“Oh, lighten up. They aren’t harming anything. Max is harmless and Ross is hilarious. To be honest, it’s somewhat refreshing having new friends on board.”
Zoey narrowed her eyes and took a step towards Perra. “They’re not our friends, Perra. They’re stowaways. Deadweight. Tagalongs that we will dump at the next port. Tagalongs, by the way, that you let on board.”
Perra extended her chin and scrunched her brow. “Are you saying this is my fault, miss get-off-this-rock-at-all-costs? If I recall, it was you and that damn cargo that got us in this mess to begin with.”
“Hey, don’t you dare put this on me. You know damn well that this job comes with a certain level of risk.”
“Risk? Risk?” Perra took a step forward, bringing them face-to-face. “I can handle risk. That clusterfuck of insanity we just escaped from was beyond risk.” She pointed a firm finger to the airlock. “We still have part of the Europa Center dock attached to our ship. What on Tim’s Blue Terra are we carrying to warrant a shootout with Jai Ferenhal?”
“I—” Zoey bowed her head and lowered her arms to her waist. “I don’t know.”
“What? What do you mean you don’t know?” Perra lifted both arms into the air and gestured with open palms. “How can you not know? What if it’s a bomb or something? Do you not ask questions?”
“Precious cargo, Perra.” Zoey lifted a sour gaze. “It goes with the territory.”
“It’s a shift drive core,” Ross said in Korish.
Zoey and Perra lowered stunned expressions to the floor where Ross sat at their feet.
“Beyond top secret, above high-military. We’re talking the upper tiers of the Suth’ra Society.” Ross cleared his throat and switched back to English. “That being said, we need to plot a course for Hollow Hold. If it isn’t obvious by now, your recipient is dead.” He turned and caught Max’s stupefied expression from the bedchamber doorway. “Er, I mean ... meow, I’m a cat.”
CHAPTER 10
Andromeda’s vibrant colors poured through the transparent ceiling of the cargo bay. Zoey sulked in a plastic chair beside the bio-lock safe with her arms folded across her chest. She stared at a random crate across the room as restless fingers rapped upon her bicep. Perra leaned back on the far wall with her arms crossed behind her waist. Her wearied eyes studied the metal floor through a blank expression. Max stood in between them with one hand hooked on a cargo net, balancing himself as he surveyed the magnificent vista above. Ross sat upright in the chair opposite of Zoey with ears cocked back and brow lowered in what seemed like intense concentration, but in all likelihood amounted to little more than a strong desire to nap.
A ping on Zoey’s comdev broke the dead silence. With a hesitant hand, she scooped the device from atop the safe and gave it an unwilling glance. A heavy sigh departed her lungs as she closed her eyes and lowered her head. She tossed the comdev back onto the safe, sending hollow clanks into the cargo bay. Leaning forward, she rubbed her temples before relaying the obvious news.
“Ross was right. Navashea is dead.”
Perra plunked her head back onto a locker. Max raised an eyebrow and shifted puckered lips across his face, unsure of how to react. Ross shrugged in the exact way one would imagine a cat shrugging. As Zoey and Perra shouldered the weight of the casualty, Max turned to Ross and decided to clear the air.
“How did you even know about the package?”
“Remember Kenny at CounterPet?” Ross said. “Yeah, he was working with one of SSA Navashea’s associates. Once word got out that the cargo was en route to Europa, they wanted to install a few inconspicuous ringers should things go south. So, they gave me all the information I needed. We just happened to arrive as things were southern bound. Course, these badass young ladies managed to blast their way through Jai Ferenhal’s entire entourage.” Ross winked at Perra, who responded with a smirk.
“You were a ringer?” Zoey said with a skeptical gaze.
“A watcher, mostly. Intelligence gathering and the like.”
Zoey chuckled. “So a domestic cyborg feline is a Council of Loken informant.”
“Hey, nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition,” Ross said with a cocky tone.
“Furthermore,” Zoey said, glaring at Ross, “how did they know that we were on our way to Europa? We didn’t even know until days before. The entire jaunt was planned on a whim. And on top of everything, we always put an enormous amount of effort into keeping our ship off any and all radar. We’re even invisible to high-military.”
