Mourner

by Irene Radford

  The grunting chant ground against her ears and her mind. It demanded domination and mastery. She needed to kneel in abject submission so that the chant did not drive her insane, nor let the long teeth and claws of these monsters rend her flesh from her bones.

  “Stop!” she cried out, flinging her arm over her eyes to blot out the image. Her insubstantial flesh did not hide the monsters of her vision.

  The alarms for coming out of hyperspace ended the punishing chant. But it didn’t banish the memory of the parade. Or her fear.

  Monstrous lizards perverted the clerical garb of Harmony.

  Chapter Twelve

  Martha shivered with a chill that gnawed at her bones. No ghosts had come to advise her on this trip through hyperspace. She stared blankly at the nearly transparent walls that separated her from the vacuum of space. Stars spun around her as if she were the center of a tornado.

  But no celestial wind stirred her hair or warmed her face.

  “What am I to do?”

  Her only reply was the constant whisper in the back of her mind from the dreams and thoughts of those around her. She didn’t sense any waking thoughts. Those came louder and more precise.

  Answers await, someone—something—said, quite distinctly directly into her ear.

  She jerked her head right and left seeking the source, and nearly panicked.

  A blob of mist in the corner by the door stretched upward, assuming the rough outline of a person. She thought it male from the baritone voice.

  But . . .

  “Who are you?”

  No longer important. Wait. Watch. Listen. You are nearly home.

  The mist dissipated through the walls, streaking toward an unknown destination.

  A klaxon blared, startling her. She nearly jumped free of the restraints at the noise.

  “Warning, coming out of hyperspace. Antidote to sleep drugs available upon demand.”

  A second klaxon and repeat of the message.

  Nearly home. Nearly to First Contact Café. Did the ghost belong to the station? Or did it belong to her?

  The Star Runner jerked and slowed. The walls coalesced, blotting out the stars. Her mind cringed at the new cacophony of thoughts invading her soul as people roused and prepared for the long final approach to their destination.

  Was the station truly home? Or was that as illusory as the ghost?

  Pamela lingered behind Jake and Ianus when they reached the zero G hub. Shadows invited her to fade into them and observe from a distance. She didn’t like the setup of the Dragon entourage.

  Besides, she had a lot to think about and decisions to make, things she did best alone without the hubbub of new aliens arriving and Jake’s presence filling every inch of available space with his personality.

  She had one key piece of knowledge to reduce Jake’s influence. Visions of swooping in to save the day and thus give her more control and authority wanted to flit through her mind. She needed more information.

  A flicker of movement, black within dark, caught her attention down by Wing 25, the same side of the platform as she.

  Then another flicker across the rails on the even numbered side.

  If she hadn’t been looking for something out of the ordinary she wouldn’t have seen them.

  Slowly, keeping her back against the bulkhead, she sidled on tip toe along the platform toward the next cluster of three wing entrances. Damn the spike heels for the noise they made every time she brought her feet down. Normally she only wore these dress uniform boots when she needed to make a visual statement and resounding footsteps announced her authority.

  The shadow on her side of the rails moved again. She blinked rapidly and the shape resolved into an upright humanoid with a black cap of feathers, black clothing and a black beak.

  A Maril Warrior observing the proceedings.

  She’d heard about Jake’s meeting with the ambassador—she had a red feathered crest that was intimidating when flared, but totally impractical in combat. Pamela wore her own hair short and straight to fit nicely under a flight helmet, or a wig, or ubiquitous billed cap.

  The Maril raised a handheld gadget and trilled something.

  The shadow across the way replied in a similar quiet warble. The devices must be their version of links, private and on a frequency layered into something else, or Pamela would have known about it.

  She tapped a note into her link and sent it silently to one of her operatives. He must search for a gadget or at least uncover the frequency so they could monitor Maril communications in and around the station.

