by Sam Coulson
The Slire dove, evading the human ships, and then turned, I saw his main engines fire to full thrust as he angled toward the last of the cargo caravan. The humans saw what he was doing, they must have, but it was too late to stop him. With the full force of his thrusters engaged, that pilot met glory as he rammed the vessel.
The Slire melted into the larger ship and became nothing. But then, as I watched, the cargo ship began to falter. Fires burst, hull plates split, the glory was his as both myself and the human fighter pilots watched, helpless.
Ju-lin and I retired to the galley as we continued across the system. So far it looked as if the pirates had held up their end and stayed powered down back by the gas giant, waiting for their next victim. When we asked Loid to join us to eat, he waved us off, his mind elsewhere.
“So,” I leaned forward to ask Ju-lin as we began eating. “What should we tell him?”
“There isn’t much more to tell,” she answered. It was true. Aside from the datacard in my pocket with the scan of the writing in the cave, we didn’t have any more secrets left.
“True,” I said, pausing. “But he is bound to ask what Growd found, and what we found when we were sent to investigate.”
“We didn’t find anything,” she said, narrowing her eyes and glancing at my pocket where I had the datacard hidden. “In reality, he knows as much as we do, which isn’t much at all. Dad sent us to find out why the Skins attacked us, before we can do that, we need to find out who did it. Once we find out who it is, then we should be able to figure a lot more about the why, without bringing Loid into it. Besides, Dad said not to trust him, and I don’t.”
“He did get us out of that mess,” I answered.
“We all got us out of that mess,” she countered. “In case you didn’t notice, I was the one flying this tub.”
I nodded.
“And you’d think that Loid would be more careful,” she continued. “Maybe done some extra scans or something before going into refueling. Walking into a trap like that seems like a rookie mistake.”
“Maybe he’s saving that for rule nine,” I commented.
She looked at me a moment, cocking her head to the side, “Wait, did you just make another joke?”
I felt the heat as much cheeks flushed red.
She smiled again, not her typical mocking grin, but a genuine smile, kind, and soft. Our eyes met for a moment, then she turned, slid into her bunk, and pulled the curtain closed.
I sat there, staring up at the empty space where her smile had been.
The rest of our journey through Hyades was uneventful. Though Loid kept checking the scanners, there was no sign of pursuit. By the time we made the flux to Magaera, one of three Furies, he was relaxed and casual. We had been traveling through the system for several hours before Loid buzzed the ships coms and called us up to the cabin.
“Take a seat,” he said quietly.
I looked out the front viewport to see a massive hulk in front of us. He must have heard my sharp intake of breath.
“It’s from the Earthborn Protectorate patrolling the Furies,” he nodded. “A Dreadnaught on patrol. Fearsome bitch. Hundreds of crew, a few flight groups of fighters.”
“It’s the Dante,” Ju-lin came in behind me. “I saw her in dry dock a few years back.”
A light flashed on Loid’s control panel.
“They are requesting our identification and authorization,” Loid said quietly. “Eli, I showed you how to access the coms package the other day, do you remember?”
“Yup,” I answered as I accessed the console.
“Good, send our Earthborn credentials,” he said. “Make sure it’s the Earthborn credentials, sending my Celestrial ident tags would be awkward.”
I laughed, though I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to. I pulled up the digital credential package, checked four times to make sure it was the Earthborn Protectorate Identification data package, and sent it.
“She’s clean,” Ju-lin studied the hull as we passed beneath the Dante. “They haven’t had action in a while.”
“Good sign,” Loid nodded. “Clean ships means clear sailing.”
“Scotsman designation Tons-o-Fun,” a voice crackled over the coms. “Package received, and authorization accepted. Watch your back out there. Dante control out.”
“Acknowledged,” Loid said simply, flipping off the coms.
“I thought you said Magaera was contested, what was it you called it, no man’s land?” I asked.
