by J. S. Morin
“Go!” Esper ordered.
Tanny nodded slowly and backed away. Her marine friends followed her lead. When they were a safe distance away, Esper backed toward the Squall.
“Explain to Kubu,” Tanny shouted after her. “He… he won’t understand.”
Esper didn’t respond. No, he wouldn’t understand. She didn’t understand. Charlie kept a respectful silence as they took off together in the Squall, and as Esper broke down and sobbed.
# # #
Mort felt like himself once again. Even a fitful night in Mortania was better dressing for his salad than any mental comforts offered in the external world. The dilapidated Mobius was barely air-worthy, but it had delivered him to the alien city the next morning. He strode down to street level, staff in hand, ready to flex a bit of wizardly muscle that had grown stiff and cramped after a two-day sabbatical from his own good sense. Two days of yammering monkey techno-talk and lying to the universe about how great and wonderful science could be. He had really hoped for a few psychotic zealots of an alien religion to try barring his path.
But the city appeared to be deserted. Esper had reported everything about the previous night’s encounter, and she had predicted a fierce resistance, possibly with direct aid from the thunder-voiced deity. The marines were no fools. With Tanny having joined them, they’d know what they were up against. If they’d spent another whole hour before fleeing into the jungle, he would have been surprised. There were other cities, other temples out there. With one destroyed, the moon-wide multiplicative effect had collapsed. But Mort could sense the magic out there, dotted across the lunar surface—so much easier to identify now that they didn’t form a cohesive, monolithic force. The marine cultists would have fled to a place where their god still held sway.
A pity really.
There were two other obelisks in the city, but Mort chose to begin with the black one—the choice just felt right in his bones, and a wizard learned to trust his hunches. The brisk walk up the spiral ramp provided a good stretch for stiff legs and cleansed the ship’s science-scrubbed air from his lungs. By the time he reached the top, he was in a positively merry mood.
Inside the Temple of Listening, he strode up to the ramped dais and rapped his staff on the floor. “Come on out, you melodramatic slice of blasphemy. Say something, before I have to—”
The vaulted stone ceiling turned clear as glassteel, letting in sudden sunlight that forced Mort to squint and raise an arm to shield his eyes. “I AM DEVRAA. I SENSE YOUR PRESENCE, WIZARD. WHY DO YOU DEFILE MY TEMPLE WITH YOUR PRESENCE?”
“Well, just being neighborly,” Mort said, addressing the sky. “I’ve had a miserable time on your little moon, but that doesn’t mean I ought to practice bad manners. I’m not here to desecrate your temples, Devraa; I’m here to level them.”
“PUNY WIZARD,” Devraa replied, the disdain dripping from his words. “EVEN NOW, THE TEMPLE OF ORDER REPAIRS ITSELF. I AM ETERNAL, MY POWER IS—”
“You’re taking a holiday,” Mort said. “I’m kicking you out of here. And I’m not going to debate whether or not I can. I’m just going to do it. Good way to end a debate, if you ask me. And since you don’t seem to have your little cult on hand to stop me, you’re just going to have to look on helplessly from whatever hole you’re hiding in.” Mort’s best guess was that Devraa had a physical presence on the next moon over, locked into an orbital chase with Ithaca, but that was a subject for later research.
“YOU WILL REGRET THIS, WIZARD. I WILL SEE YOU DEAD.”
“The name is Mordecai The Brown. And you will not believe the number of people who’ve said that to me.”
# # #
A small party of dignitaries sat on salvaged chairs from the Odysseus, spread across the flat roof of one of the buildings in Devraa’s city. Parked behind them was the Mobius. The vessel was a long way from being spaceworthy, but it was fit for ferrying people and equipment between the city, the chasm, and the Odysseus crash site. The rooftop was festive. The kitchen table had been dragged out and set with a few Ithacan delicacies—and some questionable sandwiches from the newly reactivated food processor. The available crew of the Mobius mingled with officers from the Odysseus.
“I can feel it!” Esper said, putting a half dozen conversations on hold as everyone turned their attention to the black obelisk.
