Mourner

by Irene Radford

  The general growled a protest in a language Ianus could not translate, but the damning intent remained.

  “I don’t care if Mag thinks he’s God himself. He’s killing you and all the other humans.”

  “That is his right,” Ianus said. “We are slaves, his to do with as he pleases. But he rarely finds anything that pleases him.”

  “Not here. Slaves are considered illegal, immoral, and downright cruel here,” Mariah said, stamping her foot. It made no sound or vibration through the thick carpet, but her entire body shook with indignation.

  “Cultural imperative,” Ianus parroted the phrase Mag had used often when dealing with other races who did not condone slavery.

  “Monster Mag can take his culture and his battle scars to the other end of the galaxy. They mean nothing here,” General Devlin said, quite calmly. His posture and the smugness behind his words announced that he considered depriving the dragons of their slaves might be a weapon he could use to leverage an advantage.

  A bright green light blinked on the desk surface, reflecting a strange pallor on Jake’s face that made his cheeks look hollow and his skull bones more prominent. The general tapped it three times in quick succession.

  Fear, love, regret, joy, determination flashed through him in rapid succession. “Give my respects to Laudae Sissy, but do not allow Star Runner to dock. I will not risk her health until we cleanse this place of any taint from the Dragons.”

  “Don’t you want to talk to her?” Mara asked through the comms.

  “Include my apologies. I’m busy with the next crisis of the moment.”

  With that, Ianus knew his doom had come. If his body did not give up living of its own accord, then Mag would kill him for not sealing this deal. And he hadn’t had time to sire an heir. An heir to carry his people’s lore into the future.

  Sissy watched the text message scroll across the comm screen provided by Captain Spacer Kalek du Kalem da Star Runner. He’d come to her contrite and fearful with the message from Jake.

  Do not dock yet. We have mercury poisoning potential. Jake.

  She didn’t trust texts anymore.

  “Dock anyway,” Sissy ordered.

  “You don’t understand, my Laudae, without the cooperation of FCC Control we run the risk of collision with other space craft and the station.” He kept his eyes lowered, as was proper and polite, but unlike him. He’d spent a good deal of the last week investigating the loss of Laud Gregor’s body without results. At least no results he was willing to share out of caste. Then he took a deep breath and raised his gaze to meet her own. “We need to synchronize our computers and . . .”

  “I’ve seen General Jake do it alone and without anyone in Control knowing he was exiting or entering.” She tapped her foot impatiently.

  “That’s General Jake in a small shuttle. He’s a combat trained pilot with more tricks up his sleeve than a cheating card shark.” That was a phrase Sissy had to think about, obviously learned aboard the FCC. Gambling with cards or dice was forbidden on Harmony. Though it did happen in secret rooms after the rest of the world had retired for the night.

  “Surely Harmony trains Her pilots better than the CSS.” She tried a cajoling tone.

  The captain grumbled something Sissy didn’t want to translate.

  “Excuse me, Laudae,” Martha whispered from the corner of Sissy’s quarters, the place where the ghosts of hyperspace congregated, only they hadn’t on this journey. Just that strange parade imitating a Temple ritual.

  “Yes, Martha?” Sissy almost bit her tongue trying to remain polite and attentive to everyone. Just once she’d like the privilege of losing her temper. Everyone else did, on a regular basis.

  “I know the codes to remotely synch with the station for our wing.”

  “What?” Kalek roared. “You can’t know them, they change them every half day. A fifteen digit string, impossible to memorize or predict. Near infinite variations. Codes that might have worked when we left couldn’t possibly cycle round to be valid again.”

  Martha backed off and turned her face to the wall. Once an incurable chatterbox, in the past few weeks she’d become almost mute.

  “I’m inclined to believe her,” Sissy said, hesitantly.

  “The codes are not random,” Mary said, stepping between Martha and the captain. She’d been doing that more often lately too. What was going on between the two girls? “There’s a formula and Martha figured it out.”

