by T. J. Berry
“Unidentified stoneship, this is the RSF Lady Nugent. Identify yourself immediately or you will be fired upon.” The comm officer at Borstal sounded bored with her job. She threatened the Jaggery with a flat affect, reciting it by rote. That was a good sign that they weren’t expecting trouble.
“Lady Nugent. This is Captain James Bryant of the stoneship Jaggery. I’m a human person on my way to Fort J for the Summit.”
“We may get through without an inspection,” said Gary.
“Just wait,” warned Jenny.
“Lady Nugent,” Jim continued. “I have captured some people and Bala wanted in connection with an attack on the Arthur Phillip. You may want to come on board and round them up. Just be quick. I’m on a schedule.”
Gary heard a string of dwarven curses behind him. Boges ducked into the dwarf door to warn her kinfolk.
“They’ll leave you on board as part of the ship,” called Jenny after her. “You’ll be fine.” She turned to Gary. “We, on the other hand, will not.”
“I’ll be sent to the harvesting center. They’ll take you and Ricky to the detention and rehabilitation center off the coast. Your security will be more lax than mine, so I expect that you’ll be able to make your way to me. If you get to Fort Jaisalmer, your first priority is to ensure the delivery of the cargo, then head toward me. I’ll find Kaila at the harvesting center and get as close as I can to you,” said Gary.
“Yes, Captain,” said Jenny, clearly amused that he was giving her instructions for a change, but she looked like she had every intention of following them. She’d saved all of their lives several times – and that was just over the last few hours. No wonder she’d been such a formidable adversary at Copernica. He was glad that for once they were on the same side.
“One last thing,” he said. “You aren’t going to have your chair.”
She squeezed his arm reassuringly.
“I know. I’ve worked without it before. It’s harder to knock people’s teeth out when I’m on the floor, but not impossible. I can take care of myself.”
“I have every confidence in you,” said Gary.
“And you take care of yourself at harvesting. They are not going to let a unicorn gather moss for long. You cannot let them get you into the dissection room. Your best chance of escape is from the holding cells. There are windows on the far wall. They’re high up on the wall, but they’re not alarmed in any way. That’s the weakest link in the security system,” said Jenny.
“You’re quite familiar with the layout,” said Gary.
“I’ve worked there before,” she said, letting her eyes slide away from his. “A long time ago.”
The door to the cargo hold opened. Jim floated in and hung back near the door.
“What the bloody fuck-all did you do?” Jenny asked.
Jim raised his hands innocently. “You made me, Jen.”
“People are going to end up dead because of you,” she said.
“Then those people should have been nicer to me from the beginning. Maybe if we’d just stuck with the way things were before, with me in charge, this whole delivery would have gone a lot more smoothly. You bring in all these weirdos and suddenly a man doesn’t have a place in the cockpit any more.”
“Is this about your ego? Gary’s better at piloting so you have us all arrested?” she asked.
“No, it’s just about the natural order of things. I can’t say that I’m thrilled about getting you all caught up in this, Jen. I’ve always respected you. But you’ve been mouthy ever since we got this ship back–”
“Since I got this ship back,” said Jenny firmly.
“See? That’s what I mean. This is my operation and you keep taking the credit. I just want some recognition for everything I do for you.”
“Everything like having me arrested?” Jenny asked.
“Just cooperate, act sorry, and they’ll let you go.”
“Spoken like a man who is considered the default in every way,” said Jenny.
Jim hit a switch on the wall and an alarm sounded. Gary held onto the shipping crate nearest him as the gravity kicked on. Jenny scrambled for something to grab onto, but she wasn’t near anything. She hit the floor from three meters up.
“You all right?” asked Gary, helping her to sit up.
“Choice,” she said, with a glare at Jim.
The cargo hold vibrated as the Lady Nugent’s docking tunnel clamped onto the Jaggery. Gary’s stomach clenched. Jim had implicated all of them in the destruction of the Arthur Phillip. Reason officers weren’t kind to those who took out fellow soldiers.