A crack sounded, sending a tremor throughout the city. Even from a kilometer away, the shock wave sent a jolt through shoes and chair legs. Everyone felt it. With a rumble of grating stone, the black obelisk shifted, tilting to one side before finally giving way and toppling over. It hit the streets, its bulk hidden behind the taller buildings. It caused a brief earthquake that had the viewers fighting to keep their balance. A plume of dust and debris rose from the wreckage.
“Bloody ghosts,” Parker muttered. “That guy works for you, Ramsey?”
“Old family friend,” Carl replied, grinning to his ears. “Usually keep him bottled up on a starship, where shit like that would kill every system on board. Nice to see him having a little fun.”
A bevy of questions followed. How did Carl find Mort? Where could they get a dozen more like him? What was it like having a wizard in place of a star-drive? Carl fielded them all and answered as best he could. These were his people now, not strangers. It was shit they were going to need to know… well, some of it was, anyway. Mixed in were oblique queries that probed for exactly what it was Carl did for a living.
By and large, these officers had lived upstanding lives. Most of them weren’t ready to hear the unvarnished truth, or even the slightly varnished truth. Instead, he walked them across a layer of bullshit so thick they couldn’t see the tops of their boots. It was Carl’s life as he would have told it to the director of the holovid adaptation.
Eventually Esper called their attention again. “Next one, coming up.”
This time it was the gray tower that fell—the one that worried Carl the most. The black one was harmless, and potentially amusing. Talking to Devraa wasn’t awe inspiring so much as comical. Let the no-necks fall for the “I’m a god, worship me” routine. All Carl heard was a pompous voice with no source. Mort had made him watch The Wizard of Oz enough times to know that trickery was only as effective as the mark was gullible. Devraa was behind a curtain somewhere, pulling one over on everyone; he just knew it.
The crowd’s reaction this time was cheering, rather than shock. These were people who had lived under the heel of that tower’s suppression of science ever since crashing on Ithaca. “Take that, magic tower!”
“Fuck, yeah!”
“This is our moon, Devraa!”
“Another one gone,” Carl said, nodding to himself.
“Another one bites the dust,” Scarecrow said, catching his eye with a twinkle in hers. She was back to wearing her TeleJack again, but otherwise he’d have hardly recognized her as the same woman who came aboard the Mobius. Relaxed, smiling, playful. What a burden she must have felt, carrying on the Odysseus search all those years.
“You remembered the line,” Carl said.
“Twenty hours a week of sim battles, and those early Dawn-of-Data Era songs of yours blaring the whole time? How could I forget?” There was something different in the way she looked at him, too. Though he’d been accused of it many a time, Carl was no fool. He’d never kissed her before yesterday. She had been under his command; it would have been a horrible breach not only of military etiquette but of common decency. Somehow, he’d mentally compartmentalized her into the same category as Rhiannon and loved her like a sister. But he wasn’t her C.O. anymore, and she seemed to be thinking along the same lines.
And why not? They had a history, a trust, and a bond that he’d rarely had with anyone—even his other squadron mates. She had been his wingman. They had common interests, and she was one of the only people who could understand the love for a single-seat fighter craft. It wasn’t love at first sight; first sight had been years ago, across a desk, going over the dead weight on her servi
ce record. With Tanny things had started with a torrid series of shore leave flings, and maybe that was the root of where it all went wrong. The fire of that passion burned out, and all that was left in the ashes were a couple wedding rings they kept trying to force-fit onto their fingers.
Scarecrow caught him staring and shot him a tight-lipped smile before glancing away. Was she blushing? Carl wasn’t imagining it. He’d seen her get ogled by drunken spacers on nearly every planet where they’d taken shore leave, heard her tell jokes that would make a doctor turn red, and caught her naked walking to the shower in his own damn ship, but he had never seen her blush before. Overthinking things had never gotten him anywhere in life, and it wasn’t time to start now.
“Hey, um… Amy. Can I buy you a drink?”
She turned back and regarded him with a puzzled frown. “But drinks are—oh… yeah. I’ll have whatever you’re having.”
