Mourner

by Irene Radford

  “When did you last see the bracelet?” Sissy asked. She moved into the room, placed an arm around Bella’s shoulders, and drew her close against her side.

  Bella instantly wrapped her arms around Sissy and sniffled. She swallowed a couple of times before finding words and the will to speak them. “I put it on just before we went to sleep in hyperspace. If Jilly is a ghost, I wanted her to be able to find us. Through the bracelet. I don’t want her to get lost.” Another spate of tears followed.

  Sissy found a lavender handkerchief, hastily discarded in the mad search of the baggage, and handed it to her acolyte. Her responsibility, her foster child, similar in age to her youngest sister.

  “Did Jilly find her bracelet and you during hyperspace?” Sissy had had her own ghosts to contend with during those fretful hours between the planes of existence, where time and space distorted and one had to look inward, deeply, to understand that there was more to space travel than just getting from here to there.

  “I . . . slept. Like we’re supposed to,” Bella said. A note of sadness tinged her voice. “If Jilly came to find me, she didn’t wake me up.”

  “That’s fine. Not everyone is brave enough to face the ghosts of people we’ve lost for good.” Or the ghosts of their misdeeds.

  “But if Jilly is a ghost, then we haven’t truly lost her,” Bella insisted. “That’s why I wear her bracelet all the time. She needs it to anchor her here with us, ’cause we still need her to make us laugh at ourselves.”

  That sounded like someone else’s words. Maybe Martha’s. Where was Martha, and Mary for that matter?

  Time to change the subject. “Did you take off the bracelet when you woke up in Normal space and Jilly couldn’t find it or you?” Sissy pushed up the sleeves of Bella’s blouse to look for the missing jewelry. Sure enough, the skin around her wrist looked chafed, as if the bracelet had snagged on something and pulled, or broken. In the excitement of approaching the space station, she probably didn’t notice.

  “I . . . I don’t remember,” Bella whispered, ashamed and afraid at the same time.

  “You were wearing a sweater because hyperspace is cold,” Sarah said and dove toward one of the three closets in the room. At least the girls had made a start at putting away their things before the lost bracelet became paramount in their priorities.

  Bella dashed to the little sweater hanging from the lower bar that stretched across the width of the closet—barely three feet wide—the only garment in place. Sharon, who had been assigned the top bar for her hangings, hadn’t managed to put anything away yet.

  Both Sarah and Bella felt along the sleeves and the inside of the knitted sweater.

  “Here it is, sweetie,” Sarah said, handing Bella a strand of multi-colored beads on an elastic thread. In the center lay a flat black bead carved in the outline of a rose in full bloom. Badger Metal. The most precious substance in the galaxy and exclusive to Harmony. A fine ornament for Jilly’s mother to part with for a beloved child. A way of keeping the little girl close in thought across the miles to the Crystal Temple.

  Gulping back more tears, Bella slipped it over her left wrist, where it dangled loosely. Too loosely to stay put for long.

  Sissy fingered the earbob in her own left ear, an amethyst crystal on a thin wire. “Here, let’s make it fit better so you don’t lose it again.” Deftly she wound the wire around a couple of the beads, creating a dangling loop and shortening the strand. When she clasped the earring closed, it held the bracelet securely on Bella’s wrist.

  “And it’s got one of your beads on it now, too!” Bella looked up, holding her wrist so that all could see the bracelet and their tie to Jilly, and smiled as brilliantly as Jilly used to. “Now you both will be with me forever!” She hugged Sissy, then danced away, flashing her wrist and the precious bracelet, to begin making order in the chaos.

  Sharon followed her example. “Chaos invites Discord. Discord disrupts Harmony. Without Harmony we fall toward barbarism,” she recited from her lesson books.

  The other girls rolled their eyes and set to work unpacking and ordering their clothing and possessions.

  Sissy eased into her private suite. Her own unpacking awaited her. She had reasons for postponing her report to, no her discussion with Lady Jancee.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Jake collapsed onto his hospital bed, still in his clean suit. He didn’t have the energy to take it off. Resting his head against the raised bed was paramount. The throbbing behind his eyes demanded all of his attention. But he couldn’t give in to it. Not yet. He needed plans. He needed to talk to the Maril and explain the Dragons to them, before they did something stupid. He needed Pammy’s help. One of her secret recorders and an expert interrogator to coax the telepath’s lore from his mind.

