by P. K. Lentz
The only two apart from Arixa who didn’t lose themselves were Fizzbik and Daraz. In the latter case, this was because Daraz had, by virtue of having led a mutiny against Arixa, volunteered himself as a test subject in Fizzbik’s experiments to create space-cannabis. The result was that Daraz’s mind was already addled and his perceptions warped, perhaps permanently. Every day, every hour, without the need for Nectar, he talked nonsense and saw things that weren’t there. Fortunately for him, and all those around him, Daraz was either at peace with his new self or blissfully unaware of the change.
Like Arixa, Daraz had tried the Nectar once during the voyage to Tabit-1. It had caused him to spend the bulk of sixteen hours engaged in quiet reflection interspersed with brief periods of soundless screaming. Thus he forewent substances today, but fit right in regardless. In their impaired states, the rest of the Dawn likely understood Daraz’s nonsense better.
Dr. Fizzbik simply wasn’t interested in any mind alteration beyond what could be achieved by Grel’s Eye, for which he seemed to have a high tolerance. He complained about the drink, of course, since it was his nature to complain about most things. It wasn’t his favorite drink, but it would do, considering.
After a few flasks, consumed while he watched and scoffed at the goings-on among the Gorosians, the Doctor got up and declared it was time for a walk.
Back on Earth, Arixa had met Fizzbik on one of his walks. She had almost killed herself pursuing the strange dog-man. One could even say she had succeeded in killing herself, given that she’d only survived thanks to Fizzbik’s intervention.
If one moment existed when her life had irrevocably changed, that was it. Because of that, whether Fizzbik returned it or not, Arixa would always feel a bond for the cantankerous old Gaboon.
“I’d like to join you,” Arixa said.
“Bah! Don’t I spend enough time with you ugly zimzods?”
“You spend most of your time alone in your lair.”
“Exactly.”
“I want to talk to you.”
“Fine, come on. Get it over with.”
As they started off together, Trisma saw them and ran over. In the absence of Ivar and Tomiris, she had taken over their tendencies toward over-protection.
Trisma was currently high. She gave Arixa a questioning look which was almost comically intense. Arixa waved her back and bid her continue to enjoy herself.
Arixa’s first words to Fizzbik when they’d walked out of earshot across the largely featureless Tabitan plain were, “Will the Sagaris still be here when we try to return to it?”
Fizzbik barked sharply. “You’re asking if Zhi plans to leave us here? You think if she told me that, I’d be here? But if she does, good for her.”
“You expect me to change the universe,” Arixa said. “How can I do that if someone steals my ship?”
“Yours...” Fizzbik repeated idly. “I’m not expecting anything from you. In fact, I expect very little. I’m here to watch.”
“You’re helping us a lot for a watcher, old dog.”
“Purely circumstantial. Is that all you wanted? To know if ‘your’ ship will stay where you parked it?”
“No,” Arixa said. “I want to ask about the Sleepers.”
“Go on, then.”
“How long would it take to revive only the Gorosians among them and transport them down here?”
“Hmm, that doesn’t sound like something Zhi would approve. Which I suppose is why we’re not talking on the ship, where Zhi might have ears. Are you asking me to keep secrets?”
“Not asking, just hoping. You don’t like talking to us Gorosians anyway, so why go out of your way to share with Zhi?” Arixa reasoned. “So what’s the answer? How long?”
“All sixteen thousand? Simple, no-frills stasis revival?” Fizzbik emitted a low growl while pondering, then answered, “Around a thousand hours, not counting time for me to eat and sleep. And since that does count, say fifteen hundred. Then you’ll have to feed them all, which you can’t do. And they aren’t likely to be calm and happy, unless we achieve it chemically. My professional opinion is that that’s a crappy plan. As if I don’t know the answer, why would you want to do that?”
“Just interested in knowing what’s possible.”
Fizzbik didn’t let her lie. “Don’t sling turds at me. I’ll sling them right back.”
