by Blaze Ward
That ship might be older than written records on Kanus, and it would be gone. Already, the craft had a noticeable tumble, plus the three terrible wounds in the shell that had killed it.
A light appeared on the far edge of the ship. Detached itself and moved away. Not directly towards her SkyCamel, but closer.
“Kamsichor, I need you up here now!” A’Alhakoth yelled.
“What’s happening?” the woman unbuckled herself and flowed forward to the co-pilot’s seat.
“We’re unarmed,” A’Alhakoth said. She pointed at the screen and the image out the window. “And I don’t care to know what that thing is. You need to plot us a course to the Concursion so we can get away.”
“Kathra always required three lags in an approach,” Kamsichor said as she powered her own systems live. “That way, she cannot be followed.”
“Whatever you need to do,” A’Alhakoth said. “Plot us an away and go.”
“Understood.”
Thank the gods that Kathra had refit several of her SkyCamels with petite valence drives while she was at Tavle Jocia. That would save their lives right now.
“SkyCamel Nine, what is your status?” a voice suddenly came over the radio.
Was that Erin?
“This is SkyCamel Nine,” A’Alhakoth replied as Kamsichor’s face lit up with excitement.
But the other woman didn’t know about the mind-controlling snakes.
A’Alhakoth opened her engines a little and pushed the bow away from an intercept with that beacon of light moving through space. She had no idea what sort of range the pink snakes could mind-grab you, and didn’t care to get any closer than she had to.
“A’Alhakoth, this is Erin, Iruoma, Kam, Nkechi, and Daniel,” the voice continued. “Those salauds killed the Turtle and we’re making our escape in one of Daniel’s weirder shuttle craft.”
“And your friends?” A’Alhakoth asked.
“Iruoma killed two of them in the fracas,” Erin said. “The others tucked tail and fled. They might be still stuck on the Turtle, unless they can figure out how to open the flight deck. Where’s our other friend?”
“I tried to fly WinterStar into the Septagon,” A’Alhakoth laughed with an edge of hysteria. “Well, Kamsichor did. I think they jumped to light-speed to escape. All their hunting dogs apparently went with them, but I expect everyone to return once they can. Does your ship had valence drives?”
“According to Daniel, something close enough,” Erin replied.
“We were about to plot a path to Concursion,” A’Alhakoth said carefully.
Somewhere, the rest of the Mbaysey tribal squadron was waiting to meet them. A’Alhakoth had only heard stories about the ships. All the ClanStars. The two WaterStars. IronStar. ForgeStar.
Hopefully, the Commander would be waiting for them to arrive, and not too badly put out at what A’Alhakoth had chosen to do, when it came time for a fight.
“Acknowledge Concursion,” Erin said. “We will get there long before you do, if Daniel’s memories in my mind are accurate, so I’ll have Kathra roll out the welcome mat and have Ndidi fix something extra special for dinner.”
“How’s Daniel?” A’Alhakoth asked.
She wasn’t sure how she felt about the man. The rest of the Mbaysey had a low opinion of males in general, but accepted and even liked Daniel. She wasn’t sure how she felt about a man who could do those things.
But the tribe was apparently still alive because of him.
Again.
“Unconscious but stable,” Erin said, almost evasively. “We’ll know better in three days.”
Three days?
Even a SkyCamel could have made it to Concursion in that time. What had happened to the man when the Sept killed his ship? Or were the rumors true and Daniel’s life was umbilically linked to the ship? Had the death of one killed the other?
“Understood, Spectre Two,” A’Alhakoth said. “We will see you in a few days.”
The ship-art-piece was painfully bright to look at out the window. On the sensor screen, it was just a pulsing dot in ways she didn’t think screens were supposed to display. It was almost like the sensors couldn’t get a lock on it.
But that wasn’t possible.
Was it?
And then it was gone.
A’Alhakoth blinked rapidly and saw an afterimage of light streak across her vision, where the lightship had moved. She had never heard of a ship making a jump like that.
