Flotsam

by R J Theodore

  The gangway to Wind Sabre waited for them, also quiet. Talis breathed shallow, trying to do it in her stomach instead of expanding her ribs. Stars filled her vision anyway as the sharp pain shot through her like lightning.

  One foot in front of the other. It was all she could manage at the moment.

  Talis headed for the med bay to put something on her ribs. No time to treat it properly. Dug needed her.

  Scrimshaw lay on the recovery bunk, xist long limbs folded awkwardly to fit the short berth. Put aside for the time being. It stopped her short in the doorway. Xe didn’t move at the sound of her entrance, and as she lifted her shirt up to rub an analgesic on her side, she walked to xist bunk and leaned over xin. The carapace didn’t rise and fall like the chest of softer-fleshed beings. She felt a chill that had nothing to do with the eucalyptus in the medicine.

  Back at the door, she thumbed the all-ship intercom. “Tisker, bring that field kit we found down to med, would you?”

  He rounded the corner the next moment, holding the kit up with his good arm. “Was on my way, Cap. Gotta patch myself up, too.”

  She nodded. “There’s a small apothecary jar in the top drawer, something Zeela gave me. Try that when you get it clean.”

  Dug needed her, Dug needed her, Dug needed her. It repeated in her mind even as she opened the Yu’Nyun kit on the surgery table. Inside the case, nestled in a soft foam tray, was an array of metal tubes, their polished sheaths perforated with Yu’keem characters. Entirely unreadable to her. With an exasperated sigh, she flipped the cover closed again. That made up her mind for her.

  “I have no idea how to use any of this,” she said to Tisker, waving a helpless hand at the kit. The ring flopped about on her index finger as she did. “See if you can make heads or hindquarters of this stuff. I’m going to take Meran into Talonpoint and get Dug back.”

  “You sure about that, Cap? Sophie and I can help. No telling what Meran might do.”

  Talis narrowed her eyes. “You want me to take the only remaining crew members I’ve got and leave the ship alone with Meran and Hankirk aboard and Scrimshaw unattended? In a port where they’ve already arrested Dug and are thinking gods-know-what about how we blew up a ship in dock?”

  Tisker had his mouth open to talk again but shut it. Talis thought her point had been made, but then Meran spoke from behind her.

  “I can treat your alien, or I can aid you in retrieving your man.”

  Talis looked over her shoulder. Meran, still naked, stood in the doorway. She held her limbs loose, with zero pretense or attitude, and yet she exuded the confidence of a queen. Sophie darted in behind her.

  “Sorry, Captain, I was trying to watch the docks and keep her occupied, but she slipped away.” Sophie was panting around the words, her forehead creased with worry. By the time Talis and Tisker had returned to Wind Sabre, Sophie had a litany of questions about the simula that she was set on having answered. Talis was surprised Meran could escape her attention.

  Talis rolled the ring on her finger. “It’s okay, Sophie. I think I called her.”

  Meran smiled at her, a slow creeping expression that seemed as dangerous as any smile Talis had seen on Dug before a fight.

  “Sophie, help Tisker with that alien medical business. See if you can pick out something that might work. If not, leave it till we get back.” Talis nodded to Meran. “First things first.”

  “You’re going to get Dug now?” Sophie stepped forward, put her hands up as if to stop her. “Captain, there’s a small crowd outside, mostly fire crew but a few wounded, and then there’s the curious. We’re attracting attention. Not that we weren’t before.”

  Talis nodded. “That’s why I want the both of you on watch. Tisker’s gotta patch up, and you look real quick at that Yu’Nyun junk and see what you can see. You’ve got ten minutes. Then Meran and I are going.”