“To take the Sagaris back to Br’niss without risking the Gorosian cargo,” Arixa confessed.
The Doctor loosed a sharp bark. “Even if you had someone to operate it, because you’d probably have to kill Zhi first, the ship needs satranium before you could consider taking it there.”
Zhi had mentioned the need for the substance but offered few details.
“Can we get that here?”
“Bah! Not unless you happen to trip over a functioning refinery. Which would be just like you: equal parts lucky and clumsy.”
Arixa ignored the insult. Enduring those was simply the price of any conversation with Fizzbik. “What if we moved the stasis pods containing Gorosians onto the surface of the moon without reviving them?”
“Hmmph. A lot quicker, but you’d need a power source so the contents don’t expire. I couldn’t do that myself, and as in your other hypothetical scenario, the one who could isn’t likely to.”
“I believe Morgan and Dearg could do it.”
“Who?”
“Eraínn. From Bowyn’s crew.”
“Oh, yes,” Fizzbik said. “Not that I closely follow the trivial interactions of your species, but didn’t you decapitate one of their friends and get their captain killed?”
“I trust them,” Arixa said. “At least when it comes to our shared goal of returning to Br’niss.”
“Shared folly, you mean.”
“I was forced to leave my people behind, but I won’t abandon them.”
“I understand that completely,” Fizzbik said. “I’m just disappointed. Perhaps you aren’t the bringer of change after all. Just a meteor burning up in atmosphere.”
“Rescuing my people is not an ending, old dog. It’s the beginning.”
“They’re replaceable, turd-slinger. You have an extensive collection of savages waiting to be interviewed, and you want to dump some on a moon and sacrifice the rest. You’re short-sighted, and short-sighted means short-lived. Not that Zhi is much better. All she has are visions.”
“I have those, too,” Arixa countered calmly.
“No, you have goals. And both you and Zhi have made a priority of avoiding sacrifice. That will never work.”
“Careful, dog. Don’t dare tell me the Dawn hasn’t sacrificed. Don’t tell me I haven’t.”
“Your people on Nemoora aren’t essential to the vision you claim to have. Simple as that.”
Arixa felt rising anger. But that was easy for her to stifle with Fizzbik, who could get away with saying things to her that no one else could, except maybe Ivar.
“They are essential. They have to be. I’ve realized the vision has no meaning without them.”
Fizzbik barked derisively. “As I said, maybe you aren’t the bringer of change after all.”
“Just keep observing, if that’s what you call it.”
“Are you done spoiling my walk?”
Arixa barely kept up with the short but swift Fizzbik walking the plain. Behind them, the funeral festivities were a speck of movement and distant laughter.
“Sadly not,” she said. “There’s one more thing I’d rather ask while no one is listening.”
“If only I had the luxury of not listening.”
“I know that imprinting can be used for ill purposes. A person’s will can be suppressed, making them more obedient. Although I would never do this,” she was quick to explain, “I wonder if there isn’t a subtler option.”
Fizzbik barked a laugh. “I can see where this is headed.”
“Is it possible to simply imprint... a tendency?”
“To what?”
“Let’s say
to believe.”
“In what? Something, or someone?”
“Either,” Arixa answered. “Both.”
“In other words, not to make them believe but just ensure that they are... amenable?”
“Predisposed.”
Fizzbik barked. “Yes, that’s better. You want to force people to like you.”
“Not force. Their choices must be freely made.”
“Predisposed is not free.”
“I’m not seeking blind obedience,” Arixa said. “Not slavery, simply—”
“A shortcut to loyalty. They give it and then you earn it after the fact, or fail to, instead of the reverse. To end this conversation, yes, something like that could be done. It’s tricky, and it crosses lines. You would need a brain to provide the pattern.”
“You mean someone who—”
“Likes you,” Fizzbik finished. “And of course the source brain would have to be chopped up into tiny pieces.”
Arixa nearly tripped, almost giving Fizzbik fresh cause to call her clumsy. If she needed an excuse, it was a bit difficult adjusting to the slightly heavier gravity on Tabit-1 compared to that aboard the Sagaris.
