by Barry Lyga
“’e’s awake!” said a now-familiar voice. “Big ’un’s awake!”
“Awake and big, now! Big and awake!”
And then a third voice: “So he is. On both counts.”
Thanos lifted his head from the pillow again, this time slowly. The world spun, blurred, then resolved itself.
The chamber in which he found himself was dirty. The walls, made of metal, were pocked with patches of dull red rust. Light came from a single glowing orb overhead that occasionally pulsed dark just long enough to cause his eyes to adjust, then readjust to the return of brightness.
A wheeled cart, one leg bent such that the whole thing appeared ready to kneel, stood off to one side, and by it stood a tall, slender biped with orange skin and pointed ears. His face was fleshy, the mouth wide and generous, and his eyes were round and yellow. He was bare-chested; he wore only a belted green kilt and boots and a collar no doubt similar to the one Thanos had felt snapped around his own neck. He had an easy grin, which was both comforting and terrifying at the same time; Thanos wasn’t accustomed to anyone being happy to see him.
Standing by a door was another biped, this one with green-pocked white skin, sunken cheeks, and a thatch of patchy brown hair. Thin to the point of emaciation, he wore rags for clothes, along with a metal collar. On his shoulder perched a creature that resembled nothing so much as a gray blob of protoplasm merged with the top half of a hawk. Its wings and body melted into gray sludge on the man’s shoulder, clinging there like stubborn snot.
“I’m Cha Rhaigor,” the orange one said in a pleasant voice. “How do you feel? Other than almost dying from asphyxiation, explosive decompression, starvation, hypothermia, and thirst, that is?”
Thanos groaned as he sat up in bed. “You are a doctor?”
Cha Rhaigor chuckled. “No. But I have some medical experience, which qualifies me on this ship.”
“Ship?” He’d set Sanctuary to go into orbit and broadcast a distress call once it arrived at the Kree homeworld. “I’m on a ship? What ship? How did I get here?”
“You got lucky, ’s how,” chimed in the bedraggled one. His pet immediately responded, “Truth! So truth! Lucky! Lucky!”
Cha Rhaigor glanced back at them and shrugged. “They’re not wrong. Your ship was on a collision course with ours. We almost disintegrated it, but His Lordship didn’t want to spare the blaster power. So instead we sent out an EVA crew to knock it off course. They picked up your life signs aboard and brought you in.”
“And where is my ship now?”
Cha looked back at the others. “Demla?”
Demla’s eyes lit up. “Prolly ’bout twelve light-months thataway,” he said, hooking a thumb over his shoulder.
“Twelve! Thataway! Maybe thirteen!” the odd bird-thing croaked.
Thanos decided that his first act upon standing erect again would be to throttle the annoying bird-thing.
His second act would be to use this ship to arrive at his destination. It was owed to him, given that they’d left Sanctuary adrift in space.
“How far am I into Kree space? How far from their homeworld?”
Cha laughed. “Kree space? Is that where you thought you were going? You missed by quite a bit.”
Thanos did not readily sulk, but he brooded quite well. He sat alone in the medical bay after Cha and Demla and the bird-thing left, mulling over what he’d been told.
He was hundreds of parsecs from the Kree homeworld, nearly starved and wearing around his neck the same tight gray collar he’d seen on Demla and Cha. It resembled images he’d seen of ancient shock collars. No doubt it was designed to harm or kill him if he attempted to remove it. He knew almost nothing about the ship on which he was recuperating, except its name: the Golden Berth. Judging by the medical bay, it was an aspirational name that had fallen well short of its goal.
He’d missed Kree space entirely. “There’s a new black hole out by the Arthrosian Cluster,” Cha had explained. “Maybe it wasn’t on your nav charts? Your autopilot wouldn’t have compensated for the gravity well, so it dragged you off course.”
Thanos had considered this for a moment, and then Cha had put a hand on his shoulder and said, “Sleep, my friend. All things move us forward, even our mistakes.”
My friend, Cha had said. No doubt it was meant to be comforting, but the familiarity had only surprised and bemused Thanos. He was not used to being considered a friend so readily.
Nevertheless, he took the advice and slept. He had lain near death for too long; his body was depleted; his mind buzzed and made concentration difficult.
