by J. S. Fields
A pod disengaged with the Risalian cutter and swooped on top of the skiff, showering it with laser fire. The skiff banked to starboard, avoiding each blast, and then righted. The pod moved to the other side of the Pledge and bobbed around her edges.
“We’re being used as a shield,” Neek muttered. Louder, she yelled, “Nicholas, pick one and just fire already!” The pressure in Neek’s head grew. Irritated, she pressed a stuk-covered finger to the affected area and visualized pushing the pain away.
A ringing sound came from the laser turret. A bright-yellow shot appeared from the top of the viewscreen and opened a hole in the skiff’s hull. The ship began to list and, a moment later, exploded when two additional shots were added by the pod.
“I got one!” Nicholas yelled. The sound of his whooping could be heard distinctly through the ceiling. “Take that you tiny skiffs!”
“Get the other one! Don’t stop until—” Neek cut herself off as she took in the battlefront. Nicholas’s destruction of the skiff caused a ripple effect among the others. The rest of the small Risalian skiffs had broken formation and begun flying erratically. Some were running into each other, others simply heading off course. One was listing at an odd angle, expelling occasional bursts of red fuel. The Risalian cutter was left unattended, and the strange pod frigate was closing in.
“Were the skiffs on autopilot?” Neek asked incredulously.
“Autopilot doesn’t work for those kinds of maneuvers,” Yorden responded. “It is only useful for fixed points and straight lines.” Both watched in confusion as the smaller ships continued to drift apart and the largest pod docked with the cutter. “The round ships aren’t firing anymore,” Yorden murmured. “That’s something.”
“Do you want me to keep shooting, Captain?” Nicholas had come down the ladder from the turret and into the main cockpit. He was noticeably shaken, and the sweat stains on his shirt spoke of the stress he had been under moments before. His expression darkened as he asked, “I didn’t kill anyone, did I?”
“Maybe,” Neek responded casually, trying not to think about the implications. She’d forgotten how sensitive Journey youths could be. She tried to mitigate the snark in her tone but couldn’t quite figure out how to do it. “It saved our lives though. Something worth writing home about, anyway.”
Nicholas shifted uncomfortably on his feet but remained uncharacteristically quiet.
A tiny, purple light began to flash at the base of the console. Neek tapped the area. “Incoming hail from the pod that’s docked with the Risalian cutter. You want to answer?”
“The troublemakers are contacting us?” Yorden considered and then shrugged his shoulders as he accepted the hail. “This is Captain Yorden Kuebrich of the Mercy’s Pledge. We’re a tramp ship on our way to Oorin. To whom might we be speaking?”
A grainy image finally materialized on the comm, revealing a hovering, purple-black, spherical being with no apparent appendages, eyes, or mouth. It did, however, have distinctly human-looking ears that protruded from the sides of the sphere.
“That’s a giant, sentient beach ball,” Nicholas stated flatly.
“At least it’s not a traveling planet,” Neek muttered.
Yorden glared at both of them and then turned his attention back to the comm.
The ball creature bobbed up and down twice. A lateral slit formed right in the center of its body and slowly opened.
“We’re off course,” the creature said in perfect Common. “We’ve sustained heavy damage and must dock for repair. As you are also disabled, we can offer you a tow to a planet with repair capabilities.”
Yorden looked quickly to Neek, who shrugged. They had to get a tow from someone. Why not a beach ball? There was no way the Risalians would give them a tow after what they’d just done to their fleet, and they definitely couldn’t just spin near the exit of a wormhole forever.
“That’d be Oorin. We’ve got a pull loop just under the port plating. I’ll have my pilot extend it, and you can latch on however you want.” Yorden gestured at Neek, who, in an exaggerated movement, brought two of her fingers up into an arc and then back down onto a blue button on the far upper section of the console.
“Pull loop extended, Captain. Can we have Nicholas get out and push?”
The young man scowled, but his retort was cut off when the Pledge gave a large jerk as one of the alien pods latched onto the pull loop with a coiled metal rope.
