by Ian Whates
“You all right, Mosi?”
“Fine, it’s just Naj moaning about being sidelined.”
“You took point last time out, remember? Now it’s someone else’s turn.”
“That’s what I told her.”
“Besides, the captain’s been itching to take the lead in something now that he’s recovered. Who are we to deny him?”
“I told her that, too, but she’s still moaning.”
“Same old Naj. I’ve missed her.”
“So have I, Lees, so have I.”
Things had not been going well for Nate Almont. Ever since he returned from Xter space with Pelquin and rest of the Comet’s crew, matters seemed to have slipped away from him somehow. It was funny: you spent much of your life chasing a dream, only to discover when you finally caught up with it that the chase had been the fun part. The dream itself fell way short of expectations.
Pelquin and Bren: who could have seen that one coming? Certainly not Nate, and he’d thought he knew them better than anyone. It seemed fitting that they’d been brought together by imminent death at the hands of zombie alien spacesuits, but he would have preferred them never to have got together at all.
As a consequence, he was reduced to this: sitting in a nondescript bar in a nondescript town on a nondescript world nursing a glass of deep amber spirit with a kick only marginally less lethal than that of the zombie spacesuits.
Oh, everything had seemed fine to begin with. Wealth wasn’t about to change them, no sir – they were still the same tightly bound bunch of devil-may-care adventurers they’d always been.
Like hell.
Even after paying the heavy fines levied against them for the ship’s precipitous departure from New Spartan airspace, there was still plenty of profit from the Elder cache to share around. They might not have been flush enough to rub shoulders with the upper echelons of New Spartan society, but they each had plenty by anyone’s standards. Looking back, it was naïve to think that prosperity wouldn’t change the dynamic, to expect everything to continue as it had before with their appetite for new adventures undiminished, but somehow he had.
Leesa, their latest recruit, had been the first to bail out. Nate still wasn’t entirely sure of her reasons, except that she had grown increasingly pre-occupied, even as Pelquin and Bren became ever more lost within their burgeoning relationship.
Monkey was the next to go. He had always had a thing for Bren, beneath all their banter and teasing, and seeing her so wrapped up in someone else must have proven too much for him to take. Nate was only too aware of how that felt.
New crew were taken on, but it wasn’t the same; this wasn’t his crew any more. Then it had been Nate’s turn to quit. There was nothing special about the world – just the latest port of call at which they were collecting goods to move on elsewhere and sell at a small profit – he simply couldn’t bear it any more. His anger and frustration were proving increasingly difficult to master, while he couldn’t honestly have pointed at a single cause. It was either leave or start hitting things – his old friend Pelquin, most likely, while screaming in his face don’t you remember what happened with Julia?
So this time, when Pelquin’s Comet moved on, Nate stayed behind. Pel hadn’t even tried to stop him, not really. Perhaps he too sensed that this was the right time for them to go their separate ways.
“No more being dragged off to shady restaurants to sample the local ‘delicacies’ for me, then,” Pel had said, and for a moment Nate sensed their old connection, but it was little more than a fading echo.
“Guess not,” he said. “Just a steady diet of pre-programmed authochef meals to look forward to from here on in.”
“Sounds like a win win to me.”
“Why are you still doing this, Pel?” Couldn’t he see that since the cache find they were just going through the motions, that his heart was no longer really in it?
“Because I don’t know how to do anything else,” which was the most honest thing Nate had heard from him in a long while. The moment evaporated. “Take care of yourself, Nate.”
“You too.”
Out of all of them, Bren had seemed the most upset, as if she sensed the finality of his going; a line had been drawn, which there was no stepping back from.
“Are you sure about this, Nate?” she said.
He was sure.
“You’ll always have a home here… Don’t forget us.”
He never would, but the Comet didn’t feel like home to him, not any more. So here he was, sitting in the aptly named Spacer’s Lament bar, facing the imminent prospect of alcoholic oblivion because it postponed the need to wonder what the hell he should do next.
He still had enough credit to ensure that oblivion could last a good long while if he wanted, but that wasn’t his style – it never had been. Having said that, there was no rush; it wasn’t as if he had anywhere to be…
Nate paid little attention when somebody sat down on the stool to his left, but when a second figure claimed the seat immediately to his right a split second later, defensive instincts kicked in. He didn’t look up, not immediately. It might be perfectly innocent but his gut said otherwise. A shakedown, or something more violent?
Male to his left, female to his right, he could sense that much. Lifting his glass with steady hand, he glanced to the right as casually as he could manage… and froze, the drink poised partway to his lips.
“Leesa? What in Elders’ name are you doing here?”
“Hello, Nate, fancy bumping into you in a place like this. Is that whisky as rough as it smells?”
“Rougher.”
“Sounds right up your street then, Lees,” said the man to his left. He knew that voice too, and his heart sank at sound of it.
“Drake.” Someone up there must really have it in for him.
“Small universe,” said the banker.
“Not that small. What the hell is going on here?”
“We have a proposition for you.”
