Hollow Space Book 1: Venture (Xantoverse)

by T. F. Grant

  “Yeah,” Tai said. “We’ll have to do something about that.”

  He led the way across the upper floor to the bar. Dylan blinked at the sight of the huge vul serving drinks, but said nothing.

  “Jack, this is Dylan Meredith James. Came in on the Venture and has been raising hell ever since.”

  “Ah, yes.” Jack nodded gravely. “Bookthief. First one is on the house, what’ll you have?”

  “What’s the strongest you’ve got?” Dylan replied.

  “Try this.” Jack poured a tumbler half full of some strange amber fluid. “Tarastian Whisky. They make it up on level sixty-two. Very smooth, nice kick… at least that is what humans say. Tastes like piss to me.”

  “Sip it, don’t gulp it,” Tai advised. “I’ll have the same, Jack.”

  “You have money? Your tab is quite extensive, and you have just returned from the Old Station. I assume you’ve been paid?”

  Tai puffed out his chest and pushed the chit across. “Yup.”

  Jack picked it up and read the note. “Very nice. Should I bank this for you?”

  “He’s a banker?” Dylan asked.

  “Yeah. Jack is the main banker for Haven. Nobody else worth trusting. Remember that, Dylan. Plenty of people will try to separate you from your cash, but Jack here is honest.”

  Jack nodded his head in thanks for the compliments. “Should I pay out your crew from this?”

  “Yeah, thanks. Normal combat percentages to Kina, Tooize, Scaroze. Can you set up new accounts for Sara Lorelle and this guy?” He jerked a thumb at Dylan. “Same percentages.”

  “And Lofreal?”

  “Death pay,” Tai said.

  Jack’s eyes dropped to the bar, and then he lifted his head and howled, a long banshee wail that several of the vuls sitting around the tables joined in, a lengthy silence held after the ethereal wail faded away.

  “She will be missed.” Jack poured three glasses of a dark red wine. “This is kronac slow-wine,” he informed Dylan. “Almost all of us can drink it here and relish the taste.” He lifted his glass. “To Lofreal.”

  Tai echoed the toast, and the three of them drank. The sweet sticky wine slipped down his gullet and warmed his belly. “I need two chits, one for twenty-five thousand and then another for ten thousand.”

  “That is rather a specific amount.”

  “Yes.”

  “To your freedom, then.” Jack drank more of the slow-wine. “May you use it wisely.” He shrugged, wrote out the chits with an enzyme stick, and pushed them across the bar. “Not that you will.”

  “Not likely, is it?” Tai said. “Thanks, Jack. Always a pleasure. Anyway, I make it dinner o’clock. Can we have two solan steaks, all the trimmings? And bring them to us after we’ve finished our business with Mother dearest, if you wouldn’t mind.”

  “Go careful, Tai,” Jack said.

  ***

  Dylan saw Miriam sitting at a table with the ever-present Hela beside her. Two humans and a chyros were discussing something with her. Quietly, no large movements, which told Dylan that this was not a conversation anyone but Miriam wanted. He knew the humans. They were fixers, middlemen, and they had always worked with the Blackmarks, but on the sly, on the quiet, respectable businesspeople acting as fences. Very few people knew their full client list.

  However, Dylan did. He knew them because Sethan had known them.

  Tai swaggered up to the table, placing his hand on the hilt of his Dorian, and said to the group surrounding the table, “Beat it. My mother and I have business to discuss.”

  Hela shifted, and Dylan instantly started working out ways to kill her. Would she go for the sword or the gun? He stepped sideways. His right hand fell onto his machine pistol while the dagger slipped down his sleeve and lay hidden in his left hand, tight against his forearm, ready for use.

  Hela glanced at him, her eyes narrowed as she noted his hands and the placement of his feet. “Getting brave, newcomer?”

  Dylan did nothing. He did not respond to her taunt. Instead he stared at her, his gaze locked on her eyes, holding her attention.

  “My, how big and strong you look,” Hela taunted. “What is it like being the slave of the Drifts, Bookthief?”

  He could see the interest in her eyes now. She wanted him to respond. Wanted him to say something—anything that would unleash the violence. He simply stared, his face blank with not even a flicker of a smile on his lips.