“Really?”
“No!” Fizzbik laughed hysterically. “But I could do it anyway to teach you a lesson. That is, assuming you’re able to learn one. Learn one now, and leave me alone!”
Ten
Some sixty hours after the dead were buried, Arixa stood in the cubicle attached to her quarters on the Sagaris smearing Jir hygel on her bare, extensively tattooed skin. The ship was presently nestled in a crater of one of Tabit-1’s three moons.
Watching from a few feet away, Trisma lamented, “Shame to wash this way when we can fly down and bathe in a sea.”
“You know why,” Arixa said. She needed to say no more: the Sagaris was Arixa’s prize, and she preferred not to leave it for long. “Go down if you wish.”
Most of the Dawn was on the planet’s surface. Arixa would have preferred otherwise, but she didn’t dare try to keep them on the wrong side of a just-discovered sky after a seeming eternity spent in the Blue.
“It was just an observation,” Trisma said.
“I don’t keep you around for observations.”
Trisma laughed. Laughter was at least a small part of why Arixa did keep Trisma around—even if every laugh she heard, including her own, ended in a pang of guilt when she thought of Leimya and Ivar.
“Don’t you want to ride a Tabitan horse?” Trisma asked. That was what the Dawn called them, even though the stout, six legged creatures that shambled on the alien plain looked nothing like a horse.
“First they have to catch one.”
“Sometimes the chase is better than the catch,” Trisma said. “They’re having fun.”
“I repeat, go join them,” Arixa said.
She activated the panels embedded in the walls of the stall, and her skin tingled for a few seconds as its freshly applied jelly-like coating evaporated, taking with it the residue of the day. The sensation was not at all unenjoyable. If anything, it was over too quickly.
She stepped out of the cubicle clean and dry and immediately dressed in a stretchable, black one-piece garment which was unlike any textile of Earth.
“Bridge?” Trisma asked.
“Bridge,” Arixa confirmed. It was where she spent most of her hours. If she wasn’t there, then Vaspa was. His desire to return to Br’niss was as great as Arixa’s, and apart from Trisma and the two Eraínn, he was the only other who knew about how she planned to achieve that aim. With one of them always on the bridge, it would be harder for Zhi to hide anything from them, should she choose to try.
While she finished dressing, forgoing leather and armor but strapping on vazer and slinging her war-pick, Arixa moved her fingers in the sequence that would open a comm to Vaspa.
He didn’t respond. It was unlike him, but not alarming—necessarily. She had only wished to tell him she was on her way.
What was undeniably alarming was that the exit hatch of her quarters refused to open at her approach.
She stopped short, causing Trisma to bump into her back, and stood there a few moments, waiting. She set a hand on the door’s cold metal surface, tapped it lightly.
Nothing. She keyed a sequence manually into the panel on the right which was meant to allow her access to anything on her ship, but even that produced no result.
The panel functioned and the lights were on, meaning the ship had power. The hatch alone refused to respond.
“What’s happening?” Trisma asked.
Arixa opened a comm to Zhi. But while Trisma pounded on the door, the call continued to go unacknowledged.
She opened a link that would cast her voice directly onto the bridge. “Zhi! Vaspa! Report! Are we under attack? Zhi!”
No answer. She tried Dearg and Morgana. The rest of the Dawn was down on the planet, observing comm silence to avoid giving away their presence.
The two Eraínn responded, confirming that they were trapped in the suite they shared.
At last, Zhi commed, speaking too calmly. “A temporary malfunction. It will be cleared up soon.”
“Zhi...” Arixa said, wondering whether she should tell Zhi she didn’t believe her. “Get my door open. I’m coming up there.”
“I can’t just now. It will be a few minutes. No more.”
“Where’s Vaspa?”
“Not here.”
“He’s not answering comms. Where did he go?”
“I’m working on this malfunction, Arixa. It will be quicker without distractions. Stay where you are. I’ll have you out soon.”
