by Blaze Ward
Female. Close enough to the standard bipedal form that she could pass as human woman with a little work and low lighting.
Daniel reached out carefully, cognizant that someone on this station had touched him before and then vanished.
Her emotions were loud as he listened, rather than shielded away behind some barrier that might hide her.
Nervous. Skittish at the group of dark-skinned strangers that had moved so close, but not quite ready to flee. Tempted to talk to them, maybe. They were so close.
Daniel ground his teeth together and swallowed the sudden ball of rage that had formed in his mouth that he had to do this.
He touched her mind.
It was like opening a randomly-pulled book down from the shelf and letting it fall open on the table.
She was alone. Afraid. Lost.
He pushed a little, moving past the surface of her mind like a diver entering the water.
Species: Kaniea. A form that had evolved similar to human from similar environments and the way physics affected everyone. Blue to his pinkish brown. Three slender fingers and a long thumb on each hand instead of four.
Close enough for government work.
Why are you here?
He didn’t form the words directly into her mind so much as trigger them to see what memories responded. Urid-Varg had taught his victims many useful things you could do inside someone else’s mind.
Daniel felt like the worst of any two evils right now, but it was necessary. A stranger had gotten Erin’s attention in a bad way.
He watched images of the woman.
Girl. She wasn’t much older than Ndidi, who was herself young enough to be his own daughter.
Warrior, too. Proud child on what Daniel’s brain kept wanting to interpret as a coming-of-age quest. Except she’d never returned to her homeworld, drawn to seek something greater than a mere sign from the gods.
Or maybe the gods had bigger plans for her.
She had a name, too, once he dug deep enough.
A’Alhakoth ver’Shingi. It conveyed rank and importance within her culture. Not quite a princess, but not a peasant either.
Just a young woman far from home.
Daniel saw no threat, so he reached across the table and took Erin’s hand. Shared his mind with her, that she could turn around inside herself and see this stranger, this warrior youth named A’Alhakoth.
In Kathra’s service, he could convince himself that it wasn’t rape, to open a woman’s innermost thoughts like this and study them. Felt like it, though. He’d want a long shower when this day was done, but he did not do it for himself.
As long as Daniel kept telling himself that, he wasn’t evil.
Erin’s mind turned back to his after a few seconds of study.
“New recruit?” she asked.
“Kathra’s call, but I see nothing disqualifying her,” Daniel replied.
“I meant comitatus,” Erin clarified.
“I know,” he said. “And Kathra would have me do the same thing to her then, instead of taking the initiative to do it now.”
“Understood.”
Erin separated herself and he let go.
A’Alhakoth must have sensed something had occurred, because suddenly her heart was racing. She was on the verge of bolting, when what she really needed was a friend.
It wouldn’t be him. Especially not once she found out what he could do. No woman would ever trust him once they learned that truth.
But he reached out and quietly took hold of her emotions with an iron fist. Carefully, he wound everything back down until she was calm.
He let go finally and looked down into his broth.
So little time had passed that a sip was still almost too hot handle, but hopefully it would do something about the pounding in his head.
He watched Erin stand up, turn around, and seat herself across from the other woman.
Sixteen
Erin watched the girl like she would a new recruit auditioning for a spot in the comitatus. All of those women met her standards before they ever got presented to Kathra.
Daniel had done something to the woman. Erin could tell that just from the way her breath had slowed all the way back down to normal over the last five seconds. And from having been inside her mind just a little before that.
She knew Daniel was feeling like a shit right now, for having done it, but he had followed her orders. Erin had been inside his head enough to know that it would help his state of mind that way. He didn’t think it was as evil when someone else ordered him to use his powers.
“Kaniea?” Erin asked politely. As if she didn’t already know the girl’s species.
The girl nodded, navy blue eyes hooded under brows that weren’t all that heavy, but conveyed seriousness of intent right now. And she spoke common Spacer well enough to follow the conversation.
“We’re human,” Erin continued. “Tribal affiliation Mbaysey. I’m Erin Uduik.”
Another nod. Not offering a name back, but that was fine. Strangers. Strange place.
Anybody spending any time in the Free Worlds would have picked up some level of Spacer, regardless of what they spoke at home. Erin just had to pretend that the girl might not be as fluent as Erin knew she really was.
Erin watched the woman. Behind her, the others were paying attention, but nobody had moved to do anything. They would also be watching their corners for others coming along with an unwelcome attention to the group from WinterStar.
The blue woman watched her now. Processing, from the way her eyes flickered over Erin’s shoulders to take in the others.
Erin could have told her that A’Alhakoth ver’Shingi had no meaningful secrets, but then she would have to explain how she knew that.
Nobody was ready for that conversation, just yet, but Erin also knew she could trust this woman’s world and character. That was a powerful tool, to be able to recruit someone and know who they were.
Even if it made Daniel a little evil. She’d make it up to the man later somehow.
“Is there a reason you chose to join me?” A’Alhakoth ver’Shingi asked in a cool, modulated voice almost as deep as Erin’s alto.