Nate wasn’t interested. He couldn’t have cared less if he never set eyes on Drake again, but he was intrigued. So while Leesa waved the barman over and ordered a round of the tragic excuse for a whisky, he allowed the banker to lead him to a vacant table. There were plenty of those – it was still early and business at the Spacer’s Lament was sluggish. Drake looked thinner than he remembered, a little frailer, as if he might actually need that ridiculous walking cane which he still carried.
Had these two really gone to all the trouble of tracing him to this tired bar on an unremarkable little world? It was hard to credit – and Nate had no idea how they could even have achieved such a thing – but it beat the alternative, namely that they had bumped into him purely by chance.
“When did you and Leesa hook up again?” he asked, to fill the silence until Leesa could join them.
“Only recently,” Drake replied, which told him nothing. “She found me in the middle of nowhere,” which tantalised more than it informed; Nate refused to be drawn in.
“Okay…” he started to say as Leesa plonked three tumblers of sloshing spirit in the middle of the table and claimed an empty seat between the two men. His attention focussed on the glasses for a moment. “Doubles?” he said, with less enthusiasm than he might.
“Of course.”
“So tell me,” he began again, “how did you track me down and why the hell did you bother?”
“Ah, therein lies the fun part,” Leesa said, grinning. “We didn’t know it was you we were tracking down.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean.”
“Almont,” Drake cut in. “What are you doing with your life right now?”
The question caught him off guard, and he replied, almost by defensive reflex, “Drinking.”
“Alone,” Drake pressed, “with, unless I miss my guess, the Comet not in port. Have you and the good captain had a falling out again?”
“Fuck off, Drake. I enjoy my
own company, that’s all, which is what I was busy doing until you two barged in.”
“Boys, boys,” Leesa said. “Play nicely. Nate, we came to this bar knowing there was somebody important we had to meet here. Then we saw you and realised why. How would you like to join us in bringing down an interstellar conspiracy and whipping the ass of a would-be alien overlord? How would you like to be a hero?”
Nate stared at her. “You what?”
They went outside. Nate wasn’t entirely sure why he agreed to do so, except that he still wanted some answers and reckoned that playing along offered his best chance of getting them. Leesa led the way, taking them along the side of the building to a dingy alley that ran behind the bar.
Were they planning on attacking him after all, these two former shipmates – well, one shipmate and another who’d been forced upon them? Here, in a dank and dirty alley that reeked of piss? There was no one else in sight, no witnesses, and Nate tensed, half expecting the worst.
“We’d like you to meet a friend of ours,” said Leesa.
“What friend? There’s nobody…”
The words died on his lips as a shadow on the wall behind Leesa shifted disconcertingly. Nate’s head whipped around to look behind him, but there was nothing there, nothing to cause that odd movement. He focussed on the shadow again. It seemed to be moving forward, away from the wall – which defied reason – and as it came it gathered substance and form, transforming into the figure of a woman: slender and incredibly feminine, moving with a grace that was almost mesmerising. She came to stand beside Leesa; a woman carved from black marble and then dipped in oil to judge by the way light rippled across her ‘skin’.
“This is Shadow,” Drake said.
“Shadow?” Nate blurted. “As in the Dark Angels?”
“Got it in one,” Leesa said.
As he watched, still trying to process what he’d just seen, a film of silver rose from the ground, hugging Leesa’s form as it flowed past her ankles and upwards, to cover her body rapidly from toe to head. The two women stood there and might almost have been twins in negative – yin and yang – one burnished silver, the other gleaming black, though Leesa was a little stockier, more solidly built.
“Hel N,” Nate murmured.
“Oh you’re so good at this,” Leesa said, her voice emanating from the silver figure.
Nate’s gaze shifted to Drake, who stood off to one side, a look of amusement on his face. You’re enjoying this, you bastard, Nate realised. All he actually said was, “And that would make you…?”
Drake executed a deep bow with a flourish of extended arm. “Francis Hilary Cornische, Captain of the Ion Raider, at your service.”
“No fucking way.”
Eight
Leesa could not have been more surprised on seeing Nate when they entered the Spacer’s Lament. There was no mistaking her former shipmate, who sat at the bar, hunched over a drink. He hadn’t seen them as yet, apparently lost in his own thoughts.
The captain was a fraction behind her in the recognition stakes. “Is that…?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Looks like it’s not one of the old team we’re here to make contact with after all, but a potential new recruit.”
“So it would seem,” the captain acknowledged. “Why does it have to be him, though? Bren I could understand – she used to be a soldier, and even Pelquin I could get used to in time, but Almont?”
“I know, the proverbial pain in the ass, but he does have his good points.”
“You’ll have to fill me in on those when we get a moment. I don’t imagine you’ll need longer than that.” Drake drew a deep breath. “Okay, let’s do this. You take the stool to his right, I’ll go for the one on the left.”
The meeting went much as anticipated, though Nate seemed in a particularly lary mood – enough to make her wonder how many of the crude local whiskies he had knocked back before they appeared. Despite this, they succeeded in coaxing him out to an alleyway, which wasn’t obviously overlooked, to make the big reveal. The look on Nate’s face as she summoned her suit from where it had gathered on the soles of her feet was priceless.
