by S E Zbasnik
Variel neé Terrwyn stuck out her generous jaw and said, "Who's asking?"
"A Marek Yates," the distant lawyer said.
The captain's eyes darted up to the empty landing then back to the droid, "Is...is he with you?"
"All you need to do is sign these three documents stating that you accept the legal challenge of Mr. Yates and are working to come to a compromise. Then I shall leave you to mitigate on your own," the mechanoid thrust actual paper into her folded arms. Lawyers preferred the stuff to anything digital, it provided an air of mystique to the proceedings and no one could easily zoom in on the fine print. The papers bounced thrice into her crossed arms before the mech stopped.
"I am not Terrwyn Yates," she said, still eyeing the windows of the vessel, hoping to catch a bit of movement.
"Immaterial, this challenge is for the owner and registrar of the Constipation Cruise."
She shifted her jaw up, but saw no way to get this legal terror off her ship. Snatching up the papers, she jotted down her poor attempt at a swooshy V and added in some squiggles. It was rare for anyone to sign anything with their fingers, rarer for a person to write legibly. The day the PALM was unveiled, all handwriting teachers got incredibly drunk and signed up for phone sanitation duty. The mechaniod paralegal sifted the papers into alignment before dumping them into the briefcase. It bowed its thick head, almost whacking her in the nose before cranking the briefcase hand to the left, shutting off the transmission. Turning, the blank faced robot climbed back into its ship.
"Was that it?" Orn asked, a hefty bag of jaw breakers clacking in his hand.
Their lawyer stand-in vanished into the door, but it did not shut. A heartbeat passed, and Variel hoped she'd misinterpreted what Hydra was getting at -- that all they really wanted was a promise to do something she had no intention of fulfilling -- but then a shoe shifted into the light. A shoe done up in garish stripes of red and purple that gathered data upon a person's stride and form, not that it was ever used for exercise.
The clothes that followed were silver, tucked and pulled by black strips into the illusion of a svelte frame where an extra 20-30 pounds would normally hang. Dishwater hair, rarely brushed and even rarer to find washed, clumped across the beady eyes that narrowed in the harsh light of the shuttle bay. Slowly, the man moved down the gangplank, a duffle bag askew off his shoulder. His thin nose sniffed against the foreign smell of space while his exaggerated movements tried to compensate for artificial gravity.
As his boots hit the ground, he glared into the curious eyes of the Elation, a snarl as he hit the orc, a leer over Ferra, confusion for the dulcens and a shrug at Orn. It was at Variel that he paused, when confusion she prayed would solve this problem broke into a grin. Damn, he'd remembered the scar.
"Honey," his voice still oozed that sense of oil dripping off greasy pitstop food onto your fresh uniform, "I'm home."
Once his boots hit the ground the gangplank retracted like a metal tongue. The ship powered up, but it wouldn't leave until the last person out the door pushed the shuttle bay drain button. Taliesin watched the tip of the lawyer's ship, there were no windows, it had no way of knowing what its previous passenger was doing. Shifting his eyes to the only other armed person, he tried to give a signal but she'd already gotten the idea. Ferra yanked out her plasma spanner and held it up to the intruder.
"Whoever you are, whatever you want, it won't be this ship!" the engineer cursed.
Taliesin removed his small pistol and shrugged, "What she intoned."
"You guys brought real weapons?" Orn whined.
For his part the invader didn't flinch, he didn't exactly walk over and push their weapons away with his small finger, but he didn't cower in terror at their might. Instead, he looked towards the captain and shrugged.
Variel released a sigh she didn't realize she'd been holding for five years, "Wait, you can't kill him."
"Why?" Taliesin asked, quickly noting all the ways he could easily kill the invader. He'd reached fifteen before they began to grow redundant.
Variel stared into the muddy green eyes she thought she'd never have to suffer from again, or so she dreamed most nights, "He's my husband."
