Family Matters

by S E Zbasnik

"Did you...?" she started, still kicking that silent hornet's nest, "Did you see Marek coming?"

  The djinn stood silent in the corner, mulling his response. Then the fiery head dropped down. It wasn't going to answer, even in its half guessing game way.

  "You could have reminded me, maybe left a note: 'Hey, that stuff you sort of abandoned back on Arda. Might be best to take care of it in case it comes back and bites you on the ass.'"

  Gene placed his rocky fist upon her bed, releasing some steam out of the cracks along the knuckles. It smelled of baking bread and cinnamon, an old trick he did the last time she lay immobilized across a medical bed with only the mute djinn to keep her company. She had no idea then that they'd develop a crude system of communication through smells. It wasn't until weeks later before she realized his vow of silence was endless. Aside from the bare minimum to survive in space, not a single internalized thought would be projected from him to another being. It could be infuriating at times when Variel Tuffman's oldest friend refused to talk to her.

  Her fingers curled around the rocky finger and she patted it lightly. Gene shifted up, resuming his stance as protector of her fragile body. A small smile took up her lips and she asked, "But you still disapprove of Taliesin?"

  The blue flames returned to the eyes and smoke burst from the shoulders. She expected a bit to dribble out of the ear holes as well, but it seemed to be under control. Perhaps he was warming to the elf. Variel laughed, "I take it that's a yes, then? Who knew I'd find my mother on the other side of the galaxy buried inside a lava golem."

  A whomp drew their attention to the door as her trusty dwarf forced himself around the orc barricade and burst into the room. He took one look at the captain and shouted to the shadows behind him, "She's alive!" Then his eyes wandered down from hers and he shrieked, covering his face with his good hand, "And naked!"

  "That's what I told you," Monde clucked, "not the naked part, but it seemed to be impertinent. Wait! Where are you going?"

  Taliesin pushed past the doctor scampering to get some order into his operating room and Marek trailed behind. But Variel had eyes for her plucky dwarf, who pushed forward despite blinding himself, the bad hand reaching into the air to keep from bumping into things.

  "Orn...that's my thigh."

  "Ah!" the dwarf jumped back as if he'd touched something hot and freed his sight, only to find his hand leaning against Gene's bulging back stone.

  Variel laughed at the accusatory glare, "Gotcha."

  Orn smiled at her, "Well, you're not some evil clone or savage cyborg bent on assimilating us all into a collective of stamp enthusiasts."

  She twisted her lips up in thought and lifted her body, pulling against the thick restraints across her motionless body, "That you know of."

  Orn didn't turn back to the elf as he shouted, "You owe me five accordion playing cats, Stabby boy," which meant he missed the look of relief and something more dangerous washing over Taliesin's face. Too bad, it'd have been some great fodder for Orn's conspiracy theories.

  "You bet on me?" Variel asked, feigning outrage.

  "He said you wouldn't be a right pillock for a good 25 to 50 hours. But I knew you had it in you, Cap."

  "I am so loved here, I see."

  "So..." Orn knotted his hand around, "did you get the stuff?"

  "I'm strapped to a bed, half exanguinated, with enough tubes inside me to power a small golem," Variel chided as Orn twisted up his mouth in shame, "Of course I stole you three bags from high class. They're in my jacket pocket. Wherever the jacket is."

  "Really? The honey roasted kind?" Orn lifted up some shredded fabric, hunting for his treasure.

  "So, do you have anything to tell me or are you just here to gawp at me in my underwear?"

  "Alloys, did you have to remind me? I just ate...We're undocked from the station, humming a few thousand clicky-clacks above one of their icy moons."

  "You got into the bridge okay?" Variel asked.

  "'Course I did. What do you take me for?"

  "And it only required three plasma torches and an acid spitting tennen to break the lock," Taliesin added, earning the glare of the pilot. Somehow it's all Orn's fault that he couldn't remember the password to break the locks. They never use the damn thing and for good reason. Well, they certainly weren't going to be using them now.

  "I'm watching you, elf!" Orn said, pointing at his eyes then back to the assassin who only folded his arms and leaned back on one leg.

  "Have we heard from your hacker friend?" Variel asked, trying to get this impromptu meeting into order.

