ISSUE.54
Third anniversary issue!
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Overlords’ Lair: RGR’s Third Anniversary by Johne Cook Sky Voices by Alice Roelke Just A Room, Out in Space by Matthew Wimmer What World is Made Of by Casey Chan CALAMITY’S CHILD — CHAPTER 8 ROP: King in the Corner by M. Keaton C.MOIRA’S CHOICE by Donald Jacob Uitvlugt ARTIST INTERVIEW: Christian Nauck TALES OF THE BREAKING DAWN
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The Ties That Bind, Part Three by Justin R. Macumber Deuces Wild, Season Two Space-pale by L. S. King RGR REVIEWS The Adventures of the Sky Pirate Chapter 27, Enter the Barracuda by Johne Cook THIEVES’ HONOR: EPISODE 9 Endgame, Part Two by Keanan Brand RGR Author Bios
OVERLORDS (FOUNDERS/EDITORS) Johne Cook, L. S. King, Paul Christian Glenn
Cover Art “Robojourney” by Christian Nauck
Matthew Winslow Book Reviews Editor Shannon McNear Lord High Advisor, Grammar Consultant, Listening Ear for Overlord Lee Paul Christian Glenn - PR, Executive Tiebreaker, desktop publishing L. S. King - Lord High Editor, proofreader, beloved nag, muse, webmistress Johne Cook - art wrangler, desktop publishing, chief cook and bottle washer
Bill Snodgrass Site host, Web-Net Solutions, admin, webmaster, database admin, mentor, confdante, liaison – Double-edged Publishing
Submissions Editors John M. Whalen, Alice M. Roelke. Martin Turton Serial Authors M Keaton, Keanan Brand. Justin R. Macumber, Johne Cook, L.S. King
Ray Gun Revival Issue 54 © 2009 by Double-edged Publishing, a Memphis, Tennssee-based non-proft publisher.
Special Thanks Ray Gun Revival logo design by Hatchbox Creative
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ith this issue, Ray Gun Revival magazine celebrates our third anniversary and starts our fourth year of publicaon. When we started publicaon in 2006, we modeled our magazine on Deep Magic, a venerable magazine devoted to fantasy and science con, ‘a safe place for minds to wander.’ Deep Magic was around for four years, and I’ve always had it in the back of my mind that if we could make it that long, we’d be a success. But where DM was largely a fantasy publicaon, RGR was going for something dif ferent. Fantasy has been enjoying a lot of aenon and book sales. But what about space opera of the kind I grew up with? Who was wring those stories? Joss Whedon, for one. If there was any one catalyst for Ray Gun Revival, it was Whedon’s Firey TV series and Serenity movie. That was the kind of story we wanted to tell. We were collecvely so ex cited about the seng and yarns from Firey that when the plug was pulled on the TV series, a number of us sll had so much enthusiasm for the genre that forming the magazine was almost second nature, a foregone conclusion.
It is axiomac that while Paul and I were kicking around space opera story ideas, Lee King had already independently had the same thought. Starng the magazine was hard, but deciding what to write about was easy. But what, exactly, is space opera? John Scalzi’s recent observaons about design aws in the Star Wars lms ared up into heated, and surprising, ‘nerdrage.’ Scalzi claims Star Wars is science con. We space opera fans know otherwise. Some think of Space Opera as science con without the science. That isn’t quite true. It is more accurate to say that Space Opera is science con with a lessened emphasis on rigorous science and a greater emphasis on adventure, characterizaon, and sprawling scale. In the beginning, Space Opera used to be Doc Smith’s Lensman stories, pulp sci- where the story was more important than the science. Today, Space Opera has been revamped and re-imagined to feature more plausible science in service of the wildest, largest stories imaginable. You might think Space Opera as the smallest subgenre of science
con, however, I think the opposite. I think it lls the very wide expanse between hard science con (on the one side) and Tolkienesque fantasy (on the other). There are rousing debates about dening just what, exactly, Space Opera is, but in my mind, it is simply Science Fanta sy, the best of both worlds. Everything about Space Opera is big, and the best recent treatment of the genre is an anthology is called The Space Opera Renaissance . It weighs in at 941 pages and covers the enre history of the genre from the early days (the Redened Writers) to the present (the New Wave). Editors David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer do a phenomenal job of geng their arms around this most browbeaten, overlooked genre. Space opera… means colorful, dramac, large-scale science con adventure, competently and somemes beaufully wrien, usually focused on a sympathec, heroic central character and plot acon, and usually set in the relavely distant future and in space or on other worlds, characteriscally opmisc in tone. It oen deals with war, piracy, military virtues, and very large stakes. What is centrally important is that this permits a writer to embark on a science con project that is ambious in both commercial and literary terms. And while Space Opera used to
be overlooked, it is currently enjoying a huge resurgence in popularity. Science con author Alastair Reynolds just signed a ten year, ten book, one million pound contract wring out a Space Opera series with UK publisher Gollancz. That’s geng up into J.K. Rowling territory, and that’s great for Space Opera. And as long as there’s Space Opera, there will be Ray Gun Revival magazine. At least for another year. ;) Johne Cook Overlord Breezeway, WI USA September, 2009
“I
can see the sky, the stars so clear,” murmured the pilot. She blinked at the overhead stars, coming ragged through her tears. Through her cockpit’s cracking window. “It’s like I never saw them be fore.” She remembered standing on the hillock of the red Maran soil of her family’s land, staring into the thin sky as it turned deepest black. The chill touched her ngers, made them curl into her palms. But the heat of the stars warmed her heart. Someday I will go, she’d thought, and her heart felt bird-wild and free. “Shh now,” said the voice through her crackling radio. “We’ll get you back. There’s no damage the boys and girls back at the dock can’t x. I’ll tow you back and we’ll be laughing about this over coee in a couple hours, see if we don’t. You’re just lucky your radio had enough power, that’s all.” She breathed raggedly, blinking back her diamond-cold tears, swallowed. “You’ll tell my mom and dad I love them?” Terror and cold traversed her limbs, made them shake. “You’ll tell them yourself,” came his reply, too hearty and thin across
the void. The void that was leaking into her ship. Her gaze fastened on the crack barely visible, like a piece of hair. Her air sucked towards and out it, leaving with each lungful less. “Someday this war will be over, and the Earthers will go home,” he said. “You and I and the rest, we’ll be farmers again.” “Watching the moons rise.” Her good eyelid uered convulsively. Her other one lay plastered shut. If she could seal the crack, listen to his voice, let it carry her home... “Keep talking.” “I—of course I will.” His voice fal tered, as though caught unawares, freezing up. In the cramped connes of her ghter, she used her le hand to push up her right elbow, press her numb and lost right hand against the crack. Watching with interest as it caught up against the widest length of the crack. Like the lile boy with the...she tried to think of the word. It was an Earth tale, a little boy stopping a leak with his nger. Had he lost his hand, too? Hers would be amputated either way. If she survived. If. Breath came ragged and too fast
again; the stars, the dark closing in, the connes of her deathtrap cabin. “Talk to me,” she begged, almost screamed. Then more calmly, “That is, tell me about yourself.” Her teeth chaered. “We’re almost there.” He repeat ed what couldn’t be true. “Don’t die on me, hear?” he went on desperately. “How old are you, anyway? You don’t sound much older than me. I’m nineteen.” “Eighteen,” said Vale. “I’d nevnever h-have learned to y without the war.” “This damned war.” He sounded like he wanted to spit. “You and I, we’d be worried about dates and schools and maybe the crops, if it weren’t for the war.” He hesitated. “I’d ask you out, maybe.” She laughed at the absurdity, the brilliance of that remark. How normal it made everything seem, prosaic like old friends meeng with new ages on them, the ordinary mang dance of humanity. “I’d say yes.” She laughed again, too close to tears, closed her eyes and wished herself back to the hillock, to reach a message to that little girl. Tell her...what? To not care about her planet? To stop wanng
the stars, yearning for things beyond her ngers? Tell her to let her heart bleed dry so she could plant it, anchor it to soil and never look up, never raise her eyes to the sky? “Did we win the bale, or don’t you know?” she asked. “Don’t know. Tell me your name.” “Vale.” “I thought it might be something like that. Aer one of the Valles, I suppose?” “Marineres.” “That’s where we’re completely dierent. My parents didn’t want me to join up. They’re immis from earth. I’m rst gen. They hate even thinking about revoluon from good ol’ Earth. Whereas you’re probably third generaon if you’re a day. Bleed rust red.” That explained his accent. Vale looked down on the darkening mess of her arm. “Something like that.” Yet when she spoke, the face of her father swam before her. He hadn’t made anything like the protestaons of her mother, but something in his face had gone sll and scared when she told him. He with drew, like he was already waing for the news of her death. Like he
knew. The other pilot had fallen silent. Without his distracon, the night began to seep back into her soul. “Keep talking. I can’t die if you’re talking.” They were connected, and all the forces of sky, war, night couldn’t cut that thin thread formed between their radios. If he’d just keep talking! “Only you see it’s not like that for me.” He moved the words together too fast. “My sort ain’t liked by yours. Don’t even let you in some restaurants, if you’re a rst genny. So you wouldn’t say yes. And I prob ably wouldn’t even ask.” He was sll on about that? “So war brings people together,” she said. “Tell me something new.” “What?” Tell me about your farm, she wanted to say. But you couldn’t assume with anyone whose family hadn’t been here from the rst. Maybe he was a sharecropper. Maybe he worked in a city. “Tell me anything,” she gasped, staring at her arm, the swollen and twisted ngers pressed against the ship’s wound. “Tell me a story.” He grasped that. “Sure. Sure. Somemes I think my whole life is a story. I’ve been telling lies since I could rst speak. I lied to impress people, stay out of trouble, be more
popular than the next guy. Only it never quite worked. Even if nobody gured it out, I knew. I knew I was the kind of guy who tells lies. May be—I always will be.” She listened to the harshness of her breathing, loud in the silence. Is he trying to tell me something? Were they even moving? She couldn’t tell, with her instruments not working, and her equilibrium messed up by the delirium. Were they just spinning o together into space? Had his engines failed, too? “You’re not,” she murmured as hearly as she could. “You’re my rescuer. We’ll go back, land, have that...coee.” Her voice trembled on that word, the absurdity of it. Medical aenon would be top priority, if they got back. But for an instant, she closed her eyes, and tried to believe it. Tears tracked down her face and froze. She pictured the two of them, months from now, safe and warm, happy despite a long recovery. She might feel self-conscious about having one arm, would cradle her mug with the le. But it wouldn’t maer. They’d be friends, and maybe more, no maer what. “Are we really going to make it?” she said, her voice trembling beyond all conscious control. She
couldn’t stop shaking, a deep-bone shake that went down to her cold, chilled marrow. They don’t tell you how cold space is. She pictured it eang her, this many-jeweled nightmare of darkness and stars. He sll hadn’t replied. “You’d “You’d tell me, wouldn’ t you, if we weren’t going to make it?” Her voice quavered. “You’re my rescuer. You’d tell me the truth, no maer who else you lied to, wouldn’t you?” His breathing came ragged over the thin radio connecon. “I’m not. I’m—not your rescuer. I’m—I lied. I’m the pilot you damaged, who damaged you. I’m not towing you back. We’re both disabled, driing. My air’s running out. I had enough for two hours, but now my gauge is broken and I don’t know, maybe it’s less. I don’t know enough about the doohickey to x it, much less under stand what’s wrong. Barely taught me to y before sending me out here. The bale’s moved on. Le us to die, unless we get incredibly lucky and someone comes by. Or I should say, one of us gets lucky.” Tears trembled in Vale’s eyes, the last of them. She could feel the eyeball skin drying even as they slid down, added to the icicles on her face. “Why’d you lie?” I was preparing for death, and then you made me hope again, made me care.
The dreams of future now lay cut o. Could think: only a few minutes ahead. Could prepare? Barely at all. Could do? Nothing. Not even leave a recorded message for her family. That had been one of the rst things she’d tried, aer calling for hopeless help. She could imagine...father, mother. er. No, mustn’t imagine. Dying, out here, with her enemy, her end. I hope they never know . Never try to guess about these last few moments. Hope they don’t think I was cold or frightened or in pain. Because I am. The cold numbed her pain, though. She could no longer feel anything below the neck. She writhed against these last moments, and their shreds of cruel hope. Would someone arrive, a real rescuer with a last moment reprieve, to stay death’s claws? Or would she slip into that undiscovered country with only this monster, this liar for company? “You shouldn’t have lied.” I am going, she thought. I am driing away and I’ll never even know why he lied to me. What good could it possibly have brought him? “Are you just an evil person? Why would you do that?” “I’m sorry, okay?” Over the radio, his voice broke. Sounded like
he wanted to cry as badly as her dry eyes did. “I heard you scream, your voice on mayday. You sounded just a kid, even younger than me. I wanted more than anything to be the guy who could rescue you. But I just made it worse.” “You did.” Her ship dried, like so much rubble. Which it was. Like in a nightmare or a horror movie, she saw the crack widen under her cadaverous hand. Felt and heard the air hissing thinner all around. Barely any me le now. Death coming. I hope it’s not as cold as here. He was talking again. “When I said all that, I really could imagine us together, maybe raising a family and a crop on one of those red farms down there. That’s what Mars is about, isn’t it? People who aren’t wanted on Earth, making themselves a new place to belong. I don’t know why I’m ghng to keep her under Earth control. I didn’t want you to be so alone and scared. But I’ve made it worse, haven’t I? I’m sorry I lied.” She couldn’t die angry with her only companion. “I forgive you.” Her voice shook. “Try and get a mes sage to my parents, if you live. Love them.” Her teeth chaered almost too hard to speak. “I will,” he choked.
