by Blaze Ward
He reached out his right hand and took hold of the gem. It was firmly embedded somehow in the glove, and perhaps his bones, but he was able to pry it free with nothing more than a quick pop.
The gem went dim. The glove returned to wherever dark place gloves go when you take them off and stuff them into a pocket when you arrive, as he removed it and put it back with the other.
“But for a hat,” he murmured. “We’d all be dead right now.”
“A hat?” Erin spoke up.
The gun hadn’t wavered.
“A taqiyah,” Daniel offered. “It goes under the keffiyeh to cover the head, like a Jewish kippah. Had he been wearing one, I probably wouldn’t have been able to hurt him. Poof. We’re all gone.”
“You’ll need one?” Omezi asked.
Daniel shrugged.
“You planning to invade another tribal squadron and take them all as your personal harem?” he asked, finally feeling some of the weight slide off his shoulders. “Be wary of the chefs.”
That got enough of a chuckle that Daniel decided he might survive the morning.
Might even want to survive the morning.
Maybe.
He rose, slowly enough that nobody would shoot him accidentally, now that he decided he actually wanted to live through this.
Stepping carefully backwards over the bench so he didn’t fall over and crack his skull, AGAIN, he pulled his shirt over his head and rested it where he had been sitting. Booties next as a couple of the women whistled sarcastically. Pants on top of the shirt until he was standing there in nothing but his briefs.
“What are you doing?” Omezi asked him.
“The stupidest thing I have ever even considered, Commander.”
24
Erin had to give the man credit. He had watched her draw the pistol and aim it at his face, just to sort of keep him off track, and the chef hadn’t even blinked.
She could see why Kathra considered him tough enough to join the comitatus. Not many of the others would have been that solid, surrounded by that much promised-but-unspoken violence.
Now he was mostly naked, standing in front of all the women. One hundred and sixty-eight centimeters tall. Maybe sixty-eight kilograms. Erin was bigger. So were all but three of the rest. Pale skin that reminded her of beef stew for a color. Dark brown hair starting to gray above the ears but still dark on the chest.
The man had hardly any muscle tone to speak of. Wiry, but skinny. Sure hands, though. She had watched him cook, early on, just to get a feel for the man’s mind.
You could learn a tremendous amount about someone by letting them get into their own comfort zone and run with it. Daniel Lémieux didn’t put a foot or a hand wrong in the kitchen. She suspected that they might have blindfolded the man and challenged him to make cookies, and still eaten them.
He wasn’t there today. Erin could see his shakiness. Oh, he controlled it quite well. Anybody but her and Kathra would have probably missed it. Any maybe Areen, if he had truly spent enough time fornicating with the man to learn his naked body.
That deep breath. In and out, before he moved, like he had to plan each step, and then convince his limbs to actually carry out his instructions. The way his hands still had the slightest wobble as he reached out and picked up the pants that she had stripped off the dead mummy.
After a moment, he put them back down and picked up the shirt instead, pulling it over his head and tilting his nose down far enough to look at the gap she had torn in the center. It was much smaller than it had been, but Kathra had warned her that was expected, so Erin didn’t shoot the man right now.
A breath rattled around that narrow chest before it finally found an escape. Both hands flexed into fists and relaxed twice.
The eyes looked up and met hers.
Urid-Varg, or whatever it was, wasn’t there today. All she could see was a lifetime of pain and bad decisions welling up as they stared at one another.
Like: How did I get here? And who did I offend to cause that?
She couldn’t help him with theological concerns. The daughters of slaves rarely believed in a benevolent deity.
The shirt hung strange. Daniel had a longer torso, and a far smaller gut than the other creature did. And his arms were long enough that the shirt fit him like her own three-quarter raglan sleeves, but that was accidental.
“Erin,” he said to her quietly, “this shirt will adjust itself to fit me when I stick the gem into the middle of my chest. Please don’t shoot me unless you really mean it.”
Okay, that was an interesting request. And probably necessary. Kathra had warned her that she might have to take Daniel down, right up to the point where nobody might be able to stop him.
Ndidi was prepared to hit him in the face with a carafe of hot coffee, but anyone holding a fire extinguisher right now would just warn the man what they had prepared.
She watched him step close enough to pick the gem up again and study it for several long seconds before he turned it curved-side-out and rested it against his breastbone like it might bite.
Erin could see the terror in his eyes that it might embed itself right now and conquer him. And still he did it.
Fierce.
And the shirt flowed. Erin didn’t have a better word to describe what happened. The gap around the gem disappeared, but Daniel didn’t start screaming in pain, and his soul was still there at the back of those brown eyes. Sleeves extended. Gut got sucked in. It even showed off the lats and deltoids that weren’t immediately obvious, until you considered how much lateral strength a chef needed to have to lift pans and move them with utter precision.
Still, she might have shot him without the warning. Or one of the others. Everyone was that keyed up right now.
Daniel seemed a little more calm now. He truly had feared losing his soul to the gem, hadn’t he?