Jim reached up and opened the airlock. The door hissed and swung open. Several Reason officers ran into the room with stun sticks and bolt guns drawn. Unlike Jim, these people knew the danger of firing off projectiles in a pressurized spacecraft.
“Down on the ground, now!” shouted one of the soldiers, shoving a stun stick into Jenny’s ribs, even though she was already on the floor. Her face hit the stone. The soldier grabbed her arm and dragged her toward the airlock.
“There is no need for violence. We will go willingly,” said Gary, raising his hands to eye level. The soldiers ignored him.
“Geneva Perata in custody,” a soldier shouted to the officer in charge. Jenny pulled a wooden club out of the side pocket of her jumpsuit and thwacked the soldier’s knuckles. He let go, dropping her onto the floor. She hit him in the knee and he doubled over.
“Jenny, stop. We’re going with them,” said Gary, wondering if she’d misunderstood the plan. Two soldiers flanked him, holding their stun sticks at the ready. They seemed unsure of whether to start hitting since he was cooperating.
“I don’t have to make it easy,” she replied, swinging at the next soldier who stepped toward her.
Colonel Wenck stepped into the cargo hold and marched over to Jenny. His burns had started to scab over around a hand-shaped pink patch. A man of his rank had access to healing spells and unicorn blood. The wound would be completely healed within a day. Wenck put his boot down on Jenny’s club. The polished wood split in two with a snap. He kicked the pieces across the floor.
“Acknowledged, Perata in custody,” said Wenck, crouching down near Jenny. He laced his fingers into her hair and pulled her head as far back as it would go.
“Just cooperate and you’ll be all right,” said Jim from the back wall, like a spell to counteract what he was seeing.
Wenck ignored him and stared icily at Jenny. “Well if it isn’t the Hero of Copernica Citadel again. I’m impressed that you survived that little bullet wound. Must be that Bala magic you’re always playing with. Speaking of which, your little manicorn friend is up and about as well. How extremely convenient for me.”
“Suck my dick,” said Jenny, through clenched teeth.
“Oh I don’t think I’ll be the one sucking dicks, Perata. You’re headed to rehab. There are fixes for people like you who consort with Bala filth.”
He stood up and shouted to his soldiers. “We have Perata and Cobalt. Bonus points for catching Mr Tang, boys.”
He knew all of their names, even the old ones that didn’t belong to them any more. It meant that they were not going to stop tearing apart the ship until they found everyone. There was no place on the Jaggery in which Ricky could hide.
The soldiers flanking Gary took their cues from Wenck’s actions with Jenny. They shoved stun sticks into his torso. They couldn’t injure him, but it tensed all of his muscles until he couldn’t control them. He lurched forward and held onto the cargo boxes. They stunned him again and he hit the floor.
“No,” said Jenny, lifted to her feet by a soldier. He tried to get her to stand and she sank back down.
“Ma’am, we can do this the easy way where you come with me willingly, or the hard way where I make your day a little worse. Which one will it be?” asked the soldier.
Jenny lifted both of her middle fingers. If he could have talked, Gary would have told her that was the least productive way to
conduct herself right now. She smiled as if gleaning great joy from the experience of flipping off the officers. A small part of him wondered what that kind of insouciance felt like, because he certainly would not have survived it.
“All right, we’re going the hard way.” The soldier waved over two others. They took her feet and dragged her into the center of the room.
One of the soldiers extended an open palm to Jim. “Papers, sir.”
Jim’s hand shook as he held out the tablet.
“This isn’t the way inspections used to be,” he said.
“Old man, a lot of things aren’t the way they used to be. It’s called progress. Stand against the back wall and let us do our jobs,” said the soldier. Jim shuffled against the wall like a chastened child.
“You don’t need to harm us, we’re coming voluntarily,” said Gary.
