The tang and taste of salt and iron mingled with his tears.
Thud. Fists on flesh. The flash of Father’s ring.
Moans.
The silence was worse.
Jesson struggled against the constricting webbing—he had to save Ma. He had to hide from Father. The rhythmic throb of the Knight Hawk stilled his limbs.
He hadn’t had that dream in years. Snapping open the webbing, he swung his legs off the sleeping pad and buried his head in his hands. His encounter with Teir must have triggered the memories he preferred to keep locked away. He was a ship’s captain now, not a frightened boy. And that planet, that land of peace and beauty that his mother had sung about, no longer existed. Singing, or dreaming about it, wouldn’t bring it back.
He folded the sleeping pad back against the wall to pull down the flap of his console and the swivel chair that transformed his sleeping quarters into his office. Space on the Knight Hawk was limited, but at least he was master here.
Passing his thumb over the console, lights flickered on, and the Knight Hawk’s trajectory and current position appeared on the screen. The Knight Hawk had started the countdown to the last jump before the final run to its home planet, Xanta. That planet had stopped being home the day Father drove his fist once too hard into Ma’s face. But Father and Shadow had ensured he hadn’t escaped his fetters, yet. Saddling him with a caged creature that was probably the size of a well-fed canine was proof enough.
If Shadow, or his father, wanted to get him arrested on entering Xantian airspace, they couldn’t have found a better way.
He thumbed in the link to the cargo bay.
“Captain?” Vincente’s bald head filled the screen.
“Has the creature eaten?”
“It’s taken water but left the dried meat pellets.”
Not a predator, then. Damn Teir for not giving him any information about what was in the box. “Give it vegetable pellets.”
“Did so already. It would be better if we know what we’ve got.”
“I’ll come down later.”
“Ne majey ge…”
Jesson whirled round, for a crazy moment expecting to see Ma behind him. Nothing but blank walls and folded bed pad. His cabin was too small to hide a desert rat, let alone a mortal. Yet someone was singing.
Cutting Vincente off, he searched his room for some hidden device. Nothing.
“Ne majey ge…”
His empty eye socket twitched and itched. The voice sounded young, anxious. Could one of the crew be playing a joke on him? Yet who knew Ma’attan?
He strode out of the cabin, the voice continuing to cocoon him in its embrace. It was everywhere, and nowhere, filling the spaces of the Knight Hawk with sound—which no one else heard.
Of course they didn’t. Ma had no reason to haunt them. Only him. He’d failed her.
He was going mad.
The singing continued. Songs about Ma’att, songs about freedom, songs about love, songs about loss.
Stee took to following him with her eyes, her gaze a silent question. She knew something was amiss. She’d been with him since his first voyage, when he was a mere youth who’d barely known how to program the Knight Hawk and get the ship in the air. But he couldn’t tell her his mother’s phantom had decided to take up residence in his head.
The voice piped on.
Why had Ma waited twenty-six years to curse him? The death of the boy must have been the chaff that tipped the scales. The Ma’attan valued life above all. The boy had been part of his crew, his responsibility. He had betrayed his Ma’attan heritage, and all that Ma had taught him.
He’d become just like his father.
* * *
Off Xanta
Jesson woke up drenched. Father was angry with him for going into his office. He whipped him, then he whipped Ma for not keeping him close, out of sight.
“Ne majey ge…” Old is the land of the people. The land was Ma’att, and Ma’att meant both homeland and Mother.
“Farem’ije toa…” A mother’s love is infinite, eternal.
“Stop it,” he yelled.
The voice faltered, then halted, as if the phantom paused to watch him unravel.
“Ajeni!” Help me.
Jesson groaned. “Help me,” she’d screamed then, too. But he hadn’t been Ma’attan enough to stop his father. Just as he hadn’t stood up to Teir and demanded what that chip was really worth.
“Ajeni, toimoi’d.”
Jesson shuddered. The voice sounded frightened, but hopeful, too. Ma had always been strong—like all Ma’attan. At least she’d stopped singing.