With the dri of her ship, his came into focus. She felt a momentary ame of pride; she had too hit the side, a engine, good and clear. Then pride dimmed. Far, far below lay the red orb of home. That beauful, dried-blood red home. Mars. With all her heart she yearned for it. So many years it took to get away, and now I wish I could see home one last me, drink the silty water from our well. I was glad to leave, and now I’ll never— With red dry eyes, she gazed at the red orb below. “We’re not even in orbit. I can’t even give my ashes back to Mars.” “You think a lot of Mars, don’t you?” His voice sounded bier. Or maybe envious? In the hissing dark, she nodded. “Maybe a place is only really yours when you feel like it needs you.” His voice cracked. “I wish I could have met you some other way. Any other way. I’m using up my air, but I can’t shut up. Talk to me. Please.” She thought. “Tell me—your ship’s name.” “It doesn’t have one. I didn’t think to name it.” She took a thin breath; it hurt. “Let’s—name. Together.” Together.” “Yes. Together. That’s a good name.”
Hadn’t been quite what she meant, but okay. She imagined him christening it with his blood, his death, didn’t want to even think that, much less say it. It seemed too morbid, even for an enemy—if he were sll that. But her voice was slipping away; she couldn’t say anything more if she wanted to. The saliva on her tongue bubbled, as if boiling. The vacuum must be nearly complete. If only they could have met under other circumstances. To really say what you meant to one other person. But could they have talked like this, under any other circumstance? Now that she couldn’t speak any longer, she thought of a million things to say. Did you stare at the stars, she wondered, as the crack suddenly widened, as her ngers slipped through and the last of the air slid out. Did you stare into the stars. But her voice was gone, her breath was gone, her heartbeat slowed. No anger, trying, angst, only the so detaching of her soul, like Velcro, winging its way home. Her frozen arm looked like it was reaching out, into, to touch the cold sky, the face of God.
© 2009 by Alice Roelke
“W
hat happened? Is it over? Please tell me it’s over.” The sweet, trembling voice oated into the empty room. “I don’t know yet, Angela,” replied a gravelly, drinker’s voice. “It does seem to have seled down.” “Do not move yet, people! Stay put!” “Screw that.” A slight, educated man hopped down out of the top bunk. “I say it’s okay.” From under the boom bunk emerged the even slighter gure of a girl in her late teens or early twen es, skinny, with mousy brown hair and a cute face. She slithered out, then stood, holding onto the bunk support. “You guys think everything is okay?” She suppressed a sob. Her wide blue eyes gleamed. “Well, that was quite a shaking,” said rered Navy Admiral Jed Johnson. He stood up behind the couch. “We are sll alive, it appears. That is a plus.” He smoothed his bright blue tunic, stretching it over his large frame. He brushed his short-cropped short-cropped white beard and cleared his throat. He walked to the bathroom door and aer a brisk knock said, “Commander Farson?”
The bathroom door opened and Commander Bill Farson appeared, a thirty years younger match to the older man. Farson had thick black hair where Johnson’s was white and sparse, a solid physical build to Johnson’s slightly paunchy soness. “Ah, I thought I saw you run in there. The Kromarty really gave us a wallop. What happened, man?” “Hold on, sir. I, uh, need to check something.” He brushed past the old man and saw the girl sing on the lower bunk next to the bald man with glasses. They were talking quietly. The girl turned and saw Farson. “Billy! Oh, it was terrible, such shaking!” She jumped up and leapt at him, the fringe of her yellow jumpsuit swishing. He caught her. “Angela! Oh, I got the right room. I couldn’t be sure, but...dear, hold on one second.” He tried to set her down, but she clutched him in an iron grip. He dragged her with him to the control panel indented next to the door and gazed into it’s dark surface. As she plastered him with kisses he pressed the screen where he knew the communicaons buon should be. He groaned. There was only one
reason the unit wouldn’t be receiving power. Angela dropped lightly to her feet. “Okay, Farson,” Johnson said, yanking the younger man around. “Some answers, please.” “I don’t know. I was running down to check on the engine room. I was out in the corridor and I heard the bulkheads starng to collapse. So I ducked in here. Pure luck, man. Pure luck!” “Pure luck, right. And in the middle of a ght,” said Nelson. “What, sir?” Said Farson. “Oh, nothing. So, we were geng it good, eh?” said the bald man with glasses. “I was telling Angela that we should be dead right now. A ship doesn’t shake like that and survive intact. I mean, four to seven odds? Against the Kromarty? No chance!” “And what’s your name, sir?” replied Farson. “I am his Eminence George Nelson, sir. Ambassador. I was hitching a ride with the seventh eet to Arjon when you somehow thought you could take out that Kromarty eet. At two to one odds!” “We didn’t know there were that many. Four of them were blacked out. By the me they joined in, there was no chance. We should be so much radioacve dust!” “Why is that?” said Angela, con nuing to hold onto Farson. She leaned into his stalwart frame.
“Johnson? I can’t...” “Darling, the Kromarty don’t take prisoners. Or leave ships intact. They blast them to pieces. All or nothing.” “So, then, we won! Cause we’re sll here!” Her brightening expression only managed to darken the faces of the three men. “No, darling, I’m afraid not. I think I can explain our situaon,” said Johnson. “Farson, if you don’t mind.” He brushed Farson away and moved his hand towards the door panel. Farson grabbed his arm. “What? The bulkheads out there collapsed. It’s exposed to space! And, anyway, there’s no power,” he said. “Then it won’t maer if I push the buon or not?” He shook o Farson’s hand and pushed the button. The door slid open. Everyone but Johnson lurched towards the nearest solid object. But there was no explosion of air. “What?!” Farson said as looked out and gasped. The other two joined Johnson and Farson and gazed out into what should have been the familiar grey metal of corridor 7-B. What they saw instead was the black empness of space, punctuated by the occasional star and glowing hunks
of ship. “You see! The ship was destroyed,” said Johnson. “But, then how... oh, your emergency force eld?!” Farson said. “Of course. I always stay in a room with an emergency generator!” “Wait.. what? Explain this to the dummy in the room.” Angela said. “You see that box over there in the corner, that you’ve been keep ing your hyper-wave set on these past six weeks? It’s a force eld generator. It’s powered by atomics. And, it’s fully contained within this room,” Johnson said. “So, the ship could sll be okay?” She said. “Well, as the evidence shows...” and he pointed out the door. “But, why weren’t other places protected, protected, then?” “Well, unfortunately, these generators are fairly expensive. It’s an, uh, Admiral’s privilege. Doesn’t cover much more than one room. It’d sll never take a direct blast, though. Mostly it’s to seal the environment in case of a breach.” “You mean, we’re completely sealed in?” Said Angela “Sure. You wouldn’t even need the room. Could be just you and this generator in space. It holds in oxygen, anything.” Farson loosened Angela’s grip
on his shoulder. He dropped to his knees and gasped. Angela kneeled and held him. He looked up into her eyes. “Don’t you see? We’re all that’s le! The whole ship is gone! It’s just us! This room!” #
“So, we’re okay, then?” Angela said. “Well, for now...” replied John son. “What do you mean, ‘for now’?” stated Nelson. “Well, we have oxygen enough. There are tanks in the room.” “What about rescue?” Nelson re plied. “Farson? Any chance one of our ships survived?” Johnson asked. “Oh. Well, there’s always the chance that one of them slipped o while the others were being destroyed, but...” “But what, Billy?” “Well, then, why would they come back? Only to be destroyed as well?” “So we’re just a room, sing in space? With no engines or comm or anything?” She wailed. “Why don’t the Kromarty shoot us, then?” “They couldn’t detect a single room. Space is big, you know. And
there’s debris all around. Anyway, would you want them to nd us?” Farson said. “So, what do we do?” Shouted the bald man with glasses. “I don’t know,” replied Farson. “We have no signaling beacon, no engine, no weapons, no comm. We just sit.” Jed Johnson stroked his beard and said, “Here’s what we do. And, Angela, I’m sorry, you may take this hard, but, we must turn o the shield generator.” generator.” The others stood as if they hadn’t heard him. “Okay. I’m going to turn it o.” Johnson rose and started toward the generator box. He opened the panel and started ddling inside it. “No!” roared Farson. He ran and grabbed Johnson’s hands. “What the hell, man? Kill us all? I’m afraid we would all take that hard!” “Look, we’re dead anyway,” replied Johnson, and in a fatherly tone, “I’m sorry, Angela. I have grown fond of you over the past month and a half. You’re young, and I hope we can help you accept this...” George Nelson interrupted him. “Bull, man. You don’t just say that kind of thing to a young girl! And, what the hell are you talking about? We’re ne. We just wait to be res cued!”
Farson and Nelson, along with Angela, pushed Johnson back unl he fell onto the couch. “Okay. Okay. I thought it could be over with, quick-like. Without need lessly upseng people. I guess I’ll have to explain it more carefully,” he said. His eyes glinted from one face to another. “Farson! Are there any human ships le! Answer. Quickly!” “No!” Shouted Farson. He let go of Johnson’s abby frame and backed away. “No way. We had to drop out of the ght, due to our beams failing. I saw the Freemont and the Tooling both take direct hits. No way they survived.” “So our eet is destroyed! Angela! You’ve been watching the eet deployments on your hyper-wave. Is there any other eet within ten light years of us?!” Angela relaxed her grip on Jed’s collar. “No,” “No,” she said, “ The third eet was between Arjon and M’tharn, about, uh, thirty light years away.” She stepped back. “Okay, now, uh, your name?” “George Nelson, God damn it! Ambassador! To Arjon!” “Okay, now, how long can we live on four tanks of oxygen?!” George stepped back. “For four people, about, uh, ten days, I’d say.”
Johnson laid unmolested on the couch. “Okay! Now that I’ve got your attenon. I know it’s hard, but we can’t refuse to accept the situaon!” Johnson struggled up. He adjusted his tunic again. “We have some stu to talk out, Bill,” he said. “Okay,” replied Angela. She wagged a nger at Jed. “As long as it is how we are to be rescued!” “Okay, I said it might be hard for you to take, dear, but...” Bill Farson rammed him down onto the couch again. “Into the bathroom!” He yelled through clenched teeth. “She must know, at some point, Bill.” “I don’t care! Double exclamaon point!!” His eyes bulged. “We do it in there!” “Okay, Farson, just let me up. I don’t want my last half hour of life to be with a crushed diaphragm. “Okay. Angie, Bill, as your ancé, has taken ward of you and has demanded that we discuss our, very, immediate futures in the bathroom, where I’m sure just he and I can t, rather uncomfortably. Therefore we must exclude, uh, this gentlemen and yourself.” Angela glared at Bill Farson. George Nelson paed the generator
he was leaning against. “Look, fellas. If it has to do with the unplugging of our savior, here, then I demand that I, and Angela, for that maer, be in on it. We’re all senent beings, and we all deserve a say in our futures!” Farson turned to Johnson and looked inquiringly at him. “You really want to have this out. In front of everyone?” He said. “Yes,” replied all three. “Okay. We might as well get com fortable,” Johnson said. Farson leaned protecvely against the shield generator box. George Nelson sat on the lower bunk of Angela’s bed. Angela sat on the oor and leaned against the generator box at Farson’s feet. “Well,” began Farson, “perhaps rered admiral Johnson would like to begin. Why did you try to kill us?” “I, uh, would just like to say, rst, that I have at heart all our best interests.” “How is that, sir, when you tried to kill us?” said Nelson. “Okay. I’ll just be blunt, from here on out, sorry Angela. We are dead, no maer what we do.” There was silence. “First o, we only have, as Mr. Nelson said, some ten days of oxy gen.”
