by F. E. Arliss
“When Queen Altum Juls confronted the nest of General Shale and his allies, it was a rout! She killed them all! She now controls all of the Idolum empire,” Sasha blurted out, unable to control her enthusiasm for the bloodbath part of the story. “Well, almost all. There are always a few who won’t follow a Queen not of original Idolum birth.”
Captain Quirke stood up and faced his crew. “You have met her. Queen Altum Juls is an honorable person. Make no mistake, though, she will kill any who try to harm her nest or allies. We are now among those allies. We are protected by her, and we will die to protect her. That is our destiny now,” Commander Quirke finished. A stone silence met his statement. “Go to bed and think on it. We’ll talk in the morning.”
Then he added. “Congratulations to the new Quirkes. Thank you for giving me the honor of a family,” he added gruffly. Arc and Birdie came and hugged him. From within the clasp of their arms, he met Dag, Cole and Coates’ eyes, “And thanks to my crew-family for having our backs,” he rasped out. The three crewmen all nodded solemnly back. “Haul yur asses to bed,” the old man ordered with a smile, patting both girls on the back as he gave them a gentle shove on their way.
Chapter Fourteen
Warp Waylaid
Two days later the Clyde was on its way at warp-drive to Valoria, the home planet of General Monsav. None of the crew had changed their minds about the commitment to the Alliance. General Monsav was the original supporting general in the Idolum empire ruled over by Queen Altum Juls, and they were all eager to meet him.
It would take them about a month to get there, as they’d be able to take a few shortcuts through gates powered by black holes and controlled by the Vanguardians. At plain old warp without the shortcuts, it would have taken them years.
Commander Quirke had arranged for Captain Sasha Kelty and Caja, her First Officer, to interview his other brothers and see if they passed her ‘honor’ test. If so, the entire Quirke clan would soon be independent carriers with contracts ranging the entire reaches of known space. What no one would be aware of was that they also would be part of a secret alliance helping to supply the empire of an Osmirian and Idolum Queen, Altum Juls.
It was risky, but worth it, as far as the crew of the Clyde was concerned. Wages had been raised considerably and, if they lived through the next few years, each of them could retire to their own private deserted moons and live the rest of their days in peace.
Of course, that wasn’t the only reason they were doing it. The money was good, but they also respected Queen Altum Juls and loved the vivacious, gifted Sasha Kelty. Renegar and Geboren had felt like home to them.
Never underestimate the power of home, Arc thought. Coates and Cole had loved Geboren, as had she. Dag and Birdie had simply had to be dragged away from the nooks and crannies of Renegar’s desert climes. As for Arc and Quirke, they liked both places. Each had its own charm and the people on both were wonderful.
To be welcomed as part of a group, and especially to have an actual world to go home to, was a powerful thing. None of them would ever take it for granted again. Clyde was home. But Clyde had to set down for repairs and refueling. A home base for Clyde was a blessing for all of them.
Time would tell whether the rest of Quirke’s clan were accepted. Arc wondered if he’d informed his family about his adoption of Arc and Birdie. Thinking about it gave her a little nervous flutter in her stomach. With a shrug she shook off the feeling. It didn’t matter. Quirke was her family now and she was loyal to him and Birdie. Nothing, not even a disapproving family, would drive them apart.
The third week out from Valoria, in a long stretch of uninhabited space, the new improvements were put to the test, as the crew took the fighters on runs around asteroids. Coates had a blast, literally, blasting smaller asteroids just behind the fighter’s patterns. One of the reasons that General Monsav’s nest had chosen Valoria was its remote location.
After the death of their queen and the decimation of the numbers of their clan, the surviving Idolum had needed a quiet planet with bountiful mammalian life in order to sustain themselves and rally their spirits.
Learning to live with respect for the animals that sustained them had been an easy thing to do. Having learned how fragile life was, had them grateful for the chance to heal and live quietly.
The vast remoteness of the uninhabited galaxies the Clyde had to travel through to get to Valoria was also a haven for pirates and all types of ships that were trying to put distance between themselves and whoever was looking for them.
Having left the bio-load from Geboren on Renegar for their crew to haul onwards to select clients, the Clyde was riding lightly. This gave the crew free time to practice with their new shielding, cloaking device, and turret gun as well as have a multitude of runs with the two refurbished Idolum fighters.
Arc had named the fighters ‘Bat Outta Hell’ and ‘Hell-n-a’ and then gave Birdie a picture of an old handbasket she found in the archives and asked her to paint the handbasket next to the name of the second fighter. The two names were sayings that her great-great gran used to say. No one got it but she and Quirke. It made them laugh every time they looked at the block letters Birdie had painted on the nose of each fighter.
When Quirke had sent the little Vanguardian to the scrap yard on Zabados 9 to get paint for the lettering, Birdie had been unable to find the right paint. Most paints weren’t compatible with the new Soclaued shielding. There were just drips and dabs of paint left in small quantities. Birdie had brought them all back to the Clyde, mixed them all together and now each fighter sported a lovely shade of bright neon orange.
