New Sky: Eyes of the Watcher

by Jason Kent

  Kate considered Ross. What quest would be complete without a stalwart warrior sworn to protect them from all harm? Ross was by far the largest and most heavily armed of any of them. Besides Merrick, who already shared some link with her which Kate still desired to better define, Ross was the fighter Kate would most like to have at her back in a dangerous situation. Given how the past few hours unfolded, Kate figured they were likely to run into several more of these before the team managed to get home.

  Kate's eyes wandered over the members of her quest. With a flash of insight, Kate's eyes alighted on each of them once again. It was as if she found herself in a plot involving a sage leader, fairy, elf, dwarf, and knight. She could not contain the single bark of laughter which escaped her lips. Kate threw her hand over her mouth to stifle any further outbursts.

  Everyone turned to eye Kate. Georges stopped with his hand on the door handle. "Problem, Ms. Thompson?" the gunslinger asked.

  "Nervous, that's all," Kate offered by way of explanation. She eyed the pistols partially hidden by his flowing coat. Kate felt her lip twist up in a grin. "Sorry. I'm ready."

  "Nice," Ross snorted.

  Georges grabbed a hat from a rack near the door and settled the black fedora low over his brow and ducked through the door. Kate put her hand over her mouth at the sight of the hat and long coat flowing around Georges' knees.

  A thought struck Kate as she followed Merrick to the door. If everyone else has a role to play, what does that make her? The helpless maiden, doomed to always require rescue? This would make Merrick her shining hero. Kate smiled at this. The thought was not wholly unpleasant.

  Ross pulled up the rear and closed the door gently behind them once they were all outside. He eyed the packed nearby stalls of the bazaar. "Hopefully the shopkeeper is not sitting somewhere nearby eating a gyro with the local equivalent of lamb."

  Kate agreed and was relieved when no one reacted immediately to their departure from the store. She thought back to Georges' hastily outlined plan. Find their contact, get a ship, and go home. Georges obviously meant to find a way back to Stellar Union territory. Each point of the plan was valid, except the last. The smile spreading across Kate's face as she thought about Merrick faltered. They were not going home anytime soon. She...no, corrected herself, they needed to find the tree from her visions. They needed to find Knowl.

  The certainty of the task solidified in Kate's mind and now pulled on her heart with an unexplainable longing. Where their journey in search of Knowl would ultimately take them, she could not tell. One thing was certain, they were going to have to tackle their quest one step at a time because this was as far as Kate could see with any sense of clarity. A new interpretation of her role came to Kate.

  "I'm not the lost princess," Kate breathed. "I'm the quest-keeper...the map holder." With sudden certainty, Kate realized she knew exactly what their next step needed to be.

  Kate thought back to the woman from her vision aboard the shuttle as they were forced to abandon the ship. Who was this redhead? Kate only knew she must find the woman. It was not really a map, but it would have to do for now. Kate scanned the faces of the crowd, anxious to follow the next clue she had been given. As her eyes searched, Kate whispered, "Blade Redeemed..."

  Kate stumbled as she stepped down from the clothing shop's small porch. Kate momentarily forgot about the woman she needed to find and instead concentrated on staying on her feet.

  The walkway was like the others seen through the window out in the bazaar. It was comprised of two separate lines of interlocking plates moving along a chain drive in opposite directions. Kate carefully placed a tentative toe out and tapped the rusty moving sidewalk. She watched where she stepped as missing plates created dangerous gaps. She took a deep breath then went all in and stepped onto one of the plates. It gave slightly under her foot but also revealed the shoes Sparrow picked out for her in the shop contained an embedded strip of metallic material woven into the sole. They were common enough items on a station where significant portions of the habitation section possessed very low gravity or no gravity at all. The magnetic soles helped keep wearers like Kate rooted in place while doing such mundane chores as traveling along the sidewalk.

  Ross was ahead of everyone. Kate noted Georges and Sparrow did not hesitate, having trusted their boots and shoes to hold them tight to the clanging sidewalk. More evidence the pair were not strangers to the ways of this particular station. Definitely been this way before, Kate thought.

  "We need to find a woman," Kate called to Merrick on the plate right behind her. "She has something we need."

  "Wrong," Georges remarked after overhearing Kate. "My contact here is a man."

  Kate also thought of the man from the same vision which had revealed Blade Redeemed back on the shuttle. Nearly overwhelmed by the desire to flee, she leaned past Sparrow and grabbed Georges' arm.

  "Not a good time to faint, Ms. Thompson," Georges commented as he adjusted his stance on the now-wobbling plate to compensate for Kate's grip.

  "It's not that," Kate replied. She glanced at the knots of people and into the dim corners of the market. Her heart raced. Kate wanted to run. She swallowed hard. "We need to get out of here."

  "In case you didn't notice," Georges stated, "that's exactly what I'm trying to do."

  "I mean..." Kate paused, examining the gut feeling blossoming from the seed of her earlier flash of insight. Why did she want to find this woman and run so bad? She tried a different approach. "Look, do you trust this guy? This contact?"

  Georges did not respond. He just eyed Kate for a moment

  "No," Sparrow answered for Georges. "But he's all we have right now."

  'Blade Redeemed.'

  Javin's voice echoed in Kate's mind. She tried not to let anything show on her face. Javin needed her to try harder.

  "We need to find a woman with red hair," Kate insisted. "She has something to do with knives." Kate pointed at her eyes, still softly glowing even in the lights of the bazaar. "I caught a flash of her. She's important."

  Georges met Kate's gaze, as if trying to read the significance of her luminescent sight. Finally, he asked, "You would trust your instinct rather than someone I've used successfully before? Even if I don't trust him completely, at least he is a known quantity."

  "He's a spy," Kate said as she pictured the man with the tattooed skull in her mind.

  "So am I," Georges admitted. "Lucky for us all, I'm with the good guys."

  Kate paused at hearing the Colonel's statement. She never actually met an intelligence officer who admitted his job so casually. She smiled and looked at his hat. A black felt fedora pulled low over his eyes. "If you're the good guy where's the white hat?"

  "You missed the memo," Georges joked, "Can't wear white anymore, always gave us away." He turned to face forward again, scanning the crowd for danger.

  Kate dropped the subject for the moment. She was not going to talk Georges into anything. She craned her head to look down the alleys formed by the booths. The only way to convince anyone to believe her was to find her redheaded woman. The flash of certainty back at the shop intensified. Still getting a feeling for how these things worked, Kate thought the strength of the insight might indicate there were immediate implications.

  They approached a mech standing idly next to the moving walkway. Kate and the rest tensed up as they each passed through the mech's optical scanner. It twitched its' weapons-laden arms as the beam crossed over Garrett's crossbow but otherwise did not react to their presence. Garrett and Sparrow were right. The Tallinn's and their mechs obviously did not object to the heavy weapons the crew carried.

  At the next corner, Merrick took the cross-path and began taking long strides, which effectively doubled the speed he traveled along the walkway. Putting distance between them and the mech standing guard duty. Ahead, she watched as a stall floated across the path, completely blocking it for long moments. Kate scurried to catch up, worried she would get lost among the stalls drifting
along the sidewalk. She harbored no desire to get separated from the sniper by a booth full of necklaces and alien fruit.

  Close to Merrick, she resumed her search for her 'Blade Redeemed'. Everyone they passed bore a weapon. Most were energy handguns, these were better suited aboard a space station or ship where a stray bullet could cause a really bad day if it hit the wrong part of the outer hull. No one paid them more than a passing glance. Kate's entourage was merely another knot of heavily armed crewmen from a newly arrived ship. As they moved together through the market, Kate wondered what kind of ships would dock here at Transom Station. What kind of captain would come here, far outside Union space and deep inside Tallinn-controlled territory? Kate decided she did not want to know.

  There were many Tallinns, set apart by their tunic-style of clothing and hair braided at the back of their head. Like the Watcher on the ironclad.

  "The Tallinn's originated from Aesti, a world colonized by the Stellar Union nearly seventy-five years ago," Merrick explained softly so only Kate could hear him.

  "I thought the colony nearly failed," Kate responded. "How'd they manage to get to the point where they're kicking everyone's behind?"

  "Don't know," Merrick said. "Maybe the collapse of the colony made them look at different technology. Stuff Earth passed up long ago." He nodded back at the steam-powered mech. "For instance..."

  "Yeah," Kate breathed. "Creeps me out."

  "They set up their capital on Tima once they captured it," Merrick added, "and the Tallinn Republic was born."

  Kate was about to ask why Aesti was not the Tallinn capital but a voice in her head interrupted her thought.

  'Blowing winds through time.

  Drifting leaves quiet corners.

  Come winter's slumber.'

  Kate shook her head, wondering just where the haiku which popped in her head came from. She knew it was something Javin came up with while he sat and contemplated... Kate knew that was not the right word. Javin composed the poem while he...communed with Knowl. The image of the tree and its spreading limbs was crystal clear in Kate's mind. Was this Knowl or did Knowl live there, near the tree? In the tree? Couldn't be the tree. Could it? Even so, seeing what Knowl might look like did not actually help Kate grasp what it truly was.

  Kate's thoughts were jarred as she was bumped hard into the shoulder of a passer-by.

  "Sorry!" Kate apologized and refocused on her surroundings. She looked up into the woman's face.

  The woman Kate knew only as 'Blade Redeemed' was glaring at her as she passed Kate on a moving catwalk which intersected the walkway Kate was on. The angles were off by thirty degrees, so the woman was either forced to lean to her left when she joined Kate's path, or run into anyone she found there. The tall redhead elected to bowl over the competition and run into a distracted Kate.

  Kate's jaw dropped as she held her gaze for a long moment. The woman was just as in the vision; thin but athletic build, and a lean face with gray eyes under spiky red hair. She was wearing a leather jacket, dark pants with a beige stripe twisting from her waist down to the inside of each ankle where they disappeared inside sturdy shoes, heavier than most ship-shoes, but perfect for getting around on most planetary surfaces. Multiple piercings glinted in her eyebrows and ears. Her outfit was complimented with knives of various sizes strapped to her calves and hips. Like most of the other station visitors, she sported a heavy blaster slung in a shoulder holster.

  "Problem, Princess?" the red-haired newcomer snarled. She did not break eye contact with Kate.

  Kate opened her mouth to speak. Despite her insistence at finding the woman, Kate realized she was completely unprepared for yet another vision to come true. Merrick came up behind her. He took a moment to assess the situation before he inserted himself into the confrontation. He surprised Kate by breaking into a broad smile aimed at the tall stranger.

  "Market's crowded today, eh?" Merrick asked. Kate looked at the sniper. He sounded like a tourist on his first trip away from some backwater colony world.

  "Transom's always busy." The woman's lip twitched then her lips curved into a wicked smile. "Bump some of these tral-heads the wrong way and you'll find out how inhospitable this oasis can turn. Fast. Try and teach Princess here some manners." The woman tossed her head and scanned the rest of Kate's team now standing behind her. Her eyes rested on Garrett's crossbow. She shook her head and snorted, "Bows and arrows, I've seen everything now." The woman stepped onto a side path leading away from them and did not look back. She pulled a long knife from a sheath at the small of her back and began to twirl it in her hand.

  Kate came to her senses and started after her. She held up a hand and called, "Wait!"

  "Let her go," Georges said and snagged Kate's arm.

  Kate took a moment to realize the spy thought she was upset about the exchange. "No! We need her! That's the woman I was talking about!"

  Georges looked from Kate to Merrick. "She keeps saying stuff like that."

  "Long story," Merrick remarked.

  Georges looked after the woman then back to Kate's glowing eyes. He nodded at Ross. "Keep an eye on her." Ross stepped on to the same side path and followed the mystery woman.

  "But—" Kate started.

  "No 'buts'," Georges interrupted and pointed at a line of unwelcoming rundown shops clinging to the bay wall. "We're here. I have a feeling we might need you. Let Ross keep an eye on your dream girl." There were no convenient walkway connections to cross the gap between the booths and these particular shops.

  Kate let herself be pulled by Merrick to a single float plate waiting beside the walkway. He pulled her close and leaned forward. His body command set the plate in motion. As they sailed over the gap to the waiting shops, Kate strained around, fruitlessly trying to catch another glimpse of the woman with the spiked hair. She spotted her between two floating stalls for a second then the woman was gone again. Kate failed to spot Ross and wondered if that was good or bad. It was good if he were trying to follow and not be seen. Bad if his prey shook him off her tail so easily.

  The plate scraped to a stop as it joined with the stationary metal walkway in front of their destination. She was still trying to spot 'Blade Redeemed' when Merrick helped her off the plate and into one of the dim store fronts. Kate took one last look out into the market before she turned and found herself in a rather awkward situation.

  Kate was right in the middle of an Old West-style stand-off. She gasped and tried to make sense of the situation. Georges' two oversized pistols were aimed at a man. The marine's target was dressed as a Tallinn with a vest lined with pockets and filled with a wide assortment of tools. His head was shaved, save for a patch in the back where his ponytail sprouted, and covered with intricate interlocking tattoos. Kate guessed this was the contact Georges and Sparrow insisted on locating.

  Georges' contact held a battered projectile weapon aimed at the marine's chest. The weapon's design was Tallinn, but a shotgun is a shotgun wherever it comes from. Georges and the contact were not the only ones with weapons drawn. Merrick trained his sniper rifle on the shopkeeper's head. Likewise, Garrett's crossbow was pulled tight, bolt ready to fly. Sparrow had drawn her two small pistols and held them in outstretched arms, also aimed at the shopkeeper.

  "Oh!" Kate gasped. She sounded like woman out of her element and she knew it. But maybe this was the time for a little infusion of high society sensibilities. The situation needed to be defused.

  Kate planted her hands on her hips and looked right at the contact. "So, were you going to introduce me, Mr. Georges?"

  The Colonel did not break eye contact with the contact. "Kate, Mr. Stampf. Mr. Stampf, Kate."

  "No last name?" Stampf remarked with a tired grin.

  "Not that you need to know," Georges interjected.

  "Stampf's the man," Sparrow joined in, "so far, he's never failed to get whatever we've needed."

  Stampf smiled and lowered his shotgun.

  Georges followed suit a heartbeat later. The o
thers followed Georges' lead.

  "Sorry," Stampf explained, "I heard you S.U. boys got your butt handed to you out on the Frontier. I'm a little antsy. Figured you were the mech-heads coming to urge me to reconsider my ways."

  "You can switch sides?" Kate wondered aloud.

  "Only if you're a traitor," Georges said.

  "Or a spy," Stampf added with a wink at Kate. He nodded at Georges. "You'll have to keep an eye on this one, Kate."

  Kate smiled weakly but kept silent. Her part in diffusing the confrontation ended. Time to let her spy do his thing.

  Stampf eyed Garrett and Merrick. He focused on Georges and stated, "You didn't come here to surrender to the Mechs."

  "Not yet."

  "Then what can a humble shopkeeper possibly offer you?" Stampf spread his arms in a gesture which took in the entire shop.

  Sparrow snorted.

  Kate looked around. The bins on the shelves were packed with mechanical devices from clocks to kitchen utensils, weapons to complex optical contraptions, and other objects whose function Kate could not guess. Her hands twitched with the desire to rummage through the bins in the room and wind up a few of the intriguing clockwork devices arrayed prominently behind the counter, obviously made by Stampf. Kate wondered if they were perhaps his specialty.

  "Ah, the lovely lady has taken a liking to my gyronavs," Stampf exclaimed as he followed Kate's gaze. He did a quick backflip up and over the counter, a neat trick in zero gee in such a tight space with plenty of sharp edges around. Stampf planted his feet and took a shiny gyronav from its holder in the wall display. He wound it up and adjusted a few of the tiny knobs then handed it to Kate.

  Kate looked at Georges who simply shrugged. She took the device from Stampf and studied it closely. A compass point was suspended in a clear glass bubble framed by brass. There was a line of numbered dials above a second row of rolling read-out numerals set in the tiny console. She could feel the tiny gyroscopes working inside the gyronav as they resisted even the tiniest movement of her hand.