by Casey Lea
Darsey’s morbid thoughts disappeared when the computer cancelled the mirror field. She took a deep breath and managed to drag her mind back to the outing before her.
“Can you make my hair silver?”
The machine was silent and Darsey sensed its reluctance.
“C’mon, Pertwing. I just want to go for a walk, but it won’t look good for Nightwing if I get caught.”
“Agreed. I can decompress a hologram emitter, but its power is limited. It will give your hair and eyes a silver sheen, but will be useless within thirty cents of another person and will not deceive a scan.”
“That’s okay. I’ve already checked where the ship’s scanners are. I can avoid them and I’ll remember not to cosy up to any pirates I meet. How long will it take for those t’ssaa to study Nightwing?”
“Between ninety minutes and one hour.”
“That long?” Darsey asked in surprise. “Perfect. I should be able to find one of your ship’s exit globes before they do.”
“You are attempting escape,” the computer stated flatly.
“Not yet. I need somewhere to escape to first. However, that’s not your concern and you won’t tell Nightwing about this conversation. I’m logging it in the personal file you helped me create and it remains confidential. Understood?”
“Understood, but I will be most pleased when you escape and are gone. Your use of my facilities is not appreciated.”
Darsey merely smiled and waved before stepping from the room. Outside Nightwing’s quarters, she took a deep breath and turned in the direction of the link. The temptation to run was huge, but instead she settled into the brisk walk of someone confidently going about her business. She neared another junction and heard the sound of approaching boots. Her heart raced, but her pace remained steady.
A tall figure stepped into the corridor ahead of Darsey and turned to hurry toward the link. She allowed herself to fall back slightly and the silver-haired male seemed unaware of her.
He reached the link and pushed off from the tunnel floor before firing a pulse from his com. Darsey stopped short behind him.
“Damn.” She abruptly realized that she had overlooked something obvious when planning her outing. How could she have been so stupid? She snapped her fingers as though she had forgotten something, turning back into the corridor and straight into another crewmember. He was taller than her, but stepped back in alarm.
“I’m sorry” she said automatically, and moved quickly aside to re-establish the distance between them.
He looked up at her and then down again just as fast. His hair was tied back in a long plait of blue, brown and blond, while one downcast eye was gold and the other dark red.
“My apologies, Lady,” he said softly. “I am ManDaNiah from Eltok, if you wish to log offence.”
Darsey blinked and leaned casually against the wall to hide her bare left wrist, hoping that he hadn’t noticed her lack of com. “There was no offence, Mandaniah. I’ve an urgent task to complete for Greon. Excuse me.”
ManDaNiah’s mismatched eyes darted sideways at her mention of the Leader and he stepped further back.
“Of course. I meant no offence, sah. Ah... luck with the Leader’s errands.” He bowed smoothly, but turned away in obvious haste and launched himself into the link.
Darsey tried to walk on, but the urge to run had grown too strong. She sprinted back to Nightwing’s cabin and hurled herself at the door. However, she hit a solid surface and static flared as she bounced back across the passage.
“Ooof.”
Darsey collided with the far wall and slid down it to sit on the floor, too winded to move. She shook her head and wondered what went wrong. She knew she had been careful not to lock herself out. She groaned and her diaphragm moved again. She took a gasping breath, and then another before she could speak. “Pertwing,” she hissed. “What happened?”
I inadvertently left the door in camouflage mode, answered a voice in her head without a trace of contrition. Without a com warning, you attempted to enter the wrong cabin. My access is one door closer to the link.
“Great,” Darsey muttered, and took a calming breath before pushing herself upright. She staggered to the correct door, which wavered into sight like a mirage solidifying. She approached it cautiously, but managed to step through unimpeded. She strode to the bed and collapsed face first onto it.
“That was quick,” Pertwing observed happily.
“Is it possible for computers to gloat?” Darsey muttered into the bedding.
“I am too well designed to gloat. It would be beneath my programming. You neglected your lack of a com.”
“And you didn’t point it out,” Darsey accused as she rose and moved to stand over the computer.
“Correct. I knew that you would eventually notice. You are highly intelligent.”
Darsey regarded the console suspiciously. “Are you trying to mess with my mind?”
“You have messed with my programming.”
“I’ll take that as a yes. Look, do you have a face or something? If we’re going to hate each other, it would be so much easier to do it in person.”
“I do not hate you,” Pertwing answered throatily, “but I do have a visual projection.”
An image appeared above the curving console fascia and Darsey blinked at it in surprise. She studied it silently before tilting her head to one side to study it some more.
“We-ell, you certainly have a face. And a body.”
“Do you like them? Nightwing does. He programmed them for me.”
“He could’ve programmed more clothes.”
“Nightwing does not like such.”
“No kidding? I think it’s fairly obvious what Nightwing likes, and you have lots of it. I assume your visual is based on a female kres. The face clearly is. Is the rest biologically accurate? I mean, the birds I know don’t even have mammaries and there’s no way you’d get off the ground with those things.”
“Ah, you have breast envy.”
“I do not,” Darsey flushed with annoyance. “I’m simply after information.”
“I believe that I am well proportioned and quite realistic.”
