by Blaze Ward
“Has Vidy-Wooders acknowledged?” she asked.
“He has not,” the captain nodded. “We are unsure if he is currently ready to depart, in spite of your schedule.”
“Ignore him then,” Athanasia ordered. “He knows where we are going. If he chooses not to follow, or proves incompetent, I’ll just have to find other help.”
“Other help, Ambassador?”
The captain turned to her now with the first honest emotion she could remember ever seeing on his face. Granted, she had a hard time remembering what he even looked like until he walked into a room but still. Honest confusion.
Athanasia reached out a hand and let Stephaneria grasp it. Felt the woman pulse with suppressed energy that she had apparently been bottling up for years, perhaps decades, looking for an outlet. Another one of Athanasia’s tools for when she caught up to the man known now as Dave Hall.
And entertainment until then.
“Once we reach Kryuome, Captain, I intend to begin the process of locating a new vessel and hiring a crew for it,” she said loud enough that ears along the front half of the chamber twitched. “The Dominion never intended for you to spend eternity chasing our prey. Once they were out of Laurentian space, technically there is nothing we can do.”
“Acknowledged, Ambassador,” the man was hedging his bets.
“So I’ll need to turn pirate, out in Wildspace,” Athanasia announced for the first time to anyone other than Stephaneria. “Members of this crew who choose to remain will be given preference of position, while the rest of you will be sent back to the Dominion with my final report.”
She studied the man now. Saw an actual human threaten to emerge from that colorless shell he had surrounded himself with. Probably afraid that he might be forced to end up in a situation like Stephaneria had chosen to occupy.
“Are you sure that is the wisest course of actions, Madam?” he managed to get out without sounding condescending or drunk.
She had to give him points for that much.
“Captain, I intend to chase Dave Hall through the very gates of hell, if that’s what it takes to get my revenge,” she let the snarl fill the bridge. “I do not require that the rest of you be forced to attend me when we get there. Now, back away from the station and come around to the pursuit course I have given you.”
“Immediately,” he said, snapping to and turning to the rest of his bewildered crew. “Pilot, unlock and disengage. Back away as you have clearance and prepare to come about.”
Athanasia looked over at the hungry rage slowly consuming Stephaneria’s soul and wondered if that was what others saw when they looked at her. Probably. But these fools had never been more than meaningless cogs in the giant machine known as The Dominion.
She had been the wife of the Dominator himself. Head of the personal Household. One of the powers of the government, along with top officials of the Solar Party.
And none of that meant anything now. Gone, like the morning dew as the sun burned off even the memories of the dawn.
The new Dominator would never welcome her back. Probably just have her killed as an embarrassing memory of how he came to power if she proved to be an annoyance. At best, shuffle her off to a museum.
At least they had given her enough money to do this the right way. Buy a secondhand warship. Hire a crew.
Disappear into Wildspace chasing Dave Hall down.
And kill him.
The ship lurched solidly as the bolts holding it to the station retracted. Engines and gyros hummed as they went to work.
And if Butler Vidy-Wooders proved to be too little of a man to help her, then she would just have to find others.
There was a whole galaxy out there that had never learned to fear the Dominion.
At least, not yet.
20
Glaxu
Glaxu squatted at the inner edge of the rear hatch of Outermost as the two cramped humans worked on his warp systems. Part of him wanted to be outside, guarding the landing zone, but the tallest human, Hall, and the lethal brunette, Apokapes, had that situation well in hand.
He had never encountered a ground weapon like a twin pulsar cannon before today, so it had been something of a shock to watch it shatter a building. Outermost would likely be at significant risk in a low-level attack pass. Still, they were safe for now.
The building had caught fire and then collapsed within an hour. Very few survivors had been visible in the telescopic view of his goggles, but that may have just meant that they escaped in the smoke and confusion.
Thus the two guards, on the off chance that the human locals were able to rally themselves and foment an attack. He could always take off in Outermost, even with the warp systems off-line, and engage ground targets, as long as he was careful about heavy defensive weapons.