  The Maril on her side stepped forward openly onto the part of the platform with sensors connecting to the next tram. The vehicle came within a few moments on its endless and mindless loop back and forth the length of the hub.

  The Maril bowed ceremoniously and . . . and reverently to the hatch as it irised open. When it passed, Pamela noted the glyph of Harmony painted on the side.

  The exact opposite reaction from the white lizard and from Mag.

  “What is so gol durn important that you need me to translate a dead language, thus taking me away from my real work?” Doc Halliday demanded as she stumped into Jake’s office. She stopped short the second she realized Jake wasn’t at his desk.

  Jake watched her closely, wishing he was at his desk getting something done, moving reports and forms and communications about in his arcane filing system. Instead he stood by the holo on the bulkhead. Earth’s solar system glowed beautifully. He turned his head to acknowledge her presence.

  “I will have real work for you, Doc, in just a few moments. How full is Medbay at the moment?” he replied. As he spoke he switched off the starscape and paced a circuit, pausing only to stare briefly at the real time projection of the jump point halfway across the local solar system. Sissy’s ship had disappeared into that hyperspace portal less than three weeks before (real time, who knew how long hyperspace transit truly lasted). He missed her terribly. She’d have interesting insights into his dilemma, a sideways twist that gave him new perspective.

  She’d also fill the room with her laughter and her energy. Her six boisterous acolytes always helped him shake off the gloom of each new crisis. There seemed to be a new one every day.

  “We have the usual mix of digestions that don’t adapt well to changes in water and food, occasionally someone gets a whiff of an alien atmosphere and has to have their blood cleaned. Last night the ammonia breathers had another barroom brawl that nearly took out an entire level. I swear those creatures have the attention span of a twelve year old on a sugar rush. Half don’t even remember that they’re hurt and need stitches, and sometimes surgery.” She shook her head, dismissing the wayward antics of drunks everywhere. Her helmet of iron gray hair didn’t dare swing out of place.

  “I see you still wear CSS blue,” he said idly, not sure where that came from.

  “They still pay my salary. And yours.” She waved toward his own everyday blues.

  The only concession to a token independence from CSS policy makers were the Badger Metal stars on his collar. Sissy had given them to him.

  Since Sissy and Telvino had signed the new treaty, Harmony had begun releasing regulated amounts of Badger Metal for spaceship hull repairs. But the stuff was still incredibly rare and expensive in the CSS. No one could afford to use it for trinkets and decorations, let alone tools—things he’d found in abundance on Harmony.

  “Please sit, Doc. I have something to discuss with you before our guest arrives. I strongly suggest you move non-critical patients out of Medbay as quickly as possible.”

  She cocked an eyebrow at him before settling into a chair opposite his desk. The chair shifted to accommodate her short legs by providing a narrower seat and extruding a footrest. She kicked the thing aside and chose to slide her spine down while she stretched her feet out and wiggled her toes in her soft ship boots. “Talk. I’ve got to get back to work, and you just gave me a buttload more.”

  Jake took his own chair whil
e he practiced his words in his head. “The Dragons, the new species that think they own the mortgage on First Contact Café, have among their entourage a number of people who appear to be human.”

  “How? We’d never heard of the Dragons before we came here.”

  “These humans appear to have been slaves of the Dragons for a number of generations.”

  “Kidnapped? Maybe all those 20th C reports of aliens kidnapping humans were true. Reports from the era dismissed them all as hoaxes.”

  “Another hoax from the same period was that some humans were born telepaths,” Jake said, doing his best to keep a straight and bland face, wondering what nickname Ianus would give Doc.

  Doc Halliday jerked forward, spine stiff, eyes keenly focused on Jake’s face. “What are you not saying?”

  “My brief interaction with their chief liaison, a young man named Ianus, suggested that the Dragon’s reptilian larynx and vocal chords cannot imitate communication with mammals. And mammals cannot understand or imitate reptilian language, which involves a lot of tail twitching, tongue flicking, and chameleon color shifts.” He held up a hand to stall her next question. “And yes, they do have very long and forked tongues.”

