TailWind

by Charlotte Boyett-Compo

  Pressed back into his seat as the Fiach continued to drop, it was all he could do to turn his head toward her. His intent was to level a savage snarl at her that would keep her from talking but behind her, he could see a strange glow that was increasing in brightness the lower the Fiach fell.

  “Is that a tractor beam?” she demanded. Although she was strapped into the jump seat, she had twisted her head so she could look out the porthole. “It is, isn’t it? It’s a tractor beam!”

  The glow was intensifying and the ship was slowing. The cabin was bathed in a strange greenish light that made the woman’s face look ghastly as she turned to look at him.

  “We’re being pulled down to something,” she said as though he didn’t have sense enough to realize what was happening.

  “You think?” he sneered.

  “Aye,” she said, smiling, and looking back around, trying to get a glimpse of the source of the light. “I think I see a planet down there.”

  When the greenish glow became so bright they both had to shield their eyes from its intense brightness, the ship seemed to sink gently to ground, the slightest bump signifying the landing skids had touched down on something solid. The bright light began to decrease in strength.

  Blaez’s fingers flew over the safety harness buckles once more and he was out of his seat like a shot. Rushing to the porthole beside her, he looked out, squinting as the brightness died down completely. Beyond the temperplex there was pitch black and he could see nothing.

  “Where are we?” she asked.

  He ignored her and stomped to the hatch. There was a manual release and he pulled it, shouldering the hatchway door up so he could peer out into the darkness.

  “I can’t see a gods-be-damned thing out there!” he snarled.

  “Here,” she said, startling him for she’d crept up on him so quietly he’d been unaware of her. She pressed a phospho torch into his hand as he reached out to shove her away.

  Almost dropping the torch, he nudged her aside with his hip for she was much too close to him for comfort. He didn’t like anyone that close without having pulled them there in the first place.

  “Get the hell away from me, wench,” he ordered. He heard her sigh loudly as he flipped on the torch.

  The darkness beyond the ship was oppressively thick. Even with the superior light quality of the phospho, the beam only went so far out into the gloom then seemed to be swallowed up.

  “It almost feels like the air is breathing, you know?” she commented from behind him.

  He stiffened for her hand was on his shoulder as she peeked her head out the hatchway opening. Once more she had gotten close enough to touch him without him noticing and he wanted to plant his fist in her pudgy face. Before he could order her away from him again, her hand tightened on his shoulder.

  “Do you see that?” she asked, her voice very low. “The air is moving.”

  Pulling his mind from her distraction, he forced himself to look for what she was seeing and was surprised to find the air was, indeed, moving. Not swirling or blowing, but moving as though it was alive.

  “Is that fog, you think?” she questioned.

  “How the hell should I know?” he asked.

  “Well you do know what fog is, don’t you?” she asked as though talking to the village idiot.

  “Aye, I know what fog is,” he sneered.

  They stared into the darkness for a long time and the feeling that settled between their shoulders made them both uneasy. Together, they stepped back—almost as one—and Blaez shut the hatchway and secured it.

  —

  “Gods-be-damned Brewton,” he cursed the bounty hunter as he worked to get the panel off the engine. “I should have known that bastard would have paid someone to sabotage my ship.”

  “Who’s Brewster?” she asked.

  “Brewton,” he corrected her with a hiss. He grunted as he plied the wrench to the bolts holding the panel in place.

  “Okay, so Brewton, then. Who is he?”

  “Was,” he growled, removing the panel. “Hold that damned light steady, woman!”

  Rozenn rolled her eyes. She leveled the phospho torch so that its beam played over the panel. “Okay, then, who was he?”

  He wiggled some wires, a spark flared and he jerked his hand back, shaking it, cursing in a language Rozenn did not recognize. He got to his feet, his hands on his hips.

  “Well?”

  “It’s going to have to be re-wired,” he said with disgust. “I can’t do it without a hell of a lot more light that what we have with that dying torch.”