Quirke had about exploded when he’d seen it. Birdie just shrugged and said, “I think it’s pretty, Papa. The only paint left that would work was from the caution signs and the landing pad lines.” The grizzled old Commander had gone away laughing and happy. Hearing ‘Papa’ had turned him into a big gooey mess of nothing, Ewan Quirke thought to himself. Then he shrugged and laughed out loud.
So far, Birdie -- though tiny -- was becoming an effective fighter during their daily bouts in the cargo bay. At first, Commander Quirke had tried to keep her out of the workouts, but Dag wasn’t having it. “She needs to learn to protect herself,” he said firmly. “Of all of us, she’s the most likely to get picked on. She’s a flawed Vanguardian. She may be your daughter now, but to outsiders, they’ll just think, ‘flawed’,” he added with sadness in his voice. “She must train. For her own good.”
Quirke gave in with a sigh but watched her closely during the training to make sure she wasn’t damaged by an accidently placed blow. After a few weeks, it became clear that his fear was misplaced. Birdie was small and fast, and almost as dirty a fighter as the Wyatt twins had been!
Even Coates, with his massive shoulders, thought twice about how he was going to proceed in his bouts with her. Lots of small hits could really be very aggravating, he acknowledged after a bout where Birdie smacked him repeatedly in his exposed lower left rib, frustrating him as she used the wall as a fulcrum and bounded over his head. Like a wildcat, she then whirled, slid between his braced legs and punched him as hard as she could in the ‘sweet spot’ as Arc had told her to call it. He had a good size bruise the next day.
During the end of that third week, the long-range sensors alerted and the Commander, always rather safe than sorry, raised their new cloaking device.
What they saw next kept the entire crew hunched and silent. A flotilla of twenty Arachnian ships passed within a few thousand light years of their lone cargo hauler.
Arachnians, an upright spider-like species, preyed on human flesh and were among the most dreaded species in the known galaxies. They’d been beaten back repeatedly by the Intergalactic Guard and the Idolum clans, but this looked like a serious arming for attack.
Taking up a position behind a series of drifting moons, the crew of the Clyde watched as the Arachnian convoy rendezvoused with a group of Idolum nest ships. “Oh, holy crap!” Quirke moaned. “This i
s bad, very bad.”
Within the next few minutes, Commander Quirke had sent untraceable communications to Geboren and Renegar. Those were followed by a barrage of comms to his extended family. The next several hours were tense as information flew back and forth between bases and ships. Speculation ran rife, but Quirke quietly closed it all down and made the crew focus on preparing absolutely everything for battle. They’d already checked everything as a matter of routine, but he had them double check, mostly to keep their minds busy, but it also never hurt to be ready.
The information was disturbing enough that Queen Altum Vis sent the closest Osmirian representative, her son General Apollo, to assess the situation.
Using sophisticated fold-space technologies, he arrived within hours of the news being transmitted. Jumping to their location behind the drifting moons, General Apollo, aboard the Lance, slid into position alongside Clyde. Arc had only a second to observe the sleek ship before the cloaking device engaged and all was rendered invisible.
Joining Commander Quirke in the cargo bay, Arc searched his face to see if he felt any of the same tension she did. Only a small muscle twitching near his wrinkled left eye gave any indication of his feelings. “Keep yer cool, girl,” he said to her grimly. “We’ll be needing our heads on straight fer this one.”
Arc nodded, “Yes, Sir. I reckon we will.” She grinned at him after using one of his favorite words ‘reckon’. He grinned back.
“Rubbing off on you, am I?” he asked with a laugh.
“What’s that old Earth saying, ‘Fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree’?” Arc asked, grinning. “More like fruit gets the same pollen it stays near,” she added. “Environment not genetics,” Arc said grimacing at the memory of her own horrible birth family. “At least I sure as hell hope so, Sir,” she added, sighing heavily, then rolling her shoulders and releasing the tension that had coiled as they waited.
Just then the docking tube locked into place with a loud clang. Meeting the others’ eyes seconds before the door slid open, Arc and Ewan Quirke sent each other a silent message of hope.
Apollo Freux was just as enormous as his parents. As an Idolum, he had stood nearly six and a half feet tall. Now, at almost eight feet in his evolved Osmirian form, he was a giant. With his father’s jet-black hair and amber eyes, he was the opposite in coloring from his mother, Queen Altum Juls.
Arc couldn’t help the small gasp that escaped as she caught her first glimpse of the massive general, as a bevy of Idolum warriors, a forward guard grouping, stepped into the bay. Exhaling slowly, she reminded herself that these were allies and with a feeling of relief stepped forward with her father to great the enormous hulk that followed the guards into the bay.
“General Apollo, welcome to Clyde,” Commander Quirke said, thrusting a gnarled hand forward in greeting. “This is my daughter, Arc Quirke, First Mate on this vessel,” he added, letting his hand be swallowed into the massive vacuum of the General’s grip.
