by A. B. Keuser
"She's not worth this Cable. She's trash, even if you get her back, there's no guarantee the admiralty won’t vote to terminate her.”
"Then they’ll have to terminate me as well. There is no way in Hell I'm going to let your bureaucratic bullshit be the death of someone on my team. You threw her out into the wilds of space without a lick of training, and against her will. This is not a legally recognized 'time of war' and I have a feeling the news outlets would love to hear how you personally conscripted her - the only surviving daughter of upstanding citizens whose son is listed in the honorific deaths manual at every military academy we have."
Buck bristled at that and turned to look at something off in the distance.
"You will be court-martialed if you do not return immediately."
"Fine." With a shrug of his stiff shoulders, Cable cut the comm connection and leaned back in his chair, thankful the numbing agent had kicked in fully. The shuttle cabin behind him was silent as a grave.
"I'm taking the Flippancy, the rest of you are under orders to head back to rendezvous with the Dendratic. Raza, you're in charge, is that understood?"
"Yes sir. And my first command, as active commander is to pass that command on to Peezus and accompany you."
"Raza." he all but growled.
"With all due respect sir, you are in no shape to go sneaking about trying to find Kenzie. You need my help if you want either of you to survive."
Cable bit his tongue and glared at her, because he knew arguing would only make him sound stupid. Turning to Peezus, he shook a finger at him. "Don't you get any ideas, commo."
"None at all. My first act as commanding officer will be to escort you off my boat and then to follow you to the coordinates, so I can scout the area for when the Admiralty comes after you with a vengeance. I don't want them flying into something blind."'
Cable's jaw was going to shatter at any moment, he just knew it. This was his own fault.
"Fine. You want to put your butts on the line with mine. You go right ahead." He turned to Peezus with a glare. "You at least know what it is you're getting into."
"And I may not know Kenzie well, but I refuse to let the admiralty abandon her. And I know you wouldn't leave any of us behind."
"Aye, but the admiralty might."
Cable looked to Bezzon who was nodding in sharp agreement. "I'll come with you two if that's alright."
"It’s not. You stay with the crew." he turned to Peezus. "You drop in a ways back from the rendezvous point. We’ll be coming in here. Don't crowd our tail. I don't want him knowing we're coming until it's too late."
Peezus nodded and turned to the only soldier who hadn’t spoken. "Stacy? You want to wait for us here on Bad Alley."
“No chance in any of the hells.”
Cable relieved a spare packet of clothes from a back storeroom, and quickly changed in the cramped confines of the lav. When he returned, Raza waited for him patiently, her face a mask of boredom.
"Ready to go boss?" She stepped out onto the gangway and he followed, his injured foot forcing him to limp behind her like some decrepit old man.
As they moved through the crowd, she sidled up to him placing her arm gingerly around his waist and propping his hand on her shoulder. "I figure they'll bother us less if it looks like we're together." She nodded to the prostis lounging around the door of the Bad Alley Brothels. "But, if you ever tell Kenzie, about this, I will bash your head in while you sleep."
Cable only chuckled. "I don't know why Kenzie would care."
"She probably wouldn't. But if your secrets have turned her off you for good, I still want my chance."
He gave Raza a strange glance and she punched him in the ribs, softly. It hurt, but she'd thankfully chosen one of the few places Vinnita hadn't gotten to before they arrived.
"Sorry, I just never thought."
"Welcome to one of the reasons I like you, Cable."
"And apparently one of the reasons you like Kenzie."
"I have a feeling you and I like Kenzie for pretty close to the same reasons. At least, my reasons. I’m betting there are multitudes I’ll discover if she throws you over."
He gritted his teeth and tried not to think about all the reasons Kenzie should rightly resolve to never see him again.
"Somebody can't take a joke."
"I'm not in a joking mood. Kenzie is.... well, I guess I'd better tell you the truth now. Peezus knows after all, and I'm sure you tow gossip like fools."
"We do, but that's not important right now. What's up?"
Cable took a deep breath and told her the whole sordid tale.
"That's heavy."
"I know."
"If brass asked you to retire me, I'd hope you gave me the opportunity to survive on an XT planet. None of us would blame you for where we are right now, even if you were dragging the rest of them into the mud too. I couldn't follow through on a kill order for my best friend. I didn't expect you to either." Raza exhaled heavily and turned to look up at him. "But if she's with her brother, she's safe then, right?"
"I don't think anything Aaron does can be predicted anymore. He thinks he's a goddamned Ka. He might be completely cracked. And my abandonment might have been the final straw."
Bad Alley had started its slow progression into what passed for night, and the throughways had thinned, their only impediment came from a small dark figure who stepped in his way a hundred yards from their exit point.
The woman who bought the Blackshark.
She stood in front of him, arms crossed, a glare narrowing her eyes to slits. “You and I have a problem.”
“Do we?”
She looked from him to the three behind him and back again.
“I want a cut.”
Behind him, Stacy snorted. “And I want a weekend holed up with a buxom billionaire into kinky shit.”