  “No, I meant Brewster. Who was he?”

  He turned to look at her. In the glow of the phospho light her face was mottled with shadow, accentuating the broad planes of her cheeks. Her eye sockets were deep black holes, her mouth a thin dark gray slit.

  “Was he an enemy of yours?”

  “If you just can’t live another minute without knowing, he was a bounty hunter,” he told her. “Satisfied?”

  “What happened to him?”

  Blaez took a step toward her, annoyed when she didn’t move back, didn’t gave an inch. She was staring directly into his eyes—something few people dared to do—her head tilted to one side as though his answer was of the greatest interest to her.

  “I took off his head,” he replied in a low, deadly voice.

  “Huh.” Rozenn dropped the word like a heavy rock. “Do that often, do you?” she inquired.

  One more step and he was toe to toe with her, glaring down into her upturned face with enough venom to quell the bravest man. “When I’m not pulling out the tongues of irritating women,” he answered.

  She simply looked at him. There was no fright in her green eyes, no wariness, or even the slightest hint of concern. Then she smiled slowly and turned away.

  “What was that?” he demanded.

  “Big bad wolfie,” she said, sitting down in the jump seat. “Him gotta try to scare the poor old nun.”

  “Nun?” he repeated, frowning.

  Rozenn sighed. “Didn’t you hear anything I said to you, wolfie.”

  “Stop calling me that,” he warned, his hands clenching into fists at his side.

  The phospho torch was slowly dying. She shook it and for a moment it got brighter but then began to fade again. “Do you have another one of these?” she asked.

  “You said something about Galrath,” he said, ignoring her question. “Is that where you were?”

  “That’s the hell-hole from which I tucked my tail and ran,” she replied with a yawn.

  Blaez had heard bad things about the convent. It was supposed to be a cruel place where women were treated more like prisoners than members of a religious order. Curiosity got the better of him and he hunkered down in front of her.

  “How’d you get sent there?”

  She shrugged. “Nobody wanted me,” she said. “Never knew who my parents were. I grew up in an orphanage and when I turned eighteen they kicked me out and the next thing I knew a man whose name I was never told picked me up and took me to Galrath. That same day, by the by.” She yawned again. “Sound to you like somebody was trying to get rid of me?”

  “I know the feeling,” he mumbled.

  “Are you going to tell me your name or am I going to have to keep calling you…”

  “Don’t say it,” he warned.

  “I bet it’s something like Lupin or Lobo or Loupi or Lupo or…

  “Blaez,” he cut her off, his teeth clenched. “Blaez Dolan.”

  “Well, see? I knew it,” she said. “Blaez is the Chalean word for wolf and Dolan means challenge.” Her gaze moved over his black long sleeve cotton shirt and black jeans. “It fits.”

  “Oh, goody,” he growled. “I’m so glad you approve. Actually, Dolan in Chalean High Speech is O Dobhailen and that’s the name of my ship, The Black Defiance, another meaning for the word.” He pushed to his feet and went to the command chair, plopping down and swinging his left leg over the arm.
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br />   She arched a brow. “Name fits this ship. Was the bounty hunter after you?” she inquired.

  The air inside the ship was getting warm. Sweat was gathering under his armpits and at his temples. He released a loud sigh. “Aye, he was after me.”

  “What’d you do?”

  He laid his head on the tall back of the chair. “There was a slight problem between me and a dead man.”

  “A different dead man than the one you dispatched in the bar?”

  “Aye,” he hissed, a muscle working in his jaw.

  “Who was the first dead man?”

  “Wench, do you just live to annoy the hell out of people by asking stupid questions?” he snarled.

  “How will I learn if I don’t ask?” she inquired then switched off the phospho light, casting them into utter darkness.

  “What the hell did you do that for?” he demanded.

  “We need to conserve as much of what’s left as we can in case we really need it, don’t you think?” she asked.

  He grunted.

  “Who was the first dead man?” she repeated.