He reached out and snagged the pants, sitting down with his back to everyone so he didn’t pitch face first when he put them on and stood back up. Again, the material flowed, shortening in the legs, expanding in the thighs, and shrinking to fit the chef’s much smaller waist.
Daniel stood perfectly still for a moment, facing them. It wasn’t death she saw in his eyes. Well, not their death. His own, perhaps.
Dreams dying quickly as fate took you by the collar and shook.
“Commander, I won’t be flying over to the other ship on your Spectre,” Daniel said with infinite sadness in his voice.
“Why not?” Kathra had turned sideways, straddling the bench, to watch her chef come to grips with eternity, or whatever that damned gem promised the man to get him to take it up.
Daniel gulped once. A second time. Sucked a breath deep into his chest and held it hostage for several seconds.
“Urid-Varg flew over here under his own power,” the chef said in a clear, bright voice that reminded her of the edge of her blade, just after she had sharpened it. “That’s how I’ll go back.”
The barrage of sound that erupted around Erin was shock made solid. Denunciation. Anger. Fear. And a few other things.
She and Kathra had already guessed that part, since there had been no shuttle that docked with WinterStar. The suit was a portable spaceship, in ways nobody understood.
At least not yet.
“How was he going to get all of us over there?” Erin suddenly perked up.
She lowered the pistol, and after a moment, holstered it. They were past the part of stopping Daniel. And she had enough friends handy to kill him if they needed to.
And if he could be killed.
He shrugged with his head tilted to one side. Probably as good an answer as any other.
“Dunno,” he said. “I’m assuming some sort of airlock, but I won’t know until we get there.”
Kathra handed Daniel the boots next, subtly pushing him to keep moving forward when Erin could see just how much Daniel wanted to stop now, give it all up, and run back to his kitchen.
She didn’t think she had ever met a male who would refuse to
accept that level of power. Especially not one that had had two successful restaurants. That was the definition of power, because all decisions had to be yours, at the end of the day.
But he had also had enough. Sold the restaurant to his Sous Chef for whatever cash the man had in his wallet that night, according to the legend that had built up. Walked completely away without once looking back, even when people were trying to find him to throw money at the man.
Again, he turned his back on everyone and sat on the bench, close enough that Kathra could punch him or kiss him. Bent over and pulled a boot on, then the other.
He stood, facing them. Closed his eyes in true pain, as if he had just crossed some Rubicon in his mind.
And then he started floating. Not much, but his feet were high enough in the air now that he might look Kathra in the eyes if she stood.
If the last noise to explode had been fear, this one was wonder. Had they all come to claim Daniel Lémieux as one of their own? The only male ever in the comitatus?
In her head, Erin had given it even odds that someone would have shot him by now. So apparently nobody was that concerned.
Daniel landed like a cat. Fixed his eyed on her like someone was driving a knife into one of his kidneys with exquisite patience, and accepted the gloves Kathra was holding out. Pulled them on like he was going out into a blizzard, like they saw on one of their favorite entertainment vids about the team of scientists at the south pole of some forbidden planet.
He just stood there for several more seconds, staring down at his hands. Front. Back. Fists. Flat.
Without bringing his head up, Daniel’s eyes found hers again and he pointed at a spot midway between his navel and that gem. Maybe centered just below bone, over his diaphragm.
“Erin, could you shoot me right there, please?” he asked in a quiet tone. “Just once. Areen and Commander Omezi, you might want to step back a little first.”
Erin glanced over at Kathra as the woman rose and put space between herself and her chef. Areen did the same.
Erin pulled her pistol and centered it on the man. The gem was almost pulsing, and she could see the faint candy-coating of whatever he had done with his hand earlier, but this was over his entire body.
She hadn’t put the safety on earlier, just in case she had needed to quick fire, so she lined him up and caressed the firing stud once. There was a hypersonic crack as the pistol fired, and the recoil drove it smoothly back into her shoulders and hips, like a perfect shot always did.
The bolt had nailed him exactly square and detonated, like it was supposed to. Daniel stumbled back a half-step and stood upright again.
“Well, apparently not,” he muttered, looking down before he looked her in the eyes again. “Thank you. Once was enough.”
Once should have slammed him backwards into the bulkhead behind him like he had been kicked by a large equine. He should be scorched across the center of his chest about the size that he would need a round dinner plate to cover it. Internal rupture. External bleeding.
Probable death, at this range and that location. Fairly quickly, too.
But Daniel Lémieux was no longer vulnerable to particle bolt fire. Erin watched him blink rapidly several times as he processed that information.
Most males would effect a massive bravado right now, to be handed that level of power. That was one of the reasons that so few males were birthed by the Mbaysey. Just enough to maintain a wide vitality to the sperm bank, and to have some play toys for those women open-minded enough to consider something so barbaric.
Daniel wasn’t most men. Erin wondered how much of his current temperament was a result of being a chef, and how much had driven him into the field in the first place.
He stepped forward with a tiny shrug, almost imperceptible, and sat down again in his spot. After a moment, he picked up his coffee mug, emptied it, and looked over Erin’s shoulder.
“Ndidi, if you aren’t going to hit me with it, could I get some more coffee, please?” he asked in a voice still finding its footing. “And some bourbon, if we have any handy?”
