by Welch, David
“Can I leave here?” Second asked.
“We can go back to the ship,” Rex replied.
“The ship…” she spoke. Rex prayed she didn’t decide that she didn’t feel ‘compelled’ to return to the ship. She wouldn’t survive a day, even on a tame world like Byzantium. The last thing he needed was to force her into the truck when her entire memory consisted of genetic freaks forcing her to do things for them.
“Quintus is there,” he spoke. “And your cabin.”
“My cabin,” she whispered.
The nurse returned with a robe and handed it gingerly to Second. She held the robe in front of her for several long moments.
“I used to wear clothing,” she spoke. “He-he made me wear them, to speak with the primitives.”
“Most people wear clothes,” Rex said. “And once we get back, you can take them off and spend all day in your cabin naked as the day you were bor—uh, forget it. I just need you to wear it until we get back, OK?”
She stared a few more seconds and then smiled. The smile itself caught Rex by surprise.
“I feel compelled to listen to you,” she spoke. “I don’t know why.”
Rex kept himself from rolling his eyes and fought a losing battle to keep his mind out of the gutter. Her nudity made it a lost cause. He took the robe from her hands and opened it. She stared at it for a few long seconds and then slipped her hands slowly into the armholes. She pulled it closed.
“This feels warm,” she replied, her fingers rubbing the terrycloth. Mere touch seemed to fascinate her.
“Can you tie the sash, to cover your skin?” Rex suggested.
Another inquisitive stare came, followed by her fingers fumbling with the sash. She clearly knew how to tie a knot, but at each step of the process she seemed to pause to figure out whether she wanted to.
This could be a long trip back, he thought, only to have it immediately followed by: you’re a bastard for wanting to rush her at a time like this!
They made their way out into the hallway and then to main office. Second had stopped clawing at herself. Her head swiveled around constantly, her mind truly seeing things for the first time. She paused in the lobby, fixated on the wallpaper.
Doctor Tzimikes and his nurse stood next to a desk, watching a holographic projection of a TV news special report broadcast. Rex didn’t understand a word of what was being said, but didn’t need to. The image of the reporter shifted, being replaced by the image of a Europan frigate.
“Second, we need to get back to the ship now,” he spoke urgently.
“Should I listen to you?” she asked, genuinely not knowing, “Why—”
“Yes. You should listen,” he spoke. “Remember that ship we fought? The frigate?”
She paused for a moment and then nodded.
“I do,” she said. “The thought of it makes me feel like running.”
“Yeah, me too. It’s here, and it’ll find us if we don’t get out of here,” Rex spoke.
The words caught the doctor’s attention. He reached for a phone-patch on the cuffs of his shirt-sleeve. Rex snapped a small pistol out of his front pocket, aiming it directly at the man.
“I paid for anonymity,” he spoke.
The doctor and nurse held up their hands.
“You think your gold is worth calling the empire down on us?!” the doctor snapped.
“Yes. Take off the phone, throw it on the floor.”
The doctor reluctantly complied, tossing the coin-sized panel to the ground. It skittered across the floor, stopping half-way between them.
“Now stomp on it,” Rex ordered.
The doctor walked forward slowly and crushed the plastic object beneath his heal. Small pieces snapped off, propelled by the impact.
“Thank you for your services,” Rex said. He tossed the doctor a sack of gold, grabbed Second’s hand, and dashed out the door.
* * *
I will have to reward the techs, Julius Daniel Jagiellon-Sobieski, Viscount of Althay, thought as they burned in-system. What should have taken twenty-four hours had been accomplished in fifteen. Severn’s scanners had easily picked up Baliol’s trail and followed it to this world. The locals apparently called it “Byzantium.”
The joy of techs was that any reward seemed like heaven to them. They were glorified serfs, allowed to work on ships, stations, and colonies on dead worlds so that the warriors and nobles could fight. A day off, a wench, and a third-rate feast would keep them buzzing for weeks. Part of him felt disgusted that his success in this mission relied on such low-born villains, but he’d made peace with that nagging voice years ago. Any good Europan commander had to, if they expected to survive that first, inevitable systems glitch.
A different unease had his attention now. The proton traces from Baliol’s ship led directly to this planet. It made little sense. They could have crossed this system and jumped away already, getting a decent head-start. Stopping here could mean a number of things. Perhaps this was their destination, their home. Baliol could have friends or be considered part of this world. If this was his new home, then he could have left the ship and gone into hiding anywhere. Or he could be setting up a trap. Part of Julius dismissed the idea that any local ship could seriously challenge his frigate in battle, even in an ambush. But the more focused part of his mind remembered that a junker had just fried his primary jump drive. There could be no further underestimation.
“Time to planet?” he spoke.
“Two hours sire,” the comms tech replied.
“Have the telescopes spotted anything resembling Baliol’s ship?” Julius asked.
“Nothing in orbit around the planet sire,” the scanning tech reported.
“Stand-by on weapons anyhow,” Julius spoke. “Who knows what reception this barbarian world may have waiting for us.”
“As you desire, sire,” a soldier replied from the weapons station.
“Sire,” the scanning tech spoke. “Scopes have picked up a large ship, heading in our direction.”