  “A prick by the name of General Alphon Morrison of the Coalition of Federated Worlds. He was the Chief of Command Central.”

  “Sounds like someone important,” she mused.

  “He thought he was,” Blaez said with a snort.

  “Did the problem occur before or after that man died?” She heard him yawn and followed suit.

  “After.”

  “Did you make him dead?”

  “I wish. He was dead before I got to him but he’d have been dead anyway if I’d gotten to him first,” he answered.

  “I assume he didn’t die of natural causes.”

  “You assume correctly unless you consider swinging from a tree upside down with your guts hanging out is natural.”

  Her eyes widened. “He must have made somebody really mad.”

  “He made a lot of somebodies really mad, wench,” he said with a snort. “I just happened to be the one found standing under him as he swung in the breeze.”

  “And was arrested.”

  “And was arrested,” he agreed.

  “You made bail then ran, huh? Didn’t think you’d get a fair trial.”

  He smiled though he knew she couldn’t see it.

  “Why’d you run?”

  “Somebody wants me to take the blame for General Morrison’s untimely demise and there ain’t no way I’m going to do that. Whoever paid my bail knew I’d skip and I’m sure they counted on bounty hunters coming after me in the hopes one of them would kill me before I could ever stand trial.”

  “So you’re thinking that whoever paid your bail offed this guy, Morrison, and set you up to take the fall for them,” she said. “Man, that’s cold.”

  “It worked,” he grumbled.

  “Sure looks that way to me, wolfie.”

  Perfect silence descended on the ship. With the absence of any light at all—not even a hint of sky glow coming in through the portholes—the warm air became even more oppressive, weighing down on the werewolf and his uninvited guest. It almost seemed as though the blackness outside the ship was sucking up all sound as well as all the light and coolness.

  “How did you escape Galrath?” he finally asked and when she didn’t answer, he attuned his acute hearing to the place where he knew her to be and realized her breathing was soft, rhythmic and concluded she was asleep.

  Instead of welcoming the peace of not having to hear her talk, Blaez felt a tiny tug of loneliness creeping over him. He closed his eyes, settled more comfortably in the chair and was soon asleep himself.

  —

  When Dolan woke to what he thought was early morning light, it was to find his unwanted guest kneeling on the jumpsuit and peering out the porthole. From the rear, her ass looked huge in the shapeless drab gray of her gown. She was wearing utilitarian sandals that looked clunky and uncomfortable.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you had a couch?” she asked. “At least one of us could have been comfortable last night.”

  He turned to look at the long couch that served as his bed then looked back at her ass.

  “Are you going to ogle me or are you going to come look at one of the strangest things I think you’ll ever see,” she said, not bothering to look around at him.

  He tore his eyes from her derriere. “I’ve seen some pretty strange things in my day, wench,” he muttered but peeled himself out of the chair, wincing as his neck muscles let him know they hadn’t been happy about his sleeping arrangement. He put a hand to the small of his back and stretched. Sauntering over to the porthole, he bent forward and looked over her shoulder since it was obvious she wasn’t going to move aside to allow him access to the view. What he saw stilled the breath in his lungs.

  “Pretty bizarre, huh?” she asked, twisting her head to look at him.

  Blaez had to admit what he was seeing was, indeed, bizarre and unlike anything he’d ever encountered. There was a soft, grayish light spreading around the ship and out from it for about twenty feet or so but beyond that was the roiling darkness they’d encountered when they’d landed. The ground was mottled with what looked to be pale pink cobblestones but the stones were shifting, buckling as though they were breathing.

  “If that was a tractor beam that pulled us down, could we be inside something?” she asked.

  He turned to her, almost bumping his nose on hers. He pulled back. “Inside something?” he echoed.

  “Like the belly of some kind of living beast,” she said softly. “Could that be alien flesh we’re looking at? It looks slick on the ground.”

