by Blaze Ward
“He’ll try,” Lazarus said. “Of that I have no doubt. But you are correct. I’ll need roughly one hundred humans in various fields of training. Eventually.”
“What are you talking about?” Eha demanded.
“Lazarus, what are the coordinates?” Kuei broke into the conversation. “I only plotted a short jump away from Zhoonarrim, so we need to pivot and jump away again as soon as possible.”
“Back into the nebula,” Lazarus told her. “Back where we first met.”
“It’s there?” Addison finally allowed hope into his eyes.
“That’s where I hid her before I went and found you,” Lazarus nodded.
“Can she fly?” Aileen probed. “You said the vessel was so badly damaged that you had to abandon.”
“A small lie,” Lazarus nodded grimly at her. “I had no idea who I would be dealing with here. The craft is an experimental bioship. It has been repairing itself slowly since I parked her. Hopefully, she’s close enough to done that she can start the journey home.”
“Damn it, Addison Wolcott,” Eha thundered. “What is going on?”
“Ajax,” Lazarus fixed her with a predator’s stare. “We’re going to go get my warship.”
“And then?” she asked, suddenly meek as a kitten again.
“And then we’re going to hurt people, Eha Dunham,” Addison spoke up.
Lazarus nodded.
“We’re going to ignite a revolution.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Aileen
Just because they were likely to abandon this ship for a long stretch was no reason to slack, so Aileen had Lazarus down in the main cargo bay, doing an inventory. They needed to know everything the ship had happened to be hauling when they went rogue.
Insurance would cover costs for shippers and receivers, because most of this stuff was never arriving at its destination.
Well, never say never, but odds were low. Most of it had just been relegated to junk, using technologies and patents that had no bearing on Rio Alliance engineering.
“Next box?” she asked her burly assistant.
“This one says foodstuffs,” Lazarus replied, reading the side of the box.
“Open it and check,” she ordered.
She was the loadmaster. He was still just a cargo hand for now.
Lazarus grabbed the wrench and began torqueing bolts open.
“So what happens when we arrive?” she asked absently. “Ajax, not Rio.”
“Hopefully, the repairs are getting close to done,” he grunted as he levered things and pulled the lid off. “This ship is too big to fit into my flight deck, so probably Addison parks it in the same orbit as Ajax is holding. Everyone transfers over, and while I start the pre-flight, you and Remahle bring over personal goods and such. Thadrakho starts building ramps where necessary. And then everyone gets a crash course in becoming Rio sailors.”
“Just like that?” she asked, disturbed at some quiet level she couldn’t quite articulate.
“When we blasted out of Zhoonarrim, that kind of shut down most options, Aileen,” he said. “Addison didn’t want to break up his crew and send you all off to hide, so you stay together. The word will get around and Shiva Zephyr Glaive becomes a rogue vessel to be impounded wherever it tries to land.”
“So we’re rebels now?”
“You’ve always been, from what I understand,” Lazarus said as he pulled things out and tried to identify the cardboard boxes. “Now it’s out in the open. That’s all.”
“I’m not sure I want to be a revolutionary,” she finally found the thing that had been eating at her for the last few hours.
“Few of us ever do,” he nodded.
Aileen watched him start to put the boxes away. Candy for someone, special ordered from several planets away. She stole a box for herself before it could go into stores.
“And Ajax is a warship, not a cargo hauler, so you won’t need a loadmaster.”
His sudden laughter threw her off. Lazarus had his head back, howling, leaning on the prybar.
“What’s so funny?” she demanded.
It took him several moments to get himself under control.
“Aileen, I had a shakedown crew of nearly one hundred people,” he finally explained around the chuckles. “The ship itself was hauling nearly the tonnage of Shiva Zephyr Glaive in food, supplies, repair equipment, and personal goods. I didn’t have a Loadmaster. I had a Quartermaster, who was in charge of several Loadmasters. I’m hoping you’ll take the job, because you’re way better at this than any of them ever dreamed of being.”
“Really?” she asked, seeing light at the end of a dark tunnel.
“Crew,” he said, fixing her with those serious, green eyes. “But more importantly: friends. I have to teach Ereshkiki Nisab and Thadrakho how to run the engines. Addison already knows how to be a First Officer. You were born to be a Quartermaster. I’m not sure how I feel about Wybert being my gunner.”
“Dangerous?” she asked.
“I’m pretty sure that with a full crew trained up, Ajax could have taken on Zhoonarrim station in single combat,” Lazarus gazed down at her with cold eyes. “And annihilated it. Does that tell you?”
“He has a good heart,” Aileen spoke up for her crewmate.
“He does,” Lazarus agreed. “But he’s a little soft in the head at times.”
It was her turn to laugh. She’d never heard a more accurate description of Wybert of Capantzina. Lazarus grinned and finished closing the box while he waited for her to get control.
“Addison was right, you know,” she finally managed.
“How’s that?”
“It’s insane, but it will be a grand adventure,” she said.
