Starfire, A Red Peace

by Spencer Ellsworth

  “Ignore him,” I say. “How’d you get out?”

  “I left them with a cross,” he said. “Dumb girl. Short, dark skin. Just a navigator. I was going back for them—really was—when you arrived and everything went nuts and now they’ve stolen my ship and I en’t seen a dime.”

  The priest is muttering something, louder now. Sounds like a prayer—has that kind of singsong, repeated cadence.

  “This girl—where’d she take them?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “If I stick you with my soulsword, will it agree?”

  His one eye opens about wide enough to make two eyes. “She’s from Bill’s. Probably took them back there. It’s a dark node, just this side of Sector 118-R, right up next to the Dark Zone—”

  The priest fires. Shards flash right by my hand, and blow that one-eyed Zu-Path head and most of the torso apart.

  I am left holding a sad, fat little arm, with no body to match it.

  The priest exhales. “I would have done that sooner, but I must have prayer to prepare for the sacrifice. As it is, our Necrotic Lord is not pleased with you, Vanguard.” He cocks his head at me. “You have your information. I have a price for you to pay.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I wave the arm at him. “It doesn’t seem to me you helped much in my information gathering.”

  “Our Necrotic Lord would, most likely, have forgiven me if I had just shot the adept to start with.” He smiles, about as creepy a smile as mine was when my face melted off. “Lucky for you I am a devoted servant, and I took the time to pray while you two chatted.”

  “Fair enough.” This priest is a bit wiser than he lets on. “You want the letter of credit, then?”

  “No. I want you to make an offering. A great and noble offering to Death.” He points to the massive stinking NecroWasp. “For it is dead, and was dead, and now it shall fight for death.”

  When I understand what he means, I groan. This is what I get for saying I wanted a pet.

  -10-

  Jaqi

  EN’T BUT TEN MINUTES after we’ve landed, hugged, taken the kids to where they can get a bath, and Z too, that Bill turns to me and yells, “What the burning hell is wrong with you?”

  Bill looks older. He’s lost every little bit of his hair, and so his head is glistening in the pale and flickering light of the overheads. Or maybe they en’t flickering. Maybe that’s just his head shaking. He looks angrier, too. Not the usual.

  “Those are wanted kids! Haven’t you heard?”

  “I’ve been too busy running for my life.” To which I add, “Hell of a way to greet me, Bill.”

  “I en’t in the mood for hugs and kisses, Jaqi! I en’t a cross. The galaxy’s your playground now, not mine.” His big old chin sticks out, prominently displaying the flash-burns that he’s had there since I can remember. “I taught you better than to come running to me every time you need something.”

  I stand there just trying to think through this. I didn’t know anywhere else to go than Bill’s.

  Bill groans, breaking the silence. “God, I need a beer. And en’t no beer come through in a month, because we went dark. Until you got here!”

  “I might have beer in the ship. I en’t searched all the matter on there.” I try to smile.

  “Guarantee you searched it, miss eats-every-damn-thing-in-the-station.”

  He still knows me.

  The overheads glow, as usual, flickering, casting gray shadows and washing out everyone’s faces. The ceiling is too low, low enough that Z has to duck. The main area boasts a couple of old smelly chairs, a long wooden table, a shelf with some games, and Bill’s prize possession, his guitar. In another room, simulated sunshine on a few sick-looking plants. This is Bill’s. Big, cold, with bad lighting. Home.

  “Bill, it en’t me needs something, it’s these kids! Your place is safe. Always has been. So safe even a fart can’t escape, ai?” I try a smile.

  “I ought to kick you out of the airlock.”

  “Might be worth it, to get away from your farts.”

  His mask breaks for a moment. “I checked with one of them doctors. A real one. Had the card and all. He says there en’t nothing wrong with my guts.” And then back to anger, as if he’s remembering he can’t afford to smile. “Jaqi, there’s a kill order on humans.”

  “I heard. On bluebloods, and I guess merchants too.”

  “All humans. Even swine like me.”

  “Oh. The crosses—the Vanguard—they want to kill every single burning human in the whole burning galaxy?”