  But Meran crossed the room and ran a hand lovingly across the edge of the stainless steel surgery table, then up, across, and over the case of alien supplies. With a flick of her wrist she flipped back the lid, and in a seamless motion palmed one tube and a box that rattled as she lifted it. She held them out, her elbows relaxed, her hands rotated palm up with the small items loosely gripped between her fingers. The turns in her wrist were as graceful and natural as the choreographed movements of bell-strung dancers Talis saw in a prince’s hall once. As much as the rhythmic hips and air-stroking hands had drawn the eye of all the dignitaries in the room, they had almost distracted her enough to spoil the plan to palm a few palace treasures and be gone before anyone realized she didn’t belong there. And those women hadn’t even been naked.

  Talis raised an eyebrow, considering the offered supplies, then nodded. “All right then, let’s jump that schedule. Five minutes.”

  Sophie claimed the items and went to Scrimshaw’s side. She wrestled a hypodermic needle from its packaging and prepared to fill it. She looked up, “Any idea on dose?”

  Talis looked at Meran, whose enigmatic smile didn’t change. She didn’t answer, so Talis shrugged. “Start small, I guess. Four minutes.”

  She left Tisker to tend his arm and Sophie to either help or kill Scrimshaw. Meran followed her down the companionway to the deck below, and aft to the cage. Hankirk had seated himself on the crate of Yu’Nyun gold, pushed up against the bulkhead to form a bench. She’d never meant the cage as a brig, so she hadn’t bothered with amenities. Someone had put a bucket in there. More courtesy than she would have given him.

  He looked up eagerly at her approach, his lips poised to say something, but the words died unspoken as Meran followed her in, padding silently on bare feet.

  Talis waved a pistol at him. “Stow it and stay where you are.”

  Fall Island wasn’t Subrosa. If someone came aboard here, they’d have worse threats than theft in mind, but it would make Talis feel better if her crew had one less thing to worry about. She shoved the second alien crate across the decking to the entrance of the cage, then paused to catch her breath and give her screaming ribs a break. She was hardly in any shape to run into town after Dug, she knew, but she couldn’t leave it to anyone else. And she’d have Meran with her. The woman who could melt aliens with her hands and would blow up a ship at Talis’s merest thought. No wonder everyone wanted that ring.

  As if to reinforce its presence, the ring rang out, metal hitting metal as she grabbed the keys to the cage lock off the wall.

  Sparing Hankirk a suspicious glance, she looked to Meran and held out her pistol. “Watch him for me while I stow this.”

  Meran crossed to her side but did not accept the gun. “You know I do not need that.”

  Talis nodded and waved the gun loosely in the air. “Yeah, but he hasn’t seen what I’ve seen. The gun makes a great visual cue. Please?”

  Meran’s cool hand brushed against Talis’s wrist as she accepted the gun. She considered it for a moment, running her fingers along the contours of the barrel and stock, then held it up to point at Hankirk, her arm straight out from the shoulder. Her other arm dropped back and her torso twisted. Gorgeous dueling pose, Talis had to admit. And quite the image. If Talis was ever challenged to a formal showdown, she’d have to consider going nude for the distraction. It would keep any shreds of fabric from entering a bullet wound, at least.

  The temptation to speak finally proved too great for Hankirk to resist. “You put that gold and silver in here, and you only guarantee that anyone who comes sniffing into your hold will break me out to get to the coin.”

  The iron key screeched as it turned in the lock. Talis swung the barred door inward, and it blocked a direct line from Hankirk to the exit. Of course, if he made a move he could crash the door back into her while she was moving the crate. Her ribs launched a protest at the thought.

  “So far,” she said, trying to control the tightness in her voice as she curved her spine to push the crate again, �
�you’re the only one who’s ever snuck aboard my ship. And I trust the hungriest, most desperate, most honorless Bone rapscallion a hundred times more than I trust you.”

  With a final grunt, she got the crate far enough through the door to swing it closed again, and did so without delay.

  “Heavy, these crates,” Hankirk said, patting the one beneath his legs. “I can see how tempting the money must have been.”

  Talis tried to shape her scoff in a way that wouldn’t set off her rib. She locked the door behind her, then pocketed the key instead of returning it to the hook in the cabinet by the door.

  “I may regret taking on that contract, but I’m not going unpaid after everything we’ve been through. You can keep your judgments to yourself.”