“Navashea had been tracking the package from the moment you took possession. They attached a beacon to the shift drive core. It—”
“Impossible,” Perra said, shaking her head. “We would have found something like that on launch prep.”
“Not this one,” Ross said. “Low emission radiation, unique signature. Even high-military can’t distinguish it from natural background radiation. Needless to say, Navashea was taking this very seriously.”
“Sooo ...” Max said. “Navashea is dead. What does that mean?”
Zoey huffed and elevated an angered tone. “It means we don’t have a damn drop. It also means that we don’t get paid, that our reputation suffers, that we are stuck with hot cargo.”
“Hot cargo?” Max said to Perra.
“Unclaimed high-value items,” Perra said. “And given the nature of this item, we might as well be hauling lava.”
Zoey snapped at Max. “It means, Earthman, that we are now the hunted.”
Max cringed with what seemed like an appropriate level of concern, again unsure of how to respond.
“It also means that we have to listen to your fuzzball companion and make for Hollow Hold. We have to take this”—Zoey slammed an open palm down onto the safe—“to one of the most corrupt and anarchistic systems in the entire supercluster. So, there’s that.”
Max raised his hand with the enthusiasm of a first-grader. “I vote we don’t do that.”
“We don’t have a choice,” Ross said. “It’s the best chance we have for contacting the Suth’ra Society.”
* * *
If one were to describe the Suth’ra Society in a single word, it would have to be the most obscure synonym of bizarre. The entity existed not only as a collective of the most gifted scientific minds the universe had to offer, but also as a wasteland of social ineptitude. Asking a member of the Suth’ra Society how they were doing on any given day would require a group study lasting for several weeks to devise a satisfactory answer. Their culture endured as a means to a scientific end; nothing more, nothing less.
The curious story of their creation began thousands of millennia before Max hopped the multiverse. Two genius scientists working in a boring corner of a boring galaxy started what would become the Suth’ra Society. Their overall mission, to experiment without bother, was simple to an egregious fault.
When civilizations emerge, their architects have always been, and always will be, the smartest beings in a vast sea of stupid. The growing pains of building a good civilization entail convincing the stupid that the actions of the smart are worthwhile, often an exercise in futility. After all, morons hinder progress (and for the record, no truer statement has ever been uttered). And since stupid breeds like coked-up rabbits, it often mounts a devastating opposition. In most societies, the solution presents itself as a waiting game, where expanding generations of smarter beings await the inevitable die-off of their stubborn counterparts.
Dimwitted hamstringing will declare itself in countless ways, the most popular catalyst being slights on imaginary friends. As a notable example, the tiny dwarf planet of Burgadim spawned a primitive race known for its adamant resistance to change. A trip through the mind of a typical Burgadimian would yield the following proclamation: I believe that everything in the universe was created for me by Babingobip, the toad-faced god of Finklemek. Smart beings say smart stuff that contradicts my overly simplistic views. I believe that offends Babingobip. Thus, I must resist smart beings to pleas
e Babingobip. The entire race died off when a sudden shift in fertility rendered traditional reproductive methods ineffective. A visiting scientist from a neighboring planet discovered that a simple adjustment would save the species, but as the last Burgadimian said on his deathbed, “This is how we’ve always done it.”
Enter Gleek and Qii, two gifted scientists who applied their superior intellects to the limitations of their own primitive society. As expected, they struggled with a predictable amount of resistance. However, Gleek and Qii were Minoparks, a unique humanoid species that enjoyed exceptionally long lifespans. Therefore, when the deficient majority of their species challenged the integrity of their research, they opted not to waste time on a social sway campaign. Instead, they disavowed their species and ventured into the ungoverned blackness of deep space where they could conduct their research without the interference of simpleminded dullards. Neither scientist set foot on soil again.