After a few days’ rest, though, his body felt more robust, and his thoughts came more easily. Cha gave him permission to leave his sickbed, and Demla came to show him around the ship. The bird-thing (it was named Bluko, and it was technically a shift-blot, a semi-sentient creature occasionally found in Rigellian territories, not a bird at all) went with them, of course, parroting Demla. Thanos didn’t know which was more vexing—Bluko’s echo or Demla’s recursive, oblique speech pattern. One of them gave him a headache almost immediately.
He was issued a large gray tunic to wear, along with a pair of boots. The tunic had been white once upon a time—its original color still showed in a few patches at the seams. The boots’ soles were worn through; he could feel the floor, cold against his feet, when he walked.
The Golden Berth was a wheelship, a curved tube rotating around a central axis, with sixteen spokes that led into and out of the hub. From the look of the corridor Demla led him through, the medical bay was a good indicator of the condition of the ship as a whole. Curved reinforced pulsoglass portholes offered a view outside, but at least a third of them were patched over with a viscous paste to cover cracks that would otherwise suck out the ship’s atmosphere into the vacuum. Thanos felt as though every step he took could be the one that rattled something crucial loose and killed everyone on board, including himself.
“She spins sumpin’ sumpin’ number of times a day,” Demla was saying, “usin’ central force—”
“Centripetal force,” Thanos corrected under his breath.
“—to mimic whatchacall, gravity.”
“Gravity!” Bluko added. “Weighs us down!”
“Don’t rightly understand it all,” Demla admitted, “but I ain’t bangin’ into the ceiling, so I guess it works.”
“Sure does!” Bluko burbled.
“Who is His Lordship?” Thanos asked. “Cha Rhaigor mentioned such a person. He owns the ship, I assume?”
Demla shrugged. “You’ll meet soon enough, s’pose.”
“Meet His Lordship! On your knees!” Bluko spat.
Thanos ground his teeth together and essayed a pleasant smile. “Could we make it sooner than ‘soon enough’?” He had already been delayed too long from his plan to raise help on Hala. Formality and niceties were luxuries he couldn’t afford.
Demla shrugged again. “Ain’t no harm, I guess.”
“On your knees!” Bluko repeated.
They made their way through one of the spokes, passing many other aliens on their way. None of them made eye contact for more than a few moments (those with eyes, at least), and most seemed not to bother evincing any sort of interest in Thanos. Even in the tight, cramped confines of the ship, where his size was, if anything, more a liability than in the Eternal City, Thanos felt…
Comfortable.
Here, in this motley crew of aliens, he finally blended in. Each of them wore a collar like the one around Thanos’s neck.
At the wheelship’s hub was His Lordship’s collection of chambers. Demla led him into a large, open room that served as a sort of throne room, apparently. It was dimly lit and in the same state of disrepair as the rest of the ship, which told Thanos that whatever His Lordship might be, wealthy did not apply.
His Lordship sat, appropriately enough, upon a throne made of junk. Thanos recognized a chair leg jutting out from one side, a lightspeed drive’s inertial dampener (burned out) as part
of the seat, and more broken pieces of debris welded together to form the ugliest, rustiest throne imaginable. The man was a study in contrasts, draped in a luxurious red velvet cloak that covered an old set of overalls and a dirty smock. He was tall and gaunt, with spare flesh hanging from his jaw and neck, as though he’d gone on an unexpected starvation diet. One eye was blue, the other brown.
He was surrounded by a cluster of armed creatures, some of which were humanoid, a few with too many limbs or not enough.
“Ya kneel,” Demla muttered from his position on his own knees.
“Kneel!” Bluko chirped loudly.
“The pet’s right,” said His Lordship in a bored yet pleasant voice. “On your knees,” he said, as though tired of the pageantry but resigned to it.
Thanos sized up the situation quickly. He was stronger than anyone in the room, he knew, but there was the matter of their weapons… and of the collar around his neck. Still, it was best to test His Lordship first, he reasoned. Thanos would never again have the element of surprise on his side. He could not overcome His Lordship, but he could show that he would not quietly acquiesce.
Be careful, he told himself. Don’t capitulate, but don’t antagonize, either. “I am unaccustomed to kneeling,” he said neutrally.