  “Was it worth betraying your world?”

  Talis felt rage, a pressure behind her eyes. She closed them and took a steadying breath. Heard the telltale click, and her eyes shot open again in a panic. Meran had leveled the pistol at Hankirk’s face and pulled back the hammer.

  “Enough,” she said. “If I was going to kill him I’d have done it a week ago.”

  “That may prove to be a mistake,” Meran said, but she returned the hammer and handed the pistol back to Talis.

  “Oh, I know it was. Come on.”

  Chapter 31

  Fire crews were dumping sand on the last of the flames that spotted the Talonpoint docks, while rescue teams searched the wreckage for survivors. Yu’Nyun bodies were piled high on a wagon bed, a tangle of white and dark blue with sand coating everything.

  Talis stepped off the ramp from Wind Sabre, and there was a small cheer from a crowd of onlookers. Something snake-like moved its coils within her stomach, unsettled at the celebratory sound.

  Meran stepped down off the ship behind her. Talis could not manage to convince the woman that she needed clothing, and had finally resorted to exerting her will over the woman via the ring. Through Meran’s selection of clothes, Talis felt something like a personality was starting to emerge. She chose a pair of Dug’s pants, which were large on her, the crotch low. She bound the legs at the calf to keep them from dragging, so they billowed above the knee, and tied the waist low on her hips. She wore one of Sophie’s undershirts, which came down only to her midriff. Sophie had tried to offer her a clean one, but the simula had insisted on Sophie’s oldest, softened from use and irrevocably stained with engine grease. Over that, Tisker’s jacket, its bloody sleeve only half-dried. One of Talis’s favorite scarves wrapped around her hair, pulling it up and back, a winding pile almost as high as one of the alien skulls. She remained barefoot.

  She wore their most familiar things. Unremarkable upon their owners, yet wholly foreign, and breathtakingly exotic, on this strange woman who still glowed blue along the stripes and swirls on her warm brown skin. It took her only moments to dress, as though she knew exactly which articles of clothing she wanted, and where they were stowed.

  Talis took a deep breath, and the wrappings Sophie’d done last minute helped to keep her rib from shifting as she did so. She hadn’t bothered to change the pants and boots she’d worn onto the alien ship, which were still covered in the soot that she couldn’t brush off. But she put on a fresh tank top over the bindings, and her jacket. Gave her face a quick swipe with a wet cloth to remove the worst of the smudged ash, and shook out her hair so that it tumbled over her shoulders and down her back.

  She would go in politely at first. But she had a scarf around her neck that could quickly tie her hair up and out of her face if things went sour. Which they likely would.

  She squared her shoulders, gave Meran a nod, and made a steady, quick pace for the gates of Talonpoint, doing her best to ignore the crowd of onlookers who murmured as they passed.

  Things in town had already gone sour before they arrived. There was smoke in the air, along with the cheers and jeers of a well-liquored mob. Below that, the dull thrum of hundreds of voices talking over one another vibrated through the hard-packed earth below her feet.

  Talis and Meran followed the sounds of the crowd, past the empty shops and offices that lined the main entrance beyond the high stone walls of Talonpoint. The thoroughfare opened up to either side, and the businesses, municipal offices, and apartment complexes formed a ring around the central green. It was an open-air market most days, but the kiosk owners with any sense had packed up early today. Talis stopped at the perimeter of the activity, frozen in dismay.

  The walls surrounding the city proper kept the driving sand from filling in the cracks and crevices as it could on the docks, in the rural district, and beyond. Otherwise the eight alien heads mounted on pikes around the stage in the center of the green might have been indistinguishable sandy shapes. Even so, there was a good bit of sand adhering to the drying blue blood that dripped down the length of the pikes.

  That was fine by Talis. Made things easier, really, to not have to concern herself with the interference of the invaders. It was the sight of Dug tied by the wrists and ankles to intersecting X-shaped pillars in the center of the stage that stopped her mid-stride. He was the centerpiece of the alien carnage. His limbs were slack, and his chin rested on his chest, which hung forward under his weight. Blood was dried where it had run down his face, onto his stomach and pant legs.