Afloat in their unconstrained superlab, Gleek and Qii indulged in every pure intellectual’s fantasy: discovery for the sake of discovery. Curious questions found hard-lined answers without any obstruction whatsoever. As questions increased in difficulty, they decided to solicit the help of their fellow ostracized academics. After a while, the superlab had grown into a vibrant and awkward community of super-geeks doing super geeky things. The spiderweb of docked ships and pod components resembled the space equivalent of a massive multi-car pileup on a foggy interstate highway. The group dubbed themselves the Suth’ra Society because Jerry thought it sounded cool.
Years passed, then decades, then centuries, then millennia. The colossal dweeb station grew and grew, wandering about empty space with a destination of nowhere. Having no fixed coordinates of any kind, the nomadic society enjoyed an excessive level of secrecy. When recruiting new members, they relayed complex puzzles to potential candidates. Solving these near-impossible puzzles, a task only feasible for gifted prodigies relegated to the dark corners of social expulsion, revealed the temporary location of the roaming mega vessel. Soon thereafter, another ship docked itself to the hideous metal snowflake.
If a worthy candidate solved the puzzle and found the roaming vessel, they needed to recite the sacred pledge. After docking, a candidate stood before a senior Suth’ra recruiter. He, she, or it asked the candidate what area of study they intended to devote the rest of their life to. The candidate answered. The recruiter then asked why. The candidate then answered why the bleep not? (Bleep being the literal translation of fuck in Minoparkish.) The recruiter concluded the exchange by offering the candidate a high-five, or whatever number sufficed, before inviting them aboard to enjoy some refreshments. At that point, the candidate, now a Suth’ra member, spent the rest of their life aboard the vessel.
As millennia passed, the vast conglomerate organized itself into several sects devoted to specific areas of study. Every now and then, a sect broke off from the central hub and floated away, disappearing into their own aimless abyss. Before long, the Suth’ra Society had expanded to all corners of the universe, without a single traceable entity. Each misshapen metal flower possessed an array of sophisticated cloaking techniques, making them all but invisible to detection. And should a lucky passerby happen upon one, the structure would, in all likelihood, be dismissed as an abandoned trash heap.
The Suth’ra Society studied, tested, and discovered under the shrouds of space and time. But without a planet to protect or girls to impress, they simply blurted their peer-reviewed data out into the cosmos. Civilizations lucky enough to capture, translate, and apply Suth’ra signals have often found themselves liberated from conflict or destroyed altogether. Numerous societies have thrived and/or perished as a direct result of Suth’ra indifference. As the adage goes, if you give a kid a rock, he’ll break a window. But if you give a kid a pocket-sized thermonuclear bomb with a trillion megaton yield, he’ll destroy the world.
A humble theoretical physicist by the name of Rumac was a proud member of the Suth’ra Society. Like all members, Rumac carried the one simple name; a practice based not on rule, but rather on the unsaid understanding that learning family names and arduous pronunciations forced unwanted social interactions and wasted valuable brain space. Rumac was a crafty humanoid with a stocky build, deep-set eyes, leathery bronze skin, and a bushy white beard that reveled in its own wayward agenda. Hailing from a tiny moon orbiting a tiny planet inside a tiny galaxy, Rumac found himself obsessed with space travel. Most of his intellectual motivation came from an overwhelming need to break free of his tiny existence. He joined the Suth’ra Society in order to devote his remaining days to the study of hyperspace. His inquiries yielded sophisticated jump drive designs that powered the majority of space-faring vessels. But on one fateful day, he got a nutty idea.
Rumac was the father of the modern jump drive, the concept of hooking a distant particle with the concentrated power of a manufactured neutron star. Always wanting to improve on the concept, Rumac wondered what would happen if he could harness the power of a manufactured black hole. Assuming the drive would save a few valuable microseconds, he embarked on a mission to develop a core that could crush a clump of atoms even further to create a small black hole. And so, he did just that.
When it came time to test his device, he plucked one of the countless ships from the enormous docking web and installed the new drive core. When he activated the device and jumped to a new destination, his bushy beard and bald head had reversed themselves. The next jump corrected the problem, but the entire color spectrum had polarized itself. Curious fingers stroked his scraggly beard as he gazed into the open whiteness of space peppered with the black dots of stars. After a snort of concern, he initiated the next jump. A thankful smile greeted the visual correction, but inverted itself with the realization that he had lost his thumbs.