“Beautiful and brainy. You must be the envy of every other console. Too bad that won’t help you consummate your relationship with Nightwing.”
There was a brief silence and then an icy answer. “At least he would never sell me.”
“You think he’s going to sell me?”
Pertwing was quiet and its reticence was as eloquent as words.
“You do,” Darsey whispered, and was surprised by her shock. “I really thought he’d let me go. Or at least not stop me.” She realized she was bracing herself against the console and quickly straightened. “I’m gone. Now. I want a com.”
“Negative. Nightwing has refused you such a device.”
“Fine. I want a fake com that’s capable of surging me down the link and identifying cabins.”
“Negative. That is not cleared by Nightwing.”
“No, but access to the console is. I’ll make what I need myself.”
“You may be clever, but you have insufficient knowledge of my systems to manufacture what you require.”
Darsey chewed her lower lip and realized that the tart of a computer was right. However, she had no intention of waiting around to be sold again. “Inventory,” she ordered, “bracelets. Specifically those that look like coms. I want something that mimics a junior officer’s com. I won’t use the link. I’ll use service tubes instead. They were marked all over the ship and will take me where I need to go.”
“You are likely to encounter mutt in the service ways.”
“Fine. If mutt can fit, so can I. Yes, I’ll take that one and this interaction is sealed in my personal file. Don’t worry, Pertwing. It’s not your fault you can’t talk to Nightwing about this. Your owner should have been more careful when he set up hidden files in front of me.”
“Our owner should have taken much more care wi
th you in every respect. He has underestimated you badly.”
“And don’t we just love him for it.” Darsey clicked a flat silver bracelet with a simple pattern into place around her left wrist. “Okay, I’m set. It was interesting meeting you, Pertwing.”
“Where will you go?”
“I have no idea, but it won’t be here.” She decompressed some more clothes, food, bedding, toiletries and a compression strip to carry them in. “Goodbye.”
Darsey spun on a heel and stepped from the room before she could regret her decision. She had no intention of leaving the ship yet, but she also had no intention of relying on Nightwing’s good will. Spying on him while he worked at the console had proved invaluable. Darsey now knew how to eject an escape field and then destroy it. The Bandit’s arrogant crew would assume that she had died while trying to escape. It might not be freedom, but at least she would wrest some control from her captors.
She strode down the corridor away from the central link and recalled the computer display of this level. She carefully counted each junction she crossed and slowed at the tenth. Pertwing’s schematic had indicated the entrance to a service tube in the next section of passage. Darsey stopped and turned slowly with a frown. The stretch between junctions ten and eleven was the same featureless violet as the previous walls. Its roof was a single strip of light that ran uninterrupted down the length of the passage. Darsey spun again and thought hard. She smiled suddenly and moved to stand close to the wall where the section began. She ran her hands across its face and started to walk. She found the break in the apparently solid surface halfway between the junctions.
She felt the welcome warmth of relief as her hands carefully traced the invisible opening. It started at waist height and continued above her head. She perched on the edge and took a deep breath before swinging her legs up and pivoting to face into the wall. She leaned forward and her head passed through it and into a darkness broken by flashes of colored light. Darsey hesitated, but the distant sound of footsteps galvanised her. She slid into the strangely lit corridor, then rolled to her hands and knees and started to crawl.
The surface beneath her was a dull gray, but patterns of light seemed to pulse within it. She moved deeper into the tunnel and it trembled around her. The vibrations increased and a wave of gold shot around Darsey to flow on down the corridor. She smiled in delight and gazed down at her hands. Another flash passed beneath them and her skin turned briefly pink and translucent. Smaller patterns swirled in its wake, circles of red, blue or green that chased their own tails and then darted sideways to disappear from the tunnel walls. The Bandit’s service ways were a place of unexpected beauty.
Darsey moved on in delight and only remembered her goal when her tunnel crossed another. She paused in the intersection, amidst a burst of color as two pulses met. She closed her eyes and displays of the ship’s honeycombed levels appeared against her lids. The pattern was complex, but her memory of it was as perfect as always. She nodded and turned right, raising her head as she moved on. However, she stopped as soon as she looked up. The tunnel ahead was blocked by shoulders and a massive back. A mutt was hurtling toward her and showed no sign of slowing. His head was down and hairy knuckles dragged his huge frame along at surprising speed.
Darsey cried out as he charged at her, “Stop!”
His head came up with a look of almost comical surprise. The silver thatch on his shoulders bunched as he braked with his arms and tried to stop. His momentum drove him on and his nails screeched against the floor as he skidded into Darsey. She was already backing away as fast as she could and managed to throw herself into the other tunnel of the intersection before he ran her down. His straining bulk slid past her and into the junction, where it finally stopped, blocking both passages. She heard the sound of another noisy approach and a second mutt slammed into the first. The collision hardly moved the hairy creature and the two halted together to fill the intersection.