One hand wanted to stray off the table, but she kept it in sight. Erin didn’t even move, sure that the folks behind her could react faster than the blue woman could.
“You looked like someone alone and far from home,” Erin replied honestly.
She did, and it was a very brutal truth.
If you wanted to travel the galaxy, you either had to be extremely wealthy, or work odd jobs along the way. A’Alhakoth was getting down to the point where she’d have to find a job soon.
“So?” the blue woman asked bluntly.
“So we’re about to set off on a grand adventure towards the center of the galaxy, from the distant rims where we’ve been,” Erin said. “The Commander put me in charge of recruiting around here, looking for folks that might have a better feel for those sectors.”
As lies went, this one was pretty believable, and Kathra would back her up one hundred percent if asked. Second in command of the comitatus meant Erin had a tremendous leeway for interpreting things, as long as she understood that enough mistakes in judgement on her part might force her to give way to someone like Areen or Iruoma.
Not that much would change if that happened.
The woman studied her for a long second. Erin could see that too-good-to-be-true gleam in her eyes. Understood it.
A gift horse walking up and offering three wishes, to mix all the metaphors wrong.
“You know the kaniea?” A’Alhakoth asked, surprised if Erin was reading the tone of her voice correctly.
That girl was a long ways from home.
“I do not,” Erin said. “Daniel recognized your kind and gave me some of the details.”
“Daniel?”
Erin turned and looked over her shoulder.
“Daniel, Ndidi, could you join us?” she said conversationally.
J
oane and Iruoma would go back to being paranoid hawks watching her flanks now, with Erin and Ndidi facing the other way.
The blue woman studied the three of them with a nervous twitch that hadn’t been there a moment ago. Possibly feeling a little outnumbered, but Erin didn’t offer to send Ndidi over to balance things out a little.
Let you face up to three on one odds and show us what you’re made of.
“I’m Daniel,” he said simply. “I’ve researched the kaniea, as well as the anndaing, the ch’sh’xx, and the K'bari. We’ll actually be looking for some K'bari worlds, and I think they lie in the same general direction as your homeworlds, not quite as far in and a little driftward.”
“K'bari?”
She seemed astounded. Like maybe they were legends from her people, one of the lost tribes that had more or less faded out. Many species did that after a while, although Erin didn’t think humans would ever fall into that category.
Daniel said something in a language Erin had never heard. The girl nearly levitated out of her seat when he did, so it must have been good.
Or one of the ghosts in the man’s head spoke kaniea well enough.
Her eyeslits opened all the way up when she got nervous like this, that much was obvious.
Erin wondered if she had read the girl right. Maybe had pushed her a little too hard, from the way the eyes got even bigger.
She seemed set to bolt.
“We’re in wing four, bay seventeen,” Erin said to her, trying to cut through the noise.
It was obvious that Daniel was just letting her deal with things now, rather than doing anything to calm the woman.
“What are you people?” A’Alhakoth asked.
“Humans,” Daniel said quietly. “Seekers, looking for something we think is hidden deeper into the central areas.”
He turned to look at Erin now, a question in his eyes. She nodded permission.
“We are looking for ways to flee the Free Worlds and the Sept entirely and irrevocably,” he continued, his voice growing lower and turning into more of a growl. “To build a better life for the tribe someplace where the people here can’t chase us. As Erin said, we’re looking for scouts we can hire.”
Erin figured that they’d done enough damage to this poor, periwinkle woman. She rose abruptly and stepped back, pausing to grab her bowl and slip the travel lid back over it so she didn’t spill any.
“Safe travels,” she said as Daniel and Ndidi rose a beat later, a little confused but not saying anything. “Four seventeen if you change your mind.”
She turned and walked away, confident that the others would watch anything behind her. A’Alhakoth needed time to decide if she really wanted to walk off a cliff and try to find a place on an alien starship, but anybody would. Erin only knew what she was capable of, not what she would actually do.
Kinda like the rest of them.
Seventeen
She already knew that the man seated across from her was something of a sleazeball, but he was also her best choice for what she needed next, so Kathra had put up with the sly innuendos and subtle invitations she had no interest in pursuing.
Based on what Daniel had said, the man was just wired that way, and probably didn’t even recognize it himself. To Factor Isaev, every woman was a potential prize to be pursued and conquered, for no other reason than the conquest itself.
It didn’t seem to matter to him that she was slightly taller, much stronger, and utterly repulsed at the thought of his touch. If anything, that probably heightened the desire on Isaev’s part.
So she had dressed for war her way tonight. Erin and the others had worn what generally worked as the uniform of the comitatus when they had to be on a station for a reasonable period of time.
Heavy boots to mid-calf designed for planetside terrain as well as station treads. They were a rough, matte brown that didn’t require stupid amounts of time and effort to keep clean, mostly because Kathra didn’t believe in lining all the women up for inspection.
If you were in the comitatus, you were good. If you started to slack, the others snapped you back into place, or Kathra would eventually retire you out to flying SkyCamels. Same with new mothers. You stopped flying combat missions when you had a daughter waiting at home for you.