“Officially, yes,” Loid answered. “But that more or less turns it into every-man’s land. Even with all the patrols, the Furies are the only viable path for sneaking between the Celestrial Empire and the Earthborn Protectorate, it’s thick with pirates, smugglers, traders, and even the occasional honest folk.”
“Which are you?” Ju-lin asked.
“All of the above,” Loid said wistfully.
“Even the honest folk?” Ju-lin asked.
“Sometimes,” Loid answered.
“Did they scan us?” I asked.
“No,” Loid said. “As long as your paperwork is in order, a small cash transaction to an unnamed account floating around out here in space will encourage the operator to look the other way.”
“Why bother?” Ju-lin asked. “I mean, Kevarian Ale is illegal to transport, but they wouldn’t be able to identify it on the scan, and you have cargo shielding around the secondary bay, hiding the Draugari warheads.”
“Call it caution,” Loid answered. “Or call it simple math. I give away a few credits to secure that I’ll make a few thousand. The best profit is the one that you make sure you can spend.”
“Still,” she answered. “The more coin in your hand the better.”
“You would be amazed how many good smugglers get caught by a lowly docking bay clerk for sloppily forged manifests,” Loid answered. “That woman up there manning the scanners, she’s bored. Badly paid. And is anxious to get off duty. Her job is unimportant and monotonous. If you had to do that, what would you be doing? She wants to find something to make her life interesting. Better to toss her a few credits and keep on moving than risk that she increases the power on her scan or happens to detect any unusual radiation signatures. When you’re running on the edge of the law, bored and low-ranking paper pushers are the most dangerous people you can encounter.”
“I guess I never thought about it like that before,” Ju-lin answered.
“It’s the little mistakes that will hang you,” Loid said. “It always is.”
“Where are we heading now?” I asked.
“Well, right now we’re going to continue on our course to make it look like we’re heading to Tisiphone which has connecting grav points back to the Protectorate,” he answered. “But, once we’re clear of the Dante, we’ll adjust our course for Alecto, the third Fury, and the border system. Alecto has four flux points: two leading back to Earthborn space, and two leading into the Celestrial Empire. From there we’ll flux over into Celestrial territory, the Shindar system where Alonso said he sold the drone, and see what we can see.”
I looked up, studying the Dante. She was a hive of activity. Small fighters whirled around her hulk, making regular patrols. There were other ships flying point defense on all sides, cruisers, destroyers, corvettes.
I watched the Dante and her fleet slip off beyond us and out of view.
The rest of our trip through Magaera and then to Alecto was uneventful. Though there was traffic, the travelers all seemed to want to keep their quiet distance. That was just as well for us. Though it was a fair distance, the trip through Alecto went quickly. I spent most of my time in the flight deck talking with Loid. He seemed to have a story for everything, and answered my questions readily and fully. Unlike Ju-lin, Lee or the other colonists, he didn’t so much as raise his eyebrows when I asked him questions about common things. I enjoyed that.
Ju-lin came and left, sitting with us in the flight deck for as long as her shifting feet would allow.
“Preparing to flux to Shindar,” Loid called over the ship’s loudspeaker some hours later. “You two may want to be up here for this.”
Once we were both in our jump seats he spun around in his pilot’s chair.
“I’m going to assume neither of you have had direct dealings with the Celestrials before?” He glanced at both of our faces. “Yeah, I thought not. Okay, the first thing you will realize when we get to Shindar II, is that the Celestrials love order and organization. There are processes and procedures for everything. So follow my lead, do what I do, and try not to say anything.”
“How will we find out about those ships?” Ju-lin asked.
“We’ll start by tracking down the Noonan trader that Alonso mentioned,” he answered. “Odds are the trader didn’t have the tech he would need to decode the message. They probably just sold it whole to the first person to come along with a few coins.”
“How do we track them down?” I asked.
“I imagine that there aren’t too many foreigners on Shindar who would deal in corporate secrets. There is too much risk there. The Noonan look for an easy profit. If there is anyone desperate enough to buy Alonso’s stolen drone, it’s a good bet they will also be willing to help find a buyer for stolen Draugari warheads.”