“How far from us?”
“Eleven million, two hundred sixty-five thousand kilometers,” the tech spoke.
“Can the scopes estimate a speed?” he asked.
The tech was silent for a moment, hitting several panels on his computer.
“Just over .1 C,” he replied.
Julius paused, thinking. In all the days they’d been out in this cursed wilderness they hadn’t seen anything larger than themselves. Even frigate-sized ships were scarce. Most of these barbarians scuttled about in tiny vessels that were rarely larger than Baliol’s ship. Whatever this thing was, he could double its speed. If it was local defense, or, however unlikely, a friend of Baliol’s, then he would have a few hours over Byzantium before it arrived. Not enough time to fight off any attacks, radio his demands, and have the traitor delivered. Not enough time even assuming that all went well, which it never did.
We’re going to have a fight on our hands, he thought glumly.
“Keep tracking the newcomer,” Julius ordered. “Proceed ahead as planned.”
* * *
Rex’s drive through the city had been epically illegal. He didn’t even know the local traffic laws, but he was sure he’d broken most of them. His luck had held though, and he’d made it to Nea Sofia’s spaceport without getting arrested.
He drove the pick-up directly into the cargo bay. Second was busily inspecting the windows, most likely trying to figure out whether she enjoyed the feel of glass.
Rex jumped out.
“Close the doors, warm up the engines and prepare for immediate take-off!”
“Lucius and Chakrika are still on top of the ship,” the computer informed.
“Damn it!” Rex swore.
Second shrank back from his outburst, grabbing onto the door handle. Rex took a deep breath, looking straight at her.
“If I ask you to go to your cabin, will you go?” he asked.
“I…I feel sickness in my stomach,” she said.
> “Wonderful,” he said with a sigh. “Look, I want to help you through all this, I do. But right now I need you to go some place safe and stay there until we’re clear of this Europan ship. Do you understand that?”
She nodded and got out of the car. Rex grabbed her hand and led her up the stairs, into the common room. Once there she jerked her hand back, a defiant look on her face.
“You’re ordering me,” she realized. “Like the ambassador…”
“Not quite. I’m the captain of this ship; captains command.”
“How is this different?” she asked.
“It-it just is right now, OK?”
“I do not understand,” she spoke.
“I know,” he grumbled and headed for the bridge. He entered the forward hallway just in time to see Chakrika coming down the ladder from the observation blister.
“I heard yelling—”
“Our friends have come for a visit,” Rex said sarcastically. “And Second is now a real, live girl who has absolutely no conception of how the world works. I need you to watch her because she’s pretty much insane, and we’re about to all get shot to hell.”
Chakrika tried to process the information.
“Lucius!” Rex shouted up the ladder. The man’s head appeared, blocking the light from the observation blister.
“We got company!” Rex announced.
Rex stormed onto the bridge. The engines whined as they powered up, the sound transitioning into a jet-like roar. Rex got his limbs positioned and pulled up on the vertical controls just as Lucius took his seat at the weapons console.
“Which one are we fighting today?” Lucius asked.
“Your old neighbor, again,” Rex replied.
“Byzantine military network is reporting a second large vessel, unidentified,” the computer spoke.
Rex leveled the ship into a hover a few hundred feet over the spaceport.
“A second?” he asked. “Is it the Hegemony bioship?”
“Long-range telescope images match that of the bioship,” the computer replied.
A wicked grin came over Rex’s face. Lucius looked at him warily.
“What are you devising in that head of yours, Rex?” he asked.
“Something devious,” Rex replied. Lucius groaned.
He brought the ship up several thousand feet and flew over the nearby mountains. Long Haul skimmed the mountain-tops and descended into an uninhabited valley between two large ridges, seventy miles from Nea Sofia. He brought the ship down. The landing struts extended and touched ground.
Once down, Rex leaned back in his chair, relaxing.
“And now what?” Lucius asked.
Rex’s grin grew wider, “We kick back for a while.”
* * *
Things had just gotten more complicated. Blasting the local primitives had been easy. Few of them even posed a threat. But the ship in front of him was Europan, from one of the primitive peoples that had organized themselves into a resemblance of a true nation.
“Why do you think they are here?” Flynn asked from the neighboring pod.
“I do not know,” Blair spoke.
“And if they are here to purchase the body from the primitive we’ve been tracking?” Flynn spoke.
Blair’s mind spun. He had been ordered to recover the ambassador, but he had been given no orders regarding what to do if Europans were involved. The very presence of this ship, at least fifty light-years beyond their borders, was unprecedented. Flynn’s reasoning resonated in his mind. There was little of value to a superpower in this space. The body of a Hegemon was one of the few things that could warrant such a visit.
You’re assuming based on your own prejudices, he thought. Perhaps this was coincidental, and the Europan ship orbited this world for entirely different reasons. That would be preferable. While his people considered the Europans to be primitives, they weren’t stupid enough to not notice the differences between them and other, less organized primitives.