The comitatus these days was wearing long pants tucked in and made from a reasonably heavy denim they had found at Soomi, someone closing out nearly one hundred long-bolts of the stuff, all in a soft orange somewhere midway between sand and flame. Daniel had called the color tangerine, and that name had stuck.
Jackets were the same material, lined and then waterproofed, because every damned TradeStation has thermostats controlled by men and kept three to five degrees cooler than Kathra kept WinterStar. Black pullover shirts under the jackets stood out against the brightness of the fabric.
Like the rest of her women, Kathra had a pistol strapped to her thigh, available in a hurry if she needed to take someone down with a compact particle projector fed by ammunition disks. Splatter someone’s silly ass all over the place.
The only thing that really marked Kathra different from her women was the half-cloak she had added tonight. It hooked loosely at the neck, but not so tight that someone could grab it and control her. Like the uniform, it was tangerine, but edged in two embroidered colors, black at the outside and blue a finger inside that.
Standing with the rest of the women out in the salon, it made her look like a Commander, rather than a poor, tribal leader seeking favor.
Kathra Omezi granted favors to lesser beings.
If you were lucky.
Trade Factor Isaev turned to her now, as his majordomo finished delivering coffee and tea to everyone and seated himself. That put four on the far side of the table, with two new people, both male, who looked more like mechanics than anything. Possibly retired ones that had gone into yacht design, or something similar.
She had Daniel, Erin, and Ndidi, while half a dozen others waited outside in the salon, presumably making Isaev’s employees nervous. The men he had on staff were obviously guards, some of them even looking professional enough, while the women were all domestics.
Pretty ones, too, doe-eyes and rather stupid looking, so Kathra had no doubt that they served double duty in this household.
She fixed her eyes on Isaev and dared him to spend the next hour on blandishments and irrelevancies, like a Sept gentleman greeting a distant relative of unknown provenance.
He seemed to understand her game, not that she was trying all that hard to conceal it. And while he was the biggest game in town, he wasn’t the only one. Plus, this wasn’t the only system in the Free Worlds capable of building warships for her.
“So we have studied the specifications of the four ships you currently have on offer,” the Factor began abruptly, surprising only the people on his side of the table. “My experts tell me that none of that technology is all that common in human space, and some of it completely unknown.”
“So my people tell me,” Daniel spoke up serenely.
Kathra scowled so she didn’t grin at the understanding of who Daniel’s people were.
“All of them are in flyable condition right now, but none come equipped with a valence drive, so they are shuttles functionally, rather than interstellar yachts,” the Factor continued.
“Yes,” Kathra agreed blandly. “I brought them here aboard WinterStar when I transported Daniel.”
“The price you are asking for them is impossible,” Isaev said.
He really didn’t mean it. That much was obvious from the gleam in his eyes. They were just down to the dickering stage. Earlier than she had expected, even.
“For four shuttle craft each not much larger than two SkyCamels put together, I would agree,” Kathra smiled at the man, turning to include his three flunkies in the look. “However, you have nothing like them in your collection, nor does anyone else. Plus, you can incorporate the technology included in them with new vessels your yards put out, so you will be abl
e to charge exotic, new prices and have a psychological leg up on your competition, for however long it takes one of them to steal the ideas themselves.”
“And you will not tell us where you even found them?” Isaev asked.
“Correct,” Kathra smiled and leaned back. “Part of the reason I wish to commission a ship from you, or purchase one and have it modified, is so we can go look in places where Daniel’s predecessors traveled, to see what other interesting things we might find.”
“Ram cannons are illegal on civilian vessels,” the Factor pointed out.
“The Mbaysey are a stellar nation unto themselves, Trade Factor,” Kathra let her tone get sharp and deadly now. “This vessel will become part of my navy. Plus, we will not be spending any significant time in the Free Worlds, other than to cross to a border and exit. Similarly, we will return at some point, and I’d prefer if any pirates out there decided there was easier game to be had.”
“How many other vessels do you foresee selling in the future?” Isaev asked, splitting his glance between her and Daniel now.
Daniel shrugged. Kathra smiled.
“Not all of them are even flyable, at present, and some may never be repairable, either,” she said. “A few are so alien that it will take us time to translate the old manuals and notes, before we could, in good conscience, sell them to someone else.”
She liked the way his eyes flickered at that. Just a moment of greed so deep it was like that cartoon duck swimming in a lake of gold coins.
Alien tech might be better than human. Someone capable of understanding such tech and building new ships might have such a head start on their competitors that it took a generation to catch up. What amount of money was that worth?
Yes, she knew where this man’s pressure points were, courtesy of Daniel. And she began to understand the nature of evil as he saw it.
If no one could stop you, the urge to just take something from someone might be overwhelming after a while. You could change the world, make it a better place, but only so far as you saw it. Others might disagree.
Changing them to see things your way was an evil comparable to six strong men pinning a woman down and taking turns at her.