  “That’s the chatter. The scabs of the galaxy’re calling it the Red Peace.” He holds up a hand. “Red like blood, human blood, is.”

  “I get it.”

  “There’s chatter coming in from all over, specifically about them kids. Must be a hell of a catch for you to risk yourself like this.”

  “No,” I say, “en’t no catch. They’re just little kids in trouble.” I don’t say their brother got himself killed, for me.

  “What am I supposed to do with them?”

  “You know the wild worlds a lot better than I do, Bill. Come on now.” He don’t say a thing. “You can’t leave them with me—I’ll get drunk and leave them in a bar. Or some crazing.” It’s damn silent, except for the hum of the atmos cycling in, and the faint crying of the kids.

  “Bill?”

  He shakes his head.

  I guess I figured Bill was going to take over. I tell him so. “Bill, you’re going to have to pack up if there’s Vanguard after all humans. Take the kids with you. Make a deal with some Kurguls. Get a hidey-hole on a wild world, so far from everything the Vanguard won’t find you.”

  “Jaqi, the Vanguard are running all around the Empire, and soon the wild worlds, hacking folk up with those soulswords, sucking up every bit of memory they can. They’ll find us. You weren’t the only scab on Niney that knew my place. I don’t know where I’m going to hide. There en’t a scab in the wild worlds won’t sell me out with these kids in tow.”

  He sinks down into his chair. It lets out a sigh, and a little cloud of dust from the cushion.

  I know the chair Bill’s sitting in. I helped him weld it out of scrap metal, glue in the fabric and the stuffing, helped him sew up the edges. It’s a decent chair. If you’re going to sit at a table with a bunch of scabs like to shoot you any minute, might as well keep your butt cozy.

  For that matter, I tasted ice cream at this table, my first time. It had gone hard and dry in vacuum, but I felt like a princess eating it. I cooked with Bill whenever we could get real matter, although he never shared his cheese (that being the main cause of those farts. Nothing wrong with his guts, my half-Jorian ass). He even bought me a doll once, off a trader who’d raided a big family catch. I wore it to pieces, and when it ripped beyond repair, we held a little funeral and shot it into space.

  “And what are you going to do? You coming with us? I could use a cross, even if you en’t exactly muscle.”

  “I . . .”

  He’s waiting on an answer. “Come on, Jaqi.”

  Well, shit.

  My thoughts never went further than here. I’d explain the problem with the little ones, and let Bill take it. If I run with Bill and the kids to the wild worlds, that means . . . that means no Irithessa and plays and fancy lovefolk and no fancy restaurants.

  I just want to live.

  “Hell, Bill, I . . .”

  “I see.” He shakes his head. “I don’t blame you, Jaqi.” After a moment he stands up. He don’t put an arm around me, or anything like that, but he sounds a little choked up. “I was real juiced for you. I heard the Resistance had won. Heard that a cross, Mister John Starfire by name, was sitting on the throne on Irithessa. I figured, one day, ten, twenty years down, she’ll come back and she’ll be fat and smiling and have a passel of babies. Never hear another stupid thing out of your mouth. Figured you’d write one of them books about your life of crime. Fancy people like those things.”

  Me write a
book? I laugh at that. “Some dreams, Bill.”

  “You’re a smarter girl than you know,” he says. “Damn, Jaqi, I en’t got a place to go.”

  “The kids got some fancy bit of Jorian matter,” I say. “Say it’s going to help them get out of known space.”

  “Out of the galaxy? You listening to more fables?”

  “The girl, she told me, said that once the old Jorians used to run between galaxies. We’ll figure it out once we can get a Suit to hack this thing the kids have. It’s got information, Bill.”

  “Crazing,” Bill says.

  “Come see what they got,” I say. I’m hoping that Bill, as softhearted as he can be, will kin to the kids like I have, maybe get his brain working when he sees how alone they are. “We’re safe for now.”

  * * *

  Araskar

  A dark node, just this side of Sector 118-R, where the Dark Zone begins. Bill’s place.

