by E M Gale
‘You seem less inclined to that than last time,’ he thought languidly.
I sighed, and looked up at his face. He still looked serious. The corners of his mouth were turned down, but his eyes seemed softer. He caressed my cheek with a cold hand. ‘Beautiful Florentina,’ he thought. It seemed almost involuntary. ‘Where have you been all this time?’ he asked. He looked so sad for a brief moment.
‘Tortuga mostly. We got attacked a lot and rested up there for repairs.’
Price felt rather confused and frowned at me. Then, suddenly, he laughed.
‘What?’ I thought.
Price grinned at me. ‘That’s not quite what I meant.’
‘Oh.’ I frowned. ‘You ever been there?’
‘No,’ he replied. ‘It’s not the sort of the place a civil servant is supposed to go to,’ he added with a smirk.
‘That’s true, but perhaps his research for his revenge will lead him there sooner or later. If he’s not been there, I guess he hasn’t met a lot of vampires then, or duelled, or found out who I really am.’
‘Oh, it’s kinda fun, you’d like it. Well, the top levels, not the piratey levels. It’s classy-like and full of vampires,’ I thought.
‘Maybe I will go there at some point.’ He was hugging me tightly to him now and thinking about the future. I couldn’t tell what he was contemplating in any greater detail than that. ‘It is apparently on the way to Syzygy,’ he added. I nodded.
‘Oh, maybe that’s why there were so many vampires hanging around there.’
‘What will they do to you? The vampires in your clan, I mean. How much trouble will you be in for not going straight there? They won’t kill you, will they?’
‘I doubt they’ll kill me. I might get away with it. They might not do anything at all.’ He was frowning but his eyes looked calm. Then he smiled. It was a sad smile, like a sunrise over a frozen forest. ‘Flow, I might be done with my revenge soon.’
“Can I ask you about your revenge? You won’t get mad?” I asked out loud. I didn’t want to have this discussion entirely in our heads. It was too intense to communicate that way.
“I won’t hurt you, Florentina,” he said with a chilled anger in his voice.
‘I guess he doesn’t like that I’m still concerned about that.’
I nodded. I believed him. I took his hand in mine. I was used to the fact that vampires had cold hands, but I cupped it in both of my hands to warm it up anyway.
“OK then. You seem… calmer, Price. How is it going? Are you going to give up with it?” The second question was said almost ashamedly, with my eyes downcast.
‘I want him to, but do I have the right to ask?’
He lifted my head gently to look into my eyes.
“I’m calm because it’s nearly over and done with. I need to do this, Flow, I need to have my revenge.” His eyes went dark and scary as he said that. I gasped. My heart was racing. “But I think I might have something to live for afterwards,” he added.
‘Me? Is that what he is suggesting?’
“How soon?” I asked in a small voice.
He smiled at me. “Today I am meeting with a gentleman who in exchange for a suitably extravagant sum will be able to tell me the name of the person in charge of the soldiers who slaughtered my village.” The smile had gone now. “I think I can rest just killing him.” His eyes had gone flinty.
‘Will he stop after that? And not feel the need to hunt down every lowlife who was involved? What will be left of him after? Once everything has burnt out in hot white anger, what will be left? Will he be able to just shrug his shoulders and carry on with life after that? To not think about it?’
I shook my head.
‘Maybe. After all, what the hell do I know about revenge? I wouldn’t seek revenge, but that’s more because I can see the disadvantages and not feel the advantages. It wouldn’t bring them back.’
‘Perhaps Price is someone who can cope with revenge and I’m not. Maybe I ought not to tell him not to do it. Maybe he has to do it. But would his family want this for him?’
“You’re not going to tell me not to seek my revenge?” he asked me.
“No, Jonathan.” I sighed.
‘I want to.’
“I don’t think it’s a good idea. I don’t think that I would do so, but I have no right to tell you not to do so,” I said, shaking my head.