“But that’s enough, isn’t it?” Said Angela. She looked up at Johnson. “Well, it’s enough for ten days of life, sure. But what about aer ten days? As she is the smallest, Angela will die rst, in the slow convulsions of anoxemia...” Farson charged toward Johnson again. Johnson sighed and braced for the impact, but Angela grabbed him and spun him around. Sh e poked Farson in the chest and said, “Billy! Listen, mister. You don’t have to spare me from nothing. I’m twenty two years old, and I’ll be treated as a grown up! So go on, please, Jed!” She dragged Farson back to the generator box and sat down, gripping her knees. “Okay,” said Johnson. “We have no hope of being rescued in ten days.” George Nelson pointed at Johnson, “Says you, buddy. I don’t even know you! I can’t accept that.” “Okay, but Commander Farson said that there is no way that any of our eet survived the aack on the Kromarty. So there is no help there. And, Angela, who I know has been following the major eet acon on her hyper-wave set, has said there is no eet within thirty light years. So, I will submit to you that there are no human ships within ten days distance of us”
“But, we can’t just give up,” said Farson. “It is our duty, as humans, to ght ll the last breath.” Johnson looked at the group in front of him. “Even if that means unbearable torture and unlimited pain at the hands of the Kromarty?” #
Johnson sat on the toilet seat as Farson knelt before him. He tried to brush down his disheveled tunic. George Nelson squaed on the sink and, even with his slight frame, had to hang out of the small alcove into the space over Farson’s head. “So, you’re saying that no one has ever reported back aer being captured by the Kromarty?” Nelson asked in a subdued voice. “Absolutely. That is why I would maneuver us onto a quicker death. A quicker one than the Kromarty would grant us,” replied Johnson. Farson reached up for Johnson’s throat, then brushed his tunic instead. “But we don’t know! Damnit, man!” “Okay! Keep your voice down. You yourself said that there are only Kromarty ships out there. No hu man ones!” “Yah, but...”
“So what if one of those Kromarty ships happen upon us? Huh? They either blast us into radioacve dust, or they take us prisoner.” He swiveled his head slightly to see Nelson’s face. “Yes, George, the Kromarty do take prisoners. Either we die, as I intended us to, quick, or we are cap tured by the Kromarty. Do you want to go through that death? Do you want Angela to?” He said, now staring down Farson, four inches from his face. Farson stopped, looked at Nelson, then back to Johnson. He leaned onto Jed’s chest and pushed his forearm into his throat. “You think the Kromarty are gonna nd us?” he said. “I don’t know. All I know is that we can make it so that they don’t nd us. So they don’t ay your skin and bathe you in acid to get the names of the eet commanders out of you, Farson. So they don’t inject a thousand poisoned needles into Angela to get the eet placements out of her. So they don’t inject molten metal into your hands, George Nelson, to nd out what you know about Arjon!” George looked at his hands, then pushed Farson’s head back to get a more clear look at Jed. “Sorry, Farson. Molten metal, Jed! You know that, for a fact?”
“That’s the one, uh, semi-report we’ve goen back from a man captured by the Kromarty. They injected some kind of molten metal into his hands. And then, well, other unpleasant things that, ulmately, killed him. Slowly.” “It doesn’t maer, George. We know the Kromarty torture. They’ve found out certain things, base locaons, eet maneuvers, things they never could’ve known without our men giving it up.” “So, again, I must say...” began Johnson. “Wait!” Shouted Farson. He jumped up, knocking Nelson o the sink. They fell in a heap, entangled. Farson moved George’s arm out of his face and shouted, “At least we wait unl we know! We wait unl the last possible moment, then we do it. I’ll agree to that.” George Nelson groped toward door with his hand and hit the panel. He tumbled out of the bathroom and stood, brushing his tunic down and shaking his head. “Damn it! People.” He walked away. Angela stood at the door. When she saw Farson struggling to stand in the cramped space, she grabbed his arm and helped him up. “What the heck is going on in there? You guys aren’t ghng are
you? You should have let me go in there and you stay out here.” “It’s okay, darling,” said Johnson. He straitened his tunic. “Bill just got a lile excited. Excuse us for one moment, please.” He grabbed Farson and whispered in his ear. “You have a beer way?” Farson whispered into Jed’s ear. “Yes. Pills. Painless. Quick.” #
“Okay. I must admit my mistake. Bill Farson and, uh, our esteemed diplomat have talked reason into me. We have a hope that the Kromarty have moved on. They should have found us by now, if they were looking.” Angela jumped and clapped her hands, yipping. She turned and hugged Bill Farson. “I knew it! Oh, thank you Billy.” He turned and kissed her lightly on the cheek. “Okay, George...George Nelson! We’re having a meeng, if you will please jump down o that bunk and take part?” Said Jed. “Okay, Mr. Boss Man.” he jumped down with his usual sprightliness. “What?” “We’re not out of the woods, yet. We need to discuss our situaon.”
He sat on the couch with a groan. “We can sit.” Angela sat cross-legged on the oor next to the bunks, at Farson’s knee. Nelson connued standing. “First of all, food and water. Bill?” “Each room has about an eight day supply, for two people. We four could stretch it to eight, maybe ten, if we raon.” “Okay, since we only have ten day’s oxygen, that’s ne. Things are gonna get bad before then, anyway.” “Bad, how?” asked Angela. “Well, without being too graphic, waste products. Firstly, there are no carbon dioxide scrubbers in this room. Those were located in another part of the ship, not too sure where, but...” “Secon A2, behind the waste acclimators,” injected Farson. “Which brings us to the second thing. There are no, uh, waste facilies.” “But, the bathroom...” began Angela, poinng. “True, but, with the shield up, the pipes, well, uh, they don’t go any where.” “So it’ll just be smelly. We can live with that? Right?” “If it comes to that, I suppose. But, and this is the hard part. I was premature in my acons before. If it
comes to it, and we should all hold out hope that it won’t, but, we have a beer way. Bill?” Bill reached into his vest. He fum bled around, then pulled out his st and looked into it. He opened it to the group. “What? What are they? Billy?” Said Angela. “Cyanide pills. Right Farson?” said Nelson, “Or, some other poison?” “Saxitoxin. A million mes faster than cyanide. And safer,” he said. “I mean, to handle.” He moved them around on his palm, looking at them. “I just happen to have four. Course you can always break them, if you have to. Never thought I’d actually need to. You, uh, put it in your mouth and bite down. Then swallow. Bite down rst. Otherwise it won’t work.” He picked one out and dropped it into Johnson’s hand. Jed took it without looking and dropped it into his tunic pocket. Farson then extended his hand to Nelson, who looked at it without moving. “George, c’mon. Just take it. You don’t have to use it if you don’t want to,” said Farson. “Wouldn’t have to think about it if you hadn’t abandoned your post to nd your lile ancée,” he said. “Excuse me? What was that?” Farson clenched the pills in his st.
“Like you didn’t know Angie would be in this room, with Jed’s stupid generator!” A steely look came over Farson. He approached the smaller man. “Look, you lile…” But George wasn’t looking at Farson, or at the pills in his hand. He stared out the sll open door at Farson’s back. “Never mind, just give it to me!” He shouted. He grabbed for Farson’s hand and knocked the pills to the oor. “What the hell! George, sele down. Where’d they go? What’s got into you?” Farson said. As he and George scrabbled around on the oor aer the pills, Johnson, having seen the true object of Nelson’s stare, walked to the door and peered out. “Hurry up, gentleman. Angela, come here, dear.” dear.” “What, Jed?” She said, her voice shaky. She stood and walked to Jed. He pointed out the door and whispered to her. “Oh,” she said. “Quick. Get the pills, Farson. Bring them over to the table. We can help each other.” other.” Farson, who was half under the boom bunk, shouted, “What? I can’t hear you. I think they fell into
the air duct down here.” “I said there’s a Kromarty ship out there. And I think it’s heading our way,” he said, his voice stricken. Johnson took a pale-faced Angela by the shoulders and led her to the table where she sat. He sat next to her and took the pill out of his pocket. He took her hand and laid it on the table, palm up, then placed the pill into it. “Oh, god,” she muered. “Billy, I can’t.” Farson scrambled to the table, followed by Nelson. “I only found one. We’ll have to break it,” he said out of breath. “Okay, quickly. Bill, aend to An gela. I’ll break it. We haven’t much me. Farson dropped the pill onto the table top and pulled his chair next to Angela. He held her head and looked into her eyes. “Okay, it’ll be quick, dear. Just put it in your mouth, and...” he began. “No, I...I can’t. I don’t want to die.” She began sobbing. Johnson struggled to break the other pill. “George, I can’t. My ngers.” George stood at Johnson’s side. He was looking at the backs of his hands, glassy eyed. “George, here! Break it!” George looked up and smirked.
“Here, give it to me, old man,” he said. He grabbed the pill and, aer a quick glance around the group, he sighed and put it in his mouth. He bit down. A tear slid down his face. He gulped and collapsed. “Oh, god...” Angela sobbed. “Bill, break her pill.” “Noooooooooo!” shrieked Ange la. She clenched the pill in her hand and scrambled from Bill’s grasp. She dove for the bunk. “Angela, don’t!” shouted Bill. “Grab her, Bill,” shouted Jed. She scrambled under the bunk with a cry and had plenty of me to ditch the pill in the air duct before Bill Farson grabbed her by the foot and yanked her out. “Damnit, Angela! She doesn’t know, Jed!” He turned to see Johnson once again kneeling before the shield generator box, fumbling with the hatch cover. cover. “Hold her, Bill!” He shouted. “No, no no!” Screamed Angela. She pounded her sts into Farson’s chest as he held her down. “Hurry up, Jed!” “Ten seconds.” “Don’t unplug it! Don’t unplug it! Don’t unplug it!” She whined, sll struggling, “I can’t do it! No, Billy!” Johnson turned to look at her.
“Please, don’t!” “Angela, you don’t know what they’ll do to us!” Farson whispered in her ear. “Just one more buon, Farson.” “Well, “Well, hurry up, damn it!” “No!” begged Angela. Johnson stared into her face, his eyes wet. “Johnson. What are you waing for? Do it!” Bill roared. Johnson stood. He snapped the hatch cover back on. “She deserves a chance,” chance,” he muttered. Farson scrambled o Angela and towards the generator. Johnson grabbed for him. They struggled briey before Bill threw him to the ground. As he groaned and held his hip, an intense orange glow bloomed. “Bill, look!” He shouted, point ing towards the door. It no longer opened onto the blackness of space. Orange suused his face, the beginnings of tears in his eyes. “The Kromarty ship!” Farson turned. He gazed out onto the exploding Kromarty ship. It was a supernova in miniature, an expanding ball of orange re, with jets of blue and violet shoong out like coronal streamers. “Yes!” shouted Jed and Farson simultaneously. Angela rolled over
onto her front and gazed out. Her puy red face was washed in orange. She sobbed. #
“Gosh dang, miss! How the hell did you live?” The medical orderly stood before the group who reclined on couches in the mess hall of the convoy supply ship Gargantuan . “There was nothin’ le! Never saw nothin’ like it before. Just a room, out in space like that.” The door slid open and the captain of the Gargantuan strode in. Farson sat up, then stood. He approached the captain and saluted. “Commander Bill Farson, sir!” “No one asked you anything, commander. Sit back down.” “Okay, sorry. I’m shook up.” “It’s okay. I understand.” Captain McDougall stood before the group with his arms crossed. “Just. Uh. Um... How?” Johnson muered. “There’ll be me for that. Later, sir.” “As a rered Admiral, I have the authority to order...” Jed began. “Okay.” McDougall interrupted him with a raised hand. “We saw the four blacked out Kromarty once you started the at-
tack. We tried to warn you, but they’d already closed in behind you. We backed o, and I guess they didn’t see us. Aer waing out the aack...” “How did it go?” asked Farson. McDougall glared at him, then connued. “Aer waing out the aack , which le just one funconal Kromarty ship...you fought well...anyway, we started to creep out of here before they found us. But that Kromarty ship didn’t leave and, aer some, uh, tense discussion amongst my crew, we snuck up on her and launched our one torpedo. And bang, must’ve hit her reactor core. Then we get you on our radar. Without the ship’s an-radar hull, you stood out like a, well, like a ny dot amongst a bunch of slightly smaller dots, but worth a check. “We’ll get a full report from you aer you’ve had a chance to rest.” With a slight salute to Jed, he stalked out of the room. “Well, I’ve got you three on IVs, uh, don’t know why, you were only out there for thirty minutes or so. Just stay in bed, Admiral. Your hip’s broke, if you didn’t already know. I’ll let you rest. Uh, sorry about your fourth party member. He was dead when we found him, must’ve died in the aack.”
He saluted and le the room. “Oh, poor George, if he’d just waited,” said Angela. Farson reclined on his couch again. He said, “Angela, listen. I...” “Not now, Bill. Please. I’ve just stopped crying.” “It was for our own good. If the Kromarty had captured us... It’s easy enough to forget a stupid supply ship.” “Okay! I don’t care. I know you came to save me, but, just shut up for now.” Jed said, “It’s true, Angie. You’ll see that someday.” Angie closed her eyes. The others thought she had fallen asleep when she said, “Thank you, Jed. I’ll never forget what you did for me. Just, thank you.”