“Glaxu, explain this to me again?” the oddly-colored human woman, Bayjy, asked.
They were all oddly colored, but most of them were some variation on a pink/brown spectrum, so close enough to Mondi colors. This woman was a shadowed lavender. And lacking head fur, but she still had a communicative face, when you paid attention to the skin around her eyes and jaw. Bayjy and Captain Tarasicodissa were hampered as they worked, in meter-twenty-five tall, square hallways better suited to a Mondi than a human.
“Which part?” he shifted around to look inward again.
“The Southern Chain,” she replied. “Want to make sure I understand it. You actually link warpbubbles?”
“Correct,” Glaxu nodded. “My kind flew south for the winter on our homeworld in the distant, forgotten past. Once we became more civilized, the migratory instinct remained intact, so we followed hospitable climes as we needed. That went into space with us. Each fightership in the nest is piloted by an individual crew member. When the lead initiates the system, each wing locks in sequentially, until the entire nest is in formation, and then we all push.”
“Push?” Captain Tarasicodissa, Valentinian, asked. He might have sounded shocked, if Glaxu understood humans well enough.
“Push,” Glaxu agreed. “The result is a larger warpbubble than human vessels generate, as I understand it, as well as being arrow-shaped, and thus sliding through warpspace faster.”
“Huh,” the human commander grunted. “Well, to test it, you might have to push Longshot Hypothesis, so we can see what the improvement is.”
“Arrow-shaped?” Bayjy confirmed. “Slanted back at about sixty degrees?”
“Correct, Bayjy,” Glaxu nodded to the woman in the engine well itself.
“Okay, so I think I see what failed,” she turned and looked down into the hole, carefully keeping her head out of the way of the overhead light she had affixed to the outer hull. “You lost a part of a bracket at some point. It slid a little, and started rubbing against another piece that was never intended to be load-bearing. It failed just as you were ramping up to run and threw things out of alignment. Why didn’t your nest come back for you?”
“I suspect it was because I had voted to remain in human-dominated space,” Glaxu shrugged. “Rather vociferously, at that. They may have decided that I had chosen to remain, and so they might have thought they were honoring my wishes. Next time I shall be more clear about acceding to my group’s decisions, if I manage to find my nest again.”
“Valentinian, I need a powertorque and those needlenose pliers with the curve at the end,” Bayjy said. “Glaxu, I might not be able to get this part out in one piece, so we may have to open an outside panel and lower it that way. Can you find the right panel and open it? Oh, and put a big blanket below, in case we drop anything. Don’t want to have to clean sand out of delicate electronics.”
“Right away, Madam,” Glaxu withdrew and circled under the fightership.
Looking at his vessel, it was only the slightest bit longer than the truck Valentinian had bought, parked beside it, and not as wide, at least with the wings fully retracted in ground mode.
Apokapes nodded to him as he emerged and counted panel
s, finding the one he wanted before he pulled a solid tarp from a box and stretching it over the stone and sand.
Glaxu wondered about the so-called salvage task that Valentinian and his crew had chosen. The one that originally brought them to Kryuome. He had not asked, and they had not volunteered, but he rather liked these humans.
That they shared the same, lethal disdain for Truqtok and his people just reinforced that. Idly, he wondered if perhaps they were in the market to expand their nest. He had no other pressing matters, at least until he chose to go back to better-known zones.
And they were willing to help a relative stranger in need. One not even remotely related to their kind. That also spoke well of them.
He shrugged to himself and tapped on the outside of the panel.
“Bayjy, are you prepared for this to open?” he yelled.
“Go ahead,” her muffled voice echoed back.
Glaxu opened the panel and let it slide out of his way, revealing the underside of the warp harness. A bolt fell suddenly and landed on the blanket. He caught it automatically with his right foot as it bounced up again.
“That’s why the blanket’s there, Glaxu.” Bayjy laughed. “Hate to chase things like that down snake holes.”