CHAPTER FIVE
Marek leaned back in Orn's chair, his ass spreading the cushion the dwarf worked excessively hard to break in. The rest of the crew passed in various states from one edge of the galley back to the other, traveling and glaring from the captain back to the asshole taking up their air and heat. Variel would have chewed her fingernails off if she had any to spare.
No one asked a question as she led Marek at threat point out of the bay and to the galley. WEST and Ferra handled getting the lawyer ship off the Elation, while the rest of the crew sat around waiting for the all clear, not a word passing lips. As Marek poked through Orn's gated community candy bowl (it was for dwarven fingers only), sneaking out one of the pilot's favorite peanut butter and nib sauce ones, Ferra walked into the accusation room. "It's gone, nothing but taillights far as I could see. Oh, and WEST told me to tell you you're over ten years late for an RH blood test."
Variel pounded her forehead into her fist. "All right, out with it."
"You're fucking married?!" it was Orn who began. She shouldn't have been surprised. If he wasn't the center of gossip, the dwarf could pout for decades; but from the utter shock the stalwart assassin couldn't shake off, she'd feared a different attack.
"Five years, three months and two days," Marek burped out. "Or do I need to adjust for all that time you played dead?"
Variel sneered at him, but knew she'd have to win over her crew before dealing with the problem, "This will take some time to explain."
"We are not going anywhere...literally," that bit of sarcasm came courtesy of her elven lover. Gods, she hated that term. Orn; however, slugged Taliesin in the gut since he couldn't reach the man's shoulder, glad that the kid was finally getting in on the action.
"There is a tradition, an unwritten rule in the Crests, no one can rise up the ranks, especially to Knight, unless they have a family. You're not a true soldier unless you have someone back home worth fighting for, or so the brainless fucks sitting in glass offices think when it comes to promotion time. So, many of us find someone willing to pose as our spouse."
"It is a ruse, then?"
"Nope, sorry spike ears," Marek taunted the assassin, "We're legal and everything. Had a beautiful red wedding. I braided her hair, her mother toasted to me."
"She would have toasted to a stick with a happy face drawn upon it if it'd gotten me the sword," Variel cursed back. It seemed a sensible move at the time, she didn't have space in her life for a proper courtship marriage. Gods, she was an idiot at that age.
At the silent glares of confusion from people who less than two months prior knew her only as Variel, she continued, "Sword chasers they're called. In exchange for swearing fealty to a person, they get promised room and board for life as well as the knowledge their spouse is going to be out of the house for years at a time. It's a roommate that's legally binding."
"And all prospective knights marry for convenience?" Taliesin really needed to give someone else a chance.
"No, some do for love," she admitted. "My mother was married four times before they forced her into retirement."
"Four step fathers? Damn, that's a lot of ties," Orn chided.
"Mothers actually, four step mothers," Variel said. "The last two blended together in the end. I think one owned a pottery class that worked in low gravity or something." She hadn't thought of any of them in years. There was so much of her new life to consider, to adapt to, to fake. Even Mum fell into the back of her mind. Somehow, realizing she forgot about her stung more than the memory of giving her up.
"You're damn lucky your mother-mother's dead. She'd shriek like a banshee if she knew you'd given up the sword to play greasy space bandit," Marek chided.
"Why the fuck are you here?" Variel finally asked, trying to solder up her old wounds with a rifle blast.
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Marek lifted open his PALM revealing a message from the Department of Personnel for the Defenders of the Crest to Lord Gravett. The bear logo in the corner roared. "A month ago I get a little message from the high and mighties up in the crystal castle. Seems I won't be getting any more pension checks because my dead wife done reanimated herself into Missing in Action."
She yanked on his arm to steady his flashing screen while trying to read the tiny print. Most of it was gibberish about the Lord not having any legal claim to your loved ones living or dead corpse, nor any pieces if/and/when they are necromancied for service to blah blah. Her eyes stopped and she re-read the first real paragraph. Sure enough, someone pushed the "not dead" button on her forgotten corpse. She combed the data for any mention of the death of another knight or what actually happened on that djinn planet a lifetime ago but the letter was boilerplate. "Your loved one we told you was dead might not actually be. Have a nice day."