“You have no idea, Aileen Enjehn,” Lazarus smiled at her.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Addison
They had settled into a routine over the last two weeks, for which Addison was grateful. Eha had been unprepared to suddenly flee for her very life, but had adapted. It helped that Thadrakho could sew her up new shirts and vests from all the fabric they had acquired for Lazarus.
No beer logos, but that was possibly just a matter of time, as his Necherle mechanic turned tailor was making noises about either buying a fabric printer or building himself one from spare parts looted from the cargo bay.
What were the Innruld going to do? Arrest them?
Addison turned to look across the bridge at her. Just look.
Eha was staying in the cabin next to Lazarus on the top deck for now. Addison had not worked up the courage to invite the woman to spend a night in his room, even after all the years he had had such a crush on her.
He wasn’t sure he would ever work up the courage. She was his superior officer when they weren’t aboard this ship, and he was the Director here when they were. What would happen when they reached Ajax?
Several of his spare coil pods had been broken out of storage, one of them installed here on the bridge so she could be comfortable on long watches in trans-space. Cormac could handle the duty, but Addison liked sitting up here and just meditating on space and trans-space when nobody was around. He found it soothing.
Even having Eha here with him this evening didn’t disturb that. He glanced over again and found her studying him silently.
They held eye contact for several long seconds.
“So what happens next?” she asked in the most ambiguous way Addison could imagine.
He took the coward’s way out.
“We’ll be into the heart of the nebula in two days,” he offered blandly, hoping she would accept that as the evasion it was and not press. “Then we find Ajax and transfer everything over if we can, and head out for Brasilia.”
“That’s not what I meant, Addison,” she snapped, but without any energy behind it. “That much is obvious.”
“Then which part were you asking me to speculate about?” he fired back, feeling his scales flex up in just the slightest hint of irritation. All of it was
aimed back at himself, but he couldn’t help it.
“We go negotiate a treaty and trade agreement with the Rio Alliance?” she tried again. “Risk becoming prisoners or heroes, fools or outlaws, depending on who you ask?”
“I’m already a fool and an outlaw, Eha,” Addison said. “What was the purpose of the underground if not to find an opportunity like this and exploit it to try to gain our freedom from the overlords?”
“Are there really that many humans?” she whispered.
Ah. That conversation. The same one he and Lazarus had explored earlier. More humans alone than all other species in known space combined. What would that mass of alien beings do, once they discovered Innruld Space?
“I trust Lazarus on that,” Addison said back quietly. “He wanted to originally hide all of us, until I talked him out of it.”
“Why would you do something so stupid as that?” her tone grew hot, like a sine wave peaking again. “What will they do to us?”
“Welcome us, I hope,” Addison replied. “Every day they get stronger. And their technology might have already surpassed ours, from what tidbits I have been able to gather from Lazarus, so better that we integrate with them today, rather than waiting a century, when Westphalia might have won and those conquerors arrive on our shores intent on subjugating us as well.”
“We’re risking the entire galaxy,” she was quiet again, metronomically walking from fire to ice and back.
She was right. He had only Lazarus as a guide to humanity. Was he one man, or everyman? Was the Rio Alliance a thing, or the cover stories of a spy or con artist?
They would find out soon.
Shiva Zephyr Glaive had a rendezvous with destiny in a little over thirty-eight hours.
“If I knew a better way to handle all of this, I would have followed that course instead, Eha,” Addison offered. “What would you have me do?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve spent the last several days reviewing all the choices we made. All the steps that led us here, and I can’t see where we really had an alternative, from the moment that someone started beating down that door.”
She was shivering.
Addison’s first response was to uncoil himself from his pod and slither over to comfort her, but he stopped himself before he got very far down that train of thought. Eha had never given him any cues that she had any feelings toward him similar to how he saw her.
All Addison had was his infatuation, since he really didn’t even know who the woman was when she wasn’t around. He’d seen her more in the last two week than in the last decade combined.
For all he knew, she might have a mate and broods at home. He had never asked personal questions. The less you knew about your fellow spies, the better.
She uncoiled from her pod now and stared at him as if she could see through transparent scales.
“Are you joined?” she asked abruptly, just resting atop her pod rather than holding it.
Addison felt his breath catch. Perhaps her powers also included reading his mind.
“I am not,” he stammered back, unsure of himself even more now. “I have been in space for nearly thirty years, never staying long at one station.”
“The famous Addison Wolcott?” she said quietly, sliding down from her pod and standing next to it on the deck. “He doesn’t have a woman at every station?”
Of course not. There was only one woman who had caught his eye in the last ten years.
“No,” Addison held his breath as she flexed a coil and shifted towards him.
A biped would have taken a single, shy step there, to close the distance. She was doing the same.
Addison forced himself to breathe.
“A handsome Churquen like you?” she asked, a little more fire in her voice now as she halved the distance. “Why is that, Addison Wolcott?”
He studied her beauty, those long, amber stripes running down the dark emerald of her scales. The honey in her eyes. Those long, elegant fingers. The way her tail stretched into a fine tip like a spike, rather than the blunt club of his own.
“You,” he whispered so quietly that Cormac might have missed it.