25
Kathra had offered to let him rest for a while, but Daniel had politely refused, whispering to her that if he didn’t do it now, he might never work up the courage again. She could respect that. This entire day had been a calculated risk, the man’s ruthless drive against his psychological fragility.
Now she was sitting in Spectre One, hanging midway between the WinterStar and the Turtle. Originally, she had intended to keep more of the comitatus behind, but they had given her a look that promised all manner of rebellion if they weren’t allowed to be here with her, so she had twenty other ships handy.
What they might do, she wasn’t sure. The craft were all armed, but that was sufficient for pirates and fools, not conquerors, as Daniel had proclaimed the creature he was usurping today.
“Spectre One, this is Daniel,” the voice came over the radio sounding tinny.
They had made up a headset for him to wear. It didn’t have a lot of power or range, but it let her talk to the man, as he was truly intent on walking in space. Nobody understood how, but it had apparently been done, so Daniel was adamant that he would figure it out himself.
“Go ahead, Daniel,” Kathra replied, wondering if she should go ahead and assign him his own flight number, like the rest of her comitatus had, so that he understood that he belonged.
Perhaps when they got back, and she was sure he still existed as a person, rather than having been hijacked by Urid-Varg over on the ship. Or getting himself killed in the meantime.
Silence.
“Daniel?” Kathra repeated.
“Working up the courage,” he said. “Sealing up the airlock now and opening the outer door. Here goes nothing.”
Kathra heard the beeping over the radio fade as the air was drawn out of the chamber.
“How are you doing, Daniel?” she asked carefully.
“I think if I peed myself right now, the suit would just absorb it,” her chef replied with a slight chuckle. “We may find out soon.”
“Keep talking,” she ordered him. “If something goes wrong at your end, we might not know until your frozen corpse floated by.”
“Thank you for that lovely image, Commander,” his voice took on an extra layer of tartness. “I shall endeavor to remember it next time I’m making a dessert of some sort, where frozen spaceman might be an appropriate theme. When’s your birthday again?”
Kathra heard several of her crew snorting over lines that they had left open. At least everyone was approaching this with an open mind.
She didn’t think it appropriate to remind these women that their fates might come down to the decisions of one man. They might not appreciate her humor.
“Not for several more months,” Kathra replied when the line got quiet again. “You can torture Erin first.”
“Oh, thank you, Kathra,” her best friend came over the line.
More laughter.
“The outer door is opening now,” Daniel said. “And I’m not exploding, so we’ll perhaps count this as a win. I can see darkness and distant stars through the hatch as it retracts inward. Dead silence around me, without any air to carry anything but the sound of my heartbeat.”
She heard him swallow once, the mic being close enough to his throat for those sounds.
“And now, the stupid male is walking out into space, wearing a living gem as a spacesuit and pretending he’s not going to lose his bladder as he turns and looks backwards at WinterStar, hanging still behind him and rotating,” Daniel continued.
On her scanner boards, Kathra saw a new dot emerge from the stern of her flagship and begin to move in this direction. The space between the two ships was roughly a kilometer or so at the moment. Enough for all the Spectres to be in between, at relative rest and facing in all directions, with scanners pinging madly and guns ready for whatever trouble might emerge.
Kathra’s greatest fear over the last few days had been another,
damned Septagon finding her, even clear out here. She was well beyond even systems with Sept colonies being established, and well around the curve of their border from the heart of the Free Worlds. Most of this sector was empty of anything but prospectors, and perhaps religious minorities that had fled the reach of Imperial Earth at some point in the distant past. How long those folks remained free was a matter of speculation.
Kathra and her mother had both understood that being on a planet made you vulnerable to conquest. The tribal squadron could just fly away from the Sept, or any others. It kept the population extremely small, but modern medicine allowed her to maintain eighty-five percent of the adults as females.
“And now, the craziness begins,” Daniel’s voice brought her back from flights of fancy. “I am…uhm…telling the suit to fly over there. I think. Somebody be ready to catch me?”
“I have you, Daniel,” Erin came over the line. “We’ll chase you down if something goes wrong, and I’m in a suit so I can vent my ship to let you inside.”
“Thank you,” he said succinctly.
On the scanner, a blue-shift appeared as he started to move. It wasn’t much, but the very recognition that Daniel Lémieux could move in space without a suit or a ship was dangerous enough.
Any other man…
“Commander, I must share an image with you,” Daniel said quietly. “In my mind, in somebody else’s memories, all four of the forward fins are landing platforms. The rear two are…I can’t call them engines, because I really don’t understand it, but they make it fly.”
“Someone else’s memories, Daniel?” Kathra asked.
“They’re all in here, Commander,” he said with a jerky, jittery voice. “Urid-Varg controlled them, but he’s gone now. I don’t want to enslave them, but some of them are willing to…talk, I suppose is as good a word as any other. They are trying to share memories with me. If you hear me talk in the present tense about those other men, that’s what happened. Erin won’t necessarily have to shoot me.”
“Necessarily,” Erin clarified with a chuckle.