  “Try Martha’s formula,” Sissy said. “I must get aboard the station and retrieve Laud Gregor’s body. And whoever might have stolen it. And why someone is desperate enough to attempt such a heinous act to bring down the government of Harmony.”

  “If you insist, my Laudae. But I do so under protest.”

  “If you don’t trust Martha’s formula, then let me hack into Admiral Marella’s communications. For all her convoluted security since she’s the CSS spymaster and all, you’d think she’d vary her pattern more often,” Bella said with a huge grin as she peeked around the doorjamb.

  Sissy gaped. When had her girls learned complex mathematics and computer skills? And how did Bella learn about Admiral Marella’s true role in the complex network of alliances?

  Sissy had let them wander the station unchaperoned as spies for Jake.

  She had a few choice words for Jake before she kissed him senseless. Well, maybe she’d have those words with him after she kissed them both senseless.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Garrin paced the circular landing outside the bar. His head pounded and his mouth tasted like a dry sewer. Hangover. A CSS word that aptly described his condition. On Harmony a public house that served alcohol would never be allowed. Alcohol was forbidden. Its addictive qualities, along with coffee and chocolate and a host of other good things he’d discovered on FCC, disrupted harmony and led to discord.

  He needed to return to the path of Harmony. He knew that. And yet his mother drove him to seek forgetfulness in drink. Were those few moments of peace and calm worth the driving spears of pain, sour stomach, and cesspit mouth?

  Before he could decide one way or the other, the docker he sought stepped off the lift and aimed his steps toward the bar.

  “You, there!” Garrin called, and wished he hadn’t spoken so loudly.

  “I have a name,” the man said on a sneer as he paused.

  The bare-faced troll had the audacity to wear blue coveralls today. A noble color. He should wear brown work clothes, the color assigned to Worker Caste. But then he didn’t even wear a decent caste mark.

  “Names are not important,” Garrin replied. “I need to know if the new aliens will find . . . the package I entrusted to you.”

  The worker shrugged. “Not my problem.”

  “I will make it your problem.”

  “Not likely. We aren’t on Harmony. You have no authority over me.” The man laughed long and loud.

  Garrin winced at the new stabs of pain behind his eyes.

  “Another one hundred credits if you move the package to someplace safe.”

  “Why not just throw it out the airlock?”

  Garrin gasped at the blasphemy the man proposed. Stealing Gregor’s dead body was one thing, merely delaying his final return to the womb of Harmony. Desecrating it, denying a proper funeral and burial, another entirely. Even Mother agreed on that.

  The worker fingered the thigh pocket of his coveralls. “Hey, why not. One hundred credits is always welcome. Meet me at the top of the lift in 27B at midnight. That’s station time, not Harmony time.” He shrugged and sauntered into the bar, whistling slightly off key.

  Garrin had to hold his aching head tight between his palms, pressing hard against his temples with his fingers to control the pain enough to leave.

  Ianus examined each piece of arcane equipment in his private room in the medical facility, trying to discern its purpose without delving into the minds of the nurses and techs who scurried about. Their thoughts were all jumbled and barely compreh
ensible with their technical jargon he had no translations for.

  The beeping thing above his head against the wall must be some kind of monitor. If he changed his breathing pattern, a deep toned mechanical chirp sounded. What would he have to do to make them all sing?

  His heart rate speeded up at the thought of the different tones blending in a quirky rhythm.

  Then he saw size of the syringe a nurse carried. A higher-pitched warning matched the new heart pattern, then slowed as the male injected fluid into yet another gadget rather than Ianus. He’d had five injections at least in the past half hour. They hurt. Some of those needles remained in his arm with tubing connecting him to bags of clear or yellow fluid hanging on stanchions on either side of the bed.

  They’d given him a very nice bed with a soft mattress, plenty of room to turn over and comforting railings on either side to keep him from rolling off onto the deck. The open-backed “gown” they’d given him was also a polite touch, giving him a sense of modesty that no Dragon would bother thinking about.