“Prepare for towing,” the sphere said before cutting off the communication.
There was silence in the cockpit for a long moment before Yorden exhaled and slumped into his chair. He leaned back, and the chair reclined, groaning under his weight. “I think that took twenty years off my life. We need to get answers from Chen when we hit the spaceport. If the Charted Systems are being invaded—or whatever just happened to provoke the Risalians—the Systems are not prepared for it.”
“This is just another notch on your belt, I’d imagine, Captain.”
When Yorden didn’t respond, Neek playfully punched him on the shoulder before she settled back and closed her eyes. Notch on his belt, and another irritation on hers. She’d have to put off calling her uncle back for at least a few days now, which wasn’t going to look good on the yearly report. Maybe she should just write this year off altogether and send the president a few recordings of her actual thoughts. Neek grinned. That would be incredibly satisfying but, unfortunately, detrimental to her goal.
At least the funniness in the back of her head was gone. Whatever the last ten minutes had been about, Neek was glad things hadn’t gotten more serious. Hopefully, they would soon be far, far away from the Risalians, their ridiculously overpowered ships, and whatever it was they wanted so desperately to protect.
Chapter 3: Callis Spaceport
For two years
The orange planet glistened
Propulsion tail dripping flame
Our atmosphere burned in blue arcs of laughter
Blue arcs through which our future came.
On the blue arcs rode the Ardulans
Pale and dark and etched like stone
On the blue arcs came our saviors
Our future carried in open palms.
With their guidance did we build our cities,
Towers glittering in majestic height.
With their guidance did we leave our heavens
Our ships strong with orange tails of light.
All things do we owe to Ardulum
All things do we divine from them
And when they left on blue arcs turned orange
Did we weep and mourn for them.
—Poem from The Book of The Uplifting, published on Neek in 50 AA
The Pledge was a mess. Neek slapped an access panel shut near an exterior wing, but the metal refused to latch and swung back out at her. She cursed and added a broken door to the list of repairs. There was no way the payout from this job would cover everything, which meant, once again, they’d be forced to triage.
Too frustrated to continue, Neek walked out of the ship and to the docking bay exit. Directly across from the Pledge was a Minoran galactic liner, its fresh scarlet paint glossy in the overhead light. Neek took a moment to admire the long, oval-shaped ship’s soft curves and streamlined front. It was three times the size of the Pledge and easily five times the size of a Neek settee. She’d never even set foot in something so large.
“Bet it flies as smooth as it looks,” she muttered to herself as she trailed a fingertip over the shiny surface. “Probably not a tight turn radius, but it’d be great to get my hands on the yoke and see what she is capable of.”
“Neek!” Yorden’s voice snapped her out of her daydream. The captain stood near the exit, tapping his foot impatiently, a fat satchel of what she hoped were diamond rounds hanging from his belt. She’d forgotten they were to convene before lunch to price parts. Neek reluctantly peeled herself from the liner and jogged to meet him. He didn’t say anything when she came close, inst
ead turning and walking briskly out of the bay and into the main section of Callis Spaceport.
The commerce area was nearly deserted. The usually bustling port—the main commerce attraction on the otherwise uninhabited Oorin—currently showcased only a few dozen shoppers, most of whom were Terran. Neek could see Yorden physically relax, the tension from the dogfight easing away as he was surrounded by his people. She felt the opposite, however, as every pair of eyes that fell onto her hands changed from curious to apprehensive. Neek. The Neek—the only one of her species out and about in the Systems. Her planet was backwater enough to stay out of the news feeds, but important enough, due to the andal exports, that other beings knew enough to name it. To name her. The only Neek off the planet, barring the occasional diplomat. The Exile.
