Return

by Blaze Ward

  “What about the rest of Rio’s navy?” Addison asked. “I know Ajax is something new, but what about the average pirate? Can they slither in and set themselves up as new overlords by displacing the Innruld ruling now?”

  Addison appreciated the way Lazarus sat back in his chair and let his eyes come unfocused as he processed.

  “The average merchant will be about as well-armed as Shiva Zephyr Glaive,” the Human said after a few moments. “The technology is different, but beam weapons and ray shielding are comparable there. It’s in the drives that you’ll have a problem.”

  “You’ve carefully not ever discussed how Ajax moves,” Addison pointed out.

  “I never knew it was possible to travel so slowly through FTL space that you could notice it, Addison,” Lazarus leaned forward again and they locked eyes. “Ajax uses star drives, rather than trans-space generators like you have.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning I lock estimated coordinates and jump, and I’m there between ticks of an atomic clock,” Lazarus said.

  Addison’s scales flexed outward with dread.

  Yes, that could be dangerous, if you could outrun the police so quickly that you could land somewhere, pivot, and escape before they waddled up to capture you.

  “Accuracy becomes the key element then, because I’m jumping in a straight line on a vector,” Lazarus continued. “Shiva Zephyr Glaive can turn in trans-space, navigating around stars in the Phraettis Nebula along a secret path, so it’s really just one long jump for you. I would need to make five or maybe seven, depending on how cautious I was feeling. I’d still move faster than you on your best day. The pirates will be the same way. As would rebel starships if the Rio Alliance provided you some.”

  Rebel starships.

  Addison’s scales felt like they were standing on end. Eha certainly felt it as well, because he was holding her hand and felt the flinch pass through her fingers.

  Warships that could fight the Innruld overlords? And not just armed merchantmen that might be able to survive an encounter with one of the Security Barcs? Actual, purpose-built warships?

  Lazarus had said that he could easily have annihilated even something as heavily armed as Zhoonarrim Station with Ajax’s guns.

  Could the Species Underground break the Innruld?

  That had been the dream, possibly for as long as the Innruld had been in control of the others, some two thousand years now.

  Addison flashed to the overlords in his memory.

  Legend had it that they had bred themselves for beauty. There was some truth to that.

  Seven feet tall, generally, although lean and elegant, weighing perhaps just a little more than Lazarus did. The same erect biped design with incredibly long arms and legs mated to a long torso.

  Skin on an Innruld was just darker than cream, where Lazarus was a few shades darker and covered over, at least his top half, with freckles. The overlords of the galaxy usually had blond fur atop their head, long and fine, compared to the much shorter, orange hair Lazarus had, and his eyes had whites around the pupil, where the Innruld’s were a solid, bluish gold.

  Beautiful, perhaps, in the same way that a marble statue can be beautiful. Cold and aloof, at least when dealing with what they considered all the lesser species, which was all of them.

  And they had structured an entire galactic culture to serve them, with the Innruld on the topmost tier of caste. Below them, all the various servants: the police, the bureaucrats, the thugs who were granted some level of benefits, in trade for keeping their boots on the necks of the rest of the galaxy, those people just trying to make an honest living and maybe save up enough for the occasional vacation.

  It was enough to drive a young Churquen into radicalization.

  Thirty years later, it was enough to keep a mature, rational ship’s Director just as angry as he had once been.

  Addison nodded.

  “All of this is just speculation, Lazarus,” Addison said. “Rebel starships for the Species Underground would be lovely, but pardon me if I need to see them first.”

  “Understood,” the Human replied. “My superiors might not see it the same way as you and I do.”

  Addison wondered if Lazarus would rebel against order at that point. Especially if the other Humans resisted.

  “So first,” Addison finally said, “we have to get you home safely, Lazarus. How?”

  “I’ve been giving that a lot of thought over the last few weeks,” the Human commander replied, turning dark and broody compared to his usual disposition. “I can’t trust anyone outside this ship right now, for obvious reasons, so we need to make a few quiet stops between here and there.”

  “What are you going to do?” Eha spoke up again.

  “We’re going to commit a little piracy.”

  Three

  Eha

  It had been an interesting question, pushed off until now by circumstances, but Eha found herself in an interesting and slightly unwelcome conundrum tonight.

  Aboard Shiva Zephyr Glaive, she had been a guest. Addison had put her up in one of the spare cabins, fitted out for the occasional passenger he might carry, not all that far from where the Human slept.

  Not all of her nights had been spent there, once she had come to realize that Addison was too intimidated to actually approach her for any sort of relationship beyond the professional one they had maintained for the last decade.

  Spymaster and spy.

  So she had had to provoke him to step outside himself. The impressive Addison Wolcott, tongue-tied by a woman. Who would have ever guessed?

  But now, they were on an alien warship, commanded by someone else. Addison could just be himself, if he remembered how.

  Eha could pretend to be a civilian. It wasn’t who she was, but it was close enough for now. She might even enjoy the project enough to make it a full-time gig, as the chances were that her cover was completely blown in Innruld space at this point.