  In his mind he composed a report to Mag about the wonders of human medicine. Not that Mag would read it or care about it, except as a place of vulnerability. The humans cared about the sick and injured. Threaten this section of the station, and they’d capitulate on other demands.

  Or fight back.

  That was something none of the other races dared do. If the banker’s ship was armed, Ianus didn’t know about it. He sent a mental message to Janae requesting information about defensive armament on the ship and offensive armament on the station.

  His mind hit a blank wall. Distance had never hindered his communication before. Why now?

  Mag was going to be very angry.

  Maybe Ianus should manipulate the various monitor beeps and alarms into a quirky rhythm loud enough to hurt Dragon ears. That should keep Mag otherwise occupied until life settled into a normal pattern again.

  “If you don’t like what we’re doing to you, why haven’t you protested?” Dr. Mariah Halliday—the helpfully glowing one—asked, hovering near the transparent sliding door that led to other places on this level.

  “It is not my place,” Ianus said.

  “Yes, it is your place. And your right.”

  Ianus had to think about that. “I am owned by Mag. He determines my rights, if any. My purpose is to serve him.”

  “Not in my lab. Not on this station. Nowhere in human space. Slaves are a thing of the far distant past.” She placed her hands on her hips and jutted her chin in fierce defiance. Her internal glow increased.

  “In my people’s lore, there is a home world we call Terra.”

  She jerked her head in acknowledgement. “We call it Earth now. Different language root, same thing.”

  He tried out the sound of the word. Earth. Not as musical as Terra. It conjured no racial memories. “We all came from there. We all traded slavery on one world for slavery on another,” he added.

  She blanched. Then resumed a higher color than before. Indignation, outrage. Anger. “How long ago were your people kidnapped by pirates?”

  “Not pirates. Bankers. And our lore speaks of many thousands of years. The word ‘rome’ carries a connotation of power and dominance among us.”

  “Pirates. Bankers. Same difference. The Roman Empire operated on the same principles. All out to rob honest people of hard earned life, liberty, and property. You are better off here than with Mag, who is killing all of you by forcing you to breathe poisoned air.” She shook her head and came closer to peer at the monitor over his head. “Dialysis will help some, but your organs are filled with mercury, as well as your blood. I’m going to have to perform a complete transfusion, maybe a cloned liver and kidneys as well. Then synthetic blood, I think. It has limitations. In this case, it will flush some of the mercury rather than cling to it.”

  “You can perform such miracles?”

  “Not exactly routine, but hardly a miracle. We’ve had the capability for years.”

  Her mind implied more than that. Some of the tech was almost a thousand years old!

  “I would like to see this Earth of yours. Our Terra was not so advanced.”

  “With a little luck and my skills, maybe you will, my boy. Maybe you will. Now the nurses say you tell jokes. What’s the latest one?”

  “An old one I overheard from an orderly from Harmony. Why did the chicken cross the playground?” He kept a bland face, as was required of this game.

  “I don’t know,” Mariah replied with the same neutral tone. But a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.

  “To get to the other slide.”

  Mariah left, chuckling loudly. “I have got to keep you well long enough to send you to Earth.”

  Jake planted his face into his hands and shook his head in dismay. “Mara, tell me this isn’t happening,” he mumbled as he peeked through his splayed fingers at the display dead center on his desk. The station schematic showed a new vessel docking where it had no right to clamp on to an airlock.

  Transit from Harmony should have taken another three weeks, not less than ten hours. But then one never knew how time moved in hyperspace. Sometimes weeks, sometimes hours. That was why the first operation of bridge crews was to ping the chronometer of the nearest port for an update and reset.

  “Would you rather watch sixteen delegations jockeying for first exit from the station?” she asked.

  “That’s . . . that’s half the station!”

  “More than half. And none of them want to return until the Dragons have left. And they won’t return if the Dragons remain in power.”

  “Rats fleeing a sinking ship.” He sighed.