© 2009 by Matthew Wimmer
T
he World was held together by lies. The buildings were rooted in foundaons of lies and rose up on raers of lies. Conversaon was a language of lies; egos were inated with lies; and relaonships were bound together by lies. People en tertained themselves with lies. The economy supplied and demanded lies. Everything that maered in the World was held together by lies, which was why a breath of truth could destroy the World, and truthtelling was forbidden, and truth-tellers were killed. And it was under these circumstances that Praydo, a mild, gawky, awkward intellectual, realized that his students in his SuccessPrep™ “Master the Validaon Ordeal Seminar®” were not in fact “achieving their dreams” as they had been promised, if only they would “shoot for the stars,” nor were they geng the “average ten point bump” on their pracce ordeals. In fact, few of them were scoring well enough to be validated at all, let alone at an elite level. And so Praydo had wrien an email to Pejoria, the Regional Prelate of SuccessPrep™:
Greengs Pejoria, Pejoria, I am wring to express my concerns over my current validaon course. In short, the students are not doing well. Most of them are not scoring above a Theta, which, as you know, does not make one a compeve candidate at even a mediocre validaon program. Unfortunately, my current class does not appear to be an anomaly. I have been teaching for Success for a year now, and each of my ten courses have been the same: students paying the high price for our course yet geng a poor result. Tonight is my nal class, the “SuccessPrep Graduaon Party,” Party,” and I do not feel that I can face my students with another round of platudes, knowing that at the end of the evening I will return their latest pracce ordeals, which show their dismal results, which, as we know, are a strong predictor of how they will actually score on the actual Ordeal. Please do write me as soon as possible and help me know what to do. I know that these are clumsy words, but they are the truth as I see it. –Praydo
When Praydo hit “Send,” the email rumbled away into cyberspace
as if it were a boulder crashing down a chute; the computer shook, and released squeals and smoke as its circuits fried. Praydo leapt back from the monitor. For all the advances in hapc interfacing, he’d never seen anything quite like that. It was a maer of minutes before Pejoria replied: Praydo: I am concerned as well, but for a dierent reason. Rather than being worried about your students, who, if they simply apply the SuccessPrep™ Mastery Methods® will surely achieve their dreams, I am instead worried about you. Such cynicism is unworthy of a Don of SuccessPrep™. First, it is imperave that you engage in proper messaging: therefore, it is not “Success,” “Success,” as you so casually put it, but “SuccessPrep™.” It is not “validaon course” but “Master the Validaon Ordeal Seminar®.” Vast resources have been invested in creang these trade names, and it is certainly not for you, only a junior member of our Employee Family®, to cast them aside. Moreover, your statement suggesng that our students get anything less than an exceedingly valu able return on their investment in themselves borders on the libelous.
SuccessPrep™ has brought ruinous ligaon against people for less. I certainly don’t mean to threate n you Praydo, but only to warn you. I only wish to help you achieve a correct atude: but your so-called “truth” could hurt you and those around you. In fact, when your reckless email arrived, this year’s teacher portrait burst into ames. It was sing on my desk and nearly scalded me. Be more careful, Praydo. Because of your acons, we must meet tonight before your class. You must assume the famous SuccessPrep™ can-do posion for your students. Therefore, I am coming directly to you along with certain sta from the Center, and we will convene. Best, Pejoria Negrosangre Regional Prelate, SuccessPrep University™ “Shoot for the stars and you’ll achieve your dreams!”® Praydo’s stomach felt tremulous and his skin cold. He’d known his e-mail was a bit out of line, but to be threatened so blatantly was both shocking and chilling. His idea of what he should say had always been a bit o (his mother had once called him “clumsy lile fool!” aer he’d broken a ceramic vase shaped like a
holiday elf by saying, “but you said it was the ugliest thing you’d ever seen,” in front of the woman who’d given it to his mother, sharply contradicng the eusive praise which she had been lavishing on the gi). Frankly, it was Praydo’s clumsiness with words that was to blame for his being employed with SuccessPrep™, instead of with a real university or validaon school. He’d never had the knack for saying what people wanted to hear. He stared at the monitor for a long me, his thin brown hair growing damp with sweat. He tried draing several reply e-mails to Pejoria, but he couldn’t really nd an apology that didn’t consist of him taking back what he’d said, and he wasn’t ready to do that. He’d simply reported the fact that his students weren’t doing well, and he didn’t see why he should be threatened or punished over it, as if the facts were his fault. Praydo opened a new browser and went to his FriendWeb™ page. At the top of his prole was his avatar, followed by his vital stascs, including his height (1.83 meters), weight (78.75 kilograms), and Validaon Rank (Junior Alpha), as well as some trivia such as who his rst sex partner had been (Kendra Gailbraith), and how much money he’d take to sell his parents into the
uranium mines (“I’d pay to have it done!” he’d cheekily volunteered). Underneath these was a blue link “View My FriendWeb™.” Praydo clicked on it. A diaphanous, gliering web lled the screen, each webbing con necng one friend’s name to another, with great clusters of faces around certain nodes like university or validaon school or hometown or favorite gladiator or favored technocrats. Praydo zoomed in on the validaon school node, where he found the avatar of Gregor, a strapping Aussie. Gregor was his good friend since school and also a SuccessPrep™ colleague. Prayo had once pulled Gregor out of a frozen pond in Minnesota he’d fallen into during some drunken ancs, aer which Gregor had sworn lifeme loyalty to Praydo. Clicking on Gregor’s image, Pray do forwarded him the correspondence between himself and Pejoria with the note, Who’s crazy here, me or the Prelate? Gregor’s image ickered upon his momentary reply. Are you blinkered, mate? What do you think you’re doing sending me this kind of contraband? Your e-mail just torpedoed in here and smashed out my window! Don’t go geng destrucve. And don’t forget
who lls our coers: where are your loyales? Let’s forget this ever hap pened. –G
Praydo mashed up his face at Gregor’s response, and he immediately shot back: G, what the hell? I can only assume your response was a joke; perhaps you assumed my message was the same. But I am not joking. I am truly concerned that our students are pung their faith in us, and in return we are selling them a bill of goods. Please tell me what you make of this analysis. Please tell me that I’m wrong! Tell me that your students are, in fact, averaging a ten point increase on their ordeals...or that any of the guarantees of success we provide them to convince them to “ll our coers” are coming true. –P Praydo hesitated a moment over his mouse, unsure if sending this reply was wise. But the burning in his chest consumed his cauon, and he red o his message like a gun shot. And then he sat in front of his screen, nervously strumming his ngers, awaing a reply. Soon enough, the screen ickered with a new message, but it was not from Gregor, but rather the FriendWeb™ Magistrate.
Dear Friend, your friendship with Gregor Handel has been deleted. Within the shimmering image of Praydo’s FriendWeb™, the strand that had connected him to Gregor dissolved. Praydo pounded out a message to Gregor demanding an explanaon, but it was simply re jected: Gregor Handel has blocked incoming messages from Praydo Alexander. “What in the name of...?” Praydo said, falling back into his swivel chair, slapping his palm to his forehead. The screen ickered again with a message: Dear Friend, your friendship with Gwendolyn Chang has been deleted. Praydo squinted at this. Gwen was a former girlfriend of Gregor. Now that Praydo was no longer a friend of Gregor, apparently he was no longer Gwen’s friend either. The screen ickered again: Dear Friend, your friendship with Iris McElroy has been deleted. Iris was Gwen’s friend. The screen ickered again. Dear Friend, your friendship with Javaris Handel has been deleted. Javaris was Gregor’s brother. For several minutes, messages arrived in a connuous stream, bearing news of further friendship dele-
ons. In Praydo’s FriendWeb™, social connecons were ashing into non-existence like lightning in a distant storm cloud. Soon Praydo’s FriendWeb™ looked like a moth eaten rag. Praydo turned away from the screen and put his face in his hands. He was taking deep breaths trying to calm himself when the computer screen chimed, and the aracve, lean, chestnut colored face of Pejo ria materialized. “Praydo, I am in conference room Daleph on Level Q. Please join me immediately.” Her image disappeared before Praydo could respond. Praydo, wobbled on weak knees through the translucent corridors of SuccessPrep University™ unl he arrived at the conference room. He stepped through glowing white doors and was met by Pejoria, sleekgured and black-clad, as well as a squadron of solicitors in their scarlet and purple robes, all sing in maral array around the long, oval table. “Sit, Praydo,” Pejoria said, and he took the chair at the foot of the table, looking directly across a long span at Pejoria. Praydo was scrunized for a long me before Pejoria nally spoke. “Praydo, Praydo, Praydo,” she
cooed. “How are you, my dear?” She smiled a dazzling smile that was menacing under the circumstances. circumstances. Praydo cleared his throat, and the sound seemed to fall at in the chilly, cavernous room. “Actually, I...” he started to answer, but before he could nish, Pejoria hurled a handful of metal scraps at him, some striking him, and others claering across the table or cracking against the back wall. “Do you know what that was?” Pejoria yelled. “That was my com mendaon award, which I’d won for ‘Best Regional Teacher Morale.’ Today, upon receiving your delightful message, it snapped into lile pieces and fell o my wrist.” Praydo cowered into his chair be fore Pejoria’s fury. “I liked that watch, and I will hold you responsible for replacing it. But that is hardly why I am here.” Pejoria rose from her chair and stalked stalked like a panther down the aisle toward Praydo. A gray-eyed solicitor handed her a tablet as she passed by. Pejoria came to Praydo’s side and slammed the tablet down in front of him. On it were the words of a Confession, some of it having been unwingly draed by Praydo himself: I, Praydo Alexander, hereby swea r,
that the following statements, though made by me, are false and libelous: “...the student s are not doing well, in fact most of them are not scoring above a Theta...I have been teaching for Success for a year now, and all of my 10 dierent courses have been the same: students paying the high price for our course and geng a poor result...I do not feel that I can face my students...knowing . . I will return their latest pracce ordeals, which shows their dismal results, which as we know are a strong predictor of how they will actually score on the actual Ordeal...” I hereby swear that I will not repeat these words or any such words to the same eect, and if I violate the terms of this agreement, I will forfeit my membership in the SuccessPrep™ Employment Family® along with all of its rights and privileges, including my salary both past and present. Furthermore, I swear that if I do not abide by the terms of this agreement, I confess a judgment of invalidaon against myself to be added to my permanent record with the Validaon Council of the United Naons of America. (signature) Praydo Alexander Don, SuccessPrep University™
Aer Praydo read the Confession, Pejoria dropped a stylus onto the table in front of him. “Mark it,” she demanded. Praydo balked. “I don’t understand why all of this is necessary...” Pejoria leaned her face toward his, propping her arms on the table, her eyes growing wide. “You don’t understand? Are you da? Are you stupid? You cannot possibly be stupid given your Validaon Rank, but I have to ask again, are you stupid? Are you naïve?” Her voice was a spectral growl. “I...I don’t understand.” “Your reckless, negligent words threaten this enre university and the livelihoods of everyone who de pends on it, both students and the Employee Family®. Your reckless, negligent words could destroy it all. My watch isn’t the beginning of it. Do you have even the slightest inkling of how irresponsible you have been?” Sweat beaded up on Praydo’s face. “But the things we’re promising students, about how they’ll succeed on the Ordeals, they’re not true. I don’t want to be lying to them.” A tremor shook the room, evoking an anxious, hosle grumble
from the solicitors. But Pejoria laughed, a highpitched exclamaon. “Ha! Lies, Praydo? You’re con cerned about lies? My dear, dear Praydo, perhaps you are simply naïve. Lies are simply construcve truths. Truths are simply the proposions the community has invested its faith in. Millions of people have invested in SuccessPrep™ and its Mastery Methods®. By aacking these things, you’re not telling the truth: you’re destroying it.” Praydo put his face in his hands. “I need to think...” “There’s no me,” Pejoria said curtly. “Your class begins in ve min utes.” “I can’t teach class tonight,” Praydo gasped. “You can and you must,” Pejoria retorted. “Your students must have your complete assurance behind them for the SuccessPrep™ Mastery Methods® to fully benet them.” Praydo gazed up at the striking woman in her dark suit, hanging over him like an ominous precipice; he pleaded by shaking his head. She slid the Confession closer to him and spoke in a melodious whisper. “You must sign this Con fession and teach your class or else the full weight of our solicitors will be brought down not only on you,