The General’s amber eyes seemed to glow as he pinned first Quirke, then Arc with a steady accessing gaze. Releasing Quirke’s hand, unharmed as far as Arc could tell, he extended the giant hand towards her. Slipping her own into the yawning maw that was his clasp, Arc vividly recalled an incident in her childhood. She had been playing outside and their neighbor, a professional baseball player living in the gated mansion next door, had asked her if she’d like to play baseball with them at the park. She had tagged along and remembered with clarity trying to fit her tiny hand into the gigantic baseball glove he’d handed her. That was how this handshake felt. Like she was still a child and was putting her hand into an enormous oversized mitt once again.
For all its enormity, the clasp of General Apollo’s hand was amazingly gentle. Arc removed her hand from his clasp with a huge smile of relief and said, “Welcome aboard, General. I wish it was under different circumstances. How would you like to proceed?”
Fixing her father with another piercing gaze, the General’s voice sounded out for the first time. It was exceptionally deep and had an odd, low whirring sound that ran as a baseline through his speech. “I believe that we should return to the Lance and take advantage of his advanced technology to get a read on the situation.”
Then, recalling his manners, he bowed slightly to each of them and said, “Pleased to meet you. That is what my mother says I’m to say to humans,” he added with a smile, showing a broadly white, sharply pointed, set of teeth that looked much as if a great white shark was about to swallow them.
Quirke snorted, “Don’t worry, son, manners are the least of our concerns right now. Let’s go see what we’ve got, shall we?” His matter of fact attitude brought another smile to General Apollo’s face.
“I like your no-nonsense approach. Another of my mother’s sayings, I believe,” the General said, grinning. Arc grinned back, relieved that the niceties were over.
“Ok, let’s go,” she added, flicking a finger towards the docking tube. “Dag, we’re going aboard the Lance. The Clyde is yours,” she ordered quietly into her comms.
“Roger that,” Dag replied. That calm reply was followed by a second’s pause. “Stay safe.”
“You too,” Arc replied. Everyone was aware that at any moment, cloaking capabilities or not, they could be discovered by twenty Arachnian ships and a small battalion of Idolum, clearly not part of the Alliance. If that happened, they were severely outnumbered.
“Let’s find out what the hell is going on,” Quirke said and started towards the docking tube. Impatiently locking his eyes onto the disappearing waistline of the giant in front of him, he strode into the Lance with his daughter close on his heels.
The Lance turned out to feel much the same as Aasha, the pea-pod shaped living habitat on Geboren. It was clearly organic, with veins and conduits of fluid that pulsed along the walls of the passageways they walked along to arrive at the ship’s bridge.
“I hope you don’t mind my asking,” Arc ventured hesitantly as they walked the slightly damp feeling corridors, “but I’m still unclear about the difference between Osmir and Idolum. I understand the story of the transformation and that it comes with extra height and energy-work capabilities. I’m just unsure what that means in the big picture of things,” she added uncertainly. “Why aren’t there more Osmir and fewer Idolum?”
“It’s a good question,” came the deep rumbling whir of the General’s voice. His bass voice seemed to cause a slight quivering in Arc’s stomach.
“The answer is that the transformation is so powerful that it must be protected at all costs. Only those that can be trusted absolutely are allowed the experience. So far, that has been only my immediate family,” the General rumbled.
At Quirke’s nod, the General continued, stopping briefly to meet their eyes and deliver the stunning explanation that would take their breath away.
“What you’re missing is that when the transformation takes place, the recipient becomes not just a conduit of energy, but an endless source.”
“The Osmir can draw energy continually and shape it into anything the recipient’s mind can conjure. The reason that there is only one Osmir per ship, is that we are the mammalian food source that feeds this whole ship. The Idolum warriors on board do not need to feed. Simply being in my presence within a few hundred meters causes them to be sustained, as is the Lance,” he continued.
“You worry that we could be overrun by the Arachnians and Idolum we are observing. That is not the case,” he stated firmly. “If they detect us, I am quite able to defend us indefinitely until they are all dead.”
The way he’d stated this information, so blandly and matter-of-factly, caused both Arc and Quirke to gape at him. “It is an enormous responsibility,” the General added, grimly, seeing the gawking look on their faces that his words had caused.
That statement had both their mouths snapping shut as they finally understood the enormity of the General’s responsibility. “You can see why only the most trustworthy, and morally and emotion
ally developed can be given the burden of the transformation. It is not a gift. It is a burden of endless responsibility and sacrifice,” he added, his visage transformed now into an earnest mask of near misery.
“Millions can live or die on your command,” Arc said slowly. “That must be a terrible weight on your shoulders.” The understanding of the whole burden of Osmirian transformation suddenly dawned on her. “If someone was transformed that had no moral code, it would be the end of existence as we know it.” Her father gasped beside her, finally grasping the situation in its entirety himself.
“Yes,” the General said simply and proceeded down the hall turning, a now rigid back, on any more questions they might have had.
For some reason, the General’s grasp of his burdensome responsibility helped make Arc feel a wave of relief. Wobbling slightly on her now rubbery legs, the Commander reached out and grasped her elbow for support. She smiled at him, her face a pale mask of understanding. “Makes you feel better, does it? Knowing you’re allied with a world killer?” he asked in a murmur.