“I’ll tear it open myself, Zhi.”
Arixa triggered her ironglove, the Irunen Liquiform Armor. It flowed over her right arm as she set her hand over a joint at the edge of the hatch. Threads of silvery liquid began to seep from her fingers into the minuscule crack. Inside it, she caused the threads to expand. The metal of the hatch groaned faintly.
“Arixa, stop.”
“Then stop lying to me!” The tone Arixa used was a threatening one, for even if the hatch was the present target of her aggression, she wished it to be clear that it need not be the last.
“If you break through, you will have to tear down many more hatches afterward. You’ll be too late. Stay where you are.”
“Too late for what? Answer me, Zhi!” she screamed.
The metal of the hatch screamed too, as it started visibly giving way to the ironglove.
“Or what, Arixa? You’ll kill me?”
“You will not control me, Zhi!”
“Arixa, stop.” This soft urging came from Trisma, whose hand appeared on Arixa’s bare left arm. “You’ll regret it. Step back.”
Shrugging off the hand, Arixa demanded, “Zhi, don’t do this!”
Trisma’s hand reappeared Arixa’s shoulder and was joined by a second on her waist. The edge of the hatch screeched and popped as more liquid metal streamed into the crack and expanded.
“Arixa, stop,” Trisma said. “You’re better than this. You have to be or we’re doomed. Whether you kill her or try and fail, the outcome is the same.”
Arixa ceased the silvery flow and froze, seething. Her comm had not shared Trisma’s words to Zhi. Unless set to do otherwise, the implants only sent the owner’s voice. Of course, that did not preclude the possibility that Zhi was listening in by alternative means.
“She’s your friend,” Trisma went on. “You say you like her. More importantly, we need her. Speak to her. I wish I had, instead of joining a mutiny against you. Plus... who’s gonna fix that door?”
Arixa growled even while slowly accepting the truth of Trisma’s advice. The strands retreated into the ironglove, and sighing deeply, she withdrew her palm from the door.
“Zhi...” she commed. Unlike earlier, she now included Trisma in the link, and unlike earlier, she spoke calmly. “Please... tell me the truth.”
After some hesitation, Zhi’s voice came back.
&nb
sp; “A Jir scout ship Shifted in-system. It’s passed us now and likely to Shift away soon. I don’t think it detected our presence.”
Fresh rage swelled in Arixa’s chest, compelling her to renew her assault on the hatch. With help from the breathing techniques of Zhi’s tai chi and Trisma’s touch on her cheek, she resisted succumbing.
“You knew,” Arixa said. “You knew that if one came, Vaspa and I wanted to capture it.”
Their plan had been to launch Panthers to attack any Jir scout that came near.
“I suspected,” Zhi said. “You only would have given us away. As best, you might have survived. I saved you from yourself. Again. It has become a habit.”
“Things can’t go on like this, Zhi.”
“No, they cannot. That is why I’m taking over the Sagaris, Arixa. Please agree. We can still work together. Without threats. Without deception.”
“Are you threatening me now? What happens if I don’t agree?”
“We each have abilities we can use to kill the other. But I would rather we use them in better ways. We are on the same side, Arixa. Or we can be. The Dawn is yours. The wars you start are yours. But decisions affecting the safety of this ship and its contents need to belong to me.”
“I can’t...” Arixa started. “The Sagaris is mine.”
“Give her time to think it over,” Trisma interrupted.
“No!” Arixa lashed out, slapping Trisma hard across the face. “You don’t speak for me!” Then, angrily, to Zhi: “Where is Vaspa?”
“Here. Unconscious.”
Zhi’s training and techniques made her superior to any of the Dawn at unarmed combat, so it was no surprise that she could accomplish this, particularly given the advantage of surprise.
Arixa slammed a silver-clad fist against the hatch, then whirled, set her back against it and slid down. She looked up at Trisma nursing a glowing right cheek and felt immediate regret. At least she had struck her with her unclad left hand. She wanted to think that had been a conscious choice.