but on everyone associated with you. You will be socially ostracized and nancially ruined. Your choice is simple. Your so-called truth telling may hurt us, but it will hurt you far more.” Praydo thought of his father’s posion with SuccessPrep’s™ parent corporaon, Consolidated World Medium, and how his younger sister was sll at university and depending on their father’s coer. Weakly, Praydo lied his arm and signed the tablet. “Good,” Pejoria said. “All is forgiv en, but we will be watching you. Now go quickly and change your shirt. You’ve sweat yourself through.” #
The bright blue sky and billowing white clouds lled the vista of the window-walled Excellence Room. The students led in promptly: Ross, the prematurely balding, wise-cracking, pseudo-intellectual; Shane, the genial frat boy; Coral, the spunky, nervous Israeli, and a gaggle of other university students. Praydo managed to teach the nal lesson, a review of the Mastery Methods®, although it was a more slted lesson than usual, as he praccally read verbam from the Don’s Mastery Manual® to keep his frazzled
mind on track. It was clear that Ross would never be able to do physics in a mely manner and that Shane sll seemed to fail to grasp the most basic rules of formal logic and that Coral was so jiery she would most likely be undone by panic during the actual Ordeal, nevertheless Praydo managed to choke out the prefabricated Condence Boosters®: “Master the Mastery Methods®, and you’ll master the Physics Ordeal!” and “SuccessPrep™ has given you every tool you need to conquer the Analycal Ordeal!” and “You don’t need to worry because when you chose SuccessPrep™, you chose suc cess!” However, when the lesson was over, it was me to hand back the most recent pracce ordeals. Praydo glanced over the scores and saw that no one had exceeded a Theta. Aer spending a small fortune of me and money on the course, none of them had goen above the ieth percenle. Scores like these wouldn’t get them admied to a school anywhere in the United Na ons nearer than Validaon Lunarae, about which the common joke was that ‘being invalidated by (ll in one’s alma mater) was beer than being validated by Lunarae.’ Praydo buzzed for the Upsilons who were waing in the hall, and
who entered with buet dishes and mobile banquet tables and began seng up for the graduaon party. Praydo axed the golden SuccessPrep™ graduaon seal to the nal score reports, and he then began to walk down the aisles, placing students’ tests facedown on their desks. The students began murmuring as they learned their scores. Praydo went to the computer screen and pushed a buon, and the murmuring was drowned out by fesve, island music. “Well, everyone, congratulaons on compleng the SuccessPrep™ ‘Master the Validaon Ordeal Seminar®.’ You’ve all learned so much, and I’m sure you’ll all do, uh, just ne on the real thing,” Praydo said in a wavering voice. “Now, please, help yourself to some food.” The students srred uneasily in their desks; one student made his way to the buet, but the rest of them were pinned to their chairs by the weight of their futures having collapsed on them. Praydo avoided eye contact with the students. He felt parcularly unable to look at Coral, but he knew she wouldn’t be ignored. “Professor Praydo,” she said in a broken voice as she raised a trembling hand. She’d been such a conscienous student. Just then,
through the back door, Pejoria slipped in, coming to observe the celebraon. Coral connued. “Praydo...my score...is really bad...” her voice was cracking and her eyes were tearing up. “What am I going to do? I’ll never get into validaon school with a score like this.” Praydo couldn’t meet Pejoria’s eyes, even though he knew she was staring at him and arching her eyebrows, as if to say, ‘You know what to do.’ The Don’s Mastery Manual® had an answer to this specic concern: “Don’t worry!” it said. “Your score on your Pracce Ordeal doesn’t necessarily predict how you’ll do on the real thing! Most of our students score beer on the real Ordeal than on their pracce tests! It just takes me for all the Mastery Methods® to come together. Keep working between now and the Ordeal, and you’ll be just ne!” ( Say this in a condent voice to ll your students’ sails with condence! the Don’s Mastery Manual® advised.) The statement was technically true. Sixty-three percent of students scored higher on the actual ordeal than on the pracce ordeal. The rub was that the improvement was by an average of 1.3 points, not enough to make even a one percenle dierence. As for whether the Mastery Methods® ever “came to-
gether” or whether a student would “be just ne!” was enrely a maer of interpretaon. Praydo looked up at Coral, and he glanced back at Pejoria, who was glowering at him as he stammered. Praydo felt as if he would collapse under the forces of Coral’s vulnerability and Pejoria’s crushing glare. “Yeah, man,” man,” Ross, the pseudo-intellectual, said, “I thought we were supposed to score, like, ten points beer aer this course.” “Yes, that is what’s our studies show,” Praydo said, sll not looking at Pejoria directly, but sensing her approval to his answer, and the clutching around his throat and heart eased. But then he noced Coral. She was slowly shaking her down-turned head. “I guess I’m just really stupid,” she said, tears were rolling down her cheeks, tears that had been drawn out by his ‘construcve truths.’ “No, Coral, you’re not stupid,” Praydo said, a ame lighng in his chest, and he lied his eyes to meet Pejoria’s glare. “Well, I’m obviously a lot dumber than the people in your study,” Coral replied, and Pejoria shrugged her shoulders as if to say, ‘that may, indeed, be the explanaon, my dear.’ “No,” Praydo said. “That study is meaningless. It was based on ten
students who’d never taken any of the subjects, and so they did get a ten point bump, but their nal grade was about an Eta. None of them even went to validaon school.” The answer stunned the students into silence. A small, high-pitched noise seemed to be emanang from the back window-wall of the classroom, and its frequency rose unl it was a piercing wail. Suddenly the glass wall exploded. Fibrous shrapnel sprayed through the air. The students screamed as they were scathed. Ross was angry—because of the cung glass and what he’d been told about the study. “Then what the hell does that say for us? And what the hell is the point of this course?” “The truth is that your scores probably won’t go up ten points,” Praydo said. Again, the high-pitched humming sounded, ascending in frequency more quickly this me, and then another wall burst, showering the room with shards of glass. “The boom line is that most of you won’t get into validaon school, and this course was a waste of your me and money. And for that, I’m truly sorry.” A third wall burst, and everyone ducked under their desks, except for Praydo, and also Coral, who each were ayed and sliced,
and Coral was buried under a pile of debris. There was chaos and then moaning, but when the students’ groaning quieted, Pejoria called out from the back of the class. “He’s lying,” she snarled, and the students turned to her. “He’s lying,” she yelled to Ross, who wouldn’t believe that he wasn’t one of the smartest people in the World. “He’s lying!” she said to Shane, who wouldn’t believe against the World he’d known. “He’s lying!” she called to the other students, who all sll craved validaon. “He’s lying!” she snapped again. “Yeah,” Ross said, “He is lying.” “He’s lying,” Shane repeated in a drone. A chorus of agreement ran through the class. “Look what his lying h has as done,” Pe joria yelled, surveying the destroyed room. “He must be stopped!” “Let’s get him,” Ross yelled, and then he crouched down, picked up a slab of glass and threw it, striking Praydo and knocking him back. Shane was next to pick up a shard and hurl it at him. Then Pejoria, in her sleo high heels charged Praydo and shaered a blade of glass across his face. Soon, all of the stu dents were hurling debris at Praydo, and it was not long before he had been smashed and cut to death.
When they’d nished, Pejoria gathered the students around her and reassured them that they would all soon be validated, and if they were not, they could simply return to SuccessPrep™ where they would be oered supplemental seminars at discount rates. As the students began to disperse, there was a srring under a pile of rubble. Slowly, a hand pushed its way out from under the wreckage, and aer a long while, Coral crawled out from under the remains of the Excellence Room. Dazed, and squinng because she’d lost her glasses, she stumbled about unl she came upon Praydo’s body. On his forehead, they’d smeared the word “liar” in blood. Coral spit on her hand, and rubbed o the epithet. “What’re you doing?” Ross called out from behind her, having returned to retrieve his Mastery Manual®. She looked up vacantly at Ross and spoke, although not so much to him as to herself. “He wasn’t lying,” she said. “He was telling the truth.” And the World underneath SuccessPrep University™ quaked.
© 2009 by Casey Chan
Part One
“W
elcome to Red Dog’s world.” The Cillian spread his upper four arms wide, as if to embrace the wind-blasted desert and sun-baked sandstone. Beside him, Priest looked ny. The man’s red robes whipped francally in the wind, and he wore a comically wide grass hat donated by Wu Lung. “You own this world?” “All Red Dog sees is Red Dog’s. All reality is made by Red Dog for Red Dog.” The alien watched Wu’s shule rise from the desert oor in a miniature sandstorm, leaving them behind. “Fool humans will come. Red Dog needs guns.” He set o across the sands, waves of legs undulang his two-ton body forward. Priest struggled to keep pace. Within minutes, he began to lag behind, the heat sapping energy and moisture from his body. “I can’t keep up, great one,” Priest panted. “The heat.” heat.” “Red Dog likes heat. Reminds Red Dog of Cillia home.” He studied the human before seng o again at a slower pace. “Water at cave with guns.” “You have a place here?”
“Red Dog knew fool humans would break own laws someday and hunt Red Dog. Red Dog is prepared. Red Dog has sent supplies for years.” The sand gave way to cracked red clay and rock. He led them into a narrow canyon then up a switchback on the side. “Red Dog likes high ground. Beer range.” The cave sat just below the peak of what might charitably have been called a mountain. In truth, it was closer to a mesa that me and wind had led into a jagged point surrounded by similar peaks worn lower. From it, Priest could see a nightmarish land marked by spires of rock that leaned and moaned in the omnipresent wind; a series of chasms split the ground below like a shaered window pane. Everywhere, sand blew and sied into the gaps, piled against any windbreak. “Beauful,” Red Dog said at his shoulder. “Much beer than replacement Earth.” The Cillian pushed a canteen at Priest. “More water in cave. Red Dog has buried water tank. Keeps tanks under pressure, prevents evaporaon and keeps water cool. Priest can drink from tap on wall.” Priest drank deeply. The water
tasted stale, metallic, and wonderful. “How long can we hold out?” “Enough water for Red Dog for years. For Red Dog and human, maybe six months. Red Dog planned to ght here with human.” He hesitated. “Not Priest, dierent human.” “Steponovich?” Priest asked. Instead of answering, Red Dog moved into the cave. “Food in crate on shelves above water tap. Plenty to eat but do not lose can opener or Red Dog eats Priest.” The man followed, drinking from the canteen. “See hole in oor?” He waved an arm at a foot-wide pit in the middle of the area. The oor of the enre cave sloped gently toward it. “If grenade tossed in, kick grenade in hole.” Red Dog opened a massive cabinet mounted on the stone of the cave wall. A bank of monitors sat on a set of sagging metal shelves beside it. On the other side of the cabinet, a heavy blast door was set into the stone. “What kind of gun Priest want? Red Dog has good selecon.” It was a grotesque understatement; to Priest’s eyes, it looked as if the cabinet contained at least two of every weapon imaginable. “Red Dog likes .50 caliber machine gun, shotgun, and grenade launcher. Somemes rocket launcher for variety.” The Cillian gestured toward his eyes. “Red Dog does not like to
aim.” He slung guns and ammuni on bandoliers around his torso, nishing with a belt of sck bombs. Stepping back from the cabinet, he added, “Do not stand close to Red Dog during ght.” As Red Dog waited, Priest uttered his hands, searching for the right words. “I’m sorry, great one. The guns. I can’t.” “Red Dog has pistols too if guns too heavy.” “It’s not that. We, the Hamatsa I mean, we can’t. All destrucon is sacred but destrucon is dierent from merely bringing death. It’s dif ferent for you—you’re an avatar, but for us—for me—killing would be a selsh act.” He spuered to a halt. “I’m not a warrior,” he nished lamely. To his surprise, Red Dog closed the cabinet. “Worker drone,” Red Dog pronounced. “Watch monitors, build bombs, reload guns. Prob lem?” “No,” Priest said in relief. “Not at all.” “Good drone.” Red Dog ipped a series of switches in rapid succession and the silent monitors began to glow with life. “Staonary cameras on every approach to cave. Red buon below monitor triggers landmine in front of camera. Only one mine per camera.”
The Cillian crossed the cave to the blast door. “Explosives in here.” He spun the large spoked wheel in the door’s center and swung it open. “Red Dog has two more caves set up same,” he said, moving out of sight into the explosives chamber. “Next cave is maybe sixty miles to ward sunrise. Red Dog and Priest separated, return to cave. If cave is invaded, move to next cave. If Priest is captured, tell where next cave is. Red Dog does not mind. No rescue.” The Cillian returned carrying a pair of plasc crates in his upper pair of arms. He closed the blast door and set the crates on a rickety table. “You really think some one will come aer us?” Priest asked. “Yes. Red Dog expects many. Maybe army.” army.” “How long do have?” Red Dog waved his upper cilia. “Unknown. Assume enemy comes now.” He lied smaller boxes out of the crates. “Priest takes puy, rolls into ball, roll ball in steel bearings unl covered.” He demonstrated as he spoke. “Put cap in ball. Carefully so not to die. Put ball with cap in soda can.” “How long do we stay?” Priest asked, joining him at the table. “Unl all fool humans dead.” Red Dog lted his head to one side, add ing, “Or Ivan comes.”