‘After all, my family are two hundred years in the past, but as far as I know, they live out relatively boring lives–that is to say, in peace and security. No one is going to massacre them the way that Price’s family were massacred. And if they do, well, in twenty-first-century Britain we have police and courts. I can get justice for them. Out here on the edge of the galaxy there is no police force, other than the planet-based ones, and they are not able to chase people from planet to planet.’
Price looked happy at my assessment.
“Good. We can just leave it at that,” he said, smiling. He dipped his head down to kiss my ear and neck. “Because, Florentina, I said before that I may come and look for you after my revenge.”
I pulled away out of his grasp so that I could look at his face. I needed to know what he was thinking and feeling. Admittedly, I could feel it via the mind-meld, but I was still human enough to want to see it on his face as well. He looked definite, serious, earnest.
“I will come and find you,” he said.
I smiled at him. He smiled back. Then he looked alarmed.
‘Oh, great. I think I am crying again.’
He hugged me close and I relaxed into his embrace, just breathing his scent.
‘What will be left of him after his revenge? I suppose I shouldn’t ask. I should wait and see. Do I want him to come and find me? I think I do. I still don’t understand him at all, but maybe I will in time.’
“How will you find me? It’s a big galaxy,” I said, drying my eyes.
He looked… sad, yet happy, and that didn’t make any sense to me. “I know which ship you’re sailing on, under which captain, and I’ve made contacts in the spaceports round here.”
I nodded. “And if that doesn’t work, I know I’m going back to visit Tortuga at some point.”
He nodded at that, but didn’t ask me how I knew.
‘Should I tell him about the time travel? If he’s going to go looking for me, he’ll find out. He might even meet my future self.’
“Flow, do you want me to come and find you?” he asked softly, interleaving his fingers in mine.
I looked up at him and smiled. “Yes.”
* * *
I had been with him for hours, talking, kissing, drinking from and sleeping with him. As time went on he started to look at his watch more and more, which made me increasingly nervous. His meeting with whoever was a few hours before the ship took off and I had decided to stay with him until that time.
It was becoming clear to me that his revenge mattered more than anything else. Despite what I thought that he might feel for me, he had made it very clear that I came second to his revenge. I had no idea when I was going to see him again, he had said he wanted to find me again, yet he was not willing to miss his meeting to spend a few more precious hours with me. I supposed that you couldn’t just miss a meeting like this; it would be more like giving up on his revenge. And clearly, he was still not willing to give up on his revenge for me. If I was honest with myself, that was exactly what I wanted him to do. On reflection, if he had, I think I would have stayed with him and let the Egg depart without me. But I could not ask him to do that and he had already made it clear to me, both on the ship before and with his actions that day, that he would not.
It is odd when you know there is a limited amount of time left somewhere. There is always the feeling of potential. When I went planetside I never felt like I was really there. Everything I did had a time limit, a countdown to when I would need to get back. Plus I was paranoid about being left behind, which was why, even when I didn’t need to be there for loading, I ten
ded to head back to the ship an hour before takeoff, when the bridge staff had to go back to start running diagnostics.
But in this case, Price was the one in potentiality, he was watching the clock, thinking about when he would have the name he needed. The closer to the time it got, the more distracted he became. Perhaps he figured that we had discussed everything we needed to discuss. I watched the clock with a growing disquiet. I was not sure that he would be able to be happy after gaining his revenge. And, if I was honest, I was disappointed that I wasn’t enough to distract him.
“Well, Flow, it’s time for me to go,” he said, standing up and getting ready. He packed things into his suit jacket–the watch he had kept looking at, a gun that really didn’t suit him, and a leather-bound book of his notes that did.
‘Well, anything you want to say, Clarke, this is your last chance to say it.’
“Be careful.” I hadn’t asked him for any details. I didn’t want to know and he hadn’t wanted to share.
“Don’t worry about me, there’s no need.”
I smiled at him, but he wasn’t in the mood for long drawn-out goodbyes. He ushered me from the room and locked the door.