“Which you need to sell anyway,” Ju-lin added. “Efficient.”
“Or laziness, whatever you want to call it,” Loid said with a laugh. “Which reminds me, the most important thing to remember about the Celestrial: they love efficiency, but they are also steeped in ritual and culture. They’ve been fluxing through grave points for five hundred years, and their sciences are well beyond anything that anyone in the Collective of the Protectorate have developed. The story goes that the environment on their home planet was so harsh that they actually developed terraforming technologies and mastered their control over the planetary environment before they even launched a satellite into orbit.”
“What do you mean how the story goes?” I asked
“That’s what they tell us, we’ve never seen the Celestrial homeworld,” Loid answered. “Hell, few have survived past the first few seconds of a flux into Celestrial territory. They are patient, and have a long memory. Each Celestrial can live to be 130 years old. Most don’t start out on their own until after they turn 70s. Now, if I make it to 100 I will just be a toothless old rogue plugged into a dozen life support systems on some resort station with half of my marbles left. Not a Celestrial. We are children to them. Every one of them are required to spend fifteen years in military service, and twenty years in post-secondary education.”
“Required military service?” Ju-lin looked disgusted.
“Yes. So, you, keep your sass tied up,” he turned from Ju-lin to me, “And you, just don’t ask so many stupid questions. Eli, load up the credentials for Celestrial space and have them ready. They aren’t quite as patient as the Dante was.”
“No bribes this time?” Ju-lin asked.
“Bribe one of them?” Loid laughed. “That would be a damned fool thing to do, and I’m serious, tie up that damned sass.”
The engines whirled as he powered up the drive, and we fluxed.
Where the hulking shape of the Dante had been intimidating in its bulk and power, the Celestrial defense fleet monitoring the grav point inside of the Shindar system was equally intimidating through sheer numbers. As soon as we fluxed in, four sleek Celestrial fighter craft, similar to the ones we had seen back on the colony, pulled in tightly, boxing us in. As I looked out the viewscreen, I saw dozens of ships, some were floating still, while others ran patrols and practiced maneuvers in tightly packed formations. Although none of the ships were nearly as large as the Dante had been, between their numbers and the level of coordination, I was reasonably certain that the Celestrial fleet would be just as formidable.
An alien voice speaking a smooth, foreign language came on the coms. The flow of the language was so fluid and lyrical that it was difficult for me to discern one word from another.
Loid answered back, speaking back in their native language. After the Celestrial’s clear tones, Loid’s rendition was halting and jarring.
“Send the authorizations,” Loid nodded.
I sent the codes. A few moments later the voice came back on, and the fighters peeled off, allowing for us to go on our way.
“Their formations are perfect,” Ju-lin’s voice was low with awe. “I mean perfect. I grew up around fighter pilots and lived in fleet stations my whole life, and I’ve never seen anything close to this level of coordination with the Earthborn Protectorate fleet.”
“Impressive,” Loid answered. “Isn’t it?”
“How do they do it?” She asked.
“At first we thought they were all psychic because we couldn’t fathom that another race could be so much better at something than ourselves. But in reality, there are no psychic powers. It’s just that the Celestrial culture focuses patience and control,” Loid said. “They are far more disciplined than any other branch of humanity.”
“Then why haven’t they beaten the Protectorate?” I asked.
“Pardon?” Ju-lin turned sharply.
“I mean,” I stammered. “The Protectorate has been fighting the Celestrial Empire for a long, long time, right? Those fighters look much more advanced than any Earthborn ships I’ve seen, you yourself have commented about how much more maneuverable they are than most Earthborn ships,” I nodded toward Ju-lin. “The Protectorate ships may be bigger, but this fleet looks like more than a match for the Dante.”