Jump after jump, Rumac marveled at the various tweaks to his own reality. While struggling to work the cockpit controls inside a five-dimensional world, the revelation dawned on him: he was jumping between parallel universes. The coordinates he entered, while accurate, ended up hooking their corresponding particles in adjacent universes. Hundreds of jumps and puzzled expressions later, he had returned to his own familiar universe. He redocked with the aimless Suth’ra station and uninstalled the drive core. Proud eyes and a gratified smile fell upon the silvery basketball in his hands. Rumac basked in the realization that he had become the very first being in all of existence to verify the multiverse. With a grunt of satisfaction, he tossed the device into the nearest airlock and gifted it to space, complete with an autograph and simple instructions for use. He then returned to his study to address the next question on his list.
The shift drive core floated in space for several years before landing on a derelict moon inside the Fornax Cluster where chance brought it into contact with a family of octopus-like tourists. Xarther Yithik, a doctor in training on the planet the moon orbited, along with his lovely spouse and various tentacled offspring, were enjoying some low-gravity bouncy fun on the moon’s powdery surface. Ticalic, the oldest of his offspring, presented his father with a silvery round rock he had found. Xarther, unsure of what his son had brought him, studied the foreign writing upon its surface and made the determination that the object looked important enough to keep and deliver to a physicist friend.
Said friend, a nerdy octo-creature with stumpy tentacles and buggy eyes, consulted a language professional who deciphered the message. Gasps (well, more like gurgles) erupted as they realized what lay before them: a dangerous piece of Suth’ra technology. As a wise and peaceful race, the octo-creatures, known as Glurbiks, knew that the device needed protection under a veil of secrecy. Should a greedy maniac obtain such a device, they could plunder adjacent galaxies for power, wealth, and other personal gains. After much debate in the Glurbik Assembly, they decided to deliver the device to the Council of Loken, a peacekeeping faction located deep inside the Andromeda Galaxy. Their sector representative, Senior Security Advisor Verina Navashea, agreed to ac
cept the device in confidence and shroud its whereabouts. With an official plan in motion, the final step was to secure delivery. All options considered, nothing came close to the reliability and reputation of the Precious Cargo Delivery Service. And considering the cargo, they spared no expense by requesting the best courier in the fleet. One name topped the list: Zoey Bryx, known in the black as The Omen.
* * *
“So what’s Hollow Hold?” Max said.
All three of his travel companions turned to him and answered with irked stares.
“Oh c’mon, I’ve been off my own planet for less than ...” Max fished the comdev from his pocket and noticed that the location services had converted Earth time to universal pochs. “Hell, I have no idea now. What on Earth does this mean?” He pointed at an Artist-Formerly-Known-As-Prince-like symbol that followed a series of numbers.
“Well, on Earth it means nothing,” Ross said.
Perra snickered.
Zoey huffed and shook her head. “You really are just a doltish infant.”
Max pouted and lowered his comdev.
Zoey shot a sour gaze to Perra. “I still think we should just dump them at the nearest port.”
“You know damn well we can’t do that,” Perra said in a levelheaded tone. “By now, every crook in the Veiled Trader network knows our faces. All of our faces. Do you think that dumping an Earthling and his talking cat on some random rock wouldn’t draw unwanted attention?”
Zoey maintained her glare, but sighed in agreement.
“They’re part of this now,” Perra said, glancing at Max and Ross.
Max slouched and sighed with a little too much drama. “Part of what? With all due respect, nobody has told me shit.”
Zoey leapt from her chair and lunged for Max, causing the entire cabin to erupt in commotion. Perra darted forward and wrapped her hands around Zoey’s waist, preventing the ensuing violence. Max scurried backwards and fell to the floor as Zoey’s flailing arms collided with cargo boxes. Her clawing hands snagged netting as her gnashing teeth showered saliva and insults. Perra’s planted feet squeaked across the cold metal floor as she struggled to subdue her lover’s rage. Ross hissed from his chair a few times for good measure. With her dwindling strength, Perra jerked back on Zoey’s torso, sending her tumbling to the floor.
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