As Variel removed her hand and sat back, Marek switched off his PALM and whistled, "You're not an easy woman to find. I called in some old favors, dug through surveillance shit; lucky for me that old war mark never went away." He gestured to her cheek scar, a permanent note to the world that whoever wore it got on the bad side of an orc and lived to tell about it.
"Though, I got to say the new face is total shit. You weren't no looker before, but now I'd rather have one of them smashed face dogs on my arm."
Variel didn't respond to his clumsy disparagement, but she heard some simultaneous tooth grinding behind her shoulder. That was Marek; born with no power, a third son who couldn't be trusted near a family business he knew nothing, and did not wish to know, anything about. So, he scrabbled for whatever scraps the world tossed at his feet and fell back upon his charm. It was a wonder he survived grammar school. "I'd rather leave you on an airless asteroid in the middle of collision season, myself."
Marek grinned the type of smile that sunk any good man's stomach to his shoes, "Ah, but see you can't go doing that. I'm still your legal spouse and you must afford me all the comforts that legality requires...legally."
"Terrwyn Yates is your wife," Variel said, "not me."
Marek leaned into her, his breath stale as an ancient bag of corn crisps, "But supposing someone were to point out the coincidences between Mrs. Yates and Ms. Tuffman. Well, I assume Ms. given the state of your facial reconstruction. Tuffman, really? That the best you could think up? Sounds like a food container."
Variel wanted to call his bluff, to cow him into silence with the flex of some muscle, but the little shit knew her code, knew she wasn't about to murder someone even if it would improve humanity's gene pool. And he could smell coin the way a shark would blood in the water. She leaned back in her chair, "I suppose you have some plan, then?"
Marek nodded his head, "Taking half of this ship sounds like a start."
"Ha!"
"What ha? I'm entitled, I put in ten years of work."
"Trying and failing at every narcotic the galaxy produces and getting caught screwing the admiral's wife is work?"
"It's the only perk to being tied to you. You signed the contract same as me."
Orn coughed as the the married couple glared at each other, "I'd like to hear more about this admiral wife liaison."
"That's a great tale, isn't it, Marek?" Variel grinned in ancient rage, "Take whatever you want home, but keep it quiet and no one that could embarrass me. That was in the contract you signed, wasn't it?" Her husband mumbled something and waved his hands. "And what do I find when I open my daily chuckle in armor newsletter? A shot of Admiral Darmat's wife with one of the Crest shields covering up her shame as a naked man lays head first upon the ground, blood oozing from where he thought diving off the roof into the barrack's fountain was a wise idea!"
He shrugged, but still tenderly touched the area that required stitching and a whole lot of groveling. It was the closest she came to throwing him out onto the streets, "The admiral was caught in some coffeepot fishing hook scandal and you went after that elf. Day saved, no one cared." Marek loved to point out everyone else's faults while simultaneously dismissing his own as nothing more than "boyish pranks."
"You're worth less than worthless," Variel scoffed, shaking her head.
"My point being, you owe me restitutions. If'n your old bosses won't be supporting my lifestyle anymore, you have to take up the slack."
"What with?"
"You got a ship," he said, circling the room with his arms.
"That's over a century old, condemned and cubed instantly if spotted by anyone official from the Crests, and still being paid off," Variel said, depressing herself.
"A crew, sort of," he gestured to her rag tag band of misfits, some of which were paying her the honor of sitting around listening to this cretin bad mouth them. "Certainly, it's enough coin to support a man of leisure."
"It couldn't support a gnome of leisure, never mind your monetary black hole."
"Then we are at an impasse," Marek said crossing his arms.
"There is no fucking impasse. There is no coin. There is nothing for you here but a fat lip," Variel said. If she had the coin to toss him out the door she'd throw it now at him, hoping something would dent that thick head.