His heart banging against his ribs, Jesson sat up, his gaze darting round the cabin. He hardly remembered what Ma had looked like; he only remembered long black hair, and green eyes the colour of wet grass.
“Ajeni, toimoi’d.”
Toimoi’d. Male—not son. “Who are you?”
“Ye’ma.” Girl.
Jesson crashed off his bed, swept out of his cabin and lunged for the descent pole that would take him down to the lower levels of the Knight Hawk. Not bothering to latch on the safety strap, he plummeted down and his boots slammed onto the cargo bay. Rounding the shuttle, he gazed around the space as if he’d never seen it before. Every square inch had a function: food storage; flares; weapons rack; off world clothing; spacesuits; one square box.
Teir’s container stood in the middle of the floor.
“Captain?”
“Leave.”
Vincente snorted, but did as he was told, shimming up the pole as agile as any of Xanta’s primates.
We’re all animals after all.
Jesson ran his hands over the container. He didn’t have the codes to open it.
Father would.
“Ye’ma? Ye’ma?” He hadn’t communicated through thought since he’d been three years old. With Ma.
“Toimoi’d?”
“Stay low, as low as you can get.” Jesson strode to the weapons rack and took down a laser gun.
Shadow would not be pleased. They might even renege on the payment.
How had they expected him to get a box that size through customs? Of course they knew he’d have to open it, break it up. And Shadow needed that chip. He’d be made to pay a price for the loss of a containment box, but they wouldn’t back out of their agreement.
He set the intensity of the laser to its lowest setting and fired.
Plastic blackened, dissolved, and one of the locks fragmented. The jagged hole grew around the ruined lock, and a stench of sweat and fear exploded out of the breach. Jesson enlarged the opening, then took his finger off the trigger. Large green eyes below a fringe the colour of the void peered out of the opening. Skin more golden than his. A pure Ma’attan, one of the few still alive.
“Close your eyes. Don’t look.”
The girl lowered her head and shut her eyes. He pressed the trigger again to destroy the second lock. The child did not whimper or move as the laser continued to melt her prison. She was Ma’attan—strong and resilient. Just as Ma had been.
“You can come out now,” he said. He pulled up the lid and reached in, but the girl flinched and backed away.
Long moments passed. Jesson felt the girl touch his mind, like a feather across his thoughts. Her rapid breathing slowed. She shuffled within the box, then thin fingers gripped the side of the container, the girl’s disheveled hair appeared above the rim, then her dirt streaked brow and her eyes, the exact shade of grass after the first rains.
She couldn’t be older than ten.
Father liked them young. Ma had been young too, he’d just never realised how young.
Jesson reached for one of the landside jackets hanging behind him. He chose the smallest one—the boy wouldn’t be missing it—and draped it round the girl’s shoulders. “We have a spare cabin you can use.”
Xanta’s grey orb filled the console’s screen. Jesson shut it off, then, pocketing a gas pistol, he strode out of his cabin and slid do
wn the pole. He found the Ma’attan girl and Vincente in the galley, one floor up from the cargo bay. The girl was seated by a fold-down table, playing with one of the toy gadgets they’d lifted off the starship, while Vincente monitored the two food portions he was heating.
The girl looked up and her contentment faded.
Of course she knew what he intended. The Ma’attans could read minds. Even his half-breed one.
Vincente switched off the heater and straightened. “Have you thought about how we’re going to explain Eja?”
Eja? If even a stone-faced Xantian cared enough to learn the child’s name, the quicker she was off the ship the better.
The cargo master placed one of the food cartons next to the girl. “Careful, it’s hot.” He mimed touching and pain.
“We’ll drug her and say she’s a crew member who drank too much. We can’t have her questioned by customs.”
“Her parents were killed by Shadow.” Vincente’s gaze shifted behind Jesson as Stee joined them. The tiny galley had become decidedly too crowded.
“How do you know? Ma’attans are dumb,” Stee said.