  “So they kidnapped human telepaths to serve as their comms officers,” Doc said on a long exhale. “No wonder we never found a viable telepath, those giant lizards took them all away. Can I examine one? I really need to study this, see if there is an actual mutation in the brain or genetic variation . . .”

  “Doc, there’s something else.”

  She clamped her jaw shut.

  “You’ve heard the report on the Dragon’s preferred atmosphere?”

  She nodded. “They can breathe ours, but we surely shouldn’t have any contact at all with theirs. Dimethyl mercury won’t kill us right off, but it will kill us.”

  “These slaves have been breathing it for countless generations.” Jake couldn’t bring himself to look her in the eye. For some vague reason he felt responsible for the telepath’s condition and fate. Nothing he could have done at any time in his life would have had any effect on these young people. Still, he felt guilty.

  “My bet is they are not thriving, and don’t live very long.”

  “Sucker bet, and Ianus is stepping off the tram onto our lift right now.” He reduced an image on his desktop to a tiny icon and enlarged another. “He seems to have left his companions behind.” He waved a finger across the diagram on his desktop that showed the arrival he’d been waiting on.

  “Wonder if I have enough time to go color pretty pictures with Marsh and Ashell.” He sighed, longing for the simple pleasures of the children.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Ianus paused before stepping onto the lift that would take him down to the mid-grav level of the administrative wing. Without the drag of gravity, he didn’t ache all the way to his bones. He counted six breaths that came easily with no restrictions compressing his lungs. Too bad he couldn’t live here at the core. He had to settle for the light grav section of his wing, along with all the other slaves. Twenty-four, including three children, remained.

  He’d left his comrades happily pushing buttons that rearranged walls. Hopefully they’d leave him enough room for a cot in the seemingly endless space on five levels. He didn’t need much more. Mag tended to require his presence more often than not. And this looked to become a long and complicated negotiation.

  If the senior Banker Dragon needed his human interpreter, Ianus would hear his summons, even here at the opposite end of the space station and through several layers of heavy metal blast doors that sealed the Dragons and their poisonous atmosphere in.

  When he felt the anxiety of someone on a lower level, he made the effort to place himself on the next platform. It moved more briskly than when trying to compensate for Mag’s enormous weight, yet slow enough for him to count the levels, note the markings identifying each one. The increasing drag of gravity on his bones told him how far he’d descended just as efficiently. At the docking/cargo bay below LG5 he had to step free, walk around the staircase and step onto another lift. The separation made room for blast doors. He presumed the same safety precaution existed on every wing. MG3 came too quickly.

  He barely had time to draw a deep breath and step free before the lift dragged him deeper into the increasing gravity. Primitive spin gravity, he reminded himself. If the Dragons consented to selling their artificial gravity tech, they’d probably make more money, with a good deal less trouble than loaning money at exorbitant interest. But Mag thrived more on the deal making than the luxuries wealth bought him.

  Ianus could make a deal for tech seem outright dangerous, but Mag wouldn’t see that.

  “Welcome, Ianus,” a female wearing a gray uniform with dark red piping greeted him from the doorway directly across from the lift. “I am Mara da Danna du First Contact Cafe, Major and adjunct to General Jeremiah Devlin. If you will follow me, please.” She gestured behind her into a wide reception area, big enough to accommodate a Dragon or two, yet only a small triangular piece of the circular level.

  Ianus thought he remembered seeing this woman among the officials greeting the Dragons. He couldn’t be sure. The day had been so filled with new people, new sights and smells, new thought patterns he needed to listen to keenly, that individuals had begun to blur.

  Mara the Magnificent Major, popped into his head. The image had a masculine tone. Ah, General Jake relied heavily on this female who worked wonders with computers.