  "She's not a friend," Orn said defensively, "and no. Of course not. This whole area's No Pinch remember. We want to get out, we need to hit the passageway."

  "Right," Variel said, trying to remember where in the galaxy they actually were. It felt a lifetime ago and she'd assumed they'd already hopped onto that galactic interstate and were ready to go. "So why don't you go get to it then?"

  "Uh, yeah, you might want to talk to my wife first," Orn said, his eyes bouncing about the room.

  "Orn..."

  "She shouted a whole lot of techno blah-ti-de-blah, then threw a spanner at one of WEST's bots and stormed out. Whatever's crawled up her backside laid eggs."

  Variel sighed; things went from bad to really really bad in her time out. She didn't need to guess what the problem was, she knew. Stay here and there's no chance their hacker friend will appear, but there may not be enough time to make it through the entire passage before they could wyrm. It was executive decision time, "Orn, I order you to drop onto the passageway as soon as possible. Like, you should be going right now."

  "Are you sure? Fer invented a few new curse words for this problem."

  "That's an order, or are you not taking them anymore?"

  "Fine, fine," he saluted with a raised finger, and sauntered past the two men crowding the doorway. He momentarily stopped at the shiny human and muttered, "Solidarity brother."

  "Now that that is handled, it is best we all leave the captain to rest and recuperate, yes?" Monde scolded, trying to wave the rest of the invaders out of the med bay.

  Taliesin opened his mouth, but dropped his head. There would be time later. He hoped at least. "Of course, doctor knows best." Nodding his head once to the woman trying to not smile from his attempts at decorum, he walked out the door with the orc shooing him along.

  But Marek dodged past the two aliens, his hands in his silvery pockets, "Didn't think you'd make it."

  "Me either."

  He puckered his bottom lip in, looking like an algae sucking fish as he spilled out whatever weighed on his mind in that shaky flight and then long hours sitting in the waiting room with a pair of fretting aliens. "I...I should probably apologize."

  The djinn burst a seam of steam, the red eyes blackening around the edges. Marek's eyes darted up to Gene for a moment but they returned to his wife still lying upon her nearly death bed. "You risked a lot, a hell of a lot, for me. Dying. I've never seen anyone-. Well, there was my grandmother, but that was different and she..."

  "Marek, your point," Variel tried to move him on. Exhaustion clawed up her arms into her brain. Sleep sounded very tempting.

  "I am aware that I am not easy to deal with, yet you could have died for me and..." He removed his hand from his pocket and held up a closed fist. Opening it, he said, "This is yours."

  Her dwarven bit sat in his sweaty palm, smuggled inside the wound still draining as a million helpful microbes got to work. "How did you get that?"

  "In the confusion of that pointy ear's smoke, I saw the fox guy drop it. It didn't take much to scoop it up and...well, it only seems right it goes back to you. It's your money and all."

  He turned the currency about in his palm watching the small metal bit in the middle flash in the harsh lights. Variel dropped her mouth knowing she could lie her way out of this, but not wanting to. "It's fake, you know."

  "What?" his head snapped up, the fist closing around the fraudulent bi
t.

  "You think you're the only one that knows how to procure a false bit out of a bank? That wasn't even a real Dwarven Bank, just a bank run by dwarves. The clues were subtle, but most professional bankers don't wear coveralls coated in moon rock dust."

  "Oh, you're really something!" He clenched his fist trying to crack the fake bit of plastic, "Risking my life for some lowlife crime lord who's probably got bodies under his floorboards for Soulday presents just so you can keep coin back to buy more drab brown shirts."

  "Me? At least I didn't skimp on the replica. The color was all wrong in yours and there wasn't even a dash of glowstick liquid inside," Variel said.

  "I can't believe you."

  "How am I the bad guy? You did the exact same fucking thing."

  "You're supposed to be some great big hero, sacrificing your life for the greater good. The moral pillar upon which everyone is measured. And you're no better than the rest of us in the muck."

  Variel glared at her husband. Even in her old life she never claimed to be a compass for the good in the world, to decide who's wrong and who's right. She followed her orders, accomplished her tasks, and fought in a futile war. It was as senseless and meaningless as the job of a house cleaner. Once right and peace was back in the galaxy, someone else would just track mud across the universe. Sacrificing your life for someone else's cause didn't make you right, it just made you dead.