“So if the danger to humankind is as great as you say it is, why aren’t the Dark Angels high-tailing it over to confront this threat rather than skittling around different worlds picking up flotsam like me?” Nate asked.
They were in ops, curiosity bringing everyone together to meet the new arrival, and Nate was clearly relishing being the centre of attention.
“Because we’re not strong enough as yet,” the captain said. “The Dark Angels scattered after I broke up the crew, and not all of them are proving easy to track down again, even with Cloud’s input.”
“And in the meantime, the bad guys have a free crack at breaking into this Lenbya place.”
“Lenbya isn’t without its defences, and Saflik haven’t yet been able to make any real progress on that front.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because Raider would know if they had.”
“I am Lenbya.” Raider chipped in, “or an aspect of it, and I can assure you that, for the moment, defences hold.”
Cornische was doing his best to appear relaxed, but Leesa could sense that his patience was being tested, while Nate, for his part, seemed to be enjoying himself immensely, taking perverse pleasure in the captain having to court him.
“And you want me to join the Dark Angels,” he said. “Stepping into a dead man’s shoes, as it were.”
“No one’s forcing you, Nate,” Leesa said quickly. “We’re offering you the opportunity, that’s all. If you don’t want to accept, just say so and we’ll be gone, leaving you to head straight back to the bar and whatever that excuse for a drink was.”
“Of course,” Jen joined in, “if you have somewhere else to be, we wouldn’t dream of trying to keep you.”
Nate stared at her for a moment. “As it happens, I am at a bit of a loose end right now. What were my choices again?”
“Don’t push it, Nate,” Leesa said. He really was milking this. “We’re not that desperate for your company.”
“Gabriel,” Jen said with deliberation, “Siren – but both their skills are complex enough that they’d take a while to master, so neither would be ideal right now – Spirit, Helix, and Quill.”
“Quill, he’s the one who could shoot high velocity needles, right?”
“Yeah, they can punch through just about anything.”
“Even so, it just sounds a little bit… lame to me,” Nate said.
“That pretty much sums up Quill’s personality, too,” Mosi quipped – the pair had never got on. No one disagreed with him.
“There’s always Ramrod,” Leesa blurted out, the words escaping before she had the opportunity to back away from saying them. The comment drew a quizzical look from the captain. “Trust me, he definitely won’t be coming back to us,” she said in response, the words harder to voice than she would have liked.
She caught Jen’s sympathetic expression and flashed her a quick smile by way of reassurance.
“Ramrod?” Nate’s demeanour brightened visibly. “Now we’re talking. He was always one of my favourite Dark Angels.”
Leesa looked back at the captain to check that he was okay with the idea of replacing an Angel who was still alive. “That’s… a possibility,” he said, which was enough to set her mind at ease on that score. “We’ve got the harness, after all, which is where the power lies. It’s just a question of whether you’re the right man to wear it. Does this mean you’re ready to accept our invitation?”
“Do I get a bit of time to mull this over?”
“No,” Drake said. “We might have a little breathing space before Lenbya’s walls come tumbling down, but not enough to fritter away. This is a one-time-only offer. Take it, or take your leave.”
“Oh, what the hell? You’ve convinced me. I’m in,” said Nate, with a grin that told Leesa he’d been in
tending to say yes all along.
The captain gave a curt nod. “In that case, Jen, please take our latest recruit to the artefact room.”
Leesa felt relieved to be spared that particular task. As it was, seeing someone else in Kyle’s gear was going to take some getting used to; she wasn’t sure how she would have reacted to witnessing someone else encounter it for the first time.
She kept a tight rein on her emotions as she watched Jen lead Nate out of ops, glad when he disappeared from sight. There was another matter she needed to consider; something she had been trying to avoid ever since returning from the raid on Darkness Mourning, but which had been brought to the fore by the prospect of a new Ramrod. When she and Jen had gone to Babylon in a futile attempt to recruit Kyle, the original Ramrod, to their cause, he had triggered a device he referred to as a nullifier, which had suppressed her auganic side.
She had been reminded of it by the trap the Night Hammers had used to capture Geminum, and it seemed to her that parallels could be drawn between the two. Was there a link, or was she just being paranoid?
They knew that one former angel, Donal, had aligned himself with Saflik, might Kyle have done the same? It would certainly explain why he had been so blasé about the threat Saflik posed when Leesa and Jen had explained it to him, and why he refused to join them.
She baulked, though, at even considering the possibility: not Kyle, not the man she had shared so much of her life with. Unfortunately, she could imagine all too readily how Saflik – an interstellar criminal organisation – might have come into contact with Kyle, a local crime kingpin in la Gossa. Would he really have betrayed his former friends and shipmates? Much as she hated the idea, she couldn’t completely dismiss it, and that fact saddened her.
Leesa decided to keep her suspicions to herself for now. She needed to ponder the matter further before sharing with the captain.
The first thing to confront Nate as the doors to the artefact room slid open was Captain Cornische.