by Chris Fox
Fortunately, the Bloodline hadn’t damaged the throats of the Duarg when they killed the beastkin. I dragged one of the bodies to the helm, glad that the demon’s strength made the task almost trivially easy. I propped the Duarg up in the captain’s chair and sent a tendril of the demon’s stolen magic into the beastkin’s body.
“Help,” I made the Duarg croak into the vox crystal. I’m no ventriloquist, but the garbled voice made the message even more believable. “Bloodline attack, we can’t….”
And then I let the garbled message trail off and killed the vox. That message would drift through the emergency frequencies for starspans. Travelers would hear it, and the Bloodline legend would grow by one more tragedy.
That solved my first problem. No one was going to come looking for the Naglfar if they thought it had been taken by the Bloodline.
“Clever, but you’re still stuck here,” the demon reminded me. “Without me to power the engines, you’re going nowhere.”
“We’ll see about that,” I said, a plan coming together in my mind. I didn’t like it, but it was the only one I could come up with.
“You can't make me go back into the engine,” Mr. Peepers snarled. “I won't go.”
“How about I sweeten the pot?” I said. I didn't want to die, but death was a foregone conclusion if I couldn't break this impasse between Mr. Peepers and me. The demon would never give in, and every second I spent here made it more likely I was going to die at the hands of the Bloodline. Sure, I’d killed a couple of them, but a larger force might be able to do me in.
I threw my ace on the table.
“You serve me for seven years and seven days,” I said, using longest commonly accepted mystical timeframe, “and then I will pay your price.”
That got the demon's attention.
“Any price?”
“After seven years and seven days? Yeah. But you have to name your price up front, so I know what to expect when the bill comes due.”
The demon wasted no time. Like the rest of his kind, Mr. Peepers had a one-track mind, and I knew what he was going to ask before you even had a chance to say the words. “Your soul. It comes to hell with me.”
“You guys need a better playbook,” I said, masking my fear with snark. “But if that’s all you want, fine. You go back in the containment vessel and stay there for seven years and seven days, you do exactly what I say for the term of our contract, and, sure, my soul is yours.”
Mr. Peepers said nothing, and I wondered where he’d gone.
A few seconds later, the ship's lights came back on, and the Infernal Engine hummed to life.
“What will you do with the seven years and seven days left to you,” the demon asked from the shadows at the back of my mind.
“I don't know, Mr. Peepers. It’s a big universe.” I grinned, relishing my newfound freedom. I had a ship, an enslaved demon, and a ticking time bomb tied to my soul. For the first time in my life, I was free. “I'm sure somebody out there needs their ass kicked.”
For more information about the Screaming Stars series, and to receive a free story featuring Mr. Peepers, visit samwitt.com/stars.
Mystically Engineered
Craig Martelle
The Toros mothership remained stationary beyond the heliosphere. The runabouts’ crew briefings were underway, a raucous affair reminiscent of an old Earth squadron ready room. There was yelling and grab-ass, few people were paying attention. The mission briefing officer was a pogue that somebody slightly more important had sent in his place.
The young man suffered the indignity of reading the line items that were already uploaded to the runabouts, the scout vessels that would collect data for future analysis. Somebody who was somebody would look at the data and decide if the system’s planets or moons were right for terraforming or mining. If they weren’t, the system would be left behind. No one had time to waste on systems that couldn’t turn a profit.
The mystics were getting a separate briefing, because they didn’t like the cacophony of the crew presentation. A chief briefed the first, second, and third-class mystics. Not a word was spoken during the briefing. It was done in absolute silence. The astral plane was better explored through the commune, the way that the mystics funneled energy through their bodies.
Regular crew and mystics. Two sides of the same coin. One but separate. They worked together, but weren’t together. The mystics had their own ways. The engineers had theirs. There could be no compromise. There was nothing to compromise.