Cable didn’t look back at her, but he had a feeling he was the only one who refrained.
“There’s nothing to cut you in on.”
“Bullshit. Vinnita’s place is a mess, you didn’t walk away empty handed.”
“We don’t have time for this,” Raza said, pushing past him and turning the woman, her hand over her shoulder, “Let’s talk terms, I think we can come to an agreement.”
Raza caught up with them at the heavy airlock designating the end of the public corridors.
“All settled?” He asked, and when she nodded, he didn’t ask for further explanation.
They got to the private docking sector. There were no regulations here - not on Bad Alley - and so, Cable used the fob they'd taken from Vinnie’s desk to access the gangways without receiving a second glance.
Getting on board was easy as pie.
Twenty-Four
Mack stretched out the stiffness in her joints, cracking her neck as she twisted her head from side to side. A soft growl came from behind her and she turned to look at Nrog. He lifted his top lip to show a row of pointy yellow teeth. She didn't know anything about the crassicaus so for all she knew, that was how he smiled, and the growl was nothing more than a chuckle to him.... but she doubted that very much.
"It's not like I have any clue what I'm doing you know." The muttered words fell on seemingly deaf ears, as Nrog shifted his stance, but didn't say a word.
Kenzie took up a laser guide from the box of tools Aaron provided, not even sure what her brother expected her to do. He'd thrown her into a shuttle with the crassicau as her only guard and sent her to start work on his second ship. A ship he promised would be hers to command.
She wasn’t sure if that was meant as a threat, or a temptation.
What would she want with a ship?
She was a very convincing liar, and so she’d pretended everything was fine. There was something to be said for all the years she'd spent learning to blend in on a station where she should have stood out like a lame clarg. She'd simply never suspected she'd have to do the same because her brother decided he wanted power no one needed.
&nbs
p; But when the panel flared to life beneath her fingertips, she wasn't certain anymore. Her fingers trailed over the soft, organic nodes that stood in place of a fleet keyboard. She pressed one, curious to see what could happen, and a glittering holo appeared in front of her.
Jerking her hand away, she watched the galaxy twist in front of her in tiny grey pinpoints of light.
Her mind flew outward seeing the ships, the planets, the entire quadrant of space. And she was sucked right back in as quickly as she’d expanded.
Out of breath, she dropped to her knees, the bone floor burned against her palms, but she couldn’t rise.
“I can’t…”
The claw coiled in the front of her fleet uni jerked her backward, sending the console to darkness once more as Nrog threw her backwards into the wall. His scaled face millimeters from hers, his warm breath crawled over her skin, like ginger-scented tendrils of some invisible cephalopod.
"You will remember you are Ka. Understand it. Trust it. Know it. Deep in your bones, you must know it. If you doubt yourself, the others will kill you. They cannot believe if you do not."
His teeth glimmered in the odd light pulsing from the wall, and she wondered if it was true the crassicaus ate human flesh when given the chance.
“Talk about a hostile work environment."
Looking back down at her, Nrog’s ovular pupils constricted and his eyes narrowed so the deep brown formed a square.
“Don’t think for a moment that you will survive this if you do not cooperate.” It was a warning, not a threat. “We need you more than you yet know.”
“Then put me down.”
He swallowed, looking at his hands as though he only now realized he held her off the floor.
"I'm sorry,” he said, lowering her, “but you must understand what you are. Your brother needs your support. Your people need your support."
His voice was an impassioned plea, he needed her—though she couldn’t imagine why.
She stopped, looking at him for a moment, for the first time actually seeing him. He was old, even for crassicau, his scales were burnished smooth, and if he'd ever worn leather, the caustic effects had long since worn away with the passing of time. The crassicau that stood in front of her was nothing like the handful she'd seen before.
And not just because his violence was turned toward her.
"You were around back when the Ka were still a force to be reckoned with in the galaxy."
"Who do you think told your brother what he was?"
"So you started all of this."
"The Ka did not deserve their end. They were better than this fleet you cling to. They were... they understood that life takes many divergent paths, and that none need be better than any other." He sighed - a strange hissing noise through his pointed teeth. "Humans do not, and I dare say, never will understand that."
Pulling a knob of ginger from his pocket, Nrog pointed lazily to a console in the front of the space. "KaRapp said you should start with that one. I will be just outside if you need me." He popped the ugly root in his mouth and stepped out of the room.
Mack stared at the door as its double doors swung down into place like the carapace of a beetle covering over its delicate wings. Everything on the ship mimicked some form of life or another. Perhaps Nrog was right. Maybe the Ka had had a better understanding of life and the universe in general, but the Ka were gone. She refused to believe anything Aaron said at this point. He was quite obviously crazy.
But crazy meant he was less likely to remember she was his sister if a temper took him. She gave the door a sideways glance and stepped back to the console Nrog had suggested. She would have to give it her best go if she wanted Aaron to think she really was cooperating. She only wished she understood to what end.