#
At rst, Kylee could not idenfy the noise that awakened her. She listened without opening her eyes. A rapid thumping, swi taps like someone drumming their ngers on a desk, then a dragging, scuf ing sound. The thumps again and a wet snort. Already smiling, Kylee opened her eyes, turning her head slowly toward the sounds. Less than a foot away, so brown eyes met hers. The suni was barely eight inches tall, its ny hooves and horns doll-like, belying the fact that they were also razor sharp. The an telope looked at Kylee from where it had been bung at her pack with an expression expression that, had she not known beer, she would have sworn was guilt, like a shy child caught playing with someone else’s toy. They stared at each other for long seconds. “Boo,” Kylee whispered and the suni vanished in a urry of hooves and dust, back into the security of the underbrush, running to put distance between itself and its imaginary pursuer. Kylee laughed, a merry ringing sound that carried over the veldt. “Lile pests,” Pharaoh said cheerfully. “Come over to the re and have some breakfast.” They did not need the re, not for warmth; but it
kept the larger animals at bay. There was something necessary and right about the campre that guaranteed guaranteed its presence every night. “What I don’t get is, if they’re so skish, why do they keep geng into our stu?” “Curiosity, I would guess.” Pharaoh poured something thick and black into a mug from a n pot at the edge of the re. “They are not skitsh enough. There are too many of them and they do not have enough fear.” Kylee took the mug, blowing across the top. “Fear of people?” “Fear of anything. There are too many of them and not enough predators.” He dug a pipe from his shirt pocket and began packing it with tobacco. “The veldt has a checkerboard ecology. Selous populated it from what he could nd. Some things worked. Some things did not. The jaguarundi replace the leopard, but nothing replaces the lion.” He paused, lighng his pipe with the p of a twig from the re. “ The veldt is short on predators and scavengers.” He sighed. “I should be glad of that. The herds recover quickly from bad years and we can trap and hunt without fear of reducing the herds too far.” “But?” Kylee prompted. “But, it is also something that we
have to do. In the good years, we must be the predators. I dislike culling the herds.” He took a slow draw from his pipe. “Sll, no one has ever gone hungry on Selous.” “What about the langer? Aren’t they predators? That’s a nasty habit,” it,” she added, nodding at his pipe. “It is indeed. That is why Ma does not let me do it. As for the langer, they are the wrong kind of predator. We brought a few across the river once to see how it would work.” He made a pained face. “Geng them here should have been enough to convince us it was a bad idea.” Kylee sipped from her mug, coughed suddenly in surprise. “That’s not coee!” “It is close enough. We are low on coee. I stretched it with some tea and some—” Pharaoh stopped himself and grinned at her around his pipe stem. “Uh-unh, I’m not going to ask.” She drank, swallowing loudly. “So what happened with the langers?” “They were too slow. The langer is a specialized predator. They mainly prey on each other. Big and strong. Good traits in the jungle—not the best for the veldt. Two killed each other, other, one starved to death, and the jaguarundi got the last one aer it was too weak to defend itself.” He slid a cast-iron skillet from the coals
and icked sizzling pieces of meat from it into a shallow pan. Finishing, he licked his ngerps and passed the pan to Kylee. “Breakfast,” he said. “Maybe it is your lile friend’s brother.” Kylee refused to rise to the bait, counter-aacked on a dierent front. “Beer than tobacco for breakfast.” “This,” Pharaoh replied philo sophically, “is for my health.” “Then let me smoke.” “No. Nasty habit, I was once told.” “Do the boys get to smoke?” “No. They were raised beer. I am a beer father than Nimrod, in that respect.” Pharaoh grinned. “He taught Ivan and I all manner of horrible habits. Ask Ivan to show you how he can spit through his teeth.” “That’s not that hard.” hard.” “Ten feet, with a mouthful of food.” Kylee snorted, succumbing to full blown laughter. “Where are the boys, anyway?” she asked, regaining her breath. “Maybe dead. This is rough country,” Pharaoh deadpanned, sending her laughing again. “John is dressing out the eland they killed this morn ing,” he hesitated, scowling at her, “while you slept. James took the truck back to the lodge.”
“Shouldn’t someone have gone with him?” It was not the rst trip they had been forced to make. They had orders for more animals than the truck’s cages could hold, and twice before it had made the long trip north to unload its cargo and return. But always before whomever had drawn the short straws had gone in pairs, both to provide an extra driver and for safety. “A second driver is meeng him.” Kylee widened her eyes. “Martha’s coming down?” “No,” Pharaoh said, enjoying her confusion. “Not Martha.” Her brow furrowed in thought then she leapt to her feet, coee spilling down the sides of the mug. “Ivan’s here?” she shouted excitedly. “He’s nally here?” “Once Ivan is here, nothing will get done,” Pharaoh connued. “We will have to work extra hard for the next two days. You should nish eang.” When she remained standing, staring distantly to the north, he added, “Watching will not make them drive faster.” #
Priest slung another saddlebag of explosives across Red Dog’s back. “I’ve been wondering, how do we get o this world if Ivan doesn’t
come?” “Ivan will come.” “You don’t have an escape plan?” Red Dog clapped his mandibles in agitaon. “Farther south is mining company. Mostly machines but few humans watching work. Transport brings supplies every maybe three or four weeks. If Priest scared, Priest can walk to mines and ask nicely for ride.” “I’m curious,” Priest snapped. “Not scared. I’m in this ght, just like you. It just seemed odd to me that you didn’t have some way to get o the planet if you were stranded.” “Red Dog appreciates Priest’s condence in Red Dog.” A shudder rippled up and down the Cillian’s body, seling the bags. “Red Dog re turns soon.” Priest watched him head down the mountainside, then returned to the cave and the assembly of shaped explosive charges and braiding fuse wire. An unexpected side-eect of his vocaon and religious training as a member of the Hamatsa was a marked prociency in demolion and explosives, enough so that Red Dog had almost ceased to refer to Priest as a fool human. Instead, he found himself promoted to useful drone. “We’re out of soda cans,” he said as Red Dog entered, dropping the
now-empty bags into a heap. “Many cans die nobly in service of Red Dog,” the alien joked. At least, Priest thought he was joking. He was beginning to get a read on the alien’s tones and body language. “Among the Kwakiutl, we believe that when we destroy something as an oering to Kakwas, he will return it to us in the aerlife. You’re going to have a lot of scrap metal.” “Red Dog does not believe in afterlife.” Priest shook his head, nishing the charge he was working on without looking up. “Grim way to live. Nothing to hope for, no future reward.” “Red Dog does not believe in future. Red Dog does not believe in past. Red Dog only believes in now.” “That doesn’t make sense,” Priest said, twisng on his work stool to face Red Dog. “You set up this place to use in the future. You’re planning on Ivan coming to rescue you. It sounds like you believe in the future to me.” “Did Red Dog set cave or does cave exist now because Red Dog wills it to be so? Maybe here is only memory of present when Ivan rescues Red Dog. All Red Dog knows is what Red Dog knows.” Priest shook his head again. “If this cave exists because you will it to
be so then why don’t you just will us to safety? For that maer, why are we even in this mess to begin with?” “Fool humans do not understand. Cillians are smarter, understand universe beer. Red Dog will explain.” The alien gnawed absentmindedly on the edge of a can as he thought. “Red Dog has Red Dog conscious mind but Red Dog also has alter-conscious mind. Alter-conscious makes challenges for conscious so Red Dog is not bored. Job of conscious Red Dog is to do now. Job of alterconscious Red Dog is to oppose conscious Red Dog. Together, Red Dog’s reality made stronger, and Red Dog is made stronger in Red Dog’s real ity. Is simple.” Priest snorted. “I suppose all other Cillians are also products of your imaginaon?” “Now Priest wants Red Dog to explain nidus and vespiary. Red Dog refuses.” “Why? I’m just a gment of your imaginaon.” Red Dog raled in agitaon. “Not gment, projecon of Red Dog’s reality. Priest is real. Red Dog perceives Priest.” “And since you perceive me, that makes me real?” Priest was suddenly struck by the irony of being on the quesoning end of a philosophical
discussion. “Yes.” “And “And therefore part of your reality and under your control, or at least the control of one of your minds?” “Yes. Finally Priest begins understanding.” “What about the Blank and the war?” Priest asked skepcally. “An other challenge from your second mind?” “Alter-conscious,” Red Dog corrected. “Past only has meaning re lated to now. Think. Cillians fought for—” He made a spuer of hisses and clicks that did not translate. “—in war with fool humans. Humans win war. Cillians put under quaranne. Cillians not under quaranne die. Except Red Dog.” The alien lted his head and cracked his mandibles together. “Now Red Dog most powerful Cillian in universe. Red Dog’s alter-conscious very smart. Red Dog’s reality very pow erful.” Priest rubbed his forehead. “So, when you say you don’t believe in them, is it that the past and future aren’t real or that you don’t—” An alarm squealed from the shelves holding the monitors. “Ship,” Red Dog rumbled, grabbing weapons in a urry of arms and heading outside. “Bring detonator.” Priest scooped up the transmier
and a pair of binoculars as he le the cave. The ledge leading did not give an unobstructed view of the desert beyond; too many other spires of crumbling rock interposed. But the shule decelerang from orbit was obvious. The ery glow of its heat shields as it entered the atmosphere punctuated by the bluewhite glare of its deceleraon jets stabbing downward lled the sky, dwarng even the hot blaze of the sun. As it descended, ionized gas formed around it in dark clouds and discharges of lightning danced between the clouds and the ship’s hull. “Not Ivan,” Red Dog said. “Friendly ship would comm rst. Follow ledge down to overlook, watch landing. If ship tries to leave, detonate sets one and two.” “What about you?” “Red Dog must get closer, move fast.” The Cillian disappeared over the ledge, running down the nearvercal slope faster than he could fall. Priest tuned the transmier to the rst set of detonaon codes and jogged along the ledge as it twisted lower through the wastes unl he reached the at shelf that overlooked the desert. Even here, over a mile away from the landing, the shule seemed enormous. It seled
onto the sands, kicking up a dervish of dust devils, stac electricity crackling across its hull. Priest covered the last few feet to the edge of the overlook on his stomach. Liing the binoculars, he waited as the miniature sandstorm died away and the ship cooled, blasts of liquid nitrogen spraying at intervals beneath it to hasten the process. He had not considered before what a calculated ambush the landing area really was. On a planet strewn with rubble, every stone had been removed from the area, leaving the closest thing to a at, clear strip for miles around. Theorecally, a shule could land anywhere on the planet but, given the condions, the cleared area was a pilot’s dream. Priest smiled; for someone who did not believe in the future, Red Dog had planned his stand on this world to an almost obsessive level. The shule opened on both sides simultaneously while a ramp lowered from its rear compartment as well. Men ran from the sides, seeking cover and ring posions with the tense urgency of professionals, prepared for the possibility of landing under enemy re. Priest was sll trying to get an accurate count when a pair of vehicles rumbled down the rear ramp. He refocused the binoculars and looked closer.
They looked to be modied buggies, four-wheeled shells of tube steel, driver and motor protected only by metal sheets welded to the sides and front of the frame. Behind the driver, a plaorm held a pintlemounted machine gun. A harness of webbing uered in the wind, waiting to secure a future gunner. The men held their perimeter as the buggies were ooaded and sll more men emerged, stacking crates of supplies onto the sand away from the shule. Some of the workers returned to the ship while others loitered by the crates. Priest gave up trying to get an exact count, esmang their numbers at around forty. He waited, wondering where Red Dog was, wishing something would happen so he could move. The blistering rock beneath him and the sun baking down were combining to leech the last drops of moisture from his body. The shule test-red its li engines, blowing up a new cloud of sand. The men moved farther away, some sheltering behind the stacks of crates. The shule came to rest again then, moments later, ignited its liers in earnest, rising slowly up from the desert. Priest keyed the transmier. With a sound like the harrumphing bark of a giganc dog, the sur-
face of the cleared landing area erupted upward in a surge of sand, obscuring everything as the explosives buried beneath detonated. Men shouted in the confusion, some screamed. There was a crunch of metal on metal; a series of ash es bloomed inside the dust cloud to the beat of their own drumming blasts. With a squeal of sheering steel, the shule lurched above the churning sand, slewing drunkenly to the side before stabilizing. The re of its li jets cut like massive blow torches across the desert and men below, no longer a pure blue-white light but a bloody ruby instead. Fighng, it rose higher. There was a mushroom of ame and black smoke as the fuel tank of one of the buggies erupted, the ammunion of its machine gun popping in the heat like a string of recrackers. Gunre snapped inef fecvely in the bedlam, men shooting blindly at an enemy they could not see. Another gout of ame rose above the curling mist of sand and re, spreading great black wings of smoke like a raven taking ight. Priest grinned and gave thanks to be alive to witness such glorious beauty. Almost invisible in the chaos, a streak of white lanced from a nearby shelf of rock and exploded
against the side of the shule’s hull. The ship shuddered and a second rocket followed the rst by seconds. This one found the intake of a li jet, a shower of liquid ame spewing from the newly formed rupture in the hull. The shule dipped, twisting. Skimming the sand, it seemed to recover, beginning to describe a slow helix across the sky as it fought for altude with its remaining engines. A nal contrail bisected the arc with deadly accuracy. The shule’s jets shrieked, clawing themselves apart as the power they were meant to channel instead ran wild within, spraying gleaming fragments of metal from the ship in their death throes. The shule sliced into the sand at lightning speed, crumpling as it hit like one of Red Dog’s soda cans. The enre desert seemed to quake with the impact. White hot sand whipped into the air like swarms of angry hornets amid renewed shouts and screams as the men on the ground begged the mountains for shelter. To Priest’s amazement, he heard the motor of the second buggy roar to life. In the excitement, he had almost forgoen the transmier waing paently at his elbows as he gripped the binoculars with both hands. Quickly, he dialed in the sec-
ond frequency and keyed the detonator. A new round of explosives gave voice to Red Dog’s dislike of visitors, these an-personnel mines set outside the earlier ones, almost at the foot of the mountains. The landing fell silent save for the cries of wounded men and the devilish crackling of re. “Red Dog is out of SAMs,” buzzed a voice behind him. Priest lowered the binoculars, twisng to look at the alien. Red Dog carried a rocket launcher on either side of his shoulders like giant extensions of his own mandibles. Priest crawled backward to avoid being silhoueed on the ridge then fought to his feet. “Sams?” “Surface to Air Missiles.” “Will we need more?” “No. Shule must come from ship in orbit but orbing ship only has one shule, maybe. If ship has another shule, humans will not land again unless at mines.” Thunder rolled in the depression below as the res ignited a fresh explosion. “Land war now. Red Dog has achieved air superiority.” “There are sll some alive, down there,” Priest noted. “Even Red Dog will not go into inferno now.” He swung the chin wedge of his head side to side. “Lat er, Red Dog will kill survivors. If more
come, Red Dog kills more unl none le.” Red Dog unfolded an arm, patted Priest on his scalp. “Priest did well. Good drone.” The human tried not to shudder as the cilia fringing the arm caressed him with a mind of its own. #
Kylee dragged into her tent and sank to the ground. She leaned to pull her bag of tools closer, ignoring the twinges of pain sparking in her back and shoulders. All she really wanted was a shower—lile more than a bag of water and a hose hung from a tree limb, warmed to whatever lukewarm temperature the sun had deigned to give it over the course of the day, but a won derful luxury nonetheless. Before she could, the gun came rst. The gun always came rst. Pharaoh had taught her creature comforts could wait but there were mes when the need for the gun could not. More by muscle memory than conscious thought, she began to strip and clean her rie. Even with the captures nished, there remained work to do in the veldt—animals to be tranquilized, checked for signs of disease, and tagged. Others needed relocaon because of overcrowding or exces -
sive aggression, and a dozen other odd tasks mounted to ll the day— all of which involved considerable amounts of liing, twisng, and heaving of sluggish animals while tensely watching for signs of renewed awakening that would signal a dangerous panicked struggle. Kylee’s arms felt like lead and her eyes stung with sweat. She reached for the coiled spring she had placed at the edge of her oilcloth. Not nding it, she turned, expecng to nd one of the twins holding it with a grin, teasing her for being slow. Instead, something resembling a cross between a weasel and a red fox sat reared on its hind legs, holding the spring in its forepaws as it nibbled the metal experimentally. Pharaoh was right; they needed more predators. “Stop or I’ll shoot,” she said, glaring at it. “Pest. This keeps up, I’m going to get a dog.” It responded by dropping to all fours and running a few feet away, spring held in its teeth, before resuming its inspecon. Deciding it could not eat the ends, it nipped experimentally at the center. It twitched its nose in displeasure and scolded Kylee with a series of barking chirps. She replied with an exacerbated hiss. It blinked, the lighter fur around its eyes and snout mak-
ing it look even more wide-eyed than it already was, and dropped the spring, trong toward edge of camp. Once there, it paused, turned and stood again to scold her a nal me before disappearing into the grass. “And now you know who’s been digging all those holes you bounce the jeep o of,” said a familiar voice behind her. “Yellow mongoose or red meerkat, I can never remember.” “Ivan!” she screamed, bounding to her feet. Kylee threw herself into his arms, staggering him with the impact. He returned her embrace with equal ferocity. “Damn I’ve missed you, kid,” he said, squeezing her with desperate intensity. “Watch your language,” she told his chest, ghng back tears and laughing at the same me. “I forgot.” He kissed her on top of her head. “You’re at least a foot taller. Stronger too.” “Because Pharaoh works me like a mule.” She pulled back and he let her go. “You’re grayer,” she teased. “Brat.” He grinned back at her. “Go clean up. I’ll nish cleaning your gun then we’ll go nd old stone face.” She hesitated, then shook her head. “My gun, my responsibility. You go ahead.”