  Everything had all come down to the question of cabins.

  Lazarus already had his own space, from when he had first launched this impressive monster of a craft into space. There were crew quarters scattered around, but mostly at the two ends of the vessel, where seven hundred Humans could be maintained, with the vast majority of those tripling up in a single cabin.

  Lazarus had explained to her the concept of hot-bunking, and she supposed it made sense if this was a military vessel. Any one of the three crew members assigned to a room might be on duty at any given moment, with another sleeping, and the third doing whatever maintenance you needed to do when you were a uniformed sailor, rather than a cargo pirate like Addison’s crew had been. It would not be all that crowded in the room.

  In addition, there were two score cabins for officers and senior enlisted people, who rated a space to themselves.

  Addison’s crew rattled around in here like the noisemaker her kind had once developed on their tails, before losing it later. Small rock, big space.

  Lazarus had looked at her with steely determination in those strange, round pupils and assigned her to a cabin alone.

  She had been similarly situated on Shiva Zephyr Glaive, but things had been different there. She had rarely slept alone during the last two weeks aboard the freighter, spending her nights entwined with Addison.

  Now, this team was facing the most important thing since the Species Underground had been founded. The chance to actually find allies capable of breaking the Innruld and their hold on known space.

  All Eha could think about right now was whether or not she wanted to sleep alone tonight.

  After a lifetime given to the movement, with all that risk and danger, wasn’t she due a little happiness? She had never joined. Never brooded a new generation of young. While she wasn’t too old to consider it now, she had the necessary chemicals in her system to prevent it, as long as she continued to take them.

  She could enjoy herself. And Addison.

  And maybe be free. Hadn’t Lazarus de
scribed this trip as a beginning?

  All her freedom would end when they dropped out of trans-space in a Rio Alliance system. At that point, Eha Dunham would have to become an Ambassador to the aliens. A representative to the Humans, who potentially contained enough power within themselves to overturn thousands of years of history.

  Or conquer the entire galaxy by themselves.

  The shiver rippled down her scales like a small earthquake, clear to the pointed tip of her tail.

  Addison was already committed to whatever course of action Lazarus would undertake. His crew had accepted the Human as one of their own, in spite of everything. Or maybe because of it.

  She was the outsider here. She would need to approach this with a clear mind and open eyes, lest Addison be swept up by…something.

  Avarice? Revenge? Glory?

  At one point, she had been convinced the Human was a charlatan. A confidence artist using the cover of a lost sailor to prepare Innruld space for invasion by learning all their soft scales.

  That was before Ajax.

  Eha had traveled to more places, and more planetary cultures, than probably all of Addison’s crew combined, as she knew they generally stayed to the lower class docks and only worked on a small edge of Innruld space.

  She had seen bigger vessels, but those were the massive Command Pyramids that the Innruld used to travel in extreme state between castles. Ajax was larger than any Security Barc she had ever met.

  If Lazarus was right, even the Command Pyramids would be easily defeated, if not destroyed.

  Would the Humans free them when they arrived, or conquer?

  The Innruld had ruled for two thousand or more years, thwarting all the other species and keeping those numbers small and fragmented, as to benefit the long-living and slow-breeding overlords.

  Humans would arrive like a plague.

  She had to prepare for them, but Eha had spent decades preparing. One of the long-term projects the Underground had actually gamed out was how to take a First Contact with another species and parlay that into power. She’d seen the reports, but nobody had ever expected a more advanced species in greater numbers and capable of the level of casual violence and strength that Lazarus of Bethany represented.

  Tonight, however, she didn’t have to be on stage. She could be herself, whoever the real Eha Dunham had turned into over the last three decades.

  The future would arrive soon enough, and the chains around her coils would bind her again, after just a taste of personal freedom that she had denied herself for so long.

  Eha looked around the cabin one last time. Chair for a biped to sit and presumably read, too tiny and uncomfortable for her to do more than vaguely drape herself across. Desk inset into the wall across from the bed, where someone could presumably work in a spindly metal chair. Bed tucked against the other wall, again designed for Lazarus and not a Churquen, although she was confident she could coil herself in such a way as to sleep more or less comfortably. Drawers inset into a wall for clothing and personal effects. Inset closet next to that for pants she didn’t need to hang, or a heavy jacket she had traveled without.

  She had fled with nothing but her shirt, her vest, and her harness. All of those would have fit into a drawer, but at least the Necherle mechanic had taught himself how to sew clothing for Humans. Anything for a Churquen was far easier, so she had enough clothes to get through her days.

  And Thadrakho was making her something formal with which to meet Humans.

  But that was tomorrow.

  In her first night on an alien ship, Eha didn’t want to be alone.

  She turned to the main hatch and opened it, surprising Addison as he was about to knock.

  Perhaps he also sought solace?

  She noted that he held a bundle of what looked like blankets in his hands as he slithered closer.

  And all his scales had flared out in abject embarrassment as she smiled at him.

  Addison gulped once and stared at her for a long moment.