He set it off to one side, thought about it, and put it into one of his pouches so he didn’t knock it out of sight accidentally.
“How may I assist?” he squatted under the nacelle and met her eyes above him.
“Got a piece here that would be easier to lower than lift,” she said. “But I’m not sure your arms are long enough?”
“In that case, hold on a moment,” Glaxu grinned.
He rolled sideways and rested both feet on the inside of the lip.
“Much easier this way,” he matched her grin.
“Huh. Sure.”
Carefully, she lowered a short length of steel pipe with brackets and wires. Zygodactyl toes were perfect to capture and lower it. For a human, it would be like having eight opposable thumbs at once.
The section was heavy, but not overbearing. He lowered it to the blanket and let go once he was sure it would not roll away.
Standing, he met Bayjy and Valentinian, just emerging from their burrow into the bright moonlight and side lighting off of Longshot Hypothesis.
“Neat trick,” Bayjy smiled. “I’d suffer frostbite most of the time, though, if I ran around with bare feet like that.”
She knelt and Glaxu moved around to one side, opposite Valentinian.
“Here,” she said, pointing to a bracket that had sheared. And then a second spot worn bright. “And here. New strap and maybe some spot welds, then we should probably do the same thing on the good side. And tell your kin when you get home how to improve the design.”
“I will do so,” Glaxu said gravely.
“But?” Valentinian perked up.
Had he caught the underlying tones? Were humans that perceptive? Fascinating.
“But I am not sure when I will next see my old nest,” Glaxu said. “They could have gone anywhere once they reached Loniea. It was nothing more than a stopover point. Were they coming to look for me, they would have been here weeks ago, so at this point I suspect I am an orphan.”
“Can your ship get you home without the Southern Chain?” Valentinian asked.
It was a most poignant, and also most keen observation.
“It can,” Glaxu replied. “Much slower, without everyone pushing, but that just means more stops to take on supplies, and perhaps see the galaxy.”
“I’m sensing some level of discontent with that outcome,” Valentinian’s predator eyes bored in.
“I have no nest,” Glaxu finally admitted after a sizeable pause, to himself as well as to the others.
He did not miss the quick glance between Bayjy and Valentinian. Nor the half-smile that seemed to pass, ghost-like, across the face of the woman Apokapes.
“No nest?” Valentinian drawled.
Glaxu noted how slow and languid the man’s voice got when he was suddenly someone else in a conversation. The captain was some form of intellectual and social chameleon.
“Correct,” Glaxu nodded. “Mondi Nests are generally a second clan for all members, providing a social structure when far from home.”
“And your nickname is Farther?” Valentinian asked/drawled.
“Farther,” he agreed. “I have apparently outrun my kind. At least in this instance.”
“That is an interesting conundrum,” Valentinian noted. “Let’s get your ship fixed first, though.”
Glaxu smiled as well as his sudden melancholy would allow. At least he would be free to escape the lunatic bipeds of this planet. Where he might find a higher level of civilized discourse remained to be seen, but at least he would have options.
That was all a bird could ask.
21
Dave
They were having a ship’s meeting in the Rec room downstairs, so that Dave could sit in the cockpit and watch the sensor readouts directly, rather than glancing occasionally at his cardreader.
Just because Truqtok’s palace had been leveled and then burned to the ground was no reason to expect that someone wasn’t pissed enough to come start trouble. Having the four of them inside in the middle of the night, while Glaxu was buttoned up in his ship, meant that they had no guns ready to shoot, but Dave could always lift off in a hurry and move to safer ground.
Of course, Vee would magically appear in the other seat the moment Dave triggered the first engines to cycle.
“Do we know anything at all about him?” Kyriaki appeared to have chosen the role of Devil’s Advocate tonight.
“Far from home, and that break wasn’t something he did,” Bayjy replied. “Probably sheared the first piece a year ago, and that let the other piece grind. Plus, I’m from Wildspace, and I’ve never even seen his species.”