Neek ignored it. She’d grown used to the gawkers over the last decade, and the dogged stares no longer cut so deeply. Besides, she had other things to think about. The incident with the Risalians still weighed on her. Neek had never been in a fight before—not a real one. She wasn’t sure what it meant, or even what to think about it. Were there going to be consequences for firing on the Risalians? Were the beach balls a new potential member of the Systems, or were they, too, on the wrong side of the strict Risalian laws? If things got too heated in the Systems, maybe she could use that to her advantage. She wouldn’t be a useful lesson in disobedience to her planet’s president if she were dead. Maybe she could manage to negotiate some on-world religious indoctrination, with a side of family visits.
Yorden answered one of her questions before she managed to vocalize it. “It’s been, oh, thirty years, maybe forty, since I was involved in something like that. I was about Nicholas’s age, all elbows and knees but not nearly so naïve.”
They paused in front of a fast-print food shop, the neon lighting advertising perf catching Neek’s eye. A group of quadruped Minorans sat on their haunches near the front window, flicking their ears with pleasure as they lapped up perf suspended in a container of water. The owner of the restaurant, another Minoran, began to wave Yorden and Neek in with a front hoof, but then stopped when she noticed Neek’s hands. The owner’s face fell to a frown and she turned, flicked her spindly tail across her rear, and walked back into the shop.
With a sigh, Neek rammed her hands into the pockets of her flight suit, ripping one of the internal seams in the process. “What do you think the Risalian attack means?” she asked. “Not so much for us, but for the Charted Systems.”
Yorden flipped a diamond round into a wishing well near the shop and then grumbled. “That the peace isn’t holding, more than likely. That the Systems are about to get a wake-up call.” He fished his round from the water along with a handful of others. Once the dripping stopped, he opened his palm and let the shimmering diamonds plink back to the bottom of the shallow well. “You have to remember, Neek, that things were really different when I was young. Earth had all those wars going on, and space travel was still in its infancy. Risalians weren’t in the picture at all, much less their highly effective sheriff forces. This peace—this unrelenting, omnipresent peace—hasn’t been in existence for that long. Besides—” He slapped his hand against the water, splashing the nearby wall. “—peace is unstable at best. Usually more of a time to gather forces than anything else. Risalians are great at posturing.”
“I don’t know the first thing about war,” Neek muttered as they resumed walking, her hands encased to the wrists in cotton fabric.
“No, but you’re halfway decent at subterfuge. That’s something.” Yorden snorted. “Cheer up. You’ve got a job on the Pledge as long as you need it. I’ll never find another being with a hand wide enough to use the ship’s yoke and computer panel at the same time.”
Neek stopped walking and glared at Yorden. She debated a number of Common curses, but Yorden spoke before she did.
“I’m only kidding, Neek. Your piloting skills can’t be beat. You know that.”
Neek bit back the curses and resumed walking, debating whether or not to take a verbal shot at Yorden’s deteriorating ship as payback. As they turned another corner to where most of the small parts dealers were located, Neek forgot their conversation and her discomforting celebrity status. There—between an Oorin condominium and a Terran sausage shop—was Nicholas deeply engaged in conversation with a large member of the beach ball species who had given them the tow.
Yorden’s tension was back. He stomped over, and Neek could see the tips of his ears starting to turn red. She thought back to six months ago, when Nicholas had lost them an Enden hauling job by refusing the native’s offer of a small pebble from the shores of her home continent. Nicholas had argued later that it looked stolen, and he had no intention of accepting stolen goods. No amount of lecturing from Yorden about how you accepted gifts even if they were stolen had made Nicholas change his mind.
Steeling herself for another diplomatic incident, Neek kept off to the side. When the captain reached the youth, he stepped just in front of him, cutting Nicholas off from the beach ball.
Silence followed Yorden’s entrance. The captain cleared his throat.
“Captain!” Nicholas hissed. “We’re in the middle of a conversation.”
Yorden looked over his shoulder and narrowed his eyes. “I know. What’s going on?”
Nicholas stepped cautiously from behind the larger man and then took one more step closer to the sphere. Yorden eyed him suspiciously.