  I watch the priest pump his NecroWasp full of sticky green synthblood. Everyone should see something like this in their life, if only to put them off food forever. He’s wheeled in a big tank full of the stuff, and hooked up a massive pump to a couple of spots on the Wasp. As it pumps, he prays, and finally, with one grand “Death!” of an amen, the thing starts to move.

  “So, no need for cash?”

  “Honor our Necrotic Lord.” The priest rubs the NecroWasp’s shoulder. “Bring this into battle. Let it pay tribute in your Red Peace.”

  “How loyal is this thing?” I ask.

  “Loyal to death.”

  The NecroWasp blinks its segmented eyes.

  “Ah, there’s one other question for you,” I say, and I hate myself as soon as the words come out of my mouth. “There’s some matter I’ve been seeking. Contraband.”

  Had he anything like a human face, I would say this priest is raising his eyebrow. As it is, it’s just thin white skin rearranging itself above his sunken black eye. “Well, war hero. We wouldn’t want to deny your noble self.”

  I put my hand on my soulsword. “Get me some pinks, you scabby corpse, or you’ll never get to die.”

  The priest coughs in surprise, turns around, and scurries off to the back. The Necros are supposed to have religious exemption from dying on the end of a soulsword. Good way to scare them.

  Just a couple more pinks, then I can go back on a fast. I probably won’t need but one. I can even spread them out. Once a week. That’s a nice, normal life right there.

  He comes back with a plastic bag the size of my head.

  I’m staring like a vat-grown virgin seeing their first lover starkers. Burning hell. I almost got myself killed for a fourth of that on Irithessa. This will set me up for a year, if I’m careful. Right on time, my arms and legs burn, like they’re coming alive at last.

  It’s almost like that dumb story I asked John Starfire about, where the old Jorians could stick a corpse with a soulsword and bring it back to life, not just tear it up. Except the only thing I’ve been stuck with is the sight of drugs.

  He presses it into my hand. “For Death.” I let out a deep, heavy breath that I didn’t even realize I was holding. I shove one of my shaking hands behind my back, so he won’t see it. “I’ll take that letter of credit in exchange. Perhaps I’ll find a fool who thinks it’s worth something.”

  “Yeah,” I slur, my tongue even more frozen than usual. So many pinks. So much music, here in my hand.

  “Come on now,” the priest says. The NecroWasp rises from the table, shuffles along grunting, next to me, out the door, along the length of the courtyard, to the muddy path back to the port, where Rashiya must be wondering if I’m coming back.

  I look up at the NecroWasp’s beautifully hideous face. “Loyal.”

  “As long as you are loyal to Death.”

  That’s one way to deal with Terracor, if it comes to that. No soulsword’s going to stop something already dead. I keep this thing close, and when I need to break with the officer I don’t trust, I’ll have one guaranteed backup.

  It almost sounds good. Like a plan.

  Until I thumb the pinks in the bag, and I feel my head go light, and my whole body tingles. Yeah, this is me, ready to upend the Resistance and save those kids and keep that asshole Terracor in line. This is me, who can’t even go without a hit for a day.

  -11-

  Jaqi

  I TURN ON BILL’S shower. He warned me that I would get exactly a minute. He’s lucky enough to have collected a cache of comet water before he went dark, or I would be subject to a cleaning-field that would mean a mild burn all over. Instead, real water, a genuine cocktail of hydrogen and oxygen pulled from actual ice (and a bit of recycled piss; can’t be choosy).

  It rushes out nearly as cold as space. I do the little dance I learned over the years here. Face, armpits, sides, butt, crotch, one leg up, other leg. My hair slaps against my back and I run my soapy hands over it, hoping to make at least a little progress.

  The water is just starting to warm up, and I’m almost done shivering, when it shuts off.

  Short, but the best damn thing in the galaxy. Nothing beats a shower after months on-ship. It would be a bath, but we reckoned the kids needed the basin more. I reach out and grab a towel, one of the few Bill won’t use for grease spills or general repairs, and dry myself off.

  I wipe away the last remnants of Swiney Niney dirt. The last of the grease and anti-oxitate from Palthaz’s ship. The last of the sweat and stink of the crickets’ ship.