  And then there was only movement. She pushed her way forward through the crowd, Meran running ahead of her. The blue markings across her skin bounced as she moved and even in daylight made her easy to follow, as did the angry murmur of the crowd as she shoved them aside, clearing a path for Talis.

  Strong arms grasped Talis’s shoulders as she reached the platform. She shrugged them off with a quick duck and got one foot up. The hands seized her again, less negotiable this time. She brought her heel down on one sandaled foot, and managed to get that arm free.

  Meran dodged the grips of other guards, gained the platform, and reached Dug’s side before she was grappled and forced to the wooden planks of the stage. But Talis wanted to get Dug free, make sure he was okay, and Meran was tuned to her will. She threw off her attackers, and they stumbled backward, tripped, and fell back into the crowd below.

  Talis struggled as two guards, both women, wrestled her to the ground. Ignored the sparks that flared behind her eyes as one of them shoved the handle of a spear against her injured side in the tussle. Her breath was stolen from her. The sound of the mob overwhelmed her, like a pressure on the inside of her skull, as she instinctively curled her arms over her ears to protect herself. Tears squeezed out from tightly shut eyes. The press of the crowd was coming toward her, and the guards were going to hold her down and let them take her.

  Like they’d taken Dug. She opened her eyes, saw his still form over the edge of the platform above her. She clenched her jaw. It was all a series of actions right back to the day she’d talked him away from his family. He’d done everything she’d ever asked of him, and it had put him on that X-frame.

  She rose to her knees and wriggled free of her jacket, aided as the guards pulled it backward. She felt the fabric scratch the still-searing skin as she got her right arm free. Then the warm air stung the angry raised mark. Meran stood on the platform above, a hand extended to her. Talis clasped it, and Meran lifted her up as easily as if she were a child, settling Talis down beside her.

  There was a pulse beneath Dug’s jaw, steady and strong. She exhaled with relief, gripped his face in her hands and raised it up to look at his injuries. His skin was hot, as if with fever, but dry, and his lips were chapped. The blood that ran across them was from his nose, and someone had neatly sliced each of his eyebrows to add to his discomfort.

  As Meran untied the bindings at his ankles, Talis became aware of the small bubble of quiet that had surrounded them. No one had tromped up the stairs to the platform to arrest them. Their efforts had gone unchallenged since they gained the raised stage. A prickle started across her shoulders. Almost afraid to lo
ok, she set her jaw and turned to the crowd.

  The guards below were now using their energy to hold the crowd back, bracing with their arms to keep a clear space in front of the platform. Their upturned faces glowed with adoration, mouths open in wonder, their eyes on Talis.

  More specifically: on her arm. On the brand of Onaya Bone.

  One of the guards spoke. “We received word from the Temple of the Feathered Stone, from the high priestess.” Her voice was strained as she struggled to force back a man who was attempting to stretch an arm, palm up, toward Talis.

  The beseeching hand retracted, and the man tried to duck under the guard’s arm and rush the platform. The guard grabbed him by the collar of his linen shirt and spun him back into the crowd, where he tumbled to the ground amid the press of feet.

  Talis looked across the waves of faces. Their eyes were bright, eager. They seethed not with bloodlust—well, a bit of bloodlust—but instead they looked triumphant, enraptured. And they were watching her.

  “Illiya said we were coming to get him?” Talis had kept Dug’s presence to herself, expecting him to stay aboard Wind Sabre and remain a non-issue.

  “The high priestess told us you were coming to cast the deicidal invaders out of the skies. You may take the man, Hakesha.”

  Hells, she was in it. ‘Hakesha’ was a particularly weighty title bestowed upon loads of legendary Bone warriors, all of whom had died very illustrative and painful deaths. What an incredible honor to have such a target painted on her back.

  Meran finished untying Dug’s wrists, and he slumped forward. Talis caught him across one shoulder.