  “Hela,” Miriam said sharply.

  The enforcer slowly broke Dylan’s stare and stretched. “Another time, Bookthief.”

  Dylan slipped the dagger back into its wrist sheath but left his right hand on the butt of his machine pistol.

  “Well, that was fun,” Tai said. He looked at the three fixers. “Why are you still here?”

  “Careful, Tairon,” Miriam warned. “Do not let the recent excitement go to your head.” She inclined her head at the fixers. “My apologies. We will continue our discussion at a later date.”

  The fixers left the table, and Tai sat opposite his mother. Dylan deliberately drew his machine pistol and laid it on the table in front of him.

  “Play nice,” Miriam said. Who she said it to was not exactly clear.

  “I’m always nice.” Dylan spoke for the first time. “Until I’m not.”

  Tai shook his head. “Damn, Dylan. Put that thing away. He’s had a hard few days,” he explained.

  Dylan sighed and returned the gun to its holster, but he left his hands out of sight below the tabletop.

  Hela was sitting across from Dylan. She deliberately placed her hands flat on the table. “Let’s see your hands, Bookthief.”

  “Do it,” Tai said.

  Dylan placed his hands on the table and smiled sarcastically at Hela.

  “Well, that hasn’t raised the tension at all.” Tai rolled his eyes.

  “What do you want, Tairon?” Miriam asked.

  Tai tossed a chit across the table at her. “Paid in full, Mother dearest. Twenty-five thousand. Paid in full. Your debt is covered.”

  Miriam picked up the chit. Her jaw tightened when she saw the amount. “My, you have been busy. I heard there was some trouble coming back from the Old Station. Void hornets or something.”

  “Who died?” Hela asked. She nodded up toward the bar where Jack had wailed out his banshee cry.

  “Lofreal,” Tai replied.

  Hela bowed her head. “A shame. I would have rather liked to have killed her myself.” She lifted her head. “She will not be forgotten.”

  “Such a sad day,” Miriam said. “And all for this.” She touched the chit. “This, of course, pays off the debt on the Mary-May, but the other debt, the remains of your original debt to me, remains outstanding.”

  “Oh, yeah, that.” Tai tossed the other chit casually across the table as though it were a dud betting slip. “I almost forgot about that. Ten thousand covers it.”

  Dylan thought Miriam’s teeth would break with the tension in her clenched jaw.

  “I’m free of you, Mother.” Tai took obvious pleasure in the words.

  “And it only cost you the life of one of your crew,” Hela said.

  “She knew what she had signed on for.” Tai shrugged. “Everybody dies.”

  “And she died well,” Dylan added.

  Tai’s face lost all emotion. “You can go now, Mother.”

  “You sat down with me, Tairon.”

  “And I’m going to keep sitting here, Mother, and I’m getting rather drunk. Stay if you wish.”

  Miriam leaned across the table. “You are mine, Tairon Cauder,” she hissed. “I birthed your squalling arse. I fed you. I cleaned you. I cleaned up your mess. I trained you. I made you what you are. You are mine.”

  “See those.” Tai pointed at the chits. “Consider them the blade that cuts the ties.”

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  The funeral rites for Lofreal continued for three cycles.

  Three cycles full of strange kronac music and heavy rhythmic
drumming with whistled melodies. Kina had sung too, and so had Sara.

  Three cycles of stories about Lofreal, of recounting her life and achievements. Sara met her and Scaroze’s children. A trilling pack of kronac brats who could not, it seemed, remain silent or still for more than a moment.

  “What will Scaroze do now?” Sara asked Tooize. “Who will care for the children?”

  Tooize’s face crinkled in the expression Sara had come to recognize as a smile. “The clan will care for them, as they always have. It takes a clan to raise a child.”

  “Will Scaroze mate again?” Sara asked.

  “Eventually. It is always dangerous when two warriors mate, but love is love.” Tooize glanced from Kina to Sara. “Is it not?”

  Sara felt Kina’s hand in hers.

  At one point Tooize had introduced her to a beautiful female with feathers of blue and orange, and a dark purple frill. “This is my mate, Purale. And these are our children.”