What kind of ship had Daniel’s predecessor stolen?
“Course plotted,” Kamsichor announced in a quiet voice that held as much pride as her eyes did. “Destination: Concursion.”
“Take us home,” A’Alhakoth replied with an equally proud smile.
Fifty-Four
“Is he dead?” Kathra asked, as she watched a medical team load Daniel onto a cart and start to transport him to the new medbay her brand new ship came with.
That had been one the few places she had upgraded her ship from the raw hull and basic equipment that Trade Factor Isaev had built her.
“I don’t think so,” Erin replied, falling into step with her as the followed her chef out of the flight deck. “But he also hasn’t woken up.”
The other three followed, waving and exchanging hugs with the rest of the comitatus, who had been waiting on pins and needles for them.
Kathra glanced back at the thing that had brought them to Concursion. She recognized it from the Turtle, but hadn’t been aware that it was still flight-capable.
“You don’t think so?” Kathra’s feet slammed to a halt and she turned to confront Erin.
“It’s complicated,” Erin said, taking her hand and dragging her to where Daniel was still out cold on the cart.
Kathra didn’t resist much as Erin placed her hand on Daniel’s, halting the entire procession in the hallway.
“Daniel, it’s Erin,” she said quietly, leaning down to speak directly into his ear. “Kathra’s here.”
She wasn’t sure what to expect, but suddenly she was falling into Daniel’s mind.
There was a room. It suggested a small living room on the surface of a planet, located rather out on the edge of town, with a small, fenced in yard visible through a picture window.
Daniel was seated on a cloth-covered couch, looking like he had just woken up from a six-day bender and dressed in simple black cotton.
“What happened?” she asked.
Rather than speak, memories flooded her mind. Urid-Varg attacking the ishtan and destroying most of them. the, stalking the conqueror, and then stalking Daniel. Capturing him and the four women and carrying them to the Turtle so the ishtan could destroy it as well.
The air around her turned cold and dark, like stories always suggested, just before lightning struck. Yet another reason she didn’t live on a planet.
Daniel seemed reticent to continue, so Kathra pushed. He could be like that. Stubborn, but only when he thought he was protecting someone else from pain or indignity.
She was still at least as tough as he was, but new facets of the man were seemingly revealed every day.
The pain of the Axial Megacannon slamming into the Turtle was the worst thing she could ever imagine, even worse than that childbirth still sometime in her future. Three times it hit, blasting holes in the previously-impenetrable shell and wreaking havoc inside.
Finally, the Turtle itself died.
Others might question it, but Daniel had been inside the thing’s primitive mind at that very moment when the overload of pain and agony caused it to surrender life itself.
Daniel had only held on by the thinnest of threads. Looking back at him now, seated in the couch while she was in a nearby chair, she wasn’t sure he wanted to live.
“I had to get them home,” he said quietly, as though even breathing hurt, let alone talking. “I owed them that much.”
“Daniel, we owe you more than you will ever understand,” Kathra replied. “Your body is on my new warship, custom-built and
a vast improvement over WinterStar. You have saved us now several times, and revealed many of my enemies who thought to move in secrecy. You are Mbaysey, now and forever. Even if you chose to leave us at some future point, that will not change.”
Some of the pain on his face faded.
“I failed,” he said, speaking mostly to himself.
“How?” she snapped, anger rising up now, since that seemed to be the thing he needed. “You were overwhelmed by six of them, yes. They knew that they could handle you, or they never would have played such games to draw you in. What they never appreciated was how stubborn Iruoma really is. And she killed two of them, so the four remaining won’t be strong enough to take you again, except by surprise. And they can’t hold you. My own memories show that.”
“The Turtle is gone,” he whispered. “All that wealth would have transformed the Mbaysey. All that history gone forever.”
“Urid-Varg lived in his own past,” Kathra pointed a sharp, accusing finger at him. “Reliving the glories lost, rather than seeking new adventures. Even attacking the Mbaysey was just him trying to find something to excite him, after he had grown inward and strange. You would do the same if you never left your kitchen again.”
