by Adam Carter
“Harman?” Wraith repeated.
“I heard you the first time.” The man squinted. “There’s something odd about your face.”
“I have something against shaving, or personal grooming.”
“You’re not covered up.”
“I’m not Themistonian.”
Suddenly the man was interested. He got to his feet and brushed himself down. “Forgive me, sir, I am not looking my best.”
“Hey,” Wraith said with a shrug, “I never look my best. Looking your best is overrated.”
“What’s your name?”
“I asked you first. Twice.”
A small smile tugged at the prisoner’s lips. “So you did. I am indeed Wyatt Harman.” He performed a mild bow. “Now, my friend, who might you be?”
“The head of the Church of Themisto.”
Harman frowned. “You’re Father Dumah?”
“No. You asked who I might be, not who I was.”
“Very droll, my friend.”
“Just my little joke. Folk call me Wraith.”
“Because you move like a shadow?”
“Because everyone dies around me. Makes it especially worrisome since I’m a doctor, but whoever said people were kind?”
“Wraith, you say you aren’t from Themisto?”
“Carpo.”
“You’re Carpoan?” Harman raised an eyebrow. “I’ve never met a Carpoan.”
“Who are you? I mean, what are you doing here?”
“I was arrested as a spy. I’m after Themistonian secrets to sell to the highest bidder. Being a gypsy means I’m not affiliated with anyone, so that affords me a mercenary streak.”
“Oh. I’m not so sure I should have bothered coming to see you, then.”
Harman laughed. “You asked me what I was doing here, and I gave you the answer. It’s not true, obviously. I’m no more a spy than you are a ballerina.”
“You know, playing me at my own joke could have kept you stuck in this cell.”
“You’ve come to release me, then?”
Wraith scratched his chin. “I don’t know. I probably shouldn’t interfere with their laws and stuff. Are you sure you’re not actually a spy?”
“I’m a wanderer, that’s all. I earn a few coins by playing my flute. Haunting melodies always tug on people’s heartstrings and provide me enough coin for a meal once in a while. I made the mistake of coming to Themisto. I’ve never been here, you see, and wondered whether all the stories I’d heard were true. It turned out all the bad ones were because they arrested me just for landing my craft.”
Wraith thought back to dinner. It had been an uncomfortable experience and he had known at the time Father Dumah would have gladly clapped them all in irons if the threat of the sword-ship had not been hanging over his head, quite literally. Now Harman had confirmed as much, Wraith was of a mind to return to the others and insist they all leave immediately. There was every chance the Themistonians would come for them in the night, and since they were all sleeping in separate rooms they would not stand a chance.
“I can see your trust in them is going the way of umbrellas in sunshine. Wraith, I would appreciate a little help here. They’re going to execute me.”
“For spying?”
“It’s their punishment for everything. Outsiders so much as land here and they’re crucified. Something about Jesus leading by example.”
“That’s barbaric. Not to mention that it’s not quite what the Bible had in mind by including all the stuff about the crucifixion.”
“From what I’ve seen of these people, their hearts are in the right place, but their minds don’t quite gel.”
“The women seem sane enough.”
“The women are sane, yes,” he said with a roll of his eyes. “The problem there is the men are all nuts, and the women have found the best way of remaining in charge is to let the men think the opposite. The crucifixions for example feed into the men’s delusions and the women humour them so they don’t realise how utterly stupid it is.”
“That’s terrible. And here I was sympathising with the women.”
“I have known many women in my time, friend Wraith. They can be kind, they can be gentle, they can be loving, they can be firm. But, above all, they are creatures who know their own minds and they need to be watched.”
“You’d get on well with my friend. He hates women as well.”
Harman laughed. “I do not hate women, Wraith: on the contrary, I love them. Sometimes perhaps I love them a little too much, but that’s another matter.”
“Do you know anything about pirates?”
“What a random question – no, I don’t know a thing about pirates. Why? Are you a pirate?”
“No, I told you, I’m a doctor. If you want out of this cell, I suggest you start telling your captors you know everything about pirates. Maybe you were a pirate and they were the ones who sent you here to spy on Themisto.”
“You want me to confess to a crime I haven’t committed?”
“Seems to me if you continue to fight it they’re going to kill you anyway. What do you have to lose?”
“My honour? My self-respect?”
“It’s entirely up to you. It’s just that knowledge of pirates could get you out of here. Dumah wants us to go after the pirates and if you were our guide he’d probably let you out.”
Harman thought a moment. “I could have been captured by pirates at one point. Maybe they kept me in a cell close to their command deck and I overheard a great many helpful things. Perhaps I escaped one time and put to memory the layout of their vessel.”
“That’s the spirit.”
“This is your subtle way of telling me you don’t have a key to my cell, isn’t it?”
“Pretty much. Even if I was prepared to knock over a guard for you, it’d take me about six years to find the key under all those robes.”
Harman sighed and sat back on the bed. “Fair enough, Wraith. I’ll try what you’ve suggested. It’s certainly better than living without hope.”
“Good man. Anyway, I’d best get back to my friends. Chin up, Mr Harman.”