“And his ship is armed?” Kyriaki asked.
“Yes,” Vee said. “I checked that when we were poking around. Something small on the centerline, below the ship. Two more that somehow shift around with the wings as he goes into various configurations.”
“He fights with his feet,” Dave called back over his shoulder. “Dewclaw, or those shock bracers, depending, so guns on the wings would fit a design aesthetic.”
“A what?” Bayjy called back.
“You build ships and guns to a cultural and frequently a biological note,” Dave explained. “We use rifles with a trigger at the rear third, because humans have long arms and stable shoulders. Mondi have neither, but he can move quickly across the ground and strike with his feet. The gun down the middle is his beak, for quick strikes, while the bigger ones on the outside are dewclaw strikes.”
Bayjy looked at him and sighed.
“Man, and I thought Mondi were weird,” she said.
Dave laughed. The woman’s performance was mostly for show.
“I might have learned something as a major warlord for twenty-five years, Bayjy,” he teased her. “Guns and warriors fall under that rubric.”
“So what do we think of the person?” Kyriaki chimed in.
“He got at least four shots off in the firefight at the door,” Dave said seriously. “The pistol was in his hands before your first target realized that he was dead, Kyriaki. The first shot went downrange faster than Bayjy got her plasma ball into play. Another shot took out one of the guards on the left flank as we retreated to the truck. He might be small, but I’m pretty sure he’s as deadly as any of us.”
“Feel like I’m running an orphanage, some days,” Valentinian opined obliquely. “Spent three years just me and Artaxerxes, now suddenly we’re talking about adding a second ship and a fifth crew member.”
“You don’t have to,” Kyriaki noted. “He’s just a spacer. And he has a ship that can get him somewhere else.”
“Yeah, but he’s got no family, either,” Bayjy countered. “Like the rest of us. And he didn’t seem in any great hurry to go home, so we’re alike that way as wel
l.”
“So I’m hearing two generally in favor,” Valentinian said. “Kyriaki, how do you really feel about Glaxu?”
“Civilized, erudite, and lethal,” she laughed. “Probably bring the tone of conversation up around here.”
They all laughed, and Dave felt a small band release around his chest.
It wasn’t until he had gotten out of the Dominion that he realized just how specist his home had really been. Even Variant Humanities were not welcome there, to say nothing of a Dire Ground Cuckoo, a roadrunner like the Mondi, though he would never use that term to the man’s face.
As citizens of the Dominion he could have seen either Vee or Kyriaki objecting to traveling with a true alien, Bayjy notwithstanding in her divine purpleness. She was as human, as feminine as any woman he had ever known, and more so than most, his own, estranged wife included. He was glad they were able to see the person, and not the shape.
“So we think we might want to invite him to join us in the desert?” Valentinian asked formally. “As a way of gauging his fit for longer-range planning?”
“You got it,” Bayjy said.
“Yes,” Kyriaki agreed.
“Dave, how much do we tell him?” Vee asked.
“As little as necessary for now,” Dave glanced back and locked eyes with his captain. “I’m a wanted man. A fugitive with a bounty on his head, same as the rest of you, and possibly him now, since this planet will probably throw a fit over us wiping out a nest of vipers, even if they deserved it. And that there might be enemies stalking us. That’s enough to either scare him off or reveal his true colors.”
“Okay, then,” Valentinian said. “Bayjy, you stay up late fixing things. Dave and I will rotate watches and naps all night. Kyriaki, you’re in charge of caffeine and conversation as people need it to stay on task. Questions?”
“When are we actually leaving to go salvaging?” Bayjy asked.
“Tomorrow after you buy your trunk of dried fruit, plus whatever else happens at the sooq,” Valentinian’s voice suddenly sounded to Dave more like one of his former Mirlivas, the brigade commanders of the Caelon Assault Cavalry. “I want to see how the locals react, so we’ll be armed to the teeth and ready to drop hell on anyone giving us trouble. That clear enough?”