Jesson stifled a bark of laughter. Silent to others, perhaps. But not to Ma’attans. Eja hadn’t stopped prattling and singing these two days.
Stee eased past Vincente and filled a cup with water. She dropped a sleeping tablet into the water and pushed it towards the girl. “Drink.” She mimicked the action.
Eja’s gaze swung to Vincente, then Jesson.
Her fear lanced him. Fear had darkened the colour of Ma’s eyes, too, whenever she knew she’d displeased Father.
He’d lose his ship, perhaps even his life, if he didn’t deliver the girl.
“Help me,” she’d cried in her box. Just as Ma had screamed, before Father had silenced her forever.
Eja must have been terrified in the dark, locked in a box, but she hadn’t cried. She’d face worse horrors at Lord Jesson’s house.
She’d survive—she was Ma’attan.
And he…he was not. A man without dignity has nothing. No race, no motherland. Not even song. His mother had been wrenched from her home, her family, her planet, but she had not stopped singing.
The girl had sung in her cage, too.
Ma would have been ashamed to call him son. And Father never called him son, either.
Once you touch the depths, the only way is up. That’s what Ma used to say after each beating.
He had the fastest ship in the galaxy and the coordinates to an unknown world. He couldn’t give Ma the homeland she’d lost, but he could give it to one little girl. And shield her as he couldn’t shield his mother from Father’s fists.
“Don’t drink it,” he told Eja.
“Don’t be a fool,” Stee said. “She’s not worth it.”
“Behind you,” Eja cried.
Jesson whirled, sheathing the girl with his bulk and drawing his pistol. Vincente had drawn a weapon, too. Heat seared Jesson’s cheek, stunning him. Eja cried out and, behind him, a pistol clanged to the floor.
Stee reeled and crumpled to the ground.
Jesson gaped at Vincente and tightened his grip on his pistol. “You’re a Shadow man.” He should have known. Vincente was Xantian after all. Shadow, or his father, must have arranged to have Vincente meet him, just when his previous cargo master had decided—or been induced—not to return on board.
The fluctuations in the communication schematics now made sense. “You sent encrypted messages. Who do you report to? My father? Teir?”
Vincente’s eyebrow twitched. “Drop that.” He jerked his chin at the pistol in Jesson’s hand.
“After you.”
“That’s not going to happen. A gas pistol’s no match against a laser.”
“You wouldn’t have fired it inside a ship unless it’s at its lowest setting.” He had to bank on Vincente not wanting to blow them all to smithereens. “Get down, Eja.”
The girl slid under the flimsy protection of the table. It would have to do. “I want you off my ship,” he told Vincente. “You can take the shuttle to Xanta.”
“You’ll need a cargo master to get through customs.”
“I’m not going to Xanta. You can tell my father he’s not getting Eja. He’s destroyed one Ma’attan too many; he won’t hurt another.”
Vincente smiled. “I’m not Shadow, Stee was. I’m Patrol.”
What?
“Drop your pistol, you’ll only get us all killed.”
There was a reason why lasers were locked away on board spacecraft. The little girl gazed up at them. She still clutched her toy and a tiny frown scrunched up her face.
“Don’t be frightened,” he said.
She shook her head. “You’re Ma’attan. And Vincente’s a good man.”
If Vincente was a good man, what did that make him?
He could fire his pistol, the gas would disorientate Vincente. And with a bit of luck, the patrolman’s laser wouldn’t hit anything too vital before that happened.
What then? He could bundle Vincente into the shuttle and set its coordinates for Xanta. Then he’d load the Knight Hawk with the colonists’ destination chip and race away from this system. He’d be on the run from Shadow. And on the run from the Patrol—but that had been his life these last ten years.
It was no life for a little girl.
She’d love that watery planet.
He couldn’t go there. The Patrol knew he had the coordinates. They’d follow them. And Eja deserved better than a life on the run. Just as Ma had deserved better than a life as a slave. And she shouldn’t have died so young.
Just as the boy shouldn’t have died.