“First, don’t confuse good looks with effectiveness,” Loid said. “Celestrial ships are sleek, slender, beautiful even; but their weapons don’t hit any harder than ours. When the force of a large Dreadnaught battle group like the Dante’s encounters a Celestrial defense group like this one, there will be no winner. The system will be littered with debris, bodies will float out in the black, and the few who survive on either side will limp home to speak of the horrors of war.”
“That’s how every large action between the fleets went,” Loid continued. “The Protectorate and the Celestrials are on even ground when it comes to war. The discipline of Celestrial training meets the unpredictability of the Earthborn instinct, and death is all that follows.”
“So the fleets along the border just mirror each other,” Ju-lin added. “Nobody wants a war like that. There’s no money in it. When we build up our forces, so do the Skins. If we were to wage complete war, we may take their systems. Hell, we may even defeat them, but the cost would be too high.”
“So everyone just floats on either side of the flux points with loaded guns?” I asked.
“Pretty much,” Loid answered. The levity was back in his voice. “And so we bribe the Earthborn and tiptoe around the Celestrials and travel between them to turn a profit. Well, I do at least. I’m still not sure what you two do.”
“I’m a pilot,” Ju-lin’s haughtiness had returned.
“Mind the sass,” Loid responded.
“Mind the cargo ship,” Ju-lin retorted.
Loid pulled up as he realized that he was coming a little close to the hulking hauler that was crawling in front of us. As he pulled up, a planet filled our viewscreen. The oceans were light blue, the single large landmass that was visible was lush and green.
“I love it when grav points are close to civilization,” Loid smiled. “Some systems you have to fly about for hours to get to anywhere interesting, but not in Shindar. Boy and girl, I’d like to introduce you to Shindar II, our port of call. Now, if you two will be kind enough to keep your mouths shut for the next fifteen minutes, I will set us down and we can get to work.”
Chapter 18.
“Lor’ten!”
I stood in answer to my name, and stepped forward through the crowd of my kinsman. They moved out of the way as I passed. My legs felt numb as they carried me. At last I was there, standing beneath the clan Chieftain.
“Lor’Ten,” he spoke in Draugari, his voice was loud and sh
arp, stabbing at my ears. “You met the enemy in battle. And witnessed many honorable ends. You walked the fires of fate. You stood to tell the tale.”
I recalled myself curled, huddled in the remains of the ship, shivering against the cold of space. Alone and defeated. I remained silent.
“You showed true courage and strength. You, and you alone breathe after the battle!”
My lie once again haunted me. I remembered the human fighters, circling the debris searching for their survivors, and then leaving me out in the black. When my clan had found me, I told them that there had been no other survivors. It gave me the honor of victory. It was a lie.
“So rise, Lor’ten,” the chief continued. “Rise to your station as you rise in honor. To the survivor, victory!”
“To the survivors, victory!” the clan repeated in unison as they honored me.
Before landing on Shindar II, my memories of cities were all of small communities. I could recall my old village, full of narrow, twisting streets that were built by thousands of footsteps on the soft soil; the paths did not follow a plan or design, they were natural lanes that formed as a result of use as they were walked over and over again. My memories of the Draugari home-ships were of metal and ceramics, stations stitched together from cargo ships and wrecks. Steel walls with paintings of great battles and noble deaths. Those memories—Lor’ten’s memories—were shaded, old, dull, and unremarkable.
My clearest memories were of the Downs. The streets were clear and orderly and buzzing with the chaotic hum of business as people and equipment moved about with the bustle of life.
I wasn’t prepared for what I saw on Shindar II. I quickly learned that the Celestrials make a different kind of city.
“Dear god,” Ju-lin gasped as we stepped out and she surveyed the brightly colored buildings. “Are they color blind?”
“Hush,” Loid snapped as he led us through the cargo hold and opened the bay doors. “This is a Celestrial production system. And by that I don’t mean supply chain, I mean system, as in star system. The five habitable worlds, all of them terraformed for a specific purpose. One world produces food, another water and biomass, then there is a refinery, another is an assembly world. You get the idea. Shindar II here is the trading hub and machining shop. They gather supplies and make tools.”