  I step out of the shower and sigh.

  “Done?”

  Z is standing there, also in his starkers. And he’s got those tattoos everywhere. Black patterns, some of them looking like book-letters, going across every inch of his evil white skin, up around the two curved horns that stick out of his forehead.

  Not bad, though. The guy’s got muscles like molded steel. Scars every foot or so on his arms, chest, neck, and legs, marring the tattoos. I always liked a few scars. A lover can’t be too pretty.

  “All yours,” I say.

  He crouches and goes into the shower. He’s holding those armored synth-scale trousers. Suppose he’s going to bring them in the shower; not many chances otherwise to clean them.

  From inside, he says, “At home we scrub with sand. I cannot understand this much water.”

  “Sand en’t exactly a comfort after a long day in the grease,” I say.

  “It is wasteful.”

  You know, if he weren’t such a joy-killer, I think I would ask if I could join him in there. Get a little bit of the old slack. It’s been a mighty long time, long enough that I can’t afford to be picky, and by the look of him, everything would work, if you get me.

  Just my luck to be traveling with a nice big slab, everything right except his brain.

  He speaks up, over the rush of water. “Do you believe in the bluebloods’ God?”

  “That’s a hell of a question to ask in your starkers.”

  “I am curious. You have paid back the debt to their brother a few times over, yet you still seem reluctant to abandon them. I wonder if this is a conviction of faith.”

  “En’t that,” I say, and go quiet for a minute. “I don’t know what I believe, scab. I done this cuz I reckon it’s right.”

  “That is a form of belief.”

  En’t anything, I think, but now’s not a time to argue, as I’m drying my bits. “What about you? You into this God—or gosh or what you call—and the Starfire and whatnot?”

  He sounds annoyed. Well, actually, that en’t any change from normal. “The Starfire is not something you choose to believe in or not. It simply is.”

  “Scuse me, mister preacher.”

  “The Starfire is the fuel that burns in pure space. The original Jorians could touch it, and did great miracles with it, and made the nodes so that the other races could spread across the stars. Humans grafted their idea of a God onto the Starfire, but it is an older, greater force.”

  “That don’t sound too different from this Go
d.”

  “No sentient has seen or touched God. You touch the Starfire each time you take a ship into pure space.”

  “Hold on, scab. I en’t having no religious vision when I find a node.”

  “You think not,” Z says, and finishes the shower, stepping out to towel off every inch of his tattoos. “But that is what it is. Crosses are imperfect copies of the old Jorians, but the old DNA breeds true in some of you. That is why the Empire was afraid of crosses breeding, of crosses who made art. They feared the resurgence of the old powers.”

  Now he’s truly talking crazing. I find nodes just cuz I can, not because of some thing burns in pure space.

  I ignore him and get dressed. Bill’s kept some of my old clothes. They’re a bit too small. I didn’t think I had any growth left in me, but I guess I do. Going by what Bill reckoned, I must be near eighteen, Imperial reckoning. Short life, for all the living I’ve done. Can’t think of a lot of eighteen-year-olds who shot one of the Vanguard in the face and lived. Yay?

  I head over to where the kids are, across the common area. Bill’s got four bedrooms and a bathroom set off the common room to the left, and then a massive hangar full of all the matter he’s smuggling to the right. The hangar is five times as big as the living space, which is why it was so much fun to play in as a kid—as long as it was pressurized. Even a rascal little girl knows to stay away once the atmos is gone.

  Bill’s sitting with the kids, playing his guitar. I recognize this song he’s mumbling his way through. “I knew a girl, she rode the nodes, she rode the . . . furmble mumble mumble . . .” Bill gives up and starts whistling the tune. Bill en’t never learned anything but dirty scab songs.

  “Do you know ‘God of the Stars, God of the Earth’?” Kalia asks him.

  “En’t this a sight!” I say to Bill.

  He looks up at me and grumbles, “Doing the best I can.”

  “Jaqi!” Kalia jumps up. Her and Toq run and hug me, and clearly have no intention of letting go.

  “You two smell good.”