  He needed Sissy to stroke his brow with a cool cloth and make the pain go away.

  Slowly, careful not to move his neck or open his eyes and set the fire knives to stabbing his brain again, he reached for the call button. He knew a nurse or aide or someone would appear within seconds. They always did.

  A soft step in the direction of his doorway. “I need my link, now.”

  “You need pain meds and ice,” Mariah replied.

  “Get me my link or I’ll go find it myself.” He tried rolling off the bed without opening his eyes or twisting his neck.

  A sonic bomb exploded inside his head.

  “Knew you weren’t ready for our little expedition,” Mariah grumbled. She pushed him backward with the touch of one finger in the middle of his forehead.

  Strange, soothing coolness spread outward from the simple touch.

  “Magic hands,” he whispered.

  “Magic pain med patch,” she replied.

  “Please, Mariah, there are things I have to do, for Ianus, and for the station.”

  “I know, I know. I’ll get you your link, but I’m putting an aide in here to take it away from you if you don’t rest for a minimum ten minutes between calls. Let the station come to you. One at a time. You don’t need to go to them, or be in the thick of things every moment.”

  “Sissy?”

  “Will stay in her own wing for now. She’ll just make you think you’re Superman when you aren’t ready to do more than rest and heal.”

  Garrin pa Lukan pu Lukan First Contact Café laced his fingers together in a prayerful gesture. “Bound together, each unique and strong, better for the binding. May we work together in Harmony for Harmony to bring Harmony,” he recited by rote. Working through the little rituals every day made him feel as if his mother’s orders did not contradict everything he’d learned in Holy Day school. Then he drew a deep breath and followed his elusive contact into the maintenance tunnel. Crawling awkwardly along the narrow ledge on the side of the cramped space with an electrified track just below him, he forced himself to stare blankly at the retreating form ahead of him.

  His breathing sounded loud and labored in his ears, amplified by the breather his companion had forced upon him.

  “Mercury leaking from the Dragon lair,” the worker had said. Then nothing more, not even an “Amen” in response to Garrin’s prayer.

  Garrin had crawled through a tube like this once before, to escape a hull breach when an alien ship had crashed into the projecting wing assigned to the Harmony delegation. Normally only maintenance robots used the clear, radiation proof, bio plastic tubes, traveling along the electrified rail.

  Garrin’s guide couldn’t turn off the deadly electricity at the circuit breaker lest they set off alarms all over the station.

  A long shudder shook the tube, making the flimsy strut sway and bounce.

  Garrin’s eyes sought the source of the danger. He knew, without a doubt, that the entire contraption was going to break free and fling him into the deep dark vacuum of space. He had only about half an hour of air. One long half hour to contemplate his sins and his death. He’d die. Horrible. Agonizing. Slow. Better to report failure to Mother than this . . .

  The s
waying and shuddering slowed. His stomach returned to its proper place.

  But his vision! Oh, my. By Harmony, look at that vast expanse of black with only a few pinpoints of distant stars visible!

  He froze, unable to move forward or back. His back ached and his knees burned. But he couldn’t look away. Couldn’t close his eyes. Couldn’t . . .

  “Snap out of it, your lordship,” the anonymous docker ahead of him called. “We have to get the body and get back before one of Pammy’s patrolling flyboys spots us.”

  Ah, yes, these tubes were not designed for humans, and were transparent so those “flyboys” could spot anomalies, or trespassers, or broken robots.

  Garrin forced his gaze to concentrate on the blob of flesh ahead of him. Still, it was far too easy to get lost in the vast blackness. That way lay madness. One hand forward, opposite knee followed. Then the other hand and knee. One after the other. Move forward. Don’t think. Don’t look. Don’t imagine. Just move, one jerk at a time.

  Forget that half his left leg hung over the edge of the ledge.

  He squirmed until his knee didn’t feel cut in two lengthwise.