This left Blair trying to figure out a course of action. The risk of war was present, and Blair could not be sure that it would be one his people who would win. Nearly 175 light-years of wild space and lesser primitive nations separated the empire from the Hegemony. They shared no direct border. Were either to fight the other, they would do so far from home, surrounded by hostile nations and hostile space. If the Empire came to the Hegemony, they would do so at the end of a long, possibly untenable, supply line. The same held for his own people, should they be forced to attack the empire’s territory. Either way his people’s anonymity would be shattered.
War still remained a possibility if he did not attack. Were the primitives of the Empire to get the ambassador’s body, their revulsion at the steps necessary for natural sentient Perfection could drive their backward minds to bloodlust.
“If we confirm that they are seeking the ambassador,” Blair began,“We will need to annihilate them entirely. We cannot merely damage them. Their ship has to be utterly destroyed; every primitive aboard must die. Word cannot reach the Empire that we are responsible for it.”
“The locals could tell them,” Flynn noted.
“It would be dismissed as a wild tale,” Blair replied. “The larger nations do not think highly of the primitives infesting this region of space. The larger primitive nations think of them as we think of all primitives. They would not consider their word credible.”
“How do we—”
Flynn was cut off by a chirping sound. The Listeners were picking up a radio signal.
“They are hailing us,” Flynn spoke.
Blair thought for a long moment. The prospect of speaking with these random-birthed throwbacks was not pleasant, but neither was explaining to his fellows and The Perfect Mind how he’d started a war.
Blair roared angrily and seethed, “Put them through.”
* * *
“Have we gotten through?” Julius asked.
“The unidentified ship has not responded,” the comms tech spoke. “And the Byzantines are threatening to attack if we do not vacate their space.”
“They’ve been saying that for hours and done nothing to stop us,” Julius said with a dismissive wave. “Have they found the traitor?”
“They say the ship we’re following left their spaceport this morning; they do not know where it is, sire,” the tech explained.
“Their proton trace has not been detected leaving this world. They are lying,” Julius boomed. “Remind them that the empire is not an enemy to take lightly—”
“Sire!” the tech said, jumping to his feet. “The ship! It’s answering our hail!”
Julius put aside his anger at being interrupted by the peon and turned back to his viewscreen. The strange ship hung there, unlike anything he’d ever seen. It vaguely resembled a whale, except it seemed to have crab-like arms and was covered in uneven metal scales. The damn thing looked organic, like some monster of the deep sea. Only the engines of the damned thing looked at all mechanical.
“Unidentified vessel, please state your name and purpose,” Julius spoke.
The line crackled with static for a long moment.
“The…persons of this world are harboring a fugitive,” a melodious voice said in accented English. Julius couldn’t tell if it was male or female.
“A fugitive?” Julius asked.
“That has done harm to our people,” the voice continued.
“We are present to apprehend a traitor,” Julius spoke. “Do not interfere and there will be peace between us.”
“We have no desire to—”
The voice stopped dead. On the viewscreen the strange ship started moving toward the planet.
“Sire! Baliol’s ship is approaching fast!” the scan tech spoke.
True enough, the ungainly shape of Baliol’s junker shot out of the atmosphere. The viewscreen magnified the image, tracing its path. The strange ship moved to intercept.
“They’re going after it, sire,” the scan tech informed.
; They were going after his quarry. An unknown ship, from an unidentified people, were trying to capture a person who knew vast amounts of information concerning the empire and its military.
Baliol’s hatred of us will drive him to talk, perhaps even voluntarily!
“Move to intercept!” Julius barked, tensing in his chair. “Do not let them reach that ship!”
* * *
“Enemy of my enemy…” Rex whispered to himself as he drove Long Haul forward.
“Computer, I want the dorsal turret firing on the bioship and the ventral turret firing on the frigate. Ready all Tanager missiles for point defense,” he ordered.
The computer chirped a reply. Lucius sat stone-still at his station. The nervousness he had to be feeling stayed hidden behind his wooden façade.
Rex aligned the ship perfectly between his pursuers. Long Haul shot through, accelerating beyond combat speeds. Cannon fire spewed out from the defensive turrets, most missing harmlessly as they accelerated. A few shots hit the Europan frigate, but did little more than scratch the warship’s armor. Both enemies moved to pursue.
As they did, streaks of light hit the bioship, small explosions rippling across its surface. Byzantine fighters swooped in and opened fire, a half-dozen peppering the ship with shells. Another six barreled in toward the Severn, their small rounds cratering the armor around the Europan vessel’s engines. Corvettes approached as the fighters pulled away.
Both ships responded violently, breaking their chase to face the new enemy. Defensive turrets on the Europan ship opened up, blasting three fighters into oblivion in a barrage of pulse fire. The bioship's defensive rail-guns flung out metal spheres at incredible speed, ripping through two of its attackers and shattering them into spinning piles of debris.
The remaining fighters swarmed behind the four approaching Byzantine corvettes and then raced forward. They fired first, the Europan defenses taking down another as rounds exploded across the top of the large, flat ship. The corvettes, with four times as many cannons as the fighters, focused their fire on the bioship. Sixteen tracer trails shot through space, impacting the front of the massive ship. A wall of sparks and fire erupted across the front of the War-beast before dying off in the void of space.