by Casey Lea
Darsey tilted her head in surprise. “Herd sentients?”
“Ye. People used to living in groups. Like us.”
“But not like these ch't'kar?”
Wing nodded a finger. “Ye, they’re a loner species and most territorial. They meet only to mate and the males can be very aggressive. Your owner lives alone on his ship and will be wary of letting other males aboard, especially a kres.”
“Yeah, I noticed he didn’t like you. At least he has good taste.”
Wing frowned, but Darsey offered him her sweetest smile and he sighed. “It’s true enough. Ch't'kar hate the way we kres can sense their where-at. Their camouflage is vital to them, their most evolved form of protection, but it’s completely useless with kres.”
Darsey almost asked why, before remembering that Wing’s fronds sensed longer wavelengths than the visible spectrum. “Ch't'kar camouflage doesn’t work in infrared.”
“No, so we can see them clear-as. They’ve no brainwave shielding either, so we can read them easy-as too. They hate that and avoid us even more than other species.”
“I repeat, good taste. So why has this loner agreed to take me? Just because I’m a member of the opposite sex?”
“That and the money. He’s asking top credit, curse him.”
Wing’s answer was less reassuring than Darsey had hoped. “But he is keen on the fact that I’m female, right? He’s not hoping to breed with me, is he?” she asked with growing concern, but Wing shook his head, very slowly and carefully as if the human gesture was profoundly unnatural.
“No,” he said simply, without the condescension he would once have shown for such ignorance. “Reproduction between sentient species doesn’t work. No offspring have ever been produced, not in any combination, and the gentik have tried many times. Their best was to tie in a few genes and even that was a disaster. They put fronds in mermaridian and made the Beserks, who are most-times so wild they’re useless. No, be easy minded. Natural sex leads nowhere and the ch't'kar has no such plan.”
“He might not expect children, but trying could still be fun,” she pointed out and the wretched kres responded with a grin.
“Could,” he agreed, and she twisted away from his grasp.
“That’s my point,” Darsey snapped. “I don’t want Captain Be-a-Mate-or-Walk-the-Plank thinking those sorts of happy thoughts. Not if they involve me.”
“Trust me, thoughts involving you are seldom happy.” Wing raised an eyebrow at her, but instead of anger she was swept by something much more sad and bitter.
“Trust you? Again? Never.”
Wing’s face set hard and he stepped away from Darsey. “I’m sorry you feel so. Just stay with me til you lift. That way, I can see you safe, whether you believe me or not-” He broke off abruptly and his fronds bushed wide. “Perhaps it’s too late for explanations, but I do have a gift for you, Darse. Something that will keep you safe.”
She frowned, trying to resist his surprisingly contagious and completely unexpected smile, but his grin simply widened.
“You’ll like this,” he guaranteed, and looked down at his com. His fingers and mind were momentarily busy as he accessed its most secure levels, then a shining band dropped into his hand. Her breath caught in her throat when he opened his fingers to reveal a familiar circle of gold.
“My com,” Darsey whispered, before she could stop herself. Her cheeks flushed and she looked up quickly to see if Wing had heard. “I mean, your spare com,” she amended, but he was still smiling hugely.
“No more.” Wing stretched forward and passed the wrist band to Darsey.
She accepted it carefully, curling her fingers slowly around it, scared to believe that such a gift was real. It felt reassuringly firm and cool when she opened it and pressed it around her wrist. It snapped into place and any sense of cold, inert metal vanished when warmth surged up her arm. She gasped and closed her eyes against that wave of energy. The com’s embrace was overwhelming and she had to struggle to stand quite still, senses tingling, while she adapted to it.
“Good?” Wing asked quietly, but to Darsey’s newly sensitive ears his question was a shout.
“Oh, yeah.” She stood still for another moment, before gently flexing her wrist. The silver com that Jileea had given her was thrown clear and clattered across the gridded walkway. It skidded over a ragged metal edge and disappeared. A series of fading chimes marked its fall past other gangways and on toward Gratuity’s heart. Darsey looked up and offered Wing a completely genuine smile. “Thank you.”