“I shouldn’t,” he said, rising somewhat to her anger. “Look at what I’ve done.”
“What have you done, Daniel?” Kathra asked. “I’ve seen your memories as well as the many creatures you have stolen them from. The Left Hand of Evil? You are nothing like them. I only have to witness the slightest bit of Urid-Varg’s life, or the ishtan to know that. You work hard not to let the power you have corrupt you, although I can see that I’m going to have to force you to spend more time in the front of the house, so you can’t wait out the rest of your life hiding behind your pots and pans from the rest of us.”
“I failed.”
“You survived,” she said. “You brought Erin, Iruoma, Kam, and Nkechi home. A’Alhakoth, Kamsichor, and Adanne are a day behind you, also safely escaped. The only thing I lost was WinterStar, Daniel. The Star Turtle was always a larger problem, threatening to divide the Mbaysey and the comitatus. And I expected it to eventually drive you away, where you would most likely turn into another Urid-Varg, even if you couldn’t transfer yourself on. Assuming that it would be possible, requiring great enough ennui on your part.”
She leaned back and studied the room around her. Homey. Warm. She suspected it had been his childhood home. The place he retreated to when he was frightened.
Like now.
“I’m not done with you, Daniel Lémieux,” she pronounced gravely. “The comitatus is not done with you, especially as you are the first male ever admitted. It is incumbent upon you to teach other males how to serve, as well as non-fighters like Ndidi how to become warriors. You will return with me to the waking world. Am I clear?”
She could see him squint. Pain, disbelief, or refusal was unclear, but Kathra Omezi wasn’t having any of it.
“Awaken,” she commanded him. “All of life is pain. Losing Yagazie was the hardest thing I have ever faced, but it could not stop me.”
“And the next time I fail you?” he asked quietly.
“Then I will have failed you, Daniel, to have put you there without sufficient help,” she replied. “That was my failure before, thinking that five members of the comitatus would be enough. Next time, it will be all of them, myself included.”
That finally seemed to get through to the man. He flinched, but it was a different kind. Painful awakening, perhaps, that he was part of the comitatus, now and forever.
“It is good,” he whispered.
Kathra found herself standing in the hallway again. Daniel’s eyes were open. They still contained all the pain in the universe, but he would not die.
Daniel Lémieux had chosen to survive.
Fifty-Five
A’Alhakoth sat uncomfortably on the bench, seated across the table from the Commander in the primary dining hall. All of the comitatus surrounded them, with Erin and Daniel on her side and Ndidi and Areen next to Kathra Omezi.
“Kamsichor and Adanne inform me that they destroyed all the records remaining on WinterStar before the three of you abandoned the ship to its fate,” Kathra said.
A’Alhakoth couldn’t tell if the woman was smiling, but there was no grand frown. Nothing like Iruoma habitually wore.
A’Alhakoth settled for a nod. She hadn’t thought to order something like that, but she had never commanded a starship before, let alone one in mortal combat. Some of her poorer relations were still impressed by indoor plumbing and air conditioning.
Kanus was like that, poised on the edge of the future, but still stubbornly hanging on to the primitive past in places.
“And you killed my ship,” Kathra Omezi continued in a deep, hard voice.
Again, A’Alhakoth nodded. It had been the only way she could think of to hurt them, once it became clear just how badly hurt the Star Turtle was, and how overpowering a Septagon would be, to say nothing of all those Patrol craft flying around.
“Normally, losing a ship would be cause for severe punishment, A’Alhakoth ver’Shingi,” Kathra’s face finally cracked enough to smile. “Possibly enough for me to cast you out of the comitatus and even the tribe itself.”
A’Alhakoth caught the smiles on the other women’s faces now. She relaxed a little.
“However, you also took on a Septagon by yourself, you three women,” Kathra said. “And you commanded them to ram that vessel on your own, as a last act of defiance that probably saved your comrades, not knowing how badly damaged the Star Turtle was.”