  “Would you like some company?” he asked in a tiny voice.

  “I was just coming to knock on your door,” Eha replied.

  More flare of scales, this time almost halfway down his coil. She had never imagined this man as shy or awkward.

  Eha slithered back into her cabin and gestured him to join her.

  “The closet contains an extra blanket,” he said by way of introduction as he did. “With the one from the bed, I wondered if we might make a comfortable nest.”

  Eha smiled at the man and moved to the closet, locating the identical bundle and pulling it down. The room would be crowded, at least until they found a place to store the chair, but four blankets on the floor would provide sufficient cushion against metal deck plates.

  Quickly they arranged themselves on the floor in a cozy nest and twined their coils.

  “I worry about the future,” Addison admitted as they lay tangled. “Up until now, I generally had control of my life, being Director of my own ship. But now I am nothing but a passenger, as you and Lazarus will make all the important decisions.”

  “You have described him as a friend,” Eha offered, staring deeply into his eyes for cues about his mental health, not just as a spymaster, but as a lover and a friend.

  “Hopefully, he views us the same way,” Addison replied. “Everything is out of my coil now.”

  “Not everything,” Eha reminded him. “The crew will look to you, rather than him, for direction, if things get messy and complicated. I will, as well.”

  “I work for you, Eha,” he said. “Have for more than a decade.”

  “And I would have eventually done the foolish thing and demanded you turn him over to us for interrogation. That would have been the greatest mistake anyone could have made.”

  “Ajax,” Addison nodded.

  “Exactly,” she said. “We have at our fingertips the future of all species, and not just the Innruld.”

  “I fear Humans,” he admitted in a low voice. “I fear their potential for violence. I fear their technology. I fear for our place in their universe.”

  “It would have arrived eventually, as you yourself have noted while arguing in favor of this trip,” she pointed out to him. “At least now, we may be able to generate positive outcomes.”

  Just to make her point, Eha also kissed the man whose legendary reserve and dignity hid depths of concern for propriety about their relationship. She would need to cure him of that, as well.

  Another task for another day. Tonight, she would experience that fleeting sense of freedom, before duty awoke on the morrow.

  Four

  Aileen

  As Quartermaster, Aileen was responsible for all supplies on this vessel. As Loadmaster on Shiva Zephyr Glaive, it had been largely the same, but the scales here wanted to intimidate her.

  If she would let them.

  Just add a couple of zeroes to everything and move forward.

  She could only imagine what it would be like when Lazarus had a crew greater than just them. When hundreds of Humans might come to rely on her for their daily needs. That would make her an officer. Did she want that?

  Aileen wasn’t sure. It would probably get in the way of her being able to work magic on the loading deck, cramming more things in than anyone imagined.

  But if she wasn’t in charge, someone else would be. Some fool with a clipboard.

  Some bureaucrat.

  She tried not to roll her eyes too hard at that, lest she pull something.

  She had returned to the aft section of the ship by way of a slidewalk that seemed to be like ice under her feet, except it was metal when she stayed still. Only when she moved did she glide.

  Lazarus had shown her the technique for movement, describing it as ice skating, where you somehow pushed off at an angle with one foot and then the other, and the machines pushed back and held you a hair above the deck itself.

  Quick way to move. Awkward the first time, but with a half mile to cover, she had learned t
he trick.

  Most of the supplies were back here, stored around and in the bases of those three, enormous fins, one hundred and twenty degrees apart, that held the engines and weapons systems.

  But she had a special responsibility. One that Lazarus had impressed upon her, the two of them making the first journey alone.

  He had taken ninety-eight sailors into space with him on that first voyage, the one that ended in battle and flight. Twenty-eight of them had remained aboard when the others surrendered to the Westphalian GunWall.

  Their bodies were still here.

  What did it say about a military ship that they had enough cold storage space to carry that many corpses at the same time?

  She and Lazarus had talked about burial in space for the men and women. Innruld space vessels only went to great effort for the overlords themselves. The rest were wrapped up in a piece of cloth and jettisoned, maybe with a ceremony, maybe not.

  But Lazarus had wanted to haul them all home. To not leave them in so-called Alien Space for all time.

  She supposed he felt an enormous guilt at being the cause of their deaths. Aileen had seen it in his eyes, his shoulders. It had not mattered that these men and women were all volunteers, according to Lazarus. He should have been able to protect them.

  Now, they were her responsibility.

  Aileen wasn’t morbid enough to actually check on the bodies directly, after that first time where Lazarus had shown her what he had done.

  Twenty-eight bodies, dressed in new uniforms and placed on cold-storage racks in a separate compartment from where food was kept frozen. Because this was a warship, and you were expecting to haul dead people around.

  Tonight, she needed to check that the equipment had not malfunctioned. That the temperatures remained a few degrees below freezing. That all the food in the refrigerator and freezer was still good for now.

  Aileen Enjehn. Loadmaster. Quartermaster. Maybe pirate.

  And keeper of the corpses of Ajax’s first crew.