  "That woman died a long time ago," she said, trying to pin all his hatred on Terrwyn.

  Marek growled, his lips rising as if he were the kitsune about to tear his claws into her, but the man was more mouse than fox. He hurled the false bit into the blood and gauze bucket. Walking out the door filled with a grumpy orc, he said, "No, she never even lived."

  Marek hunched over his hand while glancing behind his shoulder every few minutes in case the emptiness of the shuttle hanger suddenly shifted out of his favor. "I got it. That is to say, I will get it soon."

  The hand garbled something in response, intelligible to all save those with an expensive translator shoved into the ear canal. It buzzed as it clicked on, processing the words and repeating them back with the same friendly voice the deluxe stand mixer would ask, "Are you certain you wish to add five eggs to this batter?"

  He twisted his head about, "No, it's fine. I can handle her. It, I can handle it."

  A few more grunts, more agitated than the last, filled the cold air. Gods, would it kill someone to properly heat the place? Marek shivered inside an emergency blanket he swiped from a first aid station after already accidentally ripping up a decompression suit. "Yeah, yeah," he said, silencing the grunts before his ear bug bothered translating, "I got it. Give me a day." He closed his hand into a fist.

  "You should not be here."

  Marek jumped, spinning about so the blanket fluttered like a cape behind him. He bore the striking resemblance of a gum mascot, here to fight plaque and bad breath with a single chew. Yellow eyes tilted and the light of a standing torch hidden in Marek's blanket stash fell upon the clenching arms of the elf.

  "What are you doing here?" Marek shouted, trying to replay any of his incriminating words back through his brain.

  The slit eyes blinked slowly, probably contemplating all the ways it could crush him for fun. Elves were wild animals dressed up in pretty gowns for the amusement of the galaxy. They might be beautiful for some, but make no mistake, the heart of a beast lurked beneath that marble skin. "I could ask you the same," the elf said crossing his arms and leaning back.

  Marek eyed up the assassin sharing his wife's bed as if he'd stand a snowballs chance on the dwarven homeworld against the trained killer. Maybe with the element of surprise, or perhaps the radioactive element of surprise. "I was sitting," he responded. "I needed some air away from all the non-humans. The smell gets rather fetid."

  A lip curled up Taliesin's face, turning the small mouth into a sneer. "I am watching you, human."

  "Perfect."

  "I know what you are. Spineless, a waste of flesh, solipsistic, formed from the tainted clay of sloth."

  "I know you are, but what am I?" Marek shot back. Taliesin blinked his eyes slowly, thrown back by a school yard taunt he'd never heard before. Ha! Got ya there, snake eyes Marek thought, his maturity levels falling back to that of grammar school. "Frankly, I don't give a shit what you or anyone else thinks of me."

  "That is evident in every step you take," Taliesin said, and he eyed up the house slippers Marek had to cover his feet in. After taking a kitsune bath, his designer bespoke shoes were a lost cause. The only footwear options on the ship were a pair of bedraggled sandals from the dwarf that required snapping his foot in half or a set of slippers in pink foam with fuzzy pegasus heads sewn to the top and wings on the side. No one remembered where they came from, but they all snickered as he slipped them on, kissing goodbye to what scraps of dignity remained.

  "You have a problem with me, tree fairy?"

  Hands curled around his collar and yanked him out of those pegasus slippers before Marek had time to swallow from his racial epithet. "It would be so simple to toss you off this height, to scatter your crushed bones to the grates."

  Marek wiggled, fighting against the third or fourth time he'd been removed from the ground by one of his wife's underlings. "This again?" He put one hand around the assassin's arm. "If you had the right to kill me, you'd have done it days ago."

  Taliesin pulled the human close to his own eyes, his tiny nose twitching as the nostrils flared in rage. Then the brow dropped, forming a V across his forehead. "Now? You choose now to cultivate a spine?"

  "Better late than never."

  The elf dropped the human, savoring the sight of his legs failing to catch and his shiny pants tearing on the unfinished grating. Taliesin stepped back as Marek scrambled to reassemble his slippers. By the time the human looked up only a shadow within shadows remained, but a voice called out of the darkness, "If you do anything foolish enough to harm her, I will end you."