“You, my horsey friend, are the product of a sicko human and a filthy Bala. I’ll do anything I want to you,” said the soldier.
Wenck looked up from his tablet. “Don’t talk to it. Incapacitate, immobilize, and impound. We have everyone except Tang.” He got on his radio. “Anyone find Tang?”
The radio crackled.
“Sir…” There was the sound of struggle from the other end. “Sir, we found him, but he’s giving us some trouble.”
“Mister, you get that outlaw down to the cargo hold within two minutes or I’ll have you brought up on charges.”
“Yes, sir. It’s just–” There was a loud snap and a groan. A giggle, then a gasp.
“Fine. Fine, I’ll come. Just point that somewhere else,” came Ricky’s voice through the radio.
The soldier came back on, out of breath and with a high note of pain in his voice.
“Tang in custody, sir.”
“Good.” Wenck switched off the radio and stood eye to eye with Gary, staring straight at him, but speaking to his troops.
“Men, let this day be a lesson to you. Bala filth must never mingle with humanity. We will find every last one of them and contain the threat. To the survival of man.”
“Manifest destiny,” replied the Reason troops in unison, raising their weapons. This call and response always sickened Gary. Today was no exception. Wenck approached Jim with his tablet outstretched.
“I just need you to sign here for the reward money, sir.”
Jim made a mark with his finger and Wenck tapped out the funds transfer. “You’re quite the patriotic citizen, Captain Bryant. A man of Reason can practically make a living rounding up Bala filth these days.”
Wenck read further. A sickly smile spread across his face. “Oh look at that, you got a few thousand in exchange for Perata’s wife a while back. Good for you. If we didn’t round these things up for parts, they’d be off frolicking in a forest somewhere. We might as well get some use out of them.”
A trio of soldiers burst into the cargo hold with Ricky between them. She had changed into heavy military boots and a red Reason flight suit, trying to curry favor with the locals. One of the men by her side was missing an ear. Blood drenched his uniform shoulder.
“Perata, you look terrible,” said Ricky. “I told you this was a bad idea.”
“Did you take that man’s ear off?” asked Jenny, spitting out a mouthful of blood from when she’d hit her chin on the floor.
“I might have,” said Ricky with a naughty twinkle in her eye. Jenny reached between two barrels of water and grabbed the broken piece of her club. She threw it, spinning, at the other soldier on Ricky’s right. It caught him in the eye and he doubled over with a grunt.
“Brilliant!” said Ricky. She and Jenny laughed together. Both of them took a stun stick to the side and their laughter stopped as they flattened against the floor. Gary was glad he wasn’t going to the same place as Jenny and Ricky. Between the two of them, they were going to either get themselves killed or take out half of Jaisalmer.
The soldiers took a step toward him. His hands went to the back of his head. The Quag came back to him in little ways. Like how he instinctively kept his eyes on the floor and didn’t make any sudden moves.
“No trouble,” he said.
“Yeah, you’ll find all the trouble you can handle right here,” said Ricky, raising her hand to indicate herself and Jenny, lying on the stone.
“Hey,” Jenny called out to him. Gary faced her without raising his head. “Meet you at the Summit.” She smiled at him with bloody teeth.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Fort Jaisalmer
The Fort Jaisalmer harvesting center smelled just like the Quag. Solid and liquid waste from a variety of species mixed with sweat and mildew to form a foggy miasma hanging over the cells. The sounds were the same as well; the clanging of cell doors, an echo of voices against tile, hushed and furtive with occasional bursts of shouting. Gary sat back against the bars and tried not to make any noise. He’d been brought in during the night and few beings were awake yet. He preferred to keep it that way for as long as possible.
The Reason required English to be spoken in public and private, but Gary heard a few other Bala languages around him as well. Two wolf women spoke in strained whispers, yipping occasionally to underscore a point. An elf dropped the r-sounds out of his words like a human as he told a murmured story to the others in his cell. Even fifty years ago he would have been derisively ostracized from elf circles for sounding so common. It seemed that the harvesting center was a great equalizer.