And nor should the colonists have died, and so many others like them. So many lives lost because of his wrong decisions. A mother’s love is infinite, eternal, Eja had sung. Perhaps he could deserve that love and honour Ma’s sacrifice. Jesson let the pistol drop from his hand.
Vincente kicked the weapon away. “Captain Jesson, you are under arrest for piracy. You will be locked in your cabin till I hand you over.”
“Trusting of you. Will that be before or after you inject me with paralysing serum?”
“You were ready to give it all up for the girl. I don’t think I need to incapacitate you. Yet.” Vincente slid a location bracelet over Jesson’s wrist. “I’ll see the colonists get back what you took off them.”
“So they’re alive?”
“Of course. A Patrol was waiting a jump away. I beamed the information as soon as you decided on your target.”
And rigged the schematics. “When you return the destination chip, perhaps the colonists could take Eja with them. She’d like that planet.”
Vincente smiled at the girl, and she scrambled up and slipped her hand into Jesson’s. Her delicate fingers radiated warmth into his palm.
He should be comforting her, not the other way round.
Would the colonists think her dumb, too? He coughed to ease the tightness in his throat and looked at Vincente. “Why did Patrol plant you on me? I’m nobody.”
“You’re Lord Jesson’s son. We hoped to get to him through you.” Vincente thumbed his credentials into the console by the exit hatch, then input a string of digits. “I’ve denied you access to the Knight Hawk’s control.”
“Of course.” He’d lost the one good thing he’d called his own.
“Trafficking in Ma’attans will earn your father a few years on a penitentiary planet. But if you testify against him, we could ensure he’ll never be able to hurt another child again.”
Jesson rubbed his destroyed eye. It always itched in times of stress. He hadn’t been able to defend Ma when he was three. Perhaps he could see that she got justice. He was Ma’attan, after all, just like the girl. Solid as the land. Fluid as the rivers that no longer ran in that lost world. He had needed to be, to survive. Perhaps one day he’d be allowed to board a colonists’ ship and join Eja. He’d sing the songs with her and make Ma proud.
When you reach the depths, the o
nly way is up.
After the Deluge
By Peter Golubock
* * *
“Shouldn’t we hoist the black flag?” asked the first mate.
They’d been shadowing the merchantman for more than an hour in the East Channel, edging closer by dribs and drabs, acting the part of a lowly water taxi ferrying tired servants from the island back to the main as the day came to a close.
The captain adjusted her eyepatch. “Not quite yet, I think,” she said. She didn’t speak loudly, but then again, she didn’t have to. The crew hung on her every word. Now she reached in her pocket for a stale crust of bread, offering it to the pigeon perched on her shoulder. It regarded the morsel for a moment, then cooed appreciatively and snatched the crust from the captain’s hand. “Whaddaya think, Bloombito?” said the captain to her bird. “Is it time?”
It wasn’t an easy question to answer, and Bloombito the pigeon would have been well advised to think before responding. Hoisting the Jolly Roger too soon would give the merchie time to run and sound the alarm. But every second they waited was another opportunity for a sharp pair of eyes aboard that fat merchie to sweep over the seemingly innocent water taxi a few points windward and to see the concealed gun ports and then to turn tail and run, screaming for help from the Navy as they fled.
The captain’s reverie was interrupted by the second mate’s arrival on the quarterdeck. “Avast, Cap’n,” he said, doffing his battered ball cap by way of greeting.
“Avast and ahoy, Roberto,” replied the skipper. “What’s the word?”
“The boys and girls are eager, Cap’n,” he said, tugging one of the plaits in his matted black beard for emphasis. “It’s been, what, near three weeks now since we caught that pleasure-yacht in the Central Lagoon?”
“And what’s the latest on the fuel situation?” It was this problem more than any other that had gnawed at the captain this past hour, as they’d crept up on their unwitting quarry.
“Clemenza says we’ve got ten minutes at full speed.”
Scourge of the Seas of Time (and Space) Page 20