“Nah,” Ivan lowered himself to the ground. “I’ll keep you company.” “So tell,” she demanded. “You went looking for the Hecate. Then what? And not the abbreviated version you’ve already told me, I want the whole story.” “I’ll just have to go through it all again for Pharaoh. Might as well tell everyone at the same me.” “Nope. I’m special,” Kylee insist ed. “Spill it.” He did, glossing over the full horror of the Eaters. When he tried to do the same with the events of the Salle des Armes, Armes, she stopped him, barraging him with so many quesons that he relented and gave her a full accounng of the events. “Did you tell Rose about the sniper?” she asked when he nished. “No. I reckon she’s gured it out on her own, and I don’t want to bring it up unl she’s ready. If she wants to talk about it, she’ll ask.” “And you gure Fagan hired him?” “Makes sense. Nobody else knew about her contract, and he’d already bet a fortune. If you ’d met him—he’s not the kind of guy that would’ve taken chances with his own skin. I think he believed Rose would back down but, just in case, he had his man in place to drop her if she went for his gun.”
“Hmmm.” Kylee checked the bolt. Sased, she rolled her tools into the oilcloth. “Fagan would’ve been drawing too. I’m assuming the idea was that everyone would gure he just beat her on the draw.” “That’s my guess. The angles wouldn’t have matched up, but most of the spectators wouldn’t have known the dierence or cared, and the organizers of the tournament would have been quick to go along with a cover-up.” Kylee stood, nodding. “You talk to Red Dog?” Ivan rose, slapping dust from his legs. “Not yet. House has him out on another errand.” “You are going to apologize, aren’t you?” Ivan shrugged. “That’s not how Red and I work. Don’t worry about it. We’re ne.” “Men,” Kylee snorted in disgust. “I’m going to go rinse o. Don’t van ish, okay?” He smiled. “I promise, I’m not going anywhere without you again. Not unless you want me to.” He walked toward the middle of camp, waving to John as he passed. John jerked a thumb toward the trucks and Ivan nodded. Pharaoh and James were crawling under the trailer holding the helicopter.
“Hey, Tumbo,” Ivan said, crouching down, one hand on a trailer re. “Need help?” “Yes,” Pharaoh called. “You see anyone useful around?” “Kylee’s busy. That leaves John and me so, I’m going to have to say no.” “Just a minute.” Pharaoh said something to James that Ivan could not make out. There was a pounding on the underside of the trailer and an inarculate growl from James as he strained. Chains fell loose with a claer, and father and son crawled from opposite sides of the trailer. “Chain was stuck,” Pharaoh gasped as Ivan pulled him to his feet. “Told you I got him here in one piece,” James panted. “Had to talk to the kid rst,” Ivan said, pulling Pharaoh toward him, clapping him on the back with a pu of dust. “Good to see you.” “And you, lile brother.” He hugged Ivan close with one arm around his shoulders. “You should have come sooner.” sooner.” “Work to do.” “For making me wait, I forgive you. For all the trouble the girl put me through because you made her wait, this I sll have to think on.” He chuckled, shaking his head. “She killed a langer—alone. Because she was mad at you.”
“It was awesome!” James added, coiling the chain which had held the chopper fastened. Ivan frowned. “What do you mean, alone?” “Alone. No backup, no overshot, no ‘Oh by the way Pharaoh I am o to shoot the langer.’ Alone! Your child is stubborn.” Pharaoh leaned forward unl he was nose-to-nose with Ivan, widened his eyes comically. “She makes me old!” Both men dissolved into laughter. Ivan caught his breath and sighed. “It is good to be home.” “You will stay then?” “No, not long.” Ivan turned, staring out at the waving grass. “The storm is coming. Casey’s up to something. House and I have found bits and pieces but no answers. I sll can’t walk away, not yet. I’ve wasted too much me already.” Pharaoh gripped his shoulder but said nothing. The crash of chain hing the bed of the trailer echoes like thunder across the veldt. “If you guys’ll move,” James said, “I’ll see if I can get this bird started and o onto solid ground.” He swung into the doorless cockpit as they backed away. “Hey, Pop, did he tell you he brought a girl along?” James shouted, starng the engine. The rotors began to turn in lazily, gaining speed.
“I’m guessing he does not mean Kylee?” Pharaoh yelled over the noise. Ivan ducked his head against the wind. “Rose came with me. It’s been a rough me for her.” The chopper lied gradually o the trailer and James guided it away from them. “I le her at the lodge with Martha.” “You are collecng strays,” Pharaoh warned. “Come. John took an eland yesterday. We will eat well tonight.” “Has Kylee seen them yet?” Pharaoh sobered. “She has not seen...that poron of the veldt. I have kept her busy here, close to the camp. The other, I have le for you.” “Tomorrow then,” Ivan said ghtly. They stood in silence, watching as James landed the ‘copter. They stayed awake well into the night, two old lions telling tales of their youth around the campre as the next generaon listened. Of why there were no hyenas on Selous and how Nimrod and Old Pete once accidentally tried to shoot each other and missed. Of the me Ivan and Pharaoh went o-world to hunt cape bualo and barely escaped with their lives, and the me they thought to ride a kudu. James intruded to tell Ivan of how Kylee killed the langer, and Pharaoh re-
taliated with a carefully redacted but thoroughly humorous account of how he and Ivan had ‘liberated’ Martha from the corporate mines. They went to bed late, woke even later, wisul but sased, reassured in the connuity of family. #
The place was a dive. Its kith and kin lived on almost every world and staon on the Froner; a bar on one wall, stairs up to a brothel on the other. Tables and chairs liered the center, ordered only near the wall where the usuals gambled, one table for faro, one for poker. The lighng was comfortably dim and cigaree smoke blurred the harsh edges. Somemes it seemed that Kingsher had spent half his life in the same room. “I said, the Senator is willing to pay your fee.” The man who stood whining beside the table was turning a disnct shade of green from the smoke. Kingsher ignored him. “You playing?” the dealer asked. The whiner shook his head. “Then shut up. Five draw, nothing fancy.” Kingsher lied the edges of his cards with a thumb. “Seems to me, last me we talked, your Senator only wanted the best.” He icked a chip toward the center of the table.
“Raise.” “That’s why he’s willing to pay your fee.” Kingsher let him stew. “Call. Take two.” He waited as the dealer skipped cards across the table. “Interesng,” he muered, glancing at the cards. “I thought washed-up old has-beens like me weren’t worth that kind of money. Maybe that was a dierent fellow said that. Raise again.” “As I have said, the Senator is will ing to pay.” “Washed-up will cost you double. Has-been’ll put you at triple.” Kingsher stroked the edge of his cards with his thumb, listening to the rif e. Two other players folded. “Old I’ll give you for free.” “I’m afraid I don’t understand.” Kingsher sighed. “Hold on a sec. Wal, you ain’t got nothing in that hand. Hurry up and fold. Re-raise.” Walrus folded and pushed the chips toward Kingsher. Kingsher raised his le hand, placing it absent-mindedly on the whiner’s shirt. “Now then,” he balled his hand into a sul of shirt and yanked. The whiner pitched forward to his knees, his face meeting the table with a meaty slap. “Listen good, puppy. I’m old, not stupid. First o, ain’t a man-jack on the Froner what don’t know your
Senator is just a lapdog for Edgar Casey. Second, you’re back here lap ping at my feet because your ‘best’ couldn’t do the job. So if you really want the best, you’re going to show some respect and you’re going to pay for it. Triple what I asked for last me.” Kingsher bounced him o the table again. “Understand?” “Understand?” “Yeth, thir.” Condescending distaste was replaced by fear thickened by pain. “Fine.” Kingsher pushed him backward, away from the table. “Give the details to Rounder, at the bar. Let the limey make himself useful.” The whiner either le or died; either way he did not bother Kingsher during the next two hands. Chair legs scraped across the oor and a new player joined the game. “Deal me in.” Rounder waited as the cards were dealt. “You squeezed ‘im for a few quid.” When Kingsher did not answer, he added, “We got the job.” “Didn’t really want it.” “Want me to call up some o’ the boys?” “Just the usual.” He thumbed his cards, leng the edges snap against the table. “Smith, Winchester, Colt, maybe a couple of Dutchmen.” “You’re a funny one, Kin g.” Rounder tossed a pair of Kingsher’s Kingsher’s chips into the pot. “Call. I’ll owe you.”
“I’ll collect.” Rounder looked from his cards to Kingsher’s face, saying, “They put down thirty-six men, mostly exspecial ops mercenary types. They gure half survived the landing. The bug ambushed ‘em.” Kingsher snapped a bier laugh. “Of course he did. Any decent hand would’ve.” “Them that survive’ll work for us when we get to ‘em.” “Walking trap detectors, about all they’ll be good for.” Rounder studied his cards thoughully, folded. “Stet’s with ‘em.” “Raise.” Kingsher raised a hand to his mustache, twisng it between his ngers. “That’s the cyborg?” “The enhanced bloke, yeah.” “Interesng.” Rounder snorted. “That’s all? ‘In teresng’?” When no answer was forthcoming, he le. Which suited Kingsher just ne. There was sll money on the table.