  Three cycles of couples pairing off and finding shadowed alcoves. “To celebrate life,” Tooize said as he and Purale left Kina and Sara alone.

  Later, Kina took Sara by the hand and whispered, “To celebrate life,” before leading her away into the shadows.

  Three cycles of songs and stories and love.

  ***

  Dylan had to leave Tai in the Gear and Sprocket. His mind kept skipping onto another track—Sethan’s track. When he found himself thinking about flaying the waitress open in the middle of the dance floor, of leaving her spread-eagled and bloody for no more reason than it would amuse him, he had staggered from the bar and made his way to the dark levels and hid from the world until the insistent images faded away.

  He could not live like this.

  And so he found himself back in the hated library, asking for Sweet-Sap. Drifts worked quietly around him, turning pages, copying them into their enzyme books, working to preserve the knowledge of the worlds lost to those captured by Hollow Space. Dylan could see some of his books being copied, the technical manuals mostly and some of the romances. He wondered for a moment how long it would take to copy all his books.

  Then that thought faded as Sweet-Sap swished into the reading room and stopped, studying Dylan with those sap-filled eyes.

  “I need to tell you what Sharp-Thorn did to me,” Dylan said.

  “It is not necessary. The rogue will be banished. His life as a Scholar is over.”

  “Banished,” Dylan snarled. “Is that all? He put a monster in my head and all you will do is banish him.

  “Stop,” Sweet-Sap commanded, “say no more.” Then his voice rang out across the library. “Clear the library of all non-Drifts.”

  The library resounded with the sound of rustling leaves and grumbling voices. Humans, chyros, kronacs, and members of every other species living on Haven filed out of the Scholars’ domain.

  It took a while. And then all the Drifts returned to the reading room and stood around Sweet-Sap and Dylan in a perfect circle, their leaves rustling, their eyes upon the human in their midst, the only non-Drift left in the entire library.

  Sweet-Sap said, “Explain your previous statement, Dylan Meredith James.”

  Dylan told of Sethan, of the pain and the fear and the joy he had felt as he killed, as he tortured. “He frecking mind-raped me,” Dylan finished. “He changed my body, made me look like somebody else, and then put the nastiest, most vicious, torturing bastard on Haven inside my head.”

  There was silence after Dylan’s long monologue. The Drifts did not move, not the single rustle of a single leaf.

  Finally, Sweet-Sap spoke into the silence. “That is forbidden.”

  Dylan laughed.

  “To change your form, to place the engrams of another in your head, that is forbidden.”

  Old-Leaf said, “Where is this human Sethan? The process must be reversed.”

  “Sethan is dead,” Dylan replied.

  Now the Drifts moved, spinning in circles around each other, their leaves and branches rustling and beating, a turbulent conversation that Dylan could not understand. The frenzied dance finally ended, and the Drifts turned once more to stare upon Dylan.

  “We must try,” Sweet-Sap said.

  “It will cause pain,” Old-Leaf said.

  “I don’t care about the pain,” Dylan said. “I just want this maniac out of my head.”

  “Not pain to you, human,” Old-Leaf said. “Pain to us. This is forbidden. To interfere with the mind of a lesser species, to change their form, to make them slaves to our will, this is forbidden, and the reversal of such an act, without the receptacle of the previous holder of the engrams, will fill us up with such bile and hate that it will cause us pain until we can leach the emotions and dreams away into the soil of our birth. The pain will be great.”

  “We must try,” Sweet-Sap repeated. He retreated from Dylan, taking his place in the circle surrounding the human.

  “Yes,” whispered the assembled Drifts.

  Vines lashed out from all the Drifts, like the spokes of a wheel, with Dylan as the hub.

  Dylan screamed as the vines penetrated his body, penetrated his soul. The pain raged through him. A suction pulled at him, sucking the toxins from his flesh, sucking the debased engrams of Sethan from his mind.

  And through it all, he could hear the Drifts screaming too.

  ***

  Sara placed her arm around Kina’s waist. It felt strange to be wearing clothes again after three days amongst the kronacs celebrating life. She stared at Tai slumped in a corner booth in the Gear and Sprocket in disbelief. There was a staggering array of different glasses and plates in front of him.