The mystics reached into the red dwarf system, called Cannatus by those who didn’t live there, caressing the waves that emanated from it and peeling back the layers of mist to reveal what was beneath. Even on the astral plane, distance mattered. Many of the planets’ secrets remained hidden.
That was why mystics deployed on the runabouts.
It was regulation to put a Mystic First Class, an M1C, on each boat. An additional mystic was added to support the first. The purveyors had found that the missions could be too hard on a lone mystic. The crews could be too hard on their mysterious comrades, since they rarely entered each other’s domain; the crews embracing technology to do their jobs, while the mystics worked outside the normal understanding of the physical world. Science couldn’t explain what they could do.
And those without the gift considered the mystics to be freaks, even though they had their own space academy with academic rigors comparable to the fleet’s training center.
Comparable, but not. Separate but equal.
Still separate and not equal.
“Billy” Billford captained the Toros-9, the runabout that was given the mission of the Cannatus-3 moons, arbitrarily numbered four through seven orbiting the third planet from the star. Toros-4 was given the mission to survey moons one through three, While Toros-1 and Toros-7 had the worst duty, which was to conduct the planetary survey for lucky number 3 of the Cannatus system.
“You suck!” Billy yelled at his fellow boat skipper, the captain of Toros-1. “An old boat driving parallel lines around a dead planet. How cool is that?”
“Amaze-balls, I tell you! Your jealousy reeks of last night’s dinner. You can’t have my gig, no matter how much you beg, Billy!” the slight man shouted down the passageway as the crews made their way to the ships’ access tubes. The skipper of Toros-1 flipped Billy the double bird, making them both laugh.
M1C Coraolis watched, mildly amused at the exchange. He could feel the warmth between the two men, despite their words and actions. M3C Fleeston stood at his side, unsure of what she was seeing. “I swear. I shall never understand the way of norms,” she said softly.
“We don’t use that term here. We are one crew,” the M1C replied, putting a finger to his lips to silence his colleague in the open space of the carry-ship’s corridor.
“Hey, Mike!” the boat’s chief engineer called.
“His name is Coraolis,” Fleeston offered. The chief waved her off.
“Do you have any new tricks for us this time, or is it going to be the same tired illusions?” the chief asked.
“Probably the same stuff, Chief. Go with what you know, I always say,” Coraolis replied through a broad smile.
“You got that right! See you on the mess deck, Mike.” The chief turned into the tube and hurried away, talking to the ship as he approached the hatch.
“But your name isn’t Mike, and we don’t do tricks,” Fleeston muttered, confused by the engineer’s words. Her first deployment and she had a great deal to learn about how mystics interacted with the crew.
“He calls me Mike because of the M1C. Just wait, he’ll call you Mack until you get promoted, then you’ll be Meck.”
“But I’m a woman,” Fleeston countered, still confused.
“Not to him. You’re just another illusionist. Yes, he’s one of those, but he’s a good man, a great engineer, and not a shabby chess player, either.” Coraolis guided his charge into the tube as they joined the crew in boarding the Toros-9.
&nbs
p; One week of mind-numbing travel down the gravity well was coming to a close. As the runabout approached the target planet of Cannatus-3, the crew breathed a collective sigh of relief.
Finally, the crew would have something to do. The mystics had been busy for three days, but no one knew that. They had sequestered themselves in the commune chamber, located against a carbon fiber section of the hull. Titanium and other exotic metals could interfere with their process. The ships were built with special areas around the hull to accommodate the mystics. Since space on a scout-class runabout was at a premium, the commune doubled as a storage locker. When the mystics were using it, they had to move the repair bot and supplies to the passageway.
This did not endear them to the small crew.
Coraolis and Fleeston locked the door behind them, sat comfortably, closed their eyes, and disappeared into the astral plane, weaving and churning to coax its secrets from the darkness. Time became meaningless, but still flowed forward as time did.