  He made it to the center of the long tube, everything under control, not looking anywhere but straight ahead.

  “By the hairy balls of Beelzebub!” the docker shouted.

  “Hush,” Garrin whispered automatically.

  “It’s gone.”

  “What do you mean, ‘it’s gone’?” Garrin’s gut curled into a hard hot knot. What else could go wrong?

  “I mean, that I stashed the body just this side of the hatch. Cold unused wing. Heavy grav, so few on station would even think of coming here and it wouldn’t fly around when a ship docked clumsily three wings away. But then the Dragons arrived. They like it hot and they like it heavy. And their atmosphere is toxic, so our ‘Dear General Jake,’ put them in this wing. The heat is bleeding through the hatch, which probably thawed the body and set it to stinking. Someone has discovered it, and removed it.”

  “What . . . I’ve heard things about these Dragons.” Garrin choked on hot, acidic bile that burned all the way up and all the way back down. “What if they decide to eat him?”

  All attempts at control vanished. He couldn’t breathe. The mask wasn’t working properly. He yanked it off.

  “Don’t do that! You’ll die.”

  “Can’t breathe.” No, he truly couldn’t breathe. Dragon poisons pounded from his lungs through his veins to his heart.

  Pounding, pounding, pounding in his ears.

  The universe spun around him at blinding, dizzying speed.

  “Can’t breathe,” he gasped. Then he spewed what was left of his lunch of fine cheese, olives, salami, and rare and wonderful fresh celery.

  He regretted the loss of the fresh vegetable—so hard to get in space—and the creamy, moldy cheese from Harmony III. Regretted the wine Mother insisted they drink at every meal.

  Regretted ever agreeing to this mad scheme of his mother’s.

  Another wave of bile burned his throat and gushed outward.

  The rail sizzled and sparked.

  The blackness of space swirled around him with pinpicks of light. Confusion. Dizziness.

  He lost track of up and down in the wondrous, vast, emptiness.

  His balance failed. He heard zaps and angry sparks leaping about, akin to the stars dotting the endless sky.

  Something burned his hand all the way up his arm to his thundering heart.

  And he didn’t care. No pain was worse than facing his mother with failure.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Admiral Pamela Marella stalked to the maintenance hatch where five of her undercover operatives hovered. They all wore the various uniforms of maintenance and dock workers. One wore the neutral gray with maroon piping of a flight deck control officer. But they were all hers. Answering only to her and not Jake.

  No matter what Jake thought.

  She wasn’t about to let any of these men and women slip from her control like Jake had. Never again trust an operative with more than they needed to know. She had to find a fine balance between agents able to think their way out of dangerous situations, but not think so hard and deep that they developed ideas of their own.

  “What?” she demanded of the anxious gathering when she was within saluting distance.

  “Sam went in and didn’t come out. Now there’s something dead in there,” Lieutenant Angelica D’Ambroisé said, stiff of back and upper lip. No emotion crossed her face, but her throat worked convulsively.

  Sam! The only man in her employ capable of replacing Jake. Sam, a natural leader and the most intelligent of the bunch. But not as smart as Jake. She’d never again allow herself to recruit anyone as smart, independent, and lovely of body as Jake.

  But Sam came close.

  “Did he go in alone?” she asked.

  The two dressed as cargo slingers shrugged wide, strong shoulders. This hatch was the last in the mid-grav level. The cargo bay acted as a buffer before encountering truly heavy grav. Workers in that area needed to be strong with bone density and muscle mass to survive more than a few minutes without succumbing to exhaustion.

  “Then I guess two of you go in there and drag out the body. What’s on the other end of this tube?”

  “Dragons, sir,” Angelica said. She focused her unblinking eyes on the hatch. Trepidation, grief, or general anxiety? Maybe it was time to find her a new assignment, off station. Once a spy, always a spy. Something Jake refused to admit. But sometimes operatives needed a break from field work.

  Pamela kept telling herself that Jake was just taking a much needed break after the intensity of his undercover work on Harmony—he’d even kept his lauded military caste mark.

  “Damned Dragons and their poisonous soup of an atmosphere,” Pamela allowed herself to curse out loud.