His Lordship’s eyes widened. The blue one turned red and the brown one shimmered a bright white for a moment. “Oh? Unaccustomed? I see. Well, that’s understandable. Totally understandable.” He tilted his head at the being next to him. “Robbo. Customize him.”
A pasty white man with patches of graying facial hair and a monk’s tonsure, Robbo strode to Thanos, looked him up and down. Wearing a filthy robe with one pocket torn off, he was two heads shorter than Thanos and weighed possibly half as much. Just when Thanos was thinking how amusing was the idea of this little creature forcing him to kneel, a bright pain flared in the front of his skull, just behind his eyes. The world went a harsh and total white, dimmed, then flared again.
He gasped, rocked back on his heels, grabbed his head in his hands. Everything in him fought against moaning aloud, but it happened anyway; he heard himself groan like a whipped child.
The collar… Pain transmission along his vagus nerve. It was unlike anything he’d ever endured before.
“Strong cuss!” His Lordship commented.
The pain shot through him again, and this time Thanos screamed unselfconsciously and dropped to his knees.
“Better!” His Lordship declared. “Now, was that so bad?”
As Robbo stepped back, Thanos rubbed his temples, kneading away the pain. Tears dripped down his cheeks, wrenched from him.
“Ouch,” said His Lordship, pursing his lips. “Psychic spike. Hurts, I’m told. Feels sort of like an ice-cream headache, dialed up to a hundred.”
He stood from his makeshift throne and cleared his throat, a juicy, phlegmatic endeavor that concluded with him hawking and spitting a wad of gray sputum. A smallish troll-like alien scuttled to his side and caught the spittle in his hands before it could hit the floor, then raced off through a door.
“Now then,” His Lordship said, standing over Thanos, “are you becoming accustomed to kneeling? Is this working for you? Because it’s a lot more convenient for me, let me tell you.” His eyes flashed different colors again—blue to green, brown to black—and then back.
Thanos massaged away the last of the psychic spike and gazed up at His Lordship. From this vantage point, he had a delightful view up the man’s nose, twin craggy, hairy caverns glistening with greenish snot. “If my presence is inconvenient for you,” Thanos said, “I apologize. I could make your life easier by leaving.”
His Lordship’s eyebrows shot up, and he clapped his hands with mirth. “Leaving? Did you hear that?” He turned in a circle, holding out his arms as though to gather in his entire entourage. “He wants to leave!”
Giggles, chortles, peals of laughter from the crowd. Thanos clenched his jaw, sending ripples through his broad ridged chin.
“And where would you go?” His Lordship asked. “We’re deep in the Raven’s Sweep. Nearest system is the KelDim Sorrow, and even that’s parsecs away, and no life-forms, nothing habitable. I guess I could just toss you out an airlock….” He frowned, looking down on Thanos. “Should I toss you out an airlock?”
The answer was easy, but Thanos didn’t know how His Lordship would react. He might take a no as a challenge to his own authority and eject Thanos into space just to prove a point.
“That would be a subpar course of events for me,” he said in as contrite a tone as he could muster through his frustration.
His Lordship threw back his head and blasted out a series of guffaws that coaxed similar laughter from the others in the room. Thanos noticed that Demla, to his left, was laughing, too, though the amusement didn’t reach his eyes. Bluko had—somehow—gone to sleep.
“Subpar!” His Lordship howled. “I bet! I bet you… Say, what’s your name, Subpar Course of Events?”
“Thanos.”
“Thanos.” His Lordship dragged it out, tasting the name on his tongue as it slipped through his lips. “And you must be from the planet of the purple people, eh?”
“No. Titan,” Thanos pronounced.
“Can’t be. No purple people on Titan. Some lovely shades of ecru, and a lass I knew once who was the most spectacular blue. Azure, even. No, no, more like cerulean. But no purple people.”
“I am… an exception.”
His Lordship grunted noncommittally and shrugged. “Whatever. Let me explain how your life works now, Thanos of Titan. You are aboard the vessel the Golden Berth, and like all aboard this ship, you are my chattel person. Now, I know what you’re thinking: Slavery is outlawed in most civilized regions of the galaxy! And you’re right. It is. But this is not slavery. It’s… it’s…” He paused, snapping his fingers. “Robbo! What’s that phrase, the one I keep forgetting?”