The gypsy offered him a half-hearted wave and Wraith hurried back up the stairs. Thankfully he did not pass any Themistonians on his way back to the grating and pulled it off quickly before hurling himself through. Scrambling all the way back, he fought to remember the way and hoped he did not come crashing out into the wrong bedroom. That, he reasoned, would be more than enough to get him crucified right next to Harman.
CHAPTER FIVE
“I just don’t see the problem with going back to fight those pirates,” Arowana said. She and Hawthorn had retired to her chambers, where she had taken to pacing. The room was small, but space was at a premium on such a small world. It was plush, with oil paintings on the wall depicting farming landscapes and sheep – both things they had yet to see on Themisto. Arowana saw none of this in her pacing. Her fists were clenched with a fury so intense it was drawing blood from her palms. The pain helped her focus, however, and Hawthorn did not dare to mention it. “Unless you think it’s just fine leaving that poor girl on the pirate ship to be beaten around the head every time something goes wrong?”
“Of course I didn’t like that,” Hawthorn said angrily from where he sat on the edge of the bed. “And of course I’d have done something to get her off that ship if I could. But the fact is there’s nothing we can do about it, short of ramming any pirate we meet.”
“We have a few missiles left.”
“Not enough to go round doing good deeds all the while. And it’s not as though we can pop across to Carpo to restock.”
It had been one of their greatest points of contention since acquiring the Jupiter’s Glory. Once the three of them had escaped the madness of actually taking control of the vessel, they had performed in-depth stocktaking of all their equipment. The infirmary was fine, with enough stores of blood, anaesthetic, bandages and anything else they might have needed to last them years. Th
eir food-stocks were fairly low, but food was something they could easily find wherever they went. It was the armaments they had a problem with. While the Glory was packed full of personal weapons, it had no soldiers to wield them. They had managed to find some missiles, but only enough for emergencies. The Carpoan sword-ships had been designed and built on Carpo, and since none of the vessels had ever been seized by outsiders, no one had ever been able to retro-engineer missiles to fit the tubes. As such, they were stuck solely with whatever they had on board.
“If we put on a show of force,” Hawthorn said, “maybe we could get the pirates to surrender without having to fire a single shot.”
Arowana laughed scornfully. Hawthorn’s face darkened – he did not like people laughing at him, especially women, but that was no doubt why Arowana had done it. She did not like to believe she was as cruel as that, but every time she closed her eyes she saw the terrified look on that girl’s face.
“Life isn’t fair, honey,” Hawthorn said. “She probably signed up thinking the pirate’s life would be full of adventure.”
“So it’s her fault she gets beaten around the head?” Arowana asked icily.
“I didn’t say that. I just said she might not be all that innocent. She’s a pirate. She’ll have killed people, murdered them for their money. At the very least, she’s alive because she eats the food bought with money stolen from her victims’ corpses.”
Arowana knew he was talking sense, but was well aware he was trying to talk her out of attacking the pirates head-on. The thing which annoyed Arowana so much was that they had the capacity to do something, but it would mean exhausting their supply of missiles. They were keeping them for emergencies, which involved life-or-death decisions for their own skins, not in picking up strays.
When Arowana had first met Hawthorn, she had not much cared for his opinions on anything. Her decisions were the right ones because her brain had been hardwired by her former employees to retain vast amounts of information. That meant she could assess a situation in moments and reach the most viable solution. Hawthorn was just a man and lacked that capacity. The more she had come to know him, however, the more Arowana had come to accept that sometimes it was the fact he was just a man that often meant he made the most sense.
Hawthorn had been a mechanic when she had first met him, and he still kept up that pursuit, what with all the maintenance Jupiter’s Glory needed. In fact, since the sword-ship would not run without him she had tried to allow him some leeway, for his opinions to be properly considered before she did what she wanted to anyway. He was also an incredible cook and had made it his mission in life to add weight to what he had referred to as her stick-figure. For the first few weeks she had taken great offence at this term, until she came to accept it as a mark of endearment. He had ceased saying it to her, and had instead taken to telling her she had some meat on her bones at last.
With any other man she would have thought he was an insolent boor; with Gordon Hawthorn, he was just oblivious to common sense, especially with regards to the mind of a woman.
“Maybe we can get the Themistonians to come with us,” Hawthorn suggested.
It was perhaps the worst thing he could have said. Arowana felt her ire rise and hated it. She had never been a particularly jealous woman, had never been in a relationship long enough with a man to much care what he did with other women. Hawthorn was an odd partner, for they had been thrust together at the worst of times and come through alive. She knew enough about psychology to understand there was a chance they had only remained together because they had formed a survivors’ bond. Arowana liked to think they shared something deeper, but things had been so hectic since they had acquired Jupiter’s Glory that they had taken very little time to consider where they were going.
Hawthorn seemed to realise he had said something wrong, but she could tell by his expression he had no idea what it could have been.
“The Themistonians,” she said, her voice dripping venom. “And precisely which Themistonians would you suggest we take with us?”
“That depends what armaments they have. Father Dumah’s eager enough for a fight, and Cassiel would be well up for it.”