The mystics’ physical bodies remained seated with eyes closed, as they assumed a transcendental stasis. The privacy of the commune chamber was critical to minimize the risk of harm to their unprotected shells while their souls explored elsewhere.
The fourth moon remained hidden while the others appeared as lifeless hulks of space rock, cast off millions of years before. Despite Coraolis’s best efforts, he wasn’t able to penetrate the veil covering the fourth moon. Even in the astral plane, one’s soul tired as much as one’s body. When Coraolis finally left the astral plane and retreated to the real world, he found he was famished and bone tired. Fleeston helped him to stand. She’d been along, but he’d done all the heavy lifting.
She was still learning, and there was a lot to learn.
The M1C looked at the engagement clock to see that he’d been gone for more than three days. He drank from the bottle, pre-staged to help his recovery. Balanced electrolytes and caffeine. He preferred coffee, but the mystic procedures were engraved in titanium, so he choked down his cranberry and chalk-flavored concoction before punching the comm for the bridge.
“Captain Billford,” came the disembodied reply.
“Billy, Coraolis here. Moons five through seven appear to be dead. No atmosphere, no disturbance across the astral plane. But moon four is hidden from us. How long before we arrive? When we’re close enough, I can conjure a dragon to take a closer look, peer into the dark place, but only after I’ve gotten some rest.”
“Less than half a day, Mike. Go get some rest. We’ll take it from here. Check in when you’re up.” Billy clicked off without waiting for a reply.
Fleeston helped the M1C to his feet. He leaned heavily on her as they stumbled out the door. She tried to steer him down the corridor to his bunk, but he stopped. “Procedures dictate that we return the gear to the locker, minimize the strife it creates. I’m sorry, but I’m in no shape to help. This was a tough one, and I don’t know why.”
“I’ll take care of it,” she said, still young and spunky.
Coraolis leaned against the bulkhead as she systematically returned the gear to the locker, closing the hatch once everything was repacked.
When she returned her attention to the M1C, she found that he had sat down during her efforts and with his head hanging between his knees, had fallen soundly asleep.
Fleeston wrestled with the decision to wake Coraolis or not, ultimately deciding that he needed to sleep somewhere other than on the floor.
The chief rushed from engineering and turned down the corridor when he came across Fleeston half-carrying Coraolis. “What the hell?” the chief exclaimed.
Fleeston didn’t have to say anything. The chief was a robust man. He threw Mike over his shoulder and motioned for the M3C to lead the way.
“There were significant challenges that Coraolis had to work through,” she tried to explain.
“How long were you in there?” asked the chief. He’d seen the gear in the corridor but time was as ethereal to him as it was to the mystics. When on the boat, he’d work for days straight without a break. The scout-class runabouts were not the newest boats in the fleet.
“Three days,” she said softly.
“Let’s get him to bed. Both of you. Get your rest. I get no pleasure from poking a sleeping bear. I need Mike at the top of his game if he’s going to verbally joust with me. Ha!” The chief laughed heartily.
“What’s your name?” Fleeston asked. “I can’t just call you Chief.”
“Of course you can. I’m chief of engineering. In my mind, that makes me chief of the boat. COB as I like to think of it. You can call me COB if you don’t like Chief, Mack.”
“My name isn’t Mack,” she countered as they arrived at the small berth that the two mystics shared. The chief carefully carried Mike through the hatchway and deposited him on the bottom bed. “That’s my bunk.”
“I’m not trying to throw him up there, Mack. Get a grip,” the chief told her. She remained confused. Nothing in the academy had prepared her for this. Everything had been done in an orderly fashion during her training. The order of the work space helped order the mind. With chaos in one, surely there must be chaos in the other, she had always been told.
She looked at the M1C completely filling her bunk. She didn’t like heights. Space was different. There was no sense of falling, but here, inside the boat, she could see the deck and it was too far away.