A’Alhakoth shrugged this time. It sounded so much more noble than the profanities that had been going through her mind at the time. Most of them were unfit for any sort of company except the women, and man, she was sitting with today. And they already knew them, so it was unnecessary to repeat them.
“So let me say good job,” Kathra smiled now. “I already knew you had what it took to join us. Hopefully, you have finally proven it to yourself as well.”
Hands reached out now. Touch. Slaps on the back. Pokes. However these women personally conveyed their own support and welcome.
It still felt strange to belong to a sisterhood of alien women, but that was just because none of them were blue.
She had come home.
Fifty-Six
Pasdar had ordered the destruction of WinterStar. Not as a navigational hazard, but as a final insult to the women who had thought that they might attack a Septagon, rather than surrendering to it. The Axial Megacannon had liberated all its energy on the ship and shattered it into a small plasma cloud that would eventually fall into the nearby sun.
The infamous Star Turtle that had so haunted Septagon Uwalu was dead. It tumbled through space, already beginning to heat as the atmosphere of the orange star reached out. He would have given much to find a way to salvage the vessel and her secrets, but they had hours, not months. It would be enough to stand off at a safe distance and watch the vessel succumb to the heat.
And perhaps Kathra Omezi might return, hoping for some final heroics. The Axial Megacannon was charged and prepared to shatter her new warship, or any of her friends that wished to die today.
“Aspbad, we are detecting a power signature from the wreckage of the alien vessel,” one of the men spoke up suddenly.
Pasdar was out of his chair almost as fast as Rostami, both of them gathering over the shoulders of the man who had spoken.
“Threat?” Rostami asked. From the tone, Pasdar knew he was on the verge of unleashing all the secondary weapons, from the Ram Cannons down to the shortest-range beams, just in case.
“Negative, sir,” the man paused to double-check his screens before looking over his shoulder. “If this is correct, it appears to be a class of light cargo shuttle commonly called a SkyCamel, Aspbad. Just emerging from the starboard forward fin.”
“Order it to surrender,” Pasdar overrode his friend and subordinate. “Destroy them if th
ey hesitate, before they can escape us.”
“Yes, Naupati.”
“Communications, I have a signal,” another voice spoke up. “I think.”
Pasdar got there before Rostami did.
“You think?” he demanded. “Let me hear it.”
“Stand by, Naupati.”
Greetings, Naupati Amirin Pasdar. We are the ishtan.
Pasdar wasn’t sure he was hearing this sound with his ears or his bones. It was unlike anything he had ever encountered in a lifetime of service to the Sept.
We share an enemy, Naupati Pasdar, they continued in a weird harmonic that sounded like several voices speaking, rather than just one. Kathra Omezi and Daniel Lémieux.
The cook? What kind of creatures were these that they needed to annihilate a cook?
Hunters, Naupati Pasdar, they seemed to reply to his thoughts, as he didn’t think he had spoken. Lémieux is capable of an evil the modern galaxy is unprepared to resist. He must be destroyed. Omezi will shelter him, so we find ourselves with a confluence of interests. We would aid you in hunting down the Mbaysey and seeing both of those humans ended. Are you interested?
“Scan that vessel,” Pasdar ordered.
He looked around, and noted that Rostami seemed to be hearing this as well, whatever it was. Maybe the two of them hadn’t just fallen into complete insanity after all.
“Four life forms, Naupati,” the sensors desk replied.
Pasdar walked over to look down on the screen displaying the information.
Snakes, but with upper arms, however spindly. Triangular symmetry starting at the snout and running all the way to a fur-covered tail. Enormous creatures, as well, approaching eight meters when pulled straight, if he was reading this correctly.
Ishtan.
Somehow, he knew there would be no record of such a species in any database he wished to consult. He had stepped past that bright edge of civilization that the Sept cast around them like a searchlight. They were into the darkness of the rest of the galaxy now.