  Anything was possible, he thought, but what kind of beast would have a light in its gut. “It was a tractor beam, wench. That much I know. More than likely, if we’re inside anything, we’re inside the belly of some kind of vessel,” he told her.

  “Huh,” she said and turned to look out the porthole again.

  Without having a hand laid to it, the hatchway door lifted and they looked around. Blaez’s left hand automatically went to the handle of the whip on his thigh and Rozenn reached out to grab his right arm in alarm. He shook her off with a snarling admonishment and stepped to the hatchway opening, expecting to find company, but there was no one there.

  “What the hell?” he growled, looking out into the strange light and the tumbling darkness beyond.

  “There’s no one there, is there?” Rozenn asked. She had moved close to him.

  “Wench, get the hell back to your seat and sit your wide-load ass down!” he hissed at her.

  Rozenn jumped back, more hurt by his insult than from fear of his tone of voice or the blazing amber eyes he turned on her full force. She blinked when he bared his fangs at her and plopped down in her seat.

  Goaded to beyond endurance by the female’s nearness, Blaez did something he would not normally have done without a great deal of thought or planning—he stepped down from the hatchway steps and onto the heaving ground upon which his ship was sitting. As soon as his booted foot touched one of the ‘cobblestones’ the heaving motion ceased. Frowning heavily, he looked down at the runabout’s landing skids and realized where the metal touched the ground, the expanse was as solid as the ones on which his feet were planted.

  “This is bizarre,” he mumbled to himself. He took a step forward and the stone under his foot solidified. Another step, another solid surface upon which to stand. Two more steps, two more firm, unyielding stones.

  His fingers flexed around the whip’s handle and he took several more steps from the ship toward the expanse of darkness. The closer he came to that swirling gloom, the harder it became for him to draw breath and he realized the light around him was slowly fading. He looked up, squinting against the brightness overhead but even as he watched, the light lowered as though being turned down with a rheostat.

  Something swished in the darkness in front of him and he took a step back, thumbing on the whip until a coil of light pulsed from the handle to lie on the gro
und and sizzle. The same swishing noise came from his left and he turned that way and his eyes narrowed.

  There was a tree standing off to one side and it was laden with fruit. Beside it, a stream trickled over pristine white rocks. He knew damned well that tree and that stream hadn’t been there when he’d stepped down from the hatchway. The terms forbidden fruit and fruit of the poisoned vine came into his mind like a lightning strike and the light around him dimmed even more. It felt as though he was being given a three minute warning to grab the fruit, the water, and get the hell out of town. He stood there—indecisive—for another moment and when the light lowered even more, he hurried to the tree, thumbing off the whip as he walked.

  Pulling his shirt out from the waistband of his jeans, he plucked the rosy red fruits and dropped them into the makeshift bowl then hastened back to the ship, sprinted up the steps and dumped the fruit on the floor, grabbing the two water jugs he kept handy and jumped from the ship, making his way quickly to the stream. Even before he had the first jug filled, the light had lowered to such an extent he could hardly see. By the time the second jug was filled, he was stumbling back to the ship—heaving to breath and fearful he would become lost in the pitch darkness. Stumbling up the steps, he felt Rozenn move in behind him to shut the hatchway.

  “That atmosphere is vile,” she said as she secured the hatchway.

  “You can barely breathe in it,” he told her, gasping.

  While he had been fetching their water, Rozenn had picked up the fruit he’d drop and had already eaten one of the rosy globes. She told him it was a nectarine and that it was good. “Whoever has us at least is providing.”

  “That tree and stream came out of nowhere,” he said.

  “Aye, well, someone has a helluva lot of time on his or her hands, huh?” she countered.

  Blaez didn’t answer. He couldn’t see her in the darkness but he could feel her near him. When her hand touched his, he snatched his back until he realized she was extending a handful of nectarines to him. He fumbled in the darkness until their fingers connected and he had the fruit in hand.

  “Do you think he’s going to keep us in the dark the rest of the day?” she asked.