Star Brigade: Resurgent (Star Brigade Book 1)

by C. C. Ekeke

  This dance form, thaoque, had passed down through generations of Korvenites. Taught to Tharydane at the age of 10, she loved every facet of it. Thaoque was a union between the dancer, the music and the audience. Tharydane expressed that through the passionate movements of her hips and hands, all the while toe-and heel-clicking her steps with the beat, clapping and stomping on the stresses in the music. Alongside all that, she added little niceties; brandishing her arms with a slow and seductive sway, putting a tad more oomph into the shake of her hips to make the metallic ends of her dress jangle. Tharydane’s facial expressions took on a peculiar mix of pleasure and pain when she danced. It spoke of the Korvenite’s joy and zeal for the dance, further enchanting her appreciative crowd.

  Howls of adoration from the audience thundered over the music. Through her Mindspeak talents she could feel the crowd’s flood of emotions; lust, anger, elation, desire, hope. So through her dance, Tharydane radiated back at them how she felt—love, joy, passion. It came through in more than just her actions; the Korvenite could feel the haze her Mindspeak cast over the crowd. They either stared with blank looks of delight or grew rowdy beyond belief. She couldn’t help it, nor did she want to.

  The melodies intensified, the tempo quickened. Tharydane tossed her head, dancing faster with her rapid toe-and-heel clicking. The fiery sashay of her hips now made her skirt’s goldilace ripple like a living thing. Chords from the song pushed into the foreground; the crowd shouting with ripe anticipation.

  BAM! In a loud, double stomp, Tharydane ended her dance. Her arms extended and face pointed skyward, curly violet mane tossed back over her shoulders. The moment she finished, the hostellaris erupted in applause, shaking the walls to the very moorings. Tharydane remained in pose for another half-macrom, soaking it in. She grinned and inhaled deeply. The joy the crowd got from her performance flooded the corridors of her mind, and she reveled in their emotions expertly.

  Many shouted for an encore—demanded it in fact. And Tharydane yearned to stay out there longer. But Hugrask, the hostellaris owner, staunchly forbade it. Always leave them wanting more, he said.

  Because of the ‘spell’ Tharydane spread in every performance, Hugrask’s Hostellaris was packed with patrons from all over Rimhara on all four days of the week that she performed. The Korvenite glided back behind the curtains, the thunderous applause still continuing as she made her way to the dark, dank backstage. The buzzing euphoria in her mind had died down by the time she entered the hole in the wall that was her dressing room. Reality brought her back to Bimnorii, back to this dry wasteland of a planet.

  Tharydane glanced at the rusty chronometer on the wall and did a double take. “Wow, I was up there that long?” Her dance set lasted nearly 25 macroms, though to her it felt like only 4. One quick hydrobath and a clothing change later, she was less wired—now in regular baggy pants with a dark green t-shirt.

  As she dried her wet hair with a towel, the young Korvenite did a quick mental skim of the hostellaris’ mood tonight. In the past, absorbing so many emotions from the crowd would always leave Tharydane utterly exhausted. But as her mastery over Thaoque improved, so did her handling of Mindspeak and the ambient emotions of so many others. Her gold pupils turned black as pitch when using her Mindspeak abilities. Typical surface thoughts from the patrons came up…need to get drunk…where to mine more riinethe next…I’m stuck on this worthless lump of sand… that little Tharydane is doable!

  “Ewaah!” She recoiled physically and mentally, sickened by that last thought. “I need to get out of here!” Tharydane moved to her room’s exit and opened the door, only to jump back with a high shriek.

  “Where you off to, young’n?” said a low rumbling voice. Its owner was a squat brownish creature with a pitted pug-like face and no visible nose, floating in front of her. A Mulkeavian, as noted by his lack of legs and two long, ropy arms hanging at their sides. But this one used a hover podium to move around.

  “Hi Hugrask,” Tharydane’s shoulders slumped, her dreams of escaping dashed. He was the owner of this less than honest establishment, and her guardian. Hugrask had bought her freedom eight years ago, saving her from the slave life awaiting most Korvenites on Bimnorii. But that made him no kinder or easier to deal with. The grumpy Mulkeavian worked Tharydane harder than his other employees by far, in addition to her performances. One glance into his four beady eyes told her tonight would be no different.

