by RyFT Brand
I stopped to done my plated, leather battle armor on the way up. I left the main lights off; I didn’t want to encourage snooping from the nosey neighbors. One of uncle’s neighbors was a family of Aardvarkeian Scathes, a naturally nosey species. I activated the mallow lamp over Uncle’s workbench then circled my old flycraft in shadowy light. Ship had a number of small dings where he’d taken bullet fire, and had several scorch marks from near missile misses, but it all looked weeks old. He’d certainly seen much worse damage in our time together. I kept looking, I don’t know why, maybe I was searching for a reason for Ship’s silence, or maybe I was putting off confirming the truth. Death was a part of life, especially mine; I’d chosen a dangerous way of living and those attached to me, whether voluntary or by subscription, were in constant threat of death. This was something I’d accepted long ago, something I’d made peace with.
So why was I feeling so much resistance?
It was Mickey, the sasquatch. Ever since I watched him die knowing how badly I’d misjudged him I hadn’t felt the same, about many things, especially death. But why? Why had the death of this one being who I’d barely known so rattled me? I’d held many people, people I really cared about, people I loved, and felt them slip away. Was it that I’d called him a monster? Was it that I’d lost the one being left that remembered the Earth that I so lament? Or was it something else; something I wouldn’t admit even to myself?
Whatever it was I needed to put it behind me. To do what needed doing I was going to have to return to being Jazz, and that meant facing death and doom without hesitation, without fear, and without concern of consequence.
I walked to the front and stared into Ship’s pug-like, smooshy face. “Ship?”
All I head was my own breathing.
“Come on, Ship,” I said and gave his thick shoving bumper a solid kick. “Stop it now, pouting doesn’t suit you.” Actually it suited him just fine; it was me it didn’t agree with.
I waited in silence. If he was, in fact, simply not speaking to me out of spite then it wouldn’t have been the first time. But to be absolutely silent, no huff, no grunt, no ‘under his nonexistent breath’ comments, that would be very unlike him.
I walked over to uncle’s tool chest and came back carrying a multiplying disassembly lever. “Tell you what,” I said, “I’ll stop breaking pieces of you off when you tell me to.”
I heard the metallic ring of something falling to the floor. My head spun and I trained all my senses on the shadow by the office as my hand went to my zoom-stick in its sheath. My ears caught a faint crinkle of nylon and I relaxed. “Okay DJ, you might as well come out.”
DJ slinked out from behind Uncle’s big tool crib wearing her yellow jump suit with the red racing stripes and a sheepish grin. “Sorry.”
Ahh DJ, ever my persistent shadow; the one being on all of the conjoined planets that I could count on, even when she was miffed at me. “It’s fine.”
DJ dropped the grin and jogged over. “Hey, you’re wearing you battle gear.”
“Very observant; we’ll make a deferred species bond collector out of you yet.”
“Anything?” she asked.
I looked at the metal bulk before me. “Nothing yet.” Ship was a box shape with the corners cut at forty-five degree angles that sat on two, long rectangular tubes that housed his avi-star thrusters. His clear canopy was as tall as his flat nose. It was raised to its retracted position. I stepped over the black and yellow striped bumper and dropped into the seat. I pushed the button to lower the flight control cab and nothing happened. I turned sideways in the seat and pulled the big primary power lever down. That was odd. Normally I didn’t have to do that as Ship preferred the power left on all the time, the lever was something he couldn’t operate on his own. I hit the button and the council lowered into flight position.
“How’s the crystal?” DJ asked.