“Indentured servitude, my lord.”
“Yes!” His Lordship tapped his fists together, and his blue eye went a bright orange for a few seconds. “Indentured servitude! That’s it. Thank you. And how much have we spent on Thanos here, Robbo?”
“Eight thousand two hundred seventy-four yargblats, my lord. And sixteen twillum. For retrieval, medical care, food.”
The monetary units were nothing Thanos had ever encountered before.
“Eight thousand!” His Lordship clutched his chest as though suffering a bout of angina. “So much money for so little reward! So much money, and all I get is lip!”
He lashed out with his staff at that moment, catching Thanos on the right side of his face. His Lordship was tall but scrawny. Thanos read the room and pretended that the blow rocked him to one side.
Breathing hard from his exertion, His Lordship drank in the hooting applause of those in the assemblage. Demla clapped weakly, an apologetic look on his face. Bluko stirred long enough to crow.
Thanos resisted the urge to rise up and put his hands around His Lordship’s neck and squeeze until the man’s head snapped off. Other than the synth he’d “killed,” he had, as far as he could remember, never once in his life raised a hand in violence, but His Lordship was sorely testing that trend after only a few minutes.
Although… There had been the one time. When he’d thought of striking his father…
Is this my fate, then? To turn from a creature of thought and reason into a creature of base instinct and violence?
“We spent all this money on you!” His Lordship was saying, now pacing and gesticulating wildly. “The exo-ship extraction! The medical attention! The clothes you’re wearing! All of it, from me, due to my largesse and my kindness! All I ask in return is that you be polite and that. You. Pay. Me. Back!”
He punctuated those last words with repeated blows to Thanos’s head and shoulders with the staff. They weren’t terribly powerful, but Thanos feigned injury and collapsed to the floor.
The collar. If not for the collar… “I apologize for my spiritedness,” Th
anos said through gritted teeth. He had no desire to fawn over this absurd simpleton, but for now the best strategy was to play along. He looked at Robbo, the one with the control for the collar.
If I could only…
His Lordship held up a finger to call time-out, then bent over, gasping and wheezing from his exertion. A thick stream of snot and phlegm lurched from between his lips and hung there, too heavy to retract, but too viscous to break off.
“A little help!” he called.
That same troll-like creature scampered over with a soiled handkerchief and collected the snot, tugging it from His Lordship’s mouth. It took more effort than Thanos would have thought.
His Lordship wiped his mouth with the hem of his cloak. “Where was I? Oh yes—pay me back! It’s pretty basic. I do you a good turn, you repay me in kind. You will join the rest of this ship in my army, and when we get to where we’re going, you’ll kill a whole bunch of people for me, and then we’re even. Got it?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Great! Glad we had this chat. Since you’re feeling better, we’ll get you out of the medical bay and doing something useful. Bye!”
The audience was over.
CHAPTER XIII
HE WAS ASSIGNED DANK, CRAMPED QUARTERS WITH CHA Rhaigor. The room was so small that Thanos’s head bumped the ceiling when he stood fully erect, and if he strained slightly, he could touch two opposing walls at both ends of the room at the same time.
Cha eyed Thanos’s bulk and sighed. “You can have the lower bunk.”
The room carried a floral scent that Thanos could not identify, which made sense, given that he’d never left Titan before and Cha had never been to Titan. Cha hailed from the Sirius system. There were a dozen worlds orbiting that star, and Cha called them all home. His people were peripatetic, roaming the universe in search of students for their distinct flavor of pacifistic philosophy. He was a skilled medic doing his best to survive and help as many as he could under conditions that could most charitably be described as deplorable. Thanos could not help comparing him to the only other true friend he’d ever had, Sintaa. They could not have been more different. Cha was contemplative and quiet where Sintaa had been gregarious and boisterous. Sintaa had a big, ready smile, while Cha tended more toward a pleased and subtle grin. And of course, Sintaa had never left the Eternal City, while Cha had spent most of his life on the edge of the galaxy, preaching his philosophies to the barbaric unenlightened.