  The anteroom was filled with semi-padded benches and low tables with a variety of readers embedded in the surface. Then Major Mara led him through an office with a large desk with six screens embedded in the top, large enough to put a defensive wall between the occupant and visitors. The chair behind the barricade looked comfortable and adjustable. The visitor chairs had less padding and fewer adjustments.

  Ianus pulled an image from Major Mara’s mind. She didn’t like entertaining visitors while they waited for General Devlin’s attention. (Strange, everyone thought of him as General Jake and not his more formal name.) She liked her privacy and her silence.

  She opened one half of a double set of doors in the center of the back wall. Two other sets of doors, one on each end wall, must lead to additional offices. Again she stood aside so that Ianus had to pass in front of her to enter the next room. His hand brushed against hers, he couldn’t help it, the doorway was narrow and she took up a large portion of the available space. A jolt of pain across her face passed through to him. Old pain that lingered more in memory that inflamed nerve endings. Regret, loneliness, and firm determination to do what was necessary.

  She hid the actual incident. He’d never met anyone as good at keeping thoughts and memories behind a veil of forgetful fog.

  He jerked his hand back and tucked it within the folds of his official red and gold brocade, sleeveless jerkin that fell to his knees. Inside an office as large as Mag’s parlor, General Devlin rose from his place behind a desk. His visitors’ chairs looked as comfortable and conformable as his own. And one of them was occupied by a female with short gray hair, a sturdy, squarish figure, wearing loose pants and tunic in an unflattering shade of pink against her olive toned skin. She did not rise, but examined him keenly. Her mind revealed little but a jumble of statistics that meant nothing to Ianus.

  The general’s mind, however, was open. He filled every corner of his rapid mind with knowledge about the station, worry about everything from money to engine breakdowns to water consumption. But his front thoughts of concern centered on Ianus himself.

  He almost fainted from surprise.

  “Sit down before you fall down!” General Devlin ordered. His voice brooked no defiance.

  Ianus sat, or rather crumpled, into the empty chair. Then the female hovered over him, checking his pulse, brushing an instrument across his brow, smelling his breath. “Get me an emergency med team, S.T.A.T.,” she said. The command in her voice seemed to outrank the general’s.

  “I
am not ill,” Ianus protested. At least no more than usual. He hoped he’d kept that thought private.

  “Spin me another tall tale, young man.”

  Ianus had to look deep for the female’s name. She thought of herself as Mar-I-ah. The general addressed her as Doc.

  Ah, a physician. A rare breed. “You are lovely with the glow of your desire to help others,” he said, smiling at her.

  “Enough of your nonsense.” But she shifted her posture in an appreciative preen. Then she slapped the back of Ianus’ hand. He looked and discovered a square of woven white cloth sticking to his skin.

  “That’s an oxygen patch,” she explained. “It will make breathing a little easier and help produce new blood cells. “I’ll get you some antibiotics and pain meds when I get you to Medbay.”

  “No need.” Ianus tried to wave her away. The oxygen made him feel better already.

  “You do know that the dimethyl mercury in the Dragon’s atmosphere is poisoning you,” the general said. It wasn’t really a question.

  “The what?” Ianus struggled to sit up straighter. He needed to maintain a dignified posture and command of the conversation. Mag expected that of him.

  Surely he could make a joke in this situation. He always did. Ianus just couldn’t find it right now.

  “That cinches it,” Mariah said. She tapped something onto the mechanical device on her wrist. “This interview is over until I get some serious scans and testing done. Might even need a total blood cleansing and replacement just to keep him alive. In the meantime, no one goes into the Dragon’s lair. They can come out if they must, but they probably carry that toxin on their scales and will leech it into our atmosphere. Can’t you send them back to their ship and make them stay there?”

  “Unadvisable, Doctor,” Ianus said. “My master believes that the mortgage on this station is in default and therefore he owns it. Although there is some doubt that the value of this place is worth the amount loaned out to build it.” He tried to soften the words with a smile. Instead he grimaced as the joints in his ankles protested movement.