Gary’s father had made sure that he knew all of the Bala languages so that he could converse with any being in the system. It was his duty as a future leader, he had been told many times. His mother, on the other hand, had taught him only two human languages: English and Kannada. She showed him how to assemble sticks and balls to make English letters and how to glide his pen through the undulating contortions of the Kannada alphabet. He had hated writing practice, complaining that no one wrote anything down any more. He had been right. Writing by hand was an art form that would nearly be extinct within a generation.
“Mama, I don’t want to be a king,” he’d said once, while he wrote. She’d laughed at him, but not unkindly.
“Why not, beta?” She pointed to a word he had misspelled. Her gold bracelets jangled. She was the most extravagantly dressed leader in the Reason resistance. She had once been a curator of Earth’s culture and she took her job seriously, always dressing in traditional clothing, even when it didn’t quite work under an EVA suit.
“Because when you’re a king you have to solve everyone’s problems,” he complained.
“No, beta. You just have to listen.” She had kissed the top of his head, staying clear of the sharp point on his horn. She’d given him a pained look that he hadn’t interpreted correctly until much later. He’d thought she was annoyed by his question. It was only later that he realized she was thinking about how he would survive in the world with two feet of the most precious substance in the universe growing out of the top of his head. She’d been right to worry.
In the harvesting center, a pig-like creature grunted in a nearby cell. Something clucked and the pig squealed in pain. Hooves scraped across the floor. There were waking sounds from other holding pens. Gary knew from the Quag that this time of morning was dangerous, when some inmates slept and others woke first.
“Hey, new guy,” said a voice from the bench in their enclosure.
In the rising light, a woman drew herself up to a sitting position. Her torso was covered in soft gray fur, but from her hips down she appeared to be a human woman. He didn’t like to speculate, but she was likely part neofelis cat. Gary sat on the edge of the cell, away from the other beings. He was almost always the strongest in a fight, but raw strength wasn’t always the most effective measure of success.
“Hello,” he answered, trying not to wake anyone.
“What are you in for?” she asked.
“I haven’t done anything illegal,” replied Gary. She laughed.
“That’s not what I mean. We’re a natural reso
urce, like a stream or a seam of coal. What did they bring you in to take from you? Because you look like a trash faun and those aren’t even worth the effort of rounding up.”
“I guess they made a mistake, then,” said Gary. “Because I’m worth nothing.”
The furry woman laughed mirthlessly. “True. They make mistakes all the time. I once saw them mistake a minotaur for a monoceros and try to power an FTL ship on its horn. Do you know where a minotaur horn sends you?”
“Where?”
“I don’t know, but you can’t find your way back out.” She chuckled to herself. It was an old joke, but he didn’t mind hearing it. Most didn’t know the truth, that putting a minotaur horn in an FTL drive would bring your ship to a remote mountainous planet, atop which an oracle sat. He would let you ask as many questions as you liked, as long as you brought along a bit of candy.
The holding cell was barely three meters on each side with benches along one wall. A waste bucket in the corner attracted flies and other wriggling things. There were six Bala in this single cell and dozens of other cells adjacent to theirs. Gary stood up and tried to figure out where he was in the warehouse. Cells stretched in every direction. Along the far wall, a pair of guards flanked the exit.
“You’re serious for a faun. What’s your name?” asked the woman.
“Gary.”
“I’m Mizzet.”
“I’m looking for someone,” said Gary.
“You and everyone else.” She swept her arm wide. “There’s one of everything in here.”
Beings of all configurations were starting to sit up and stretch. Gary searched for the wide canopy of a dryad’s branches. He listened for the rustle of leaves that would mean trees were here.
“Who are you looking for?”
“A dryad with yellow flowers. Goes by the name of Kaila.”