  “High heat and very heavy grav as well,” Josh said. He wore the orange uniform assigning him to maintenance.

  “At least this tube has a cargo bay and a residence level between it and the Dragon lair. Two of you will have to go in a get the body.”

  All five of them looked elsewhere. No volunteers.

  “We must remain unobtrusive. Maintenance has dominion over the tubes. Josh, you and Buddy will have to do it. Wear breathers in case some of the Dragon soup spills through.”

  “Better throw the circuit breaker, too, in case it resets itself. Automation in this place thinks it’s smarter than we are,” Josh said, reaching for the locked case where masks lurked, mostly unused.

  “Two missing!” he said, looking to Pamela in puzzlement. “Sam took someone with him.”

  “And now one of them is dead. Go get him.” Damn, she hoped the blob of bio-mass detected by one of her pilots coming in from patrol wasn’t Sam.

  Then her mind turned to ways she could blame this on Jake so she could take over the station.

  Mask in place and sucking noisily through multiple filters and from the reserve tank resting on his shoulder, Josh flipped the bolts and drew open the hatch.

  Pamela reeled backward at the stench of burned flesh and rotten celery.

  Ianus woke with a start and a stab of delight to the back of his brain. All traces of the soporific drugs in his system vanished.

  Lunch! Repeated over and over in his mind. Mine! Mag shouted with glee.

  No visible image came through. But he knew what Mag loved for a light snack more than anything. Carrion. Any kind of dead and rotting meat set his digestive system into rapturous spasms. He usually saved his snacks for the aftermath of mating. If it had been a truly exhilarating battle, he sometimes shared a few bites with the female. New wounds that would scar were something to brag about.

  Otherwise, Mag did not share something as wonderful as carrion, which was hard to find in space.

  Ianus and the other human telepaths made a point of consigning their dead to the vacuum of space before a full day had passed, reciting prayers their ancestors had brought with them. Before
the bodies began to decay. Before the Dragons got their hands on the body and treated it with no respect whatsoever.

  Ianus had a bad feeling about this. He pushed the call button. He needed to speak with General Devlin, quickly. He couldn’t trust a static-filled telepathic message that might be overheard by the Dragons.

  While he waited for a nurse to come, he sent a quick probe to Janae.

  What? Her mental voice sounded drowsy and a little irritated at being disturbed. A trace of Timmaeus’ mental signature overlay hers.

  Apologies for disturbing your rest. Mag has found carrion. The humans aboard are missing an important body. Could my master have found it and taken custody?

  Surprise, alarm, hatred, and vexation blasted through the mental probe. Ianus absorbed the pain of it without flinching. Mag dealt out much worse on a daily basis.

  Please check. This is not an offering of goodwill. These humans treat the dead with reverence, Ianus finished and broke off the probe. He collapsed back into his pillows, exhausted from just that little effort.

  Someone rapped lightly on the edge of the portal, disturbing his drift into slumber once more. “Mr. Ianus?” a gentle male voice asked. Tenor in quality, it sounded young.

  “Yes, yes, please summon General Devlin. There is a crisis in the Dragon’s quarters. He must look into it.” He didn’t bother opening his eyes. He did discern the sound of quiet words and hasty hand gestures.

  “I have summoned the general, Mr. Ianus, but I am not your nurse. I have come to ask you questions about your life and your lore. I am tasked with recording it . . . in case there is no time to pass it on to a child of your loins.” The phrasing and words were in Ianus’ own language.

  “You are not one of us, and yet you speak . . .”

  A slender man with pinched features and squinting eyes moved closer. He wore the protective white garment Ianus had come to associate with the medicos that surrounded him.

  “Who are you?”

  “My name is Patrick—Patricius—in Latin. As I said, I am here to listen and record. I speak your language, though it has been many years since I studied it. And my pronunciation may vary from yours. It is a language that has been dead on Earth for many centuries except in writing and in some rituals.” He smiled, and the pinched look vanished. Without the worry lines he appeared in his late twenties, the prime of health, but not the tall and vigorous kind of man in uniform Ianus thought belonged on the station.