“You’re most welcome.” His grin was briefly dazzling, but abruptly faltered. He must have felt her suspicion return. “What’s wrong?”
Darsey struggled to hold onto her smile, but the joy behind it was gone. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, and tried to believe that. “I can guess why you gave me your spare com and it’s a fair trade. You don’t want Jileea following you and now her tracer is gone, along with my old com. That’s a win-win exchange, so good for you.”
“Darsey,” he protested and stopped, as if briefly lost for words. “There’s no… no motive here. Jileea means naught to me and I’ve no fear of her interference. She can follow or not, I don't care. Even if I did, I’d never make such a trade to stop her. There’d be cheaper ways, truly. That com is not my spare. I kept it secret-safe because it’s precious. It was created with our latest technology. It is the best, most advanced military device we kres have and even the Arck is without one.”
“Then how come you had it?” Darsey asked sharply. She stiffened when the kres stepped closer in response, and then froze completely when he leaned down until his lips touched her ear.
“I’m in-mission,” he whispered, so softly that only her com-enhanced hearing could separate the words. “Recruited by the Shadows. My success will force the Arck’s pardon. He’ll grant it reluctantly, but if I render great service to all kres he won’t be able to deny it. I must learn what the t’ssaa want from my people. They’ve been stalking us for three years past and I’ve been sent to find all. I can’t match their numbers, but my best advantage is that com.”
Wing stopped and one of his fronds curled around Darsey’s throat. Its soft touch initiated a mental connection that surprised them both. She could feel his amazed relief and beyond it a strong sense of conviction. There were no words in their contact, just emotions, but the strongest by far was honesty. He wanted her to believe him and he made a frond-wrenching effort to open his mind to hers.
The communion was incomplete, but he still managed to share enough of himself to convince Darsey that his story was true. This was Wing at his most vulnerable and their closeness continued, growing until it threatened to carry them both into a completely unwanted intimacy.
Darsey broke free first, stepping away to back up to the far side of the walkway. Wing’s frond collapsed when she broke the contact, to lie flat and limp across his shoulder. His jaw clenched and a trickle of blood ran from behind his left ear, where that frond was attached.
Darsey shuddered, but her concern was for Wing as much as herself. “You okay?” she asked in a shaking voice, and he managed a tight smile of reassurance. “Good. Alright. I believe you. I believe everything. But why give me the com? It’s your protection and your responsibility.”
“Certain-sure,” he agreed, sounding just as shaken. “It’s hard to explain in words. Even harder without words,” he admitted with a rueful grin. “It’s just… I know you can't trust me. Not easily and I’ve no time to argue that now. The most I can do to fix what passed between us is to trust you instead. So, this is the most trust I can give. Darsey, I want you to all-time keep my com. All I ask is that you melt it, if you’re ever caught. Don’t let others take it. It will self-liquefy if you think the melt order while feeling most scared.”
“Whoa,” Darsey snapped, even as her hand closed protectively around the com. “Don’t tell me things like that and don’t just give me your state-of-the-art gadgets. You don’t have the right to
start acting all self-sacrificing now. You have to stick with mean and selfish, because that’s what you are and I am not keeping this-”
Her fingers tightened against the com, but, before she could order its release, Wing jumped at her. He leapt the width of the walkway to snatch her round the waist and spin them both back into the shadows of the port entrance.
“What?” she hissed, following his gaze to look down through the gridded floor. Several levels below their feet, a group was emerging from the thinning crowd.
“Drak, it’s the t’ssaa,” Wing stated with quiet vehemence.
“T’ssaa? Which t’ssaa?”
Wing spared her a distracted look. “Payiss and his crew.”
“You mean that frill-for-brains who tried to buy you from Greon?”