The chief nodded and walked out, leaving her alone with Coraolis. She started to cry, before catching herself and wiping her eyes on her sleeve. She took one step up the ladder and ripped the bedding from the top bunk. The mattress was pneumatic and secured within the bed itself, but the sheets, blanket, and pillow were all standard issue. She made a nest on the floor and despite the strife in her orderly life, she was soon fast asleep.
The klaxons relentlessly bellowed their emergency cry. Fleeston woke from a sound sleep, stiff and sore, confused about where she was. A leg swung above her, and its foot stomped on her chest.
She grunted and tried to roll away, but she was caught in her blanket and sheets.
The M1C’s head appeared from the bunk above. “What are you doing down there?” he asked groggily.
“Sleeping. I was,” she corrected, rubbing her eyes. “What’s going on?”
“That’s for us to find out.” Coraolis extricated himself from the lower bunk without stepping on the M3C, staggered to the hatch, and let himself out. Fleeston scrambled after him, crawling into the corridor before kicking off the sheets. She threw them back into the cabin and let the hatch close on its own as she ran after Coraolis.
He appeared to be on his way to the bridge.
She sprinted to catch up, stepping through the hatch on the M1C’s heels. He stopped immediately, and she ran into him. Mumbling an apology that he never heard, she followed his gaze toward the front and side screens, the visual displays used in place of much less robust windows. They had not yet perfected transparent aluminum, but it was coming.
“You can see it?” the M1C asked.
“In all its glory,” Billy said over his shoulder, keeping his eyes on the dragon flying between the ship and the moon. Small gouts of flame appeared before it, but the flashes dissipated quickly in the vacuum of space.
“The fourth moon around Cannatus-3,” Billy added. “Five through seven were dead, exactly like you said. Four came right to us as in its orbit. We saw the dragon about an hour ago. I tried calling you, but you haven’t been out of your love shack that long. I didn’t want to wake you if you weren’t ready. Is that how they look to you?”
“In the astral plane, that’s exactly how they look. But they can’t be here. They cannot exist in our dimension!” Coraolis exclaimed.
Billy turned completely around to look at Coraolis. “Is that how I sound when I talk with you about the stuff you do?”
The M1C looked at the captain. “I guess so, Billy. I’m sorry. May I have your chair for a bit?”
Billy stood and helped the mysti
c to the captain’s chair. “Don’t get too comfortable,” the captain joked.
“I intend to send a dragon to look in on that one, try to see where it came from,” Coraolis explained. “Hold my hand, Fleeston. I’ll need to add your energy to my own for this.”
“But, we’re not supposed to do things that way,” she retorted.
“As they say, welcome to the real world. Hurry now, that dragon is not our friend and whoever sent him wants to remain hidden for a reason, don’t you think?”
“I do not,” Fleeston replied, keeping her hand out of Coraolis’s reach, before adding in a small voice, “I think they only want to be left alone.”
“Possibly,” the M1C conceded. “And it was their poor luck to run into us, or maybe ours in running into them. Come now. Your hand.”
He held his hand out and fixed her with the intensity of his stare. Her shoulders slumped as she did not want to join her power to his, but she was neither strong enough nor had sufficient rank to do anything but accede to his order.
She flopped her hand into his. He gripped it and faced forward, closing his eyes, diving into the astral plane, and fighting his way through the hull of the ship. This close to the planet, the exotic metals could not hold him back. He was tired, but Fleeston’s energy gave him enough to take his soul on a short journey where he conjured a dragon of his own, creating it from the mists of the dimension.
He looked into its golden orbs, asking the great beast to help him, fly to the moon and see what there was to see. It would have to get past the other dragon first, but they didn’t exist in the same dimension.
It should have been effortless.
But the other dragon knew that an intruder was near.
The captain watched on the screen as half of the beast he could see disappeared as if leaning out a window.
Coraolis bucked in his seat, ripping his hand away from Fleeston’s. The captain grabbed the man, who looked to be having a seizure.