The console rose out of the deck plating like a column of coral, its exterior bony and white. Mack ran her hand over its surface and watched it come to life, one glowing light at a time. Covered in buttons that looked as though they were some creature's uvula, and levers that looked like they could be the leg of some long extinct crustacean, Mack was almost afraid to touch anything. Frustrated, she turned to look at the other consoles and griped to herself. "It's not like this stuff came with a manual."
Three consoles to her left, smack dab in the center of the room stood an ornate pillar, its surface free of the arm-like levers. As Mack made her way around it, she realized it had none of the gadgetry that covered the other consoles. Instead, it had a series of ridges... in what she would have sworn was the shape of two hands.
Curiosity getting the better of her, she slipped the laser guide into her pocket, and slowly pressed her palms to the indentations.
Mack remembered her first trip on a near FTL ship. It was exhilarating. It was nausea inducing.
It changed her life.
This... this was close
Similar, and yet so much more.
Her stomach did flips as her eyes fluttered shut against her will, and she pulled in a bone deep breath as her mind tumbled into the ship.
She knew she was hallucinating when her eyes opened and everything around her moved at half speed. The ship's bridge was gone - she knew now that it was the command center for the rock-like ship, though she didn't know how she knew - instead, she stood in a long hallway, a gilded door at her back.
Everything around her was hazy, a halo of light emanated from everything she looked at. And somehow, she knew she needed to go forward. Voices in her mind pulled her forward and she moved without walking.
They surrounded her before she knew there was anyone truly there. Thirteen faces surrounded by the Ka who stared at her, some with scowls, some with curiosity.
No, not Ka. Kindira. The history books got that wrong too.
Mackenzie felt like she was going to fall over.
A collective chuckle whispered over her skin and she shivered.
"Your first time is always a heady experience." KaLea, said, her skin flickering with electrical impulses.
She knew their names. Didn’t know how unless….
"This is why Aaron went crazy... isn't it?" She asked the question, not expecting her hallucinations to respond.”
KaMin shook her head. "He did not even attempt to commune with us. It is why KaLongre is dead."
"But she is different. She doesn't want to destroy KaDen and turn his ship into an abomination. She is not like her brother." KaLea held her hand up, keeping one of the others back.
“Seriously, this is the weirdest hallucination ever.” Mack ran the heel of her hand over her eye… but felt nothing.
KaLea reached out, static crackling between them. “You are not hallucinating. We are real. We are the captains of the kazahan ships your brother found.”
Mack looked at the “He said they were empty, abandoned.”
“Our minds joined with our ships when we knew our bodies could not survive,” KaLea said.
“Oh.” Kenzie blinked, but nothing happened. “So… sorry if I messed with something that didn’t need changing.
KaDen flickered behind the one who seemed to be in charge. “Be careful with my ship. If you consider doing what your brother did, I will snap your mind in half.”
“Excuse KaDen. We are not used to someone so untrained among us. Your thoughts spill forth like the waters of a winter stream.”
"The old rules stand." KaLea glanced at the others.
"The old rules did not save us from extinction."
"What old rules?" Mack asked the question and knew instantly, as if the information had downloaded directly into her brain. Kindiran law dictated the death of both twins when one turned out to be a proverbial bad egg.
"But we're not twins. I'm three years younger."
"You are from the same embryo, that the humans chose to implant you three years later makes no difference. You are the same." KaMin disappeared and reformed.
Mack would have fallen to the floor in shock then... if she'd had a body to let collapse.
"N
ow you've frightened the girl, KaDen. She is clearly not like him. Perhaps it was his lack of influence growing up that caused their differences?"
Memories of her youth flashed before her, and she knew, that in this place, connected as she was, there would be no secrets from them.
"Perhaps the old rules were wrong. Perhaps the twin should not be held accountable for its other half’s wrong doings." KaLea stood between them.
"Perhaps."
Mack's mind flashed with a hundred faces of Kindiran twins, and knew they were not casualties of war, but casualties of the fear of a collective mind.
"You think of it as an illness. A virus with a one hundred percent fatality rate." She looked to each of the men standing around her, stopping on the lone female among their ranks. "That is awful."
"We could not take the risk that something as pervasive as a mind like your brother would infect those around him," KaDen said.
Her mind flooded with the scenes of a ritual... a rite of passage. Twelve year old Kindiran children subjected to the communal thoughts, their entire lives laid out before them, every thought put on display. Shame and anger buffeted her as tear stained faces assaulted her mind. And she remembered Aaron's thirteenth birthday, when he'd been caught doing.... the Kas around her grimaced at that thought. He'd shown no remorse, no shame. He'd almost seemed proud.
"He would have been culled before that, KaMin said.
"And you as well." The enthusiasm in KaDen’s voice was not encouraging.
And her as well, Mack swallowed heavily. "That doesn't seem at all fair."
"Fairness does not extend to all areas of life. You should know that by now, KaZie."
She started at the sound of her name. They'd given it to her suddenly, but from the overwhelming agreement among their thoughts, she knew she was being pardoned for Aaron's actions. She knew that she could not refuse to help them, not because they could have already killed her... but because she had heeded Nrog’s command. She understood what – who – she was now.