Wing was accessing his com, but still smiled at Darsey’s description of the t’ssaa leader. “The same. I planted a trace residue in the cells he harvested from me, so I knew he was Gratuity bound. His ship’s docked and security has Payiss tracked to… the Hub. This group scans as from his crew, drakkit.”
Darsey looked down again, trying to follow the fluid movement of the t’ssaa.
“Isn’t that good?” she whispered. “I thought you were hunting them.”
“Ye,” he agreed, “but I don't want that turned ditto, with them hunting me.”
Wing looked back to Darsey and frowned. “I needs must go. Can you get back safe to the ch't'kar ship?” He grimaced at himself and lifted an apologetic hand before Darsey could answer. “Of course you can.” He paused awkwardly and glanced down past his feet again. “So… fare you well then.”
Darsey folded her arms. “You’re joking.”
“Err… no.”
“Yes,” she informed him with quiet certainty. “You are joking if you think you can just gift me your secret spy stuff, hint that there’s more going on than I know, say goodbye and then run off. You owe me some answers. Lots of answers, and I intend to get them.”
“Darsey,” Wing said just as quietly and firmly, “I truly need to go.”
“Fine.” She nodded absently, but her mind was racing. If she was finally going to escape this place… if it was true and Wing could really be trusted… then she needed all the information she could get, to take back home. “I’ll go with you. There’s still time before my ship lifts.”
She turned and strode away from the approaching t’ssaa. Wing was momentarily frozen, but then leapt to follow her. “I can interrogate you as we go,” she pointed out, and he groaned.
“Sounds fun-as,” he answered brusquely, and glanced at his wrist. “No more time for asking. We need total speed now.”
Wing took off and Darsey mentally punched her com into combat mode to follow. She flew around the curved docking ring after him and it was impossible to hear any pursuit over the pounding of her boots, but Wing called back, “they’re close.”
Darsey picked up her pace, becoming a blur as she leapt over cargo piles waiting for loading, and Wing had to accelerate to keep up.
“Next off,” he panted and she veered back toward the exits.
They dove into a transport tube together and were instantly falling. Darsey cried out in shock, but Wing grabbed her by the wrist before his com fired a braking thrust. They slowed, but were still falling way too fast toward a vortex of people below them.
Most of the tube was filled by aliens fluttering between levels, but Wing’s com pulsed repeatedly to manoeuvre them safely past the slower traffic. They continued to drop at speed, coms firing a warning to the swearing individuals they hurtled past. It took only seconds to fall to the surface of the planet.
Darsey flinched when its darkened soil leapt into focus. She had an instant to realize they were about to slam into that chilly earth before Wing braked hard. Her arm was ripped over her head, but the ground was still hurtling at them.
Wing’s com fired again and slowed them just enough to sweep sideways, away from an immediate collision. They were still travelling too fast to stop, but shot into another tunnel instead, one that drilled deeper yet beneath the surface of the planet. They plunged into a dim and bustling well, where Wing had to slow them again in order to work through the crowd. He looked across to Darsey with a reckless smile.
“They won’t catch us now. They’ll need to be more discreet and more slow. Station powers have no love of t’ssaa.”
“Good,” Darsey managed, before her breath was stolen by another rapid drop.
Wing steered them into another side passage that fell diagonally toward the heart of the planet. It was less crowded and they dropped to its steeply sloping steel floor, to slide deeper into the station. They gained momentum, sweeping up one side of the tube and then the other as they worked past fellow travellers. The people they swung past were increasingly slow, clearly braking for the end of the trip, but Wing continued at a reckless pace.
“Make ready to roll,” he shouted at Darsey, and she started to protest, but the end of the tunnel was suddenly ahead and it was too late to stop.
She braced herself as they shot from the exit and into a small plaza. The square space was busy, but not so crowded that people had no room to move, and they scattered when Darsey and Nightwing flew through the air. The ground rushed up once more and she threw herself forward to meet it, tucking into a somersault when she landed, to absorb the impact. She came to their feet beside Wing amid an ominous silence. Flustered onlookers picked themselves up, while other disturbed shoppers stared balefully at the source of their disruption.