“Oh, I’m sure. Anything else you think Cassiel might be well up for?”
He thought a good long moment and Arowana turned away in disgust.
“What?” he asked.
“You.”
“What have I done now?”
“Nothing, yet.”
“So you’re having a go at me for something I haven’t even done?” He frowned. “Oh, I get it. You’re talking about Cassiel.”
“No, you’re talking about Cassiel.”
“But you’re the one complaining about her.”
Arowana adopted the most sarcastically coy voice she could muster. “Oh, Mr Hawthorn, I would be honoured to escort you to your room.”
“So some religious shut-in has a crush on me? Deal with it.”
It was such a blunt thing to say that Arowana was lost for a response. It made her take a mental step back, after which she realised how ridiculous she was being. Iris Arowana was possessed of perhaps the finest enhanced brain in the entire Jupiter system, yet she was still petty enough to let something like teenage infatuation get to her.
Still, there was no way she was apologising to Hawthorn.
“What about this gypsy?” she asked instead, changing the subject entirely.
“What about him? If they won’t let us see him, there’s hardly anything we can do.”
“That’s the most defeatist attitude I’ve ever heard.”
“It’s a survivalist’s attitude. You should try it more.”
Again he was right – again she was hardly going to admit it to him.
“The way I see this,” Hawthorn said, “we make it through the night, we get back to the Glory and we hightail it away from all this mess.”
“Then you’re back to suggesting we leave the pirates alone?”
“I’m back to reminding you that we don’t have the firepower to take on those pirates. You do realise our main weapon is bluster? Wraith’s great at that, he loves pretending to be people he’s not; but sooner or later someone’s going to call our bluff and blow us out of the sky. And pirates are pirates because they’re ruthless, not because they shiver their timbers whenever someone issues them a challenge. Tap into that superior brain of yours and tell me I’m wrong.”
Arowana had noticed recently that whenever Hawthorn was certain of his victory, he would always remind Arowana of her conditioning. It was something she had despised at first; now every time he mentioned it she just became more disappointed in him.
“I can be thankful to the Themistonians for one thing,” she said.
“And what’s that?”
“That they gave us separate rooms. You’re an arrogant bully, Gordon Hawthorn, and I’m beginning to see why your wife divorced you.”
“Oh, that’s the road we’re going down, is it? I’ll have you know it was me who divorced her. It had nothing to do with my arrogance, but everything to do with her having her way with some other guy while I was on tour with that security firm you and I used to work for.”
“Nothing to do with your arrogance? Then you admit you’re arrogant?”
“I admit women give me cause to be arrogant.”
“That doesn’t even make sense. If you stop blaming women for all of your life’s problems, maybe you’ll see the cause is closer to home.”
“Yeah? Well maybe I’m the one who’s glad we have separate rooms. If I call Cassiel, it might allow me some quality time with a girl who appreciates me.”
Arowana narrowed her eyes. She was seething, her fists trembling by her side. She was thankful she was not armed, but was not convinced that would not stop her launching herself at him.
She heard a strange tapping sound and looked around, seeing Hawthorn had noticed it also.
“Finally,” a voice whispered from the wall. “I thought you two would never s
top arguing.”
“Wraith?” Arowana headed over to the wall. There was a small grate at the base, with Wraith’s bearded face peering through. Her shock quickly returned to anger and she crouched beside him. “What are you doing spying on us?”
“Believe me, I can live without the pre-marital arguments. Just get the grate open.”
Arowana examined the catches and unclasped them. Hawthorn helped Wraith crawl into the room, where the older man brushed himself down and stretched his limbs. “Well, that was jolly uncomfortable.”
“Wraith, why were you in our air vent?”
“Everyone crawls around the air vents. It’s the done thing, Miss Arowana.”
“That doesn’t explain what you were doing in there.”
“I went to see the gypsy.”
“You what?”
“I went to see the gypsy.”
“I heard you the first time. Wraith, we can’t risk angering these people. If it comes to a confrontation, we’re not going to come out of it in one piece.”
“When did you become such a wuss, Arowana?”
“Why are you acting like you want me to break your fingers?”
Wraith ceased stretching his limbs, his bravado fleeing him.
“Wraith,” Hawthorn said, “since you went to the trouble of talking to this guy, tell us what you found out.”
“No,” Arowana said quickly. “We don’t want to know. Whatever it is, whoever he is, we don’t need to know anything about him.”
“That’s just silly,” Hawthorn said.
“It’s not silly, and if you had a brain inside that head of yours you’d understand the seriousness of our predicament here.”
“Oh, so it’s back to me being stupid, just like every argument we ever have?”
“Maybe that should tell you something about …”
“Knock it off,” Wraith said, “both of you. Yes, we’re all uptight, yes we’ve all been stuck in that sword-ship for the last couple of months, yes we’re tired and afraid for our lives most of the time. But the only reason we’re still alive is because we have each other. We need each other. Literally. Hawthorn’s our only pilot, I’m the one with the comms skills and you, Arowana, have the brains to plot our courses away from the trouble we left behind. We’re a team and like it or not we’re staying as a team. So stop arguing and grow up.”