Amy eyed Carl as he headed for the refreshment table. Her expression was mixed between bemusement and red-faced shyness. As Carl wove his way through his guests, the rest of the spectators were taking glee in the show. Parker and Doherty were treating the temple destructions like a live holovid. Ensign Niang and Chief Yao carried on a conversation, both with grins permanently affixed; Carl eavesdropped briefly and discovered them making plans for offworld. Esper watched with pride as Mort cleaned up what she’d started, erasing the alien deity’s hold on the city—if Devraa was a deity, which Carl tended to doubt.
Kwon, however, remained silent. She watched with catatonic focus.
Carl ducked low on his way by, keeping his voice down so only she heard. “What’s going on in that head of yours?”
“One man. So much power.”
“Careful, Kwon. Look what chasing wizards got you last time.”
She turned weary eyes on Carl. Sephiera Kown couldn’t have been more than a year or two older than him but looked as if she could have been his mother. “This was never about me and Azrael. That ended months before the crash.”
“Sure,” Carl agreed. “Maybe for you. But I don’t think he saw it that way.”
“He was always insecure,” Kwon said, looking off into the distance. “I mistook it for humility at first, but it got old fast.”
Carl snickered. “Well, you’d never have to worry about humility with Mort. He just won an argument with a temple while its god watched the whole thing. He doesn’t do humble… considers it hypocritical.”
“Carl,” Esper called. “Can we join the search for Mriy and Kubu once Mort finishes up?”
Carl continued to drink-laden table as Esper trailed him. “I’ve got people for that. They’ve lived in this jungle for years, and none of the scanners are working on the Mobius yet. We’d just get in the way.”
“What if they went into the Odysseus?”
Finding two matching bottles of something clear and Martian-looking, Carl claimed them and popped the tops. “Clean-up crews are heading there this afternoon—if this place has afternoon—with blasters. If they’re inside, Mriy and Kubu will turn up. But they’re trackers. I’m sure they would have noticed that you came back out of the ship before they got there.”
Esper took a stern glance at the double-barrel liquor Carl toted. “Then why didn’t they find the chasm? Why didn’t they find Troy?”
Carl sighed. It was a hazard of having Esper on the crew, listening to her constant worrying. At least she hadn’t commented on his beverage choice. “Listen. We’ve got nearly three hundred people now, and everyone’s got a job to do. The best people are out looking for them right this minute. I’m sure Mriy and Kubu are just fine.”
# # #
Mriy and Kubu lay in a pool of blood. The azrin was propped against a wall, cradling her bandaged arm against her chest. Kubu sprawled on his side, motionless. Carl’s enchanted sword lay on the ground, still providing a faint glow that served as the only illumination.
“I blame you,” Mriy said weakly. She leveled an accusing finger at the canid, claw extended in reproach. “You are a horrible companion.”
“Kubu hurts.” He whined to emphasize his point.
“Your just reward,” Mriy replied. “And you dragged me down your witless path. ‘Just try them’ you said. ‘They are oh so yummy.’ Now look at us.”
Kubu lapped at the blood puddled near his muzzle.
“Stop it!” she snapped.
“But they taste good.”
Indeed, the growling creatures that inhabited the downed battleship had been a delicacy. On Meyang, they called creatures that tasted too good to bring back from the hunt ‘sugar-bloods.’ It was an instinct that a good hunter learned to overcome, gorging on a fresh kill. In the wild, hunger was to be sated, then the kill brought back for the clan. But to allow Kubu to lure her into a decadent feast of delectable carnivores was a mark of shame.
The growling, fang-mouthed creatures were just divinely flavorful. They lay dead by the scores in corridors throughout the ship, their scent taunting Mriy and Kubu both, available everywhere, but out of reach. In theory, the worst injury between them was the bite Kubu had inflicted on Mriy’s arm. But beyond that, both had gorged to the point where they could no longer stand. Prior to this hunt, she hadn’t known such a state existed for Kubu.
# # #
Carl looked out over the gathering. He had never been big on prepared speeches, so he had written himself a couple notes, memorized them, and decided to improvise the rest as he went along. These were his people now, under his command in the most awkward of circumstances. Not a damn one of them was actually in Earth Navy officially, yet everyone kept on pretending as if they were. It was time to map out the star lanes for them, let everyone know where they stood.