“Just passing by,” Nightwing said with firm authority and strolled forward into the crowd.
There were some resentful rumblings when he pushed past, but no one made any move to stop him. Darsey followed quickly, trying to project the same aura of confidence and invulnerability. She was allowed to pass unhindered and the two of them hurried toward a pillared exit from the square. They stepped through it, pushing into a moving crowd again, and entered a cavernous space that was filled with buildings.
Darsey drew in a sharp breath at the sight ahead. Walls towered above them, a close-packed mass of buildings tall enough to belong in the centre of any large city on Earth. They formed a patchwork of stone and metal that rose toward an icy roof hundreds of metres above. She was staring at a cityscape sandwiched into a single rocky bowl. The distant ceiling was hung with massive stalactites that looked like pins scattered in place of stars. They seemed tiny compared to the buildings rising like stalagmites beneath. Nature on Gratuity was dwarfed by the constructs of sentient life.
“The Hub.” Wing sniffed in quick dismissal. He looked down at his com and nodded to the left.
Darsey followed closely while he dodged his way down wide steps toward conveyor belts that disappeared into the city. Clanking metal scales overlapped with grinding imprecision in an endless loop that carried people into the Hub.
Darsey eyed them doubtfully as she approached, but Wing pushed his way straight on and she followed without further hesitation. The ride was rough, rising and falling unpredictably so that she was soon glad of the close-packed bodies around them. However, she was even gladder when Wing pulled her across to the travelator’s far side and gestured that they should jump. An alley was approaching below them and they launched themselves into it.
The drop was further than Darsey was used to, but she still landed lightly. She shook her head and brushed a finger gratefully across her com. Wing had found his feet just as easily and urged her forward.
They hurried into the shadows of a slim space between massive buildings. Dark stone walls, embedded with strips of metal, drew close on either side. The gap between them narrowed as the pair moved deeper, until they had to turn sideways to continue. “Where are we going?” Darsey whispered, just as Wing stopped to check his com.
“Inside,” he answered, even more quietly, before turning his attention to the blank face of the foundations in front of them. They appeared to be made of solid blocks, but he raised his com confide
ntly to those dark stones. He had to twist awkwardly to access the band on his wrist, trying to read its display despite being pressed between two walls, but he somehow managed.
“Ye, here. A service way,” he murmured to Darsey. “It’s been secured, but I can break through.”
“Breaking and entering,” she agreed softly, and Wing grinned before pressing his display against the building.
“We hope.” His smile faded and his expression became intent as his mind and fingers started their analysis. His hands danced over the featureless rock and slowly a border appeared beneath them. A gold-lined square gleamed from the wall and light spilled along the alley.
Darsey raised her own com and the betraying energy disappeared, hidden behind a dark glamour. Their narrow space grew increasingly claustrophobic, but the blackness was brief. Wing broke the security code and punched though the energy field. It vanished to reveal an open service way, pulsing with color. Rivers of energy flowed into the building, twisting through the passage walls.
However, Wing hesitated and gave Darsey a considering look. “This may be your last time to leave-” he offered, but something in her expression stopped him. “Kay. So let’s hunt t’ssaa.”
He levered himself into the service way and she followed close behind. The entrance obeyed his command to seal and her ears popped, while she crawled on into a rainbow.
36
The Dance Goes On
Arck Sharpeye, ruler of the kres Empire and the magnificence of his people, was lost for words. He blinked sleep-crusted eyes and tried to focus on a com display of his wife.
Arkyss Glowdrift smiled sweetly back, but her eyes were vague and wandered away from her husband’s. “The night’s so bright,” she called happily, plucking at the front of her frilled nightgown. “And the space-down ships most loud. Have they always been so loud, Sharpy?”