I didn’t answer; I flipped the four retainer clips off, took the panel’s D-handle and removed Ship’s magi-brain cover. I dropped the cover and unscrewed the input modem cap. Normally the Ausite Spirit crystal I’d jammed inside it cast a purple glow into the cabin, but the modem tube remained dark. I didn’t have much information about ausite, of course I didn’t know of anyone else who did either, not even the wizard I’d gotten it from, and he was now dead. I knew it had been created on another world in another dimension, a world of neither of the conjoined planets called Mirth. The story I’d been told was the original crystal had been created by a god and was stolen by said god’s devotee, who then fragmented the crystal into several pieces; apparently I’d acquired the smallest of the splinters. I have no idea why or for what it had been created, but I did know that it had the power to pull a being’s spirit or soul from their body and to contain it, or to move it to a new vessel. I’d stolen the crystal (yeah, I meant to say, acquired) for a very specific being who’s spirit I wished to contain. Only this idiotic hover demon got in the way and I captured his spirit by accident. Attempting to hide the crystal from the enforcer corps, I stuffed it in my flycraft’s input modem. The next thing I knew the dammed thing’s spirit was trapped inside my flycraft. Truth was I hated Ship just about as much as he hated me. He felt I’d wronged him by bonding his spirit to a machine, and I hated him, aside from the fact that he was a demon, for getting in the way of my intended target. But a deeper truth was that having my very own sentient flycraft had proved to be one of my greatest assets—
“Anyone there, Jazz?”
—one of my greatest assets, next to DJ.
“Nothing. The crystal’s dark.”
The glow from the crystal, I’m told, comes form the energy of the spirit inside it; no glow, no spirit. But I decided to take precautions. “Can you hand me Uncle’s melding glove?”
“Sure,” DJ said and, after a quick look around, passed me a thick, fallow plated glove. I donned the glove and gently touched the crystal; fallow had many limitations and the crystal had the potential to take my soul with the slightest touch. But I felt no tingle, no heat, no nothing. I tried to pull the crystal out, but the thing was stuck. So I tried harder but it just wouldn’t budge.
“I can’t get it out,” I said and sat back.
DJ stood on the shoving bumper and tried to look over the council. “Want a hammer?”
“No,” I said with a chuckle, but I wasn’t certain that she’d been kidding. “It’s melted into the components; it’s not coming out without having Uncle disassemble the entire council.”
“Great,” she said, “so let’s do that.”
This was going to be hard. “It doesn’t matter, in fact I think it’s better this way.”
DJ’s lips pursed and her eyes narrowed into stink-eye position. “Why doesn’t it matter?”
Harder than I thought. “I’ve come to a decision, but you’re not going to like it.”
DJ stepped off the bumper, crossed her arms and glared at me.
“I’m going to turn myself in.”
“Oh that’s just brilliant,” DJ’s head nodded with an angry vigor. “Oh yeah, just give up, great plan. But hey, I’m sure another turn in the mallow mines will do you good, since you barely survived the last time.”
There was no easy way to do this, so it meant being firm, more then firm, driving her away, I had to. “This is not up for debate, this is my decision and—”
“No it isn’t,” she said with an impertinent laugh. “It’s that decaying corpse’s decision, the thing you call father but that you’re not sure is your father and that you claim to hate because he’s the most evil being on all of Mirth…that guy’s plan is the one you choose?”
DJ face had turned a deep shade of red and I wasn’t sure whether she was about to cry or to kick me really hard in the face.
“This is how it is,” I said and screwed the input modem cover back on. I took the magi brain cover and went to set it in place.
DJ jammed her hand in the way. “No way, not after all you’ve put me though.”
>
“I put you though!” I shouted planning on beginning a tirade that would leave her no room to interrupt, but she beat me to it.
“Oh come on, Jazz, you’ve been half off your nut for the last month. And sure, I could almost understand that you thought you were dying and you thought you needed to save us, and great, you lived and we were all saved, thank you very much. But now, here at the edge of something huge, right at the point that we might find some real answers, you decide, after your devil-evil father told you to, to just throw in the towel, give it all up, so long and thanks for all the fish. That sounds like the most cowardly thing I ever heard of.”
I was impressed that she hadn’t passed out considering she hadn’t taken a single breath though all that. Her Douglass Adams reference was also noteworthy, Mirthlings didn’t read for pleasure, I had no idea where she’d heard it.
“Tough,” I said and flipped her hand up sending her stumbling back off the bumper. I jammed the cover in place and flipped the first hasp closed. As soon as I flipped the second hasp DJ unhooked the first.
I kept a hand covering the second and reached to flip the third only to find DJ’s little hand covering it. “Don’t make me punch you,” I said.
DJ leaned her face closer to mine, narrowed her eyes and said, “I’d like to see you try.”
She sounded serious, very serious, but I knew the kid knew she couldn’t take me in a