Eha would not. She was suddenly close enough to breathe on.
“Me?” she whispered back, shock registering in her voice. “What about me?”
“You’re the only woman I see,” Addison decided that he might as well go down fighting at this point, as remain silent. “The only one I have ever noticed.”
“You never said anything,” she shyly took his hand in hers.
“I know even less about Eha Dunham,” he countered. “Are you joined? Broods? Friends? Likes?”
“I have been wedded to the revolution since I was old enough to understand it,” she whispered. “You came along later, Mister Impressive Director Wolcott.”
“You were my superior officer, Miss Intimidating Spy Dunham.”
She giggled, her other hand finding his. They were dancing without moving. Entwining in the eyes, if not the body.
“Shortly, we will be aboard a human vessel,” she said, leaning close and kissing him on the cheek. “We will not be officers with rank, but mere travelers. Ambassadors to humankind. We could indulge in ourselves, rather than our duties.”
“That is true,” he kissed her back, letting go of one hand so it could slide around her back and pull her closer. “I do not wish to wait that long.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Lazarus
Lazarus was standing on Addison’s bridge as Kuei counted them down. Everyone was here, not just the normal bridge rotation. Even Wybert had given up the thought of his guns to stand and witness history with them.
They would make history today. Again. Second Contact, perhaps. Lazarus looked around at his friends and smiled.
“Ten seconds,” Kuei said loudly.
Addison had insisted that Lazarus take command today, navigating them in to perhaps the most fateful rendezvous since an Atomarsk miner accidentally stumbled across a human exploration vessel.
Lazarus looked over and noted that the two Churquen were off to one side, holding hands like giddy teenagers. From the way Addison’s scales suddenly flared up from his skin as they made eye contact, Lazarus was willing to bet that the man was doing the Churquen equivalent of a blush.
“Arrival,” Kuei said as the smoke and sky of trans-space suddenly gave way to the endless darkness of deep space.
Lazarus hadn’t known the orbital period of the ice giant, just the monster’s orbital radius out from that distant star. Roughly five months had passed, so it would not have moved too far. He had been prepared to return perhaps years later when he could finally make the trip.
Kuei had bullseyed the argon green planet anyway. She was that good a pilot. It hung before them like a radiant emerald against the night sky, twice the size of Earth’s famous moon from where Shiva Zephyr Glaive watched. None of the planet’s moons were visible from this range, but Lazarus wasn’t surprised.
“Now what?” someone asked. Might have been Wybert.
“Now we sail slowly down to forty-five degrees south,” Lazarus said. “She’s parked at about fifty thousand miles altitude, above the tiny moons but well inside the more massive ones. Finding a stable orbit was interesting, with so many gravity wells around.”
“Will the ship respond to a ping?” Addison asked.
“Not until we get close,” Lazarus smiled grimly. “I programmed it to watch near space quietly as it orbited, for the astronomical data, but not to answer any hail from more than one hundred miles away. Safer.”
“Moving inward,” Kuei began doing her magic on the controls, pressing buttons and moving sliders like a concert pianist. “Everybody might want to go get lunch or something. This is going to take about thirty to forty-five minutes to maneuver around while avoiding debris.”
Most of the rest left, back to their regular duties or something, but Lazarus was unable to move even a foot towards the hatch. He would have sat on Add
ison’s coil, but it was a lumpy cone with a blunt top, designed for the Churquen’s bottom half to grip.
“Feel good to be home?” the helmsman asked.
“You have no idea, Kuei,” he replied. “Many times, I was afraid I would never even return to this system, let alone walk her decks again.”
“One person flew it out here,” she noted. “Can one fly it back?”
“Yes,” Lazarus said. “Once I teach you and everybody how. And redo all the bridge stations for non-humans. And install a translation matrix. Cormac, you’ll have the easiest time, and the hardest.”
“Why is that, Lazarus?” the NavCrawler asked.
“The ship is largely automated, but we don’t use Crawlers,” he said. “So we don’t even have an interface that will work, plus the ship is running on a wholly different technology and language that you will have to learn. Kuei’s hands can work the controls easy enough, but Thadrakho and Ereshkiki Nisab will have to build something that will allow you to plug yourself in. And everything will be done at human speeds, rather than what you’re used to.”
“I look forward to the challenge, Lazarus,” the NavCrawler replied adroitly.
They fell into a companionable silence. Kuei didn’t talk much, on or off duty, so Lazarus just stood and dreamed.
Eventually, Kuei spoke.
“I think we’re there, Lazarus,” she said simply, drawing him back into the present. “I’m scanning something at the right elevation and orbit. Shows as a rock, but everything would on my sensors.”
“Zoom in and show me,” he ordered, suddenly breathless with anticipation.
The main screen changed view as one of the optical telescopes came into play.
There. Yes.
The long, cylindrical hull, with a bulb at the front like goose’s head or a spear. The three mighty fins aft, one hundred and twenty degrees apart from each other, housing engines, star drives, and weapon emplacements. They looked almost like flat claws, leaning forward into points where the fronts of the three engine nacelles came to spikes.