“Goodbye again, Flow,” he said, “but this time it isn’t forever.” He smiled at me. I tried to smile back but was troubled.
“Goodbye, Jonathan,” I said quietly.
He frowned, I think, at what he could read in my eyes.
‘Maybe I do want to be more important to him than this stupid meeting.’
He kissed me, lingeringly, then we walked out of the hotel.
“I will come and find you, Flow,” he said before we parted. I smiled genuinely. I watched him walk away from me. He was already gone, his mind filled with thoughts of revenge. He stopped at the corner to look back at me. He didn’t wave, but he did smile at me. Then he exited the mind-meld and turned his back on me, then walked around the corner.
An… Interesting Event
I turned away and headed back to the spaceport. I had two and a half hours left on this rock, and as I’d forgotten my sunglasses I wasn’t going to explore. I did still have the sword I’d stolen from the pirate assassins strapped on my hip, which looked a little out of place here, to be honest. People wore guns or nothing at this outpost; they didn’t wear swords. In fact, I suspected that the sword gave me away as a vampire.
I found myself a comfortable-looking dive just outside the spaceport and spent an hour over a glass of bad wine. After that, I headed back to the ship. I asked and apparently Brannigan had left the ship earlier, so at least he wasn’t around. I was informed that my friends were already on board–probably involved in running takeoff pre-checks and diagnostics–but as I didn’t want to talk to anyone I spent the time until takeoff practising kata in the sims room.
I went back to my quarters and drank a cup of orcian coffee as I watched the ship take off. I liked watching us take off and land on places. It gave me more of an appreciation of the speed of the ship when we were close to planets. It was an awe-inspiring sight. Although it might well be commonplace in the twenty-third century, from when I was from, only a vanishingly small percentage of people on Earth had ever seen a single planet from offworld, let alone several.
As I was musing on this, the alarms rang. We were still very close to the planet, still going through the takeoff procedures.
‘How the hell can pirates attack us here? Where’s the planetary defence?’
Despite having a sword, I threw my door open and ran down to the weapons locker, since that was where the marines would congregate for orders.
‘It’s dangerous to attack us this close to a planet, let alone whilst we are taking off and not even in a stable orbit. It’s much easier for ships to crash in the crowded space lanes, much harder to navigate and the planet’s gravity distortion makes the margin for error that much smaller. Why would anyone be that stupid? Pirates don’t gain anything by destroying their prey’s ship before boarding.’
I arrived at the marine area of the ship and ran into the exercise room.
“Intruder. The bridge,” said Connor. I spun on the spot and ran back past my quarters towards the bridge. Being the fastest person the ship, I beat everyone else there by several minutes. I put my hand on the panel to open the door, ready to run in at the first gap, but couldn’t.
Price was the intruder.
Almost everyone was at their stations on the bridge. Anna was calculating the update coordinates for the pilot. Jane had her back to the comms station and was staring at Price. I could smell Price’s blood seeping from a wound in his chest. The co-pilot was lying on his front on the floor behind the piloting consoles, which were covered in his blood, bone and brains from the hole in his head. His right hand had been gripped around a pistol. Both it and his hand were crushed.
To my left was the viewscreen with the planet below, tracking wildly across the screen as the bridge operators fluffed their tasks. Forward from me, on the right, standing on the raised bit of the bridge, was the captain with the major next to him. They both had their guns up and aimed at Price, who was in the middle of the bridge, a hand resting on the pilot’s shoulder. Price seemed not to care that his presence was putting the pilot off and he seemed not to expect any threat from the bridge staff. He had a gun pointed at the captain, but no one was firing. Price flicked his eyes over to me. They were cold, flinty and hard; there was hate burning in the depths.
“Price, what the hell are you doing?” I yelled as I crossed the threshold. I had a terrible feeling that I could guess.
The captain and major were looking at me now. I got the feeling that all three of them were waiting to see what I would do.