There was sudden silence and two massive heads turned slowly to look down the tunnel at Darsey. She had already recognised the hairy individual, and his bony faced companion was equally familiar. They were the guards who had dragged her before Greon yesterday. Darsey realized that to her, it seemed a lifetime earlier, and she hoped that for the mutt, it was just as distant. The stench of their sweaty bodies was overpowering in the confined space and the only sound was the murmur of energy as it passed through the walls. Darsey tried to read the mutt’s faces, but bone or hair interrupted any expression she might have recognised. She sat back on her heels as she knelt before them in the strange semi-dark and calmed her breathing in the hope that would steady her voice.
“Move aside.”
Two heavy heads bowed, and the mutt separated to clear the intersection. Darsey slipped easily between them and crawled on as fast as she could. She was intensely aware of them as she passed and instantly felt the slight twinge as one grasped a stray wisp of her hair. She paused, startled, and realized that the silver-thatched mutt had reached after her to pluck several strands. She cursed her hesitation, realising that it must be obvious she had noticed the theft. She decided that the gesture was too furtive to be normal and turned decisively.
Darsey scowled at the mutt and held out her hand. To her surprise, the pirate moaned with terror and remorse.
“Sorry, sah, sorry. So sorry,” he repeated thickly as he extended a ham-sized fist toward Darsey. “You not notice. Not meant to. For collection. My collection.”
Darsey gestured impatiently with her hand and the mutt sidled closer with obvious trepidation.
“I won’t hurt you,” she said roughly, and his bearded features were split by a huge smile.
He reached out with a long arm and Darsey could see several strands draped over his fingers. They stood out darkly against his pale skin and fear brought sweat to her palms. She held the creature’s eyes as he leaned closer and that seemed to work. His attention was riveted to her and his smile widened further.
“Thank’m, sah. Yes thanks, many thanks. Just be collection. Be the best. Like this’n. Pretty silver from pretty boss.”
Darsey knew what was about to happen even as it did. The mutt’s glance strayed to the hair in his hand as he mentioned it. He frowned ponderously and then froze. He squatted there, with the telltale threads almost in Darsey’s reach, for an impossibly long moment. His purple tongue protruded as he studied the dark red strands. He looked up at Darsey again and his bewilderment was obvious when he turned to his companion.
“What?” the other demanded, and the hairy male stretched back to show the richly colored hair in his grip. “S’different,” the other agreed.
They both turned to Darsey and she looked at them coolly.
“I like mermaridian hair, so I changed my color. Return it immediately and continue your work. Or do I have to call Greon?”
The mutt moaned in unison and both bowed their heads.
“No, sah, no,” they chanted together, and the hand swivelled back toward Darsey. However, as she reached for her hair, the pirate gripped the strands more firmly. Darsey rapped sharply on a knuckle of his fist, but he failed to notice.
“Me know sah,” he said slowly, and the lines in his brow deepened to furrows that thrust his eyebrows forward. “But not know too. When sah join ship?”
“I just came on at Eltok,” Darsey replied easily, copying the response ManDaNiah had given her earlier. “But I already knew Greon... very well. Now return my hair and continue on, or it will mean trouble.”
The two mutt studied her uncertainly and the corridor was thick with odour and tension. They looked at each other again and the hairy thief nodded in sudden submission, but, before the weakness of relief had left Darsey, another pulse flashed around them. It bathed her face with gold and the mutt’s faces were lit by both its passage and sudden recognition. Their fear turned to surprise.
“Be’n new slave,” one crowed, and they shared a confused look.
Darsey moved as quietly as she co
uld, drifting smoothly backwards, but that action was enough to catch their attention. They turned back together and the hairy one whooped with delight, then both lunged after their prize.
Adrenaline fired Darsey’s muscles as she threw herself beneath a clutching hand. Her discarded hair fluttered past as she closed on the mutt. She slammed the heel of her hand into his nose and he grunted amid a spray of blood. The other mutt tried to reach her past his partner and Darsey dropped as her leg scythed out to take him in the knee. His kneecap cracked and he staggered, while the impact exploded up her thigh. Damn. That mountain of bone was more solid than any punching bag.
Darsey quivered like a tuning fork, then threw herself back to make her escape, but the move came too late.
A massive paw closed around her arm and the mutt with the injured nose leered down at her. Purple streaked his beard, turning it to lavender, and then brown when the strange lights threw patterns across his face. His lips pursed amid spiky hair and Darsey was frozen as the peripheral blur of his other hand moved toward her. Although the blow seemed casual, it hit with the force of a hammer and darkness followed in its wake.
10
Bugs and Reptiles
Nightwing rose from the examination rack and wished he had been unconscious. His body still ached and the t’ssaas’ probing had left a harsh metallic taste at the back of his throat. He wondered whether they had really needed to calibrate his synaptic responses without anaesthetic or if they enjoyed it as much as Greon. He stepped away from the support field and reached for his discarded clothes. He dressed grimly, but realized that his hands were shaking and spared a moment from sealing his tunic to steady them. He looked down at his still fingers, while keeping most of his attention on the three t’ssaa behind him.
One of the reptiles unexpectedly moved away from the group. Its light steps made no noise, but Wing’s fronds sensed its approach and he spun to face it. Its strange features were unreadable, although he felt menace and violent intentions as it closed on him. Greon stopped humming from his shelter in the doorway and watched warily.