  “You’re needed in the front to serve drinks,” Hugrask pointed toward the front. “Getta stepping.”

  “But Hugrask,” Tharydane began to protest. “I did that last night—.”

  The Mulkeavian was adamant. “Getta stepping young’n!” The discussion was over. Angry enough to scream, Tharydane spun and stalked huffily toward the main floor of the hostellaris.

  “[Good job, Tharyn,]” the hefty, sideways-mouthed Cressonish at the bar said in his grumbling native tongue, handing Tharydane a tray full of drinks. “[You get better every time you perform.]”

  Tharydane beamed and took the tray with both hands. “[Thanks M’Hof’dourii. I aim to please!]” she replied in Cressonish, her grumbling cadence impeccable. Growing up among so many races for the past eight or so years had been Tharydane’s true education, granting her fluency in seven alien dialects.

  Tonight boasted a huge crowd. The fact that many of them came to see Tharydane perform gave her a small ego boost. But now that she was out serving drinks, that boost died a quick death. The hostellaris was at its usual best; grimy and badly lit, hazy, noisy and even a bit threatening. Add in the rank stench of intoxicants and then everything felt normal. This was what Tharydane knew, what she grew up around.

  The nearby spaceport seemed to keep vomiting out a mishmash of outlandish and exotic travelers—all who somehow ended up at the hostellaris. Some stood or sat, others tried dancing. Two puny insectoid beings sat at the bar and giggled like fiends, drunk off the tubes of liquor vapor they were inhaling.

  In one of the nearby corner booths, an attractive Nnaxan phryne seductively rocked back and forth as she straddled the lap of a drunken patron. The long craniowhisks branching from her forehead trembled beguilingly as she swayed her body with a crude yet effective allure. And her barely-there clothing was so skintight it looked like someone had poured her into them. Tharydane glared at her in muted disgust through clouds of yellow bimweed smoke. But the Korvenite knew why Hugrask let phryne whores in the hostellaris—they were good for business. Any lonely riinethe prospectors were more inclined to come buy drinks with the option for sex included—an underhanded but effective strategy.

  In a secluded corner table sat three hulking Kedri soldiers. Any non-server venturing too close received a trio of vicious glares which undoubtedly considered how best to rip that interloper’s spine out.

  Dim blue halolamps on the ceiling cast more shadows than actual light over the hostellaris, mixing eerily with the haze from the many sentients smoking their bimweed. A mellow, industrial-jazz played lazily over the speakers, somehow reaching above the clamor of different dialects. The small stage to the far right in the hostellaris was where Tharydane performed. It always looked bigger when she was on it. Tharydane glanced about and frowned. Maybe it was her Mindspeak overacting but she definitely sensed an amplified tension in the air, as if violence was about to erupt at a moment’s notice.

  The Korvenite walked around with her tray, sensed at once the eyes zeroing in on her. The leers and surface thoughts of some made her skin crawl, grabbing at her like real lecherous fingers. Not to mention the snickers and whispered asides. But, Tharydane moved through the crowd untouched. Even the most menacing patrons knew if they so much as sniffed at her, Hugrask would have them killed— rather gruesomely. The thought made Tharydane smirk cockily at some of the more vile onlookers.

  In short order, she passed out drinks with phony pleasantry to the patrons who ordered them.

  Tharydane headed back to the bar to get more ordered drinks, just as the tension she felt
earlier hit the back of her mind, reaching its breaking point. Her eyes widened, she wheeled around. Too late—!

  Rifle fire cut through the air, its whine distinct and chilling. Tharydane jumped, dropping her tray. Silence washed over the entire hostellaris, even the industrial jazz had stopped. All eyes were on the source of the rifle fire. A thickset Tarkathian male stood up with a long pulse rifle in hand at a distant corner booth. Grey-skinned, bald with two curved tusks jutting out either cheek, the irate Tarkathian glared down at the corpse of a Nnaxan male slumped over a table. Curls of wispy smoke rose from the body, stinking of burnt Nnaxan flesh. Tharydane knew him, the waiter who just started here two days ago.