I wished I had a gun.
“Flow, it was him,” said Price, his voice thick with hate. “Captain Jack Samson. He’s the one who destroyed my village… killed them all. He’s the one I’ve been looking for. And all that time, I was travelling not twenty metres from him.”
I looked over at the captain. He was gritting his teeth, but I could tell it was true: he looked guilty.
‘Well… I have the weapons to mutiny, the strength, I can take control of the computers, I have perhaps an even chance that the marines will follow me, and a good chance of winning against them if they don’t. Especially with Price’s help; even untrained a vampire is tough, and this vampire’s desperate. Surely he deserves his revenge?’
I slowly moved towards them. Everyone who wasn’t already looking at me did so, even if they were supposed to be piloting. No one had pointed a gun at me. Yet.
“Flow, you have to help me!” said Price.
The comms set burst into life. “This is Excelsis Space Traffic Control. Straighten up, Silvered Cloud, and stay in lane.”
Price looked at me with tears and hot anger in his eyes. “Help me with the rest, but the captain’s mine.”
“No, Clarke!” cried the major. I looked at him. He was shaking his head vehemently. He looked incredulous that I would even think of helping Price.
‘I want to help you, Price. I do… But why do you need your revenge, here, now? I don’t care about the captain, but he did let me on his ship. I could take the ship, but…’
I was moving closer to Price. I was aware of the captain and the major. Their hearts were beating fast but they weren’t firing on Price or me.
‘Why? Are they waiting to see which side I choose?’
I had to step over the dead co-pilot. I glanced down as I did so.
“Price, please, you don’t need to do this. Put the gun down.” I sounded calm, but there was a note of terror in my voice. Price was giving me a look of disbelief. I had my hands empty and up in a calming gesture. My sword rested heavy against my hip as I walked closer. “Let’s just take a moment here to calm down–”
‘–before the marines arrive and start shooting.’
“Are you serious?” yelled Price. “He’s a murderer! They wiped out the whole village and for what? A contract!”
My blood fel
t icy. I couldn’t resist another glance back to the captain. He was frowning.
“Normal people, Flow. How could you possibly side with a monster like that?”
“Jonathan, you don’t need revenge. Please stop this.” I was walking closer, pleading with my eyes.
‘Please, pick me over your revenge!’
“Leave it,” I said. “You have eternity. You have something else to live for now.”
He stared at me in utter amazement. “Leave it? Just how in the hell could I leave it? It’s all that’s been keeping me going for these last two years! Don’t you understand that?”
I was right in front of him now. The captain and the major hadn’t moved. My guess was that they knew that their guns would be useless against a vampire, but not against the crew sitting nearby. There was about five feet from where Price was standing to the three steps up to the raised part of the bridge. The captain and major were behind the railing and that was all the cover that they had.
I took the last deliberate step to put myself between the captain and Price.
“Jon, please, put the gun down now. I will personally make sure that you get off this ship alive if I have to guard you myself. I will make sure that they don’t come after you. Just stop this now. This is stupid. You’re outnumbered. Please, stop!” I was pleading with my eyes as well.
“Not if you’re on my side,” he said hotly. “You should be by my side, Flow.”
‘It’s not my revenge. The captain I don’t care about, but everyone else on this ship–the marines, my friends, Cleckley, the major–I don’t want to hurt them.’
“I don’t know if you’re right about the captain, I don’t know if your informant was lying to you, but there are a hundred innocent people on this ship. I will not kill them for you. And if you don’t stop now, the whole damned ship might crash.”
“Innocent, hah! They were probably the ones who did it.”
“This ship’s only been operational eight months.” I pointed at the pilot. “Grittiths has nothing to do with this, so please take your hand off him.”
Price shook his head. “Your prey, they’re all murderers. Does it matter which ones are holding the guns and which ones are flying the getaway ship? There are many planets, many villages. You think I’m the only person who’s suffered from this?” He scowled at me. “How many have you helped with?”