  "Fantastic," Marek muttered to himself, trying to fluff up the small wings and return the pegasus head from its cockeyed expression. "Could this day go much worse?"

  As he said it, his hand buzzed. Marek tried to stare into the shadow void of the dimmed shuttle bay, but if the elf was still there he'd never find him. Sighing, he flipped open his hand and saw it was an intra-ship message.

  "Marek," Variel's voice called from his hand, "get to the mess. We need to talk."

  He closed his hand and shook it in a limp fist to the uncaring field of stars around him, "That wasn't a request you know." The gods did not answer back as he picked up the pieces of his dignity.

  A spoon stirred the cup of hot protein supplement number 5, trying to dissolve the bitter aftertaste in a sea of brown sugar. There were seven protein supplements in all. Number one was a brilliant success and made the creator famous but not rich. He forgot to properly patent the formula allowing every Tom, Drow, and Harpy to offer up their own "Protein Supple Mint! Now with flavor!" for pennies to his dollar. In a fit of rage, he returned to the drawing board and created number 2, 3, and 4 in a seventy eight hour brainstorming session.

  Two would cause ones hair to fall out if you stirred the cup in a counter clockwise direction, three tasted of dryer lint dredged in burnt onion soup after it dried a pair of gnome underpants soaked in urine. Four was declared a complete success and even had a passable flavor reminiscent of blackened catfish, right up until five weeks after roll out. It was difficult to market something that could become sentient and lodge inside ones throat cutting off oxygen. Soups can be surprisingly vindictive.

  Having lost whatever small semblance of sanity he claimed from the imagined success of four, the inventor threw together all of the previous recipes into a big pot and discovered Protein Supplement number 5. It didn't burn your eyes out, it didn't ignite small woodland animals miles from where it was manufactured, and you need not worry about it forming a rebellion inside your cupboards. It did taste like a pot noodle,
but you got used to it after a while. Six and seven were the exact same formula as five, just with fresh packaging and an extreme color scheme some seventy five year old ogres in business suits insisted would "appeal to the hip, younger crowd," by which they meant anyone with their original hips.

  Variel placed the spoon down and glared at her medicine. The orc insisted that if she was allowed outside of the med-bay to eat something, it had to be nutritious and healthy. On this ship only a few rations and something once green that wilted to a brown was then left near a forgotten Protein Supplement 3 until it turned green again, counted. She hated these cursed things. If she wanted to eat nothing but powdered fake food she'd have become an extreme colonizer or joined one of those freeze dried food of the month clubs. "You can eat all your dinner inside one pill!" "Saves time and energy!" "Stomach cramps and bowel impactions are a natural side effect."

  She felt Monde hovering over her shoulder, his jaw shifting even as he pretended to bury his eyes in an orc bulletin. Despite at first banishing himself, then running from a death sentence, he still kept up on his people's comings and goings. Oddly, Variel never felt the same kinship to the ones she abandoned. "Do I have to?"

  "Yes, unless you wish me to unseal a feeding tube."

  "No, no, no. Drinking it now," she said, bringing the cup to her lips. The flavor of weak tea having a drunken, one night stand with a bottle of vinegar and a cup of brown gravy filtered down her throat and into a yawning gullet. She didn't realize how starving she was until the liquid hit her stomach and it growled for more.

  "May I have a biscuit to go with it?" she asked pathetically, batting her eyes as if it'd have any effect on an orc.

  "Your kind of biscuit or Orn's?"

  Variel weighed her chances and sighed, "Mine."

  "Very well," Monde said, turning to the cabinet loaded down with their few carb offerings when the kitchen door opened and the ship's trusty engineer dashed in, her head leading her.

  Ferra was in her "shit's about to go down" overalls; the ones that are twelve ply thick with scorch marks down both sides and one blown out boot from a small accident. They squeaked with every shift of her feet and drove her husband mad -- mostly from the pavlovian response of if Ferra was wearing them her natural cursing quotient would break "pirate smacking his testicles into a board covered in rusty nail" levels. Her hair was slicked under a black hood, a few strands of white blonde poking out from either her rage or hurry.