  “Docking Control confirms, sir, Star Runner has docked at 15A, the Harmony Temple/Noble wing between LG and MG.”

  “How in the hell . . . ? I gave orders that Star Runner was not to dock until further notice, under any circumstances.”

  “Control claims that someone aboard Star Runner hacked into their systems, found the override code and docked on its own.” Mara sounded just as bewildered as Jake felt.

  He’d expect Major Roderick to pull a stunt like that. His second in command—by order of Harmony—had returned home with Lord Lukan. He was supposed to deliver several reports and then escort Lord Lukan’s replacement back. Jake had expected that to take months.

  He moved some icons around until he had Control dead center, big and unavoidable. “How?” he demanded of the hapless ensign on duty.

  “I . . . I don’t know, sir. I have no evidence of anyone, anyone, hacking into our systems. The dragons tried right after their first message, but we shut them out. The Maril have tried every other day, and we shut them out. But this . . . I can’t see . . . I just don’t know, sir.” The young man—right out of the Academy back on Earth, still wet behind the ears—blushed so deeply Jake thought he might be on the verge of a stroke.

  “You came highly recommended by your professors as the next best thing to a telepath when it comes to communications, Ensign. Find me an answer. An hour ago.”

  Jake closed the icon and dragged it as far from center as possible and still have access to it. There was that word again. Telepath. He didn’t want to think about it.

  “Mara, get me the captain of the Star Runner.”

  “I’m trying, sir. I’ve been trying. The ship does not answer my hail on any frequency.”

  “Well, keep trying. And tell . . . no, order Control to change the algorithm for docking codes every hour and increase the sequence to eighteen characters, mixed alpha-numeric.”

  Suddenly he found himself at the doorway leading directly into the circular lobby at this level. His private entrance that only he had a key for. He strode for the lift in three long steps, jumping to catch the platform three inches higher than his feet. Safety protocols said he should have waited for the next platform to rotate up.

  He didn’t have time to wait. Should he override safety completely and order the lift to move faster?

  His heart and hi
s anxiety for Sissy’s safety urged him to.

  He’d written those protocols himself, for the good of the entire station. He couldn’t arbitrarily push them aside.

  But Sissy was involved. Her damaged lungs made her more vulnerable to contaminants in the atmosphere. He shook his head in dismay. Her chronic asthma started when she’d inhaled huge amounts of dust and powdered bio-plastic while singing a massive quake on Harmony into submission. That act had brought her to the attention of Laud Gregor. Her gift of prophecy and mutated array of all seven caste marks had convince the now deceased HP to elevate her to HPs, thinking he’d have a puppet only he controlled.

  He’d been wrong.

  If Star Runner had just docked, the air locks would need a minimum ten minutes to cycle through. Sissy would need additional minutes to gather her girls and exit. Longer if she had to wake the dogs.

  He drummed his fingers against his thigh in impatience, counting each tap: seven, fourteen, twenty-one, twenty-eight . . . Harmony and their base seven way of life was a long, long way away. He had to keep his head in the here and now. Base ten.

  Sissy was only heartbeats away. And she had brought Harmony with her.

  No time to wait for a tram, even with an emergency override. Jake bounded along the platform, surprised no one lingered at any of the stops. Mid-day and the place should be humming with activity. Maybe everyone was still watching the endless replaying of the amazing docking maneuver of the dragons.

  Or maybe they were all preparing to flee.

  Not everyone had left. Three Maril flapped ahead of him. Their black crests—smaller by half than the ambassador’s magnificent red display—lay flat, draping down their backs like an extra cloak. Warrior caste, black kilts further identified them. The leathery flaps draping down from their arms to attach to an anklet only gave them an extra lift to cover seven meters in a single bound, where Jake leaped five.

  He paused at the top of 20A on the opposite side of the tram track from the Maril. The winged mammals continued along toward the end of the station—the toxic wings of the 27 cluster. Without even looking, they flew past the bright orange warning signs posted across the track and on either side warning of the potentially dangerous atmosphere.