  He looked up blearily, his grin lopsided, and leered at Kina’s and Sara’s entwined bodies. “Scratched that itch, then, Ki?”

  “Always classy, Tai.” Kina shook her head. “Jack says you’ve been here for three freaking cycles.”

  Sara recoiled from the smell as Tai leaned forward. “Yup. Been celebrating the cutting of Tai’s ties. I’m free of my bitch mother.” He waved a tankard of dark ale around wildly, slopping some over his lap. “Free.”

  Kina gestured to a waiter. The incredibly handsome bresac leaned forward and bowed respectfully at Kina’s whispered instructions. Credits changed hands, and the waiter clicked his fingers. Several members of staff hurried forward to clear the table.

  “Hey,” Tai complained. “Hey, those are my trophies.”

  Kina rolled her eyes at Sara. “When he goes on a bender, he likes to keep track. It’s a game he and Linus invented when they were kids.”

  “Linus?” Sara said. “That hulking brute. He and Tai are friends?”

  “It’s slightly more complicated than that. But yeah, kinda, sorta.”

  Only when the waiting staff had wiped down the table and seats did Kina sit down. “Two glasses of slow-wine and another tankard of dwag ale for the idiot,” she ordered.

  Tai focussed on Sara with great difficulty. “Hey, Sara, you good? I’m good. Very good. Good beer, good wine, good food, what more could a man want? I’m free.” He leaned forward. Sara breathed through her mouth. “I told Mother dearest where to go. That was a lot of fun.”

  The waiter returned with the wine and the tankard of beer for Tai. Sara sipped her wine. It went down with a sweet aftertaste and not at all cloying as it looked.

  “Lofreal get a good send-off?” Tai asked and took a long pull of his ale.

  “She did,” Kina replied. “Three cycles.”

  “An honor.” Tai nodded solemnly. “A great honor. I”—he shook his head—“I paid you out. Jack has it.”

  “I know. Thank you for setting up an account for Sara.”

  “Least I could do.” Tai waved the thanks away. “Hey, you two look good. Glowing. Been celebrating life?” He tried to wink roguishly and failed as dribble fell from his lips.

  Kina sighed. “Here it comes.”

  Tai’s drunken smile changed to a frown, then a grimace of discomfort. “Ah, freck, Ki,” he
muttered.

  “Best get out of the way,” Kina said and pulled Sara out of her seat.

  Sweat poured from Tai’s face and from the rest of his pores, if the dark damp patches appearing on his shirt were anything to go by. His hair stuck to his head, and snot ran from his nose. “Oh, freck.” He staggered to his feet, clutching his stomach. “Oh, dear Gods, Ki, why?”

  Kina smiled sweetly. “Payback.”

  Tai scrambled out of the booth and stumbled across the dance floor to the toilet, bent double, his hands tight around his belly.

  The waiter returned to the table with a large carafe of orange liquid and two small glasses.

  “Thank you,” Kina said.

  “No problem.” The waiter placed the carafe and glasses on the table. “Best take him to Madam Zoura’s after. She has a special on.”

  “I was going to,” Kina said, “but I’ll see you get the commission.”

  “Thanks.” The waiter sauntered away.

  “What did you do to his drink?” Sara asked.

  “It’s called clean-me-out.” Kina grinned evilly. “Whatever he has been drinking, eating, smoking, and snorting over the last three cycles is now leaving his body by every available route. Consider it a quick cleanse—it’ll do him a world of good in short order with nary a hangover.”

  Sara thought about that statement for a moment. Her face twisted in disgust. “Nasty.”

  “We need his head clear when we go visit the Drifts.”

  “You told him it was payback.”

  Kina’s smile faded. “Yeah, I… There was a time when I tried to hide in the bottom of a bottle. Tai sorted me out. It wasn’t pleasant.”

  Sara thought about asking for more information.

  “Another time, my love,” Kina said. “Not here. Not now.”

  Sara nodded. “What’s in the orange liquid?”

  “It’s called wake-me-up juice. Mostly water, plus vitamins and minerals to make up for the ones he’s losing right now. And a mild stimulant. It tastes nice, designed for humans, have a glass.” Kina reached for the carafe and poured two glasses.