“Captain Llgg,” Nicholas began, and Neek cringed at the obvious butchering of the name. “Meet Captain Yorden Kuebrich.” Nicholas turned back to the beach ball captain, whose ears were now rippling. “Captain…Captain Lug commands the ship that towed us into the Callis System. Her species is called, uh…Muh-nu-gul, and they’re from one of the uncharted systems—the sector out behind Risal. She told her government that we saved their lives, and now they want to hold a ceremony for us. She seems pretty serious about it.”
Yorden looked surprised. Neek toyed with the inner seam of her flight-suit pockets, now slightly sticky, and considered. A new species meant new contacts. New contacts meant new jobs. New jobs meant more money for the ship, and maybe some extra for one of those new printer pens that extruded wood-metal composites. She’d seen some models on display a few shops back, the store window loaded with accessories like nozzle tips, support scaffoldings, refill cartridges… With something like that, they could draw out their own parts instead of buying them. Biometal was always cheaper raw than formed, and Neek always loved a new toy.
On the other hand, these Mmnnuggls were having some sort of conflict with the Risalians, and getting involved any more in that mess was probably not going to sit well with the captain. He’d already lost any Neek planetary hauling jobs because of having her for a pilot. He didn’t need his potential clientele whittled any further.
Yorden turned to Neek and raised an eyebrow. She shook her head. She appreciated getting a vote in the matter, but likely Yorden had already made his decision.
“Look, Captain…Lug.” Yorden coughed as he, too, caught on the name. “We just want to get our repairs done and leave. No need for any ceremonies or anything. If you hadn’t been there, we’d have never made it to Oorin in the first place. We’re very grateful.”
Llgg bobbed up and down twice, purple ears rippling. “Our laws demand you be compensated for your trouble,” she said in her strangely perfect Common. “You and your crew will meet us tonight in docking bay forty-seven, where our ship is berthed. There will be a meal and ceremony, followed by a presentation of your reward. This is required.”
“Reward?” Yorden sputtered, looking bewildered. Neek leaned against the wall and tried to remember if they had ever received a reward. Hauling freight wasn’t exactly glamorous work, nor was it likely to get you noticed by award-giving institutions. Still, the idea made her reconsider her position. Nicholas’s lucky shot didn’t seem particularly award-worthy, but then again, what did she know about the Mmnnuggls, or whatever they called themsel
ves? Maybe they had one of those “no debt” cultures. Maybe they liked to give gifts. Maybe the gift would be a long-range riot rifle that she could fire from here and hit the Neek president in his heavily jowled face. Maybe they’d follow the Pledge around the Charted Systems until Yorden accepted something. Did Yorden want to risk pissing off a brand-new species just to avoid more drama with the Risalians? The Mmnnuggls did seem to have better technology, and none of their ships had fired on the Pledge in the dogfight.
Yorden’s response came slowly, each word deliberate. “Maybe…we do have time for a…ceremony.”
Before Yorden could talk himself out of it, Neek walked over with a wide smile.
“Wait, reward? Of course we’ll be there!” She clapped an arm around Nicholas’s shoulder and grinned as the stuk on her fingertips wicked into his flight suit, leaving long, dark stains. Nicholas wriggled under her arm, trying to evade the wetness. “You know, I was just telling our captain here how we don’t spend enough time getting rewards these days.” She gave a practiced sigh. “The price of honest business, no doubt. Self-sacrifice for the greater good always has to play second fiddle to affording food.”
“Please be in attendance at the end of the Third Cycle.” Llgg bobbed again, flattened her ears against her body, and then, without turning around, accelerated away from the group so quickly that a small breeze ruffled Yorden’s puffy hair.
When she was out of sight, Yorden turned to Neek, who dropped her arm off Nicholas and glanced out the nearby window.
“Gross, Neek,” Nicholas said as he rubbed at the wet spots on his shoulder. “Personal space, remember? We talked about it.”
Neek ignored him. “What do you think of this ceremony, Captain?” she asked. “Possibility of a trap? It doesn’t really sound like it, but these things did try to take out a Risalian cutter and then docked with it. Think they’re after something? Think they stole something?”