"Your little ship, the ancient one worth nothing, it cannot move because," he removed a small box from his shimmering pocket, "I hold the keys now. Apparently, if you give shady lawyers enough they can get you access to just about anything."
Variel glared as his claws circled around the box that held the lockdown neutralization code. She could thump him over the head and take it, or have her dwarf swipe it, or even suggest Gene dangle him head first above a chasm, but there'd be a security code. While Marek was slightly more intelligent than a hamster that bashed its head in a terrible wheel accident, shrewdness burned through the man's veins. One didn't become a sword chaser without having a base level that put most weasels to shame.
"I am not leaving this ship until I get what's coming to me," Marek said, slipping the box back into his pocket.
An ass out the airlock is what you deserve, Variel thought, even if she couldn't do it.
"Seems to me," Brena's soft voice carried across the fallen void, her words harvested carefully, "what you need is for your wife to resume her morbid state."
"I'm afraid I'm all out of planets to explode upon," Variel muttered, confusing most of the people in the room. She'd sort of skipped over how she managed to get away from the Crests and was in no mood to get back into it. Her face change hadn't been entirely of her own choosing, but it helped with the new name.
"Why not break into your clan's database?" Ferra said absently waving her arms about. This endless debate was boring her and she'd rather life return to her engines than sit around discovering things about each other. Let the past moulder in its grave, digging it up will only give you scabies.
"Sure, and how about I honk the Grand Star's nose or drain the liquid diamond mines of Tarquin? It's about as likely," Variel muttered into her hands.
Orn coughed into his hand and rubbed his neck, not wanting to draw attention to himself even as he spoke, "I may know someone who could do it."
"You," Marek glared down at the proper owner of the chair his thick ass was slowly breaking. "You know someone that can hack the highly encrypted and firedemoned computers of the Bears?"
"Maybe..." Orn didn't want to elaborate which worried Variel. Normally, she couldn't get him to stop elaborating all over the place. "It's worth a shot, right? But I'd have to be able to place a call first," he glared at Marek and the key tucked into his pants.
"Oh ho, little man, you're not pulling the wool over my eyes," he waved his finger in the dwarf's face as if Orn were an errant child.
Variel whacked it away, getting a satisfying crack with her movement, "Stuff it, you condescending arse. We can't do anything, not plan, not gather data, not move money into your greedy pockets unless we get the locks broken down on the ship."
M
arek glared at her, coddling the finger she possibly broke, and sighed. The others looked about two steps away from stabbing him in the back a good forty times and then dumping his body on a senate floor somewhere. "Okay, but we do it my way."
Marek ejected the key out of the slot Ferra cobbled together on the bridge. Half of WEST gurgled while the other half waltzed off into the hallway. At least they had the mouth; the eyes seemed to be taking a stroll.
"There, you can make your call," he gloated while dropping the key down his trousers where no one was going to go hunting for it.
"WEST," Variel called to her wayward computer, "are you there? Can you find a communications buoy?"
The mouth flickered up and down, but the sound blared from beneath the still sparking view screen, "Yes sir, no sir, please sir, may I have some more?"
"Ya cheap piece of rotting iron," Orn banged into the console as if it would help.
"Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do," WEST flickered between personalities, "Has anyone seen my teddy?"
"Sweet molding ancestors, I hope it means the stuffed animal," Orn touched his head, wiping more grease across it, "CAN YOU FIND A COMM BUOY?"
"Daddy, what's the difference between buoys and guorls? Pbtbtbtbtbt..."
"Okay, that's it," Variel scooted Orn's chair aside and stuck her face right into the crazy computer's path, "WEST, either answer our questions or you're going back into the nursery. Permanently."
The raspberry noises stopped as it weighed its options. "Where the children are?" it asked.
"And they'll all be given sugar and fresh crayons before being sent in unsupervised."
"Hello, Owner 23, I have regained almost full control of my sanity."
"I'll eat my hair the day that happens," Orn muttered.
Variel stood and tugged down her creeping shirt, all business, "Right, WEST, find us a comm buoy to link up to."