In the shadow of the ENV Odysseus, Carl stood one switchback higher on the trail than everyone except for Amy and Kwon, who flanked him on either side. Mort and Esper were at the back of the crowd below, both dressed in formal wizard attire so no one forgot who they were. Mriy and Kubu were sleeping off a binge killing. Roddy was hard at work, eager to put something back into spaceworthy shape to make a beer run to a nearby system. Rhiannon was somewhere in the crowd, enjoying newfound popularity as the only act in town.
Tanny was just gone. Off with the marines according to Esper. If she had turned on them, good enough for her. Sooner or later, she’d come slinking back when the allure of arm-wrestling contests and fifty-kilometer hikes wore off. In the meantime, he’d be avoiding any comms from Don Rucker.
Everyone else spread below at the base of the mountain was now a part of his crew. Parker and Doherty had agreed ahead of time; the rest had come by fiat when he took over command. It was time to see who stuck around.
“Hello everyone,” Carl said. He wore Roddy’s guitar slung across one shoulder, ready to play but not actually intending to. Its mic pickup was the only thing Carl could find on short notice to amplify his voice. “In case you’ve only heard people call me Ramsey, or Lieutenant Commander, or ‘that fucker who walked in like he owned the place,’ my name is Carl. I was never big on titles and chains of command except when it was convenient for me. I don’t plan on getting carried away with it now.
“Some of you have been wondering what it’s like offworld, what’s going on in the rest of ARGO space. Well, it’s a shithole, same as it ever was. I’m sure you lads and ladies have romanticized it, being caught in this rat-trap world as long as you have. But if anything, it’s gotten worse, especially for you and me.
“You see, High Command wasn’t too keen on losing an experimental battleship. You can’t hide five thousand dead crewmen, but you can hush up the how and why. Your families, your friends, your comrades in the fleet, all believe that every last one of you is dead. Your next of kin got death benefits. I’m sure more than a couple of you have spouses who have remarried. Anything you owned has been handed over to someone else or sold off. Me and the survivors of the 333rd Squadron got the screws put to us. We knew too much, but they weren’t quite willing to eliminate us. T
hey paid us off, shuffled us around, and eventually booted us out of the navy entirely.
“And in the navy’s eyes, we were the heroes.
“Imagine what it’s going to be like, going back home. Earth, Mars, Luna, Titan, or any of the extra-solar colonies… those are all places where you need a history. A thousand different databases all got updated that you’re dead. Try to get an in-system shuttle from Titan to Earth without a valid ID… see where that gets you. Want a job in the commercial sector? Try getting hired when the navy denies that you’ve existed the past six years.
“Right about now, some of you are thinking to yourselves: ‘Hey, this is Earth Navy. I’m a lifer. They’d never do that to me.’ Well guess what? I thought I was a lifer, too. And now I just try to make ends meet running my own ship, doing odd jobs. Face it, folks. You’re an inconvenient truth that makes a few very powerful people in High Command look really bad. Billions, maybe trillions of terras got sunk into this project, and it just vanished. Odds are, you show up in ARGO space, there’s a good chance you get taken into custody for a permanent ‘debriefing.’
“So why are you all standing here listening to my bullshit? Let me tell you why. I’ve got an offer for each and every one of you. I’ll give you three choices. The first one, you keep on living the good life down in that chasm of yours. No problem. Second, once we get a ship capable of maintaining life support, we start ferrying you off to the outlying colonies. There’s a condition though: you breathe a word about this place, we’re all in danger. I’ll have your word that you can keep your mouth shut before I give anyone a ride off this rock, but that’s all I’ll ask from you. You’ll swear in front of my wizard buddy Mort though, so don’t go thinking you can lie your way outta here.
“The last option’s the one I’m most interested in. Come to work for me. You’re not in Earth Navy, and neither am I, not officially anyway. But I’ve got a small organization you can join. So far, it’s been a single ship, a single crew, one job at a time. With your help and the resources on this moon…” Carl paused to sweep an arm up at the Odysseus, looming above them. “We can get real rich.