© 2009 by M. Keaton
“T
his is the EDF Zenith to longrange shule. Power down your engines. This is not a request. Power down or I will open —” A rainbow exploded outside the Zenith. Marshal C.Moira cursed and covered her eyes too late. She would be seeing stars for days. She shook back her striped grey and black hair, the only mark of the homunculus’s feline heritage. She placed ltered goggles down over her eyes and acvated her own slip-drive. Okay, sisanba , now it’s personal. Sub-colors swirled past her, coruscang galaxies joining the stars on her renas. She could feel the controls of the Zenith vibrate in her hands, feel the nausea build in the pit of her stomach as slip-space battled to push C.Moira and her ship back into normal space. Slip-sickness, some of the old mers sll called it. The nausea and hallucinaons caused by the impression of non-Euclidean slip-space on the brain. Most pilots these days chose to plot their courses into the navicomp and take the tranqs with any passengers. Not her. She liked being sharp, especially when hunting down fugives. She had trained herself to detect minor changes in the ux of slip-space, prided her-
self on being able to track down the craiest of pilots. And she had never been bothered by the hallucinaons. Besides the swirls of colors her eyes could not quite process, she saw nothing. Then again, she had been bred to be a space pilot. Feline genes shaped into the form of a woman, hunng insncts transferred to her profession as Marshal. C.Moira was good at her job; her biology demanded it. The pilot of the shule ew er racally, like a novice. Flew by hand, not by navicomp, though that would have been an advantage if C.Moira hadn’t been ying by hand as well. Standard chase algorithms assumed navicomp eciency subrounes on the part of a eeing ship. An inexperienced pilot making a number of short slips could easily zigzag away while the navicomp overshot. Made it more likely to overload the ship’s slip-drive or get drawn into the gravity well of a star. But you avoided capture. C.Moira had known criminals that preferred death by explosion or stellar heat to capture. She hadn’t expected this to be one of them. “The of genec material,” the warrant read. Re-educaon was
generally the standard punishment. So why was this criminal running as if her life depended on it? A female, she knew from the warrant. To be brought back alive, if possible. C.Moira had a reputaon for always following the leer of the warrant. She had been bred with a strong sense of jusce. It wasn’t easy at mes, but that was what the regen chamber in the back of the Zenith was for. Plus the Jusce Ministry didn’t like scarred Marshals, physically or mentally. Bad for recruitment. recruitment. Best just for everything to be repaired from the cellular level up. Shame that it wiped short-term memory, but one couldn’t have everything. There. C.Moira could feel the small change in the eddies around her. Another object had passed this way in slip-space. She took her hand o the controls for a fracon of a second. The Zenith began to roll and yaw to the right. An inexperienced pilot was more suscepble to gravity currents. And she had been running her engines hard. Unless she wanted to blow herself up, the fugive would have to shi back to normal space soon. Likely in orbit around the star causing these currents. C.Moira would beat her to it. She could feel the adrenaline in her system ghng with the slip-space
nausea. The thrill of the hunt. That was the only complaint her superi ors ever had against her. She toyed with her prey. Three. Two. A collapsing rainbow and the Zenith was back in normal space. A reexive check of the scan ners. Old mainline star. One of the gas giants had a habitable moon. Barely habitable. She needed to know where her mouse might bolt. A soundless explosion and the shule was there. Before C.Moira could even open her comm channel, it had spoed her, started making evasive maneuvers. The Zenith’s third laser shot transxed the engine. A nice clean shot. The warrant hadn’t specied return of the shuttle, but a quick repair job would get it back to Ecumene Prime and net her a nice bonus. As expected, the shule broke o for the habitable moon. C.Moira followed leisurely. She could feel her canines against her boom lip as she smiled. She took a few calming breaths. Took the Zenith into the atmosphere. The shule had seled to rest on rocky terrain. The fact that it was more of a landing than a crash was a credit to the amateur pilot’s in telligence. The marshal landed the Zenith on the nearest smooth patch of rock, perhaps half a kay from the
shule. A lile walk would help her come down from her adrenaline high and make sure she kept to the ideal terms of the warrant. A check of the atmosphere. Well within her personal tolerances. She ed a breather into her nostrils anyway, to lter out possible pathogens. A quick check of the charge on her laser pistol. Full. She replaced it in its hip holster and stepped through the airlock. A cold wind pushed against C.Moira’s uniform. The only atmosphere the moon had. Her striped hair streamed behind her as she picked her way carefully over the rocks. She was thoroughly chilled by the me she reached the downed shule. But she had known for a long me that a marshal’s life was nowhere near like what they showed on the 3V programs. Her datawand made short work of the outer door; only a Lord of the Ecumene could keep a duly appointed marshal locked out. She paused inside the airlock to warm up for a moment and then pressed the intercom buon. “This is EDF Marshal C.Moira. You are under arrest for the the of genec material which is the intellectual property of Lord Sayid 314 of Ecumene Prime. Surrender, and I promise not to harm you.”
The inner door to the airlock slid open with a hiss, and Marshal C.Moira realized two things about the woman standing before her. The graceful gure, the orange hair, the glowing green eyes with their vercal slit pupils. This was not a homo sapiens before him, but a C-series homunculus, like herself. And the second thing was that the woman was very pregnant. “A most interesng charge, don’t you think, sister? Seeing the ‘genec material’ is as much mine as his.” Her voice was a sultry purr. She wore the blue costume of a girlygirl; cut and gusseted in such a way to reveal nothing but suggest everything. Her pregnancy had only enhanced the woman’s beauty. Non-woman. Cat in the shape of a woman. “How...” She trailed o at the musical laugh. “Certainly Marshal C.Moira of the EDF, the great hunter who always catches her prey, knows the hows of biology.” Beneath the laughter, the sweet snk of fear. The other homunculus did not know what C.Moira was going to do. That makes two of us, she thought. The marshal’s mind raced. There were rumors of Sayid 314’s...proclivies, even in the lesser circles
of power C.Moira traveled in. It was not a crime, not exactly. More like a lapse in good taste. Though she herself had had as many human as homunculus lovers. She forced all this from her mind. “All the homunculus series. We’re sterile.” The silver laugh again, poisoned with bierness. “Amazing what the luxury of dislled water and hothouse-grown food reveals about the nutrive value of mealpacks, isn’t it?” An ache in the pit of C.Moira’s stomach, an empness, a need she had never knew existed before. She felt her legs grow weak, fought to keep her knees from locking in place. The other’s smile gentled. She rested a hand on the marshal’s arm. “What a poor hostess I am. Come. I’ll make tea...” And as C.Adeen made tea—for that was the girlygirl’s name—she told C.Moira her story. How she had worked the spaceports like many in her trade. How she had caught the eye of Lord Sayid 314. How she had become his personal courtesan, and then fallen in love with him. How aer two years of life together, she had seen him with another girlygirl, and realized in an instant both that she loved him, and that he would never love her in turn. C.Adeen told of the terrible lone -
liness that opened up deep inside her. And then how, into that empness, light and life and hope came. She could not stay with a man who did not love her. She would not let him or anyone take her child from her. “So for the rst me in my life I stole. I bet everything on a single chance. And lost. I should have known they would send you aer me.” The girlygirl smiled at C.Moira. The marshal knew that they trained girlygirls to use words and tone of voice and body language to ence, to persuade. C.Adeen was good. She was very good at her job. She had to have been to aract someone like Lord Sayid 314. “Where were you planning on running? Anywhere in the Ecumene, one of us would have found you.” C.Adeen rested her hands on her abdomen. Smiled down at the life within her. “There are places other than the Ecumene. I’ve even heard it said the Covenant treats homunculi as equals. At least my child would have had a chance.” C.Moira let out a slow breath. “Enough talk. The Covenant is a handful of backwater worlds ghting for daily survival. You wouldn’t make it there. Let me take you home.” The girlygirl looked up and into the marshal’s eyes. “I would rather
die. Tell me, C.Moira, can you shoot a pregnant woman simply because she wants her child to be free?” C.Moira felt her ngers twitch over her pistol’s holster. No. There was the law, and there was what was right. She sighed, sank back against her seat. The other woman rested her hands on the marshal’s shoulders. “So. What do we do now? You can come with us, you know.” C.Moira shook her head. “If I don’t return, they’ll only send another marshal aer you. First we’ll repair your shule...” She trailed o and looked at C.Adeen’s manicured hands. Green eyes sparkled. “Don’t worry. We are more talented than many people believe. I’ve trained in many arts: music, painng, sculpture. I’m quite good with my hands.” “Good.” C.Moira unholstered her weapon and handed it to C.Adeen. “Then listen carefully and do exactly as I say...” #
Lord Sayid 314’s handsome face was red. His long limbs were shaking in rage. It took every ounce of control to keep from throling the Jusce Minister. “I want to be absolutely certain that the thief is dead if not captured. Use the mind probe.” The Minister smiled as one might
at a spoiled, slow-wied child. “It would make no dierence. The regen cycle has wiped her memories cleaned. But this is C.Moira we’re talking about. Her ship’s record show that she red on the stolen shule and brought it down. There was a struggle. The thief was killed, the marshal badly injured. She just barely made it to the regen chamber in me.” Sayid 314 pounded on the wall. “Not enough.” “My lord, it will be as much as you will get. Now, the marshal needs her rest. A few educaonal tapes and she will be protecng the Ecumene again.” C.Moira heard the conversaon with sleepy ears. She had been cold before, now she was warm. It was good. Everything was good. She should sleep. Sleep was good. Before she fell asleep, she looked again at the netsuke in her hand. A delicate jade carving of a cat nursing a kien. It lled her with an emo on that she did not have a name for. But it also made her happy. Very happy. Marshal C.Moira of the EDF fell asleep with a smile on her face.
© 2009 by Donald Jacob Uitvlugt
Name: Chrisan Nauck Age: 31 Country of residence: Germany Hobbies: drawing, games, comics... Favorite Book / Author: I know, it’s not a book but a manga, but I have to go with One Piece. It’s just a big, fun, adventure ride! Favorite Arst: Oh, too many to name one in parcular. I’m inspired by arsts from a lot of dierent areas and periods. When did you start creang art? I guess it’s the answer everyone gives—as a kid I loved drawing already. But working professionally and really working on improving my skills, I started around twenty-two, I guess. What media do you work in? I did a lot of my comic works “old school”—pencil on paper. But I mostly work digital now. Preferably with Photoshop.
Where should someone go if they wanted to view / buy some of your works? I have a homepage: www.nauckundschuetze.de , and you can take a look at my works in my more frequently updated DeviantART gallery hp:// manarama.deviantart.com/or my blog hp://sketchfu.blogspot.com/
How did you become an ar st? I started drawing, stayed stayed with it, and eventually made a job of it. What were your early inuences? Denitely comics. I loved comics my whole life, and ten years ago, they were almost the only inuences I had. Luckily that changed over me. Comics are sll a big inspiraon for me, though, but only one of many others.
Have you had any notable failures,
and how has failure aected your work? Of course. There is so much
to learn and to know, it’s hard to get it all right. It really diers on what I want to achieve, what style I work in and so on. What do you hope to accomplish with your art? My main goal is
simply to become a beer arst while sll having fun with my work.
What are your current inuences? All the art I can nd—on the
internet, in movies, books, and of dierent styles and elds such as concept art, character design, animaon, comics... What inspired the art for the
cover? I wanted to express the feeling of the start of a great adventure. I guess I was inspired by concept art and the sunny feeling some of the anime have. How would you describe your work? I don’t know—though I
work in Photoshop, my working techniques and results change very oen. I like to use dierent styles. Artwork © 2009 by Christian Nauck
H
auling cargo wasn’t normally a dicult job, but then again, the payload wasn’t usually free-oang in the middle of an asteroid belt. All in a day’s work , Ferron thought. As the cargo chief of the star-freighter Breaking Dawn, Dawn, he approached every task with the same steadfast determinism. Clad in a white environmental suit that didn’t quite t his large body, the Dunadon stood before a computer terminal next to the forwardfacing cargo doors. Magnec boots kept him locked in place, which was good since the doors were open to the depths of space and the arcial gravity had been turned o. Everything in the cargo bay was strapped down to keep from bouncing around in the icy empness, including his loader droids, which were useless in a zero-gee environment. “Skipper,” he said into his helmet mike, “if we can’t get that pod to stop spinning, we’re going to have a hell of a me geng her aboard.” “I realize that, Chief,” Jessica replied from the bridge. “If I could, I would, but its moon is just too crazy. Otherwise I would have just scooped it up myself.” “Just do what you can, Skipper,”
Ferron said. “I always do, Chief.” Beneath him, Ferron could feel the ship start spinning along its lateral axis. Less than a minute later, the captain had goen as close as she could to matching the spin of the freight pod. With that done, Ferron pressed a buon on his con sole, and from the ceiling descended a grappling cannon. It only took him a moment to get the grappler’s crosshairs centered on its target. “I’m ready to re, Skipper.” “Fire away, a way, Chief.” Chief.” “Armave. Firing grappler now.” A second later, a small metal rod shot from the cannon and ew toward the cargo pod, unspooling a length of carbon nanober behind it. Moments later, the magnec p at the front of the rod hit the metal container with a thump and latched on. “We have a lock,” Ferron said. “I’m bringing her in now.” “Understood.” A buon press began the retracon process. Above him, the winch started reeling the nanober in. Af ter a few moments, a warning light began blinking. Scanning his display, Ferron saw that the diering rates
of rotaon was causing the ber to bunch up and twist in the reel mechanism, which, if le unchecked, could cause it to seize up. He hit a buon, and the winch stopped. “Skipper, we’ve got a bit of a problem, so I’m going to go take a walk. I’ll be right back.” With a half-hearted chuckle, he reached down to grab one of his suit’s dangling carabineers, gave it a test yank, and then looked looked up. This should be fun, fun, he