as Kathra and Erin stepped out.

  The crowd fell silent.

  “Linga ver’Shingi, Father, and Ch’Caani ver’Shingi, Mother, it is my great pleasure to present to you Kathra Omezi, Commander of the Mbaysey Tribal Squadron, and Erinkansilemi Uduik, her Second-In-Command of the Comitatus to which I belong now,” A’Alhakoth gestured. “Kathra, Erin, my parents.”

  The two women stepped close and shook hands with the smaller Kaniea. Erin was a shade taller than Father. Almost everyone on the planet would look up to Kathra. Mother was just the tiniest bit shorter than her youngest child as Ch’Caani engulfed her in a hug.

  A’Alhakoth felt tears as Father joined Mother and held her.

  It was good to be home.

  Quickly, Kathra and Erin got introduced to the rest of her family. Alla, who would inherit the estate and Goli who surprised her by even being here, the man being of the conservatives who were still offended that the Anndaing had ever arrived. Sister E’Elbarth, gravid with her first child. Kilra and Trelga who still seemed trapped in that period after school and before adulthood had begun.

  All the husbands and wives would be presented later, along with cousins and any relative on good enough terms with Father to be invited to meet true aliens. And possibly get involved in the off-world trade.

  After the brief salutations, Father led them into the Longhall.

  The banquet and celebration lasted well into the night, with revelry, chatter, and music that comforted A’Alhakoth, while at the same time feeling alien to her, after even such a short time among the humans of the Mbaysey and their long-lost-but-not-forgotten African roots.

  She was not even required to fend off any marriage proposals, but she chalked that up to the long letter she had sent down to Father when SeekerStar had arrived in orbit.

  What man wanted a wife who would not bear him children any time soon, as she was sworn into foreign service for an alien warlord?

  The night wound down. Father politely threw out the last of the talkers well past his own usual bedtime, leaving her, Erin and Kathra at the long table with Father and Alla, a spitting image with fewer lines around the eyes and hair that had not lost any color or luster. Any stranger meeting Alla on the streets would guess him to be Linga’s son or nephew on the first try.

  Even their attire marked them as different, with the two men in greens and the women looking like fire demons from hell.

  Spectre Twenty-Three smiled at the image.

  “What?” Kathra asked with a similar smile.

  “Fashion,” A’Alhakoth answered. “Until this moment, I had not made the association that being dressed as we are, we fit the ancient image of the ifrit from the southern deserts, terrible demons who take the form of women and lure men and caravans to their doom.”

  “It did help with any lingering ideas of proposals for alliance,” Father leaned forward and laughed. “They will be interested in my status, but certainly you have cured them of any silly ideas that they might be able to control you.”

  “What fools still had that notion?” Alla spoke up now, merriment twinkling in his eyes at such a lively and effective evening.

  Alla would take over more and more of Father’s duties, which probably included finding suitable spouses for Kilra and Trelga, especially now that they would be in high demand for strategic marriages.

  Assuming Spectre Twenty-Three did not bring shame down upon her house.

  “So what are the first steps towards alliance, Commander?” Father asked, suddenly serious and sober in ways he had not been when others had been around to watch.

  Kathra grew serious as well, as though sloughing off a cloak. Erin was the same way, although she had embodied fierceness all night as a way of making Kathra look less likely to kill you and eat your heart.

  Not unlikely, mind you, but Erin would probably still do it first.

  “Trade,” Kathra said. “We have been advanced a line of credit on the Anndaing Merchants Guild, for sending Daniel and Joane to Ogrorspoxu. The ClanStars have been over-producing everything they could, partly because we were not sure how long it would take to get here, and partly so that each of them had goods for whatever merchants we happened upon. The Tribal Squadron itself is nearly full of all the metal stock and exotic materials we could mine from a variety of planetary systems along the way.”

  “Such has Spectre Twenty-Three told me, in about that much detail,” Father replied, nodding to her as one of Kathra’s people instead of his daughter.

  For a moment, A’Alhakoth felt a spike of cold dread in her stomach at being frozen out, but then she realized that he was treating her as an adult. Someone capable of messing up their own life, although the choices she had made so far had turned out better than she had ever expected.

  “For obvious reasons, we have a soft spot for trading with House ver’Shingi, if possible,” Kathra continued.

  Father nodded and turned to Alla, seated on his left.

  “Decisions I make today will bind you in turn,” he said with all the gravity of a stern patriarch A’Alhakoth could not remember growing up. But he had also spoiled her when he could and pushed her into roles and expectations that were so at odds with the rest of Kaniea culture.

  But they made her happy. And him.

  A’Alhakoth let that thought warm her. She was happy. The comitatus was her home, at least until, like the others, she desired children and retired to flying SkyCamels, or perhaps serving as a deck officer on SeekerStar under Ife’s command.

  “Understood, Father,” Alla said, just as seriously.

  Father studied the four of them slowly, seeking something in the various faces seated around him, but A’Alhakoth wasn’t sure what it
was.

  “We have generally been happy within the limits of the ancestral estate,” he said. “With what trade we might undertake with Anndaing merchants and others who come along, but largely we have worked with locals who were the middlemen, rather than participating directly.”

  He paused, again seeking something, but he must have found it, because he smiled ever so slightly now.

  “As my daughter has joined your house, Commander, I believe it behooves the rest of us to become more engaged in commerce, if only to put our resources at your benefit when dealing with others who might be less scrupulous with the Mbaysey,” he said.

  A’Alhakoth felt her breath catch. Father was really going to jump into the modern age with both feet?

  “My second son will, of course, be mortally offended,” Father continued with a wry smile the others shared. “But Alla, you are welcome to explain things to him, and he is welcome to go off in a huff to some monastery in the mountains. Whether or not he chooses to sell off his shares in a new trading company I cause to be created will be something I leave to your generation to sort out.”

  He turned to her now and smiled, almost like Death itself.

  “All of your generation,” he said.

  A’Alhakoth nodded, aware that she had truly become an adult in his eyes, at least as far as business was concerned.

  Alla had always been the big brother who took her with him when he was off having adventures. Goli was always the stern one who tattled on her to their parents or nannies when she did something wrong. E’Elbarth was probably the closest to Goli in temperament and outlook, but all she ever wanted was to get married and raise a big family on a big estate somewhere, and she had married into another House that might be allies in Father’s new venture.

  “You are sure, Linga ver’Shingi?” Kathra asked, her own voice deep and serious now as well. “A’Alhakoth explained some of my issues in her letter. I know, because I read it before she signed it. But you will also inherit those issues as my ally.”

  “We share Spectre Twenty-Three, Commander,” Father smiled. “Kaniea culture does not have such a thing as a comitatus. At least not yet. However, if we treat her as married into the Mbaysey, then yours just becomes another House with which I am bound, and my neighbors, short-sighted fools that most of them are, will be able to understand at least that much. They need to welcome the future, for it has arrived.”