  The Tarkathian never took his blood-red eyes off the corpse as he bellowed in his ugly, barking excuse for a native tongue. Tharydane understood every word. “[When I order Tarkathian Deathbrew, get real Deathbrew!]” Quite a few Tarkathians frequented the hostellaris so she was familiar with these nomadic hunters whose whole culture centered on the hunt. Many hunted merely for sport, others for payment as bounty hunters or mercenaries. The Korvenite had found every Tarkathian she’d met brutish and angry, which made sense if the tales about them being distant offshoots of the Kedri were true.

  Without another word, the Tarkathian wriggled his squashed nose, hefted the large rifle over his shoulder and stormed out of the hostellaris. As soon as he left, everyone in the hostellaris resumed their previous activities like nothing had happened. The industrial jazz even restarted right where it left off.

  Two saucer-like mechanoids flew from the ceiling to dispose of the corpse, someplace outside of city limits as usual. Just another nasty incident Hugrask’s, one of many she’d witnessed. Tharydane was rooted in place, as business moved on around her. She felt cold all over, still not used to the sight of death.

  A loud clang sounded in her ears, followed by a loud curse. Someone stepped on her tray and almost slipped. Tharydane shook off her daze and went back to work. She kneeled to pick up the tray, but someone grabbed it first. Tharydane smiled to herself. She didn’t even have to psychically sense the sentient to confirm his identity. The stink of the razorback blood rum favored verified it for her.

  “Looking for this, lass?” squatting before her was a mountain of a human, easily a head taller than most beings in the hostellaris. With a broad grin from under his grizzled beard, he handed back her tray.

  “Mikas!” Tharydane smiled. She took the tray from him and hugged him around his ample belly. Mikas Danbury had been a regular at Hugrask’s for years now. Unlike most patrons here, broke and bitter miners still trying to strike it rich, Mikas ran a simple trade freighter that made regular stops on Bimnorii. A bit on the odd side, he was one of the most genuinely kind sentients that Tharydane had ever met.

  “Look!” He gestured at his wristband. “I bought a holo projector. I can look like any race I call out. Kedri!” The air around him glimmered for a moment, before sputtering. Mikas, clearly disappointed, shook the wristband furiously. “Worked a couple of macroms ago. Damn charge is dying again.”

  “Mikas,” Tharydane drew closer. “I just can’t be here right now. Do you mind telling Hugrask I—?”

  “Go on through the front,” Mikas took Tharydane’s drink tray. “I’ll make sure he’s not too mad.”

  “Oh, thank you!” her face lit up like a dawnrise. Tharydane already began weaving through the crowd of rowdy drunkards and toward the main entrance.

  6.

  Tharydane took a few steps outside, and almost regretted her decision to visit Ymedes. A wave of dry heat slapped her across the face and chest, even this early in the evening. Noriida Major, the star Bimnorii orbited, cast a deep crimson sunset over the city of Rimhara. Since there was about 18 orvs of sunlight in Bimnorii’s 33-orv day, the sunsets would last 5 orvs or so. She slinked around toward the rear of the hostellaris, where Hugrask had his mini parking lot. A forcefield surrounded the enclosure, which held three options of transport; a large cobalt hovercar sedan, Hugrask’s pride and joy (which meant off-limits to Tharydane), the dusty and outdated hoverbike she loved, and the aaln.

  “Fehiza!” Tharydane swore, digging through her pockets. She forgot the hoverbike keys, and could not back inside to get them unless she wanted to get caught. Which left the only the aaln.

  Aalns certainly weren’t the prettiest beasts, with their gawky three eyes, smooth dome skull, oversized nostrils and elongated neck. But the beast’s apricot fur was short and thick, excellent for combating the arid Bimnorii weather. At the shoulder it stood about level with Tharydane’s forehead, though the neck made the aaln nearly twice that height. The creature’s only three appendages were its long tail and its two powerful legs with big splayed toes, which looked somewhat cartoonish. Moreover, the fact that the aaln looked completely graceless with its bird-like walk didn’t help the beast’s look any. Tharydane had seen how fast these creatures were, almost as fast as a hovercar. But anytime she had tried riding this obstinate beast, it would buck and writhe like mad until she went flying off its back. The young Korvenite opened the forcefield gate with her handprint ID, scowling as memories of those countless landings on compact sand filled her thoughts.

  She took a tentative step closer. The aaln swung its thick tail like a whip, nearly taking her head off had she not ducked. The aaln honked a chortle from its mouth, which resembled an open double door.

  “Oh, shut up!” Tharydane snapped. This had to be quick. So she ran, grabbed the aaln’s rump with both hands and vaulted onto its back. Before the aaln knew what happened, Tharydane flung an arm around its neck and at the same time released the reins securing it inside the enclosure. Luckily she had grabbed the neck. The beast bucked around the corral and honked loudly, tossing its head back and forth in order to throw Tharydane from its back. But she gritted her teeth and held on even tighter.

  She reached out with telepathically, projecting obedience into the aaln’s mind. At first Tharydane met resistance, despite how appallingly simple an aaln’s semi-sentient mind was. There was still so much she had to learn about her abilities. The aaln bucked and bolted toward Hugrask’s prized hover speeder.

  Tharydane gripped the beast in sheer panic, knowing Hugrask would kill her if anything happened to his beloved speeder. The aaln’s psyche was chaotic, flooded with fear. But Tharydane kept on pushing her calming thoughts. Now the creature spun around, its tail whipping toward the speeder’s headlights. Tharydane squealed. She had seen that tail break sturdier things. STOP, she psychically screamed out.

  The aaln stopped its tail in mid-swing, and then stood stock-still. Its three eyes blinked dumbly, thick tail swishing harmlessly in front of the hoverspeeder. Tharydane sighed in relief and took the aaln’s reins.

  “Why Hugrask feels you’re worth all this effort is beyond me.” The aaln obediently trudged forward, the gate sliding closed behind it. “Aja!” Tharydane cried, slapping the reins on the back of its neck. With that command the aaln jogged into the balmy evening, cutting through alleyways and scattering pedestrians in their way. The mount’s two-legged gait had some jolts and bouncing even with a saddle on its back, yet it was quite brisk. Tharydane had to bend forward so she could stay on the aaln’s rounded back. Its thick tail swished back and forth, never dragging or even touching the ground. If the aaln grew restless in its trot, Tharydane caressed its head and psychically nudged it back in the right direction.

  Rimhara flew by in a blur, though Tharydane still took in its patchwork of activities. Bimnorii’s largest city always reminded her of a puffed up bazaar, but with actual buildings. Tiers of grubby balconies and windows jutted from blocky structures on each side of the street. Looming in the backdrop was a group of ramshackle structures that made up Rimhara Spaceport. During the daytime it looked trivial and tattered, but under the setting crimson sun the spaceport adopted a gloomy, almost sinister air.

  Two long boardwalks near the spaceport were saddled with a jumble of shops, each matchless in style. Certain shops re
eked of putrid cuisine that some found tasty. Diverse ranges of music floated out from others stores, mixing into the clamor of Rimhara’s streets. Holosigns floating above most shops were low-grade, bright and gaudy, completely clashing with everything else in the surrounding area.

  Several metrids above Tharydane was a parking lot of hovercar traffic, each vehicle crammed with mining supplies. The Korvenite rolled her eyes. Someone must’ve found another ‘lucrative’ riinethe ore vein that would of course prove false. The sandy streets stretching before Tharydane were littered with a crush of different species milling about. This included disheveled vagrants near the boardwalks’ edges, many who were penniless miners desperate to join tonight’s dig. Their pleas for currency came in ‘portspeak’, the multi-species mongrel tongue used at all of Bimnorii’s spaceports.

  Tharydane could name any world she knew of and then easily find someone from there on this microcosm of the galaxy at large. That was one positive out of many negatives to living on Bimnorii.

  Before Tharydane knew it, she was at Rimhara’s borders. An endless expanse of reddish sand dunes and rocks laid beyond the city, glittering under the fiery sunset—the Crimson Reach. To the Korvenite’s right and left, this barren stretch of desert seemed to go on forever, the site where many had tried and failed or died to find their riches. Luckily for Tharydane, her destination lay straight ahead.

  “Hold it,” Tharydane pulled gently on the reins. The aaln slowed at her command, hardly exerted. “Alright, let’s see some speed. Aja!” This time she kicked her heels into the aaln’s flanks. The Korvenite was jerked violently forward, hanging on to the reins for dear life. At her command the aaln craned its neck ahead and hurtled off, galloping like it was on a cushion of air. When its splayed toes did touch ground, they dug into the soft sand and tossed it back in crimson sprays. The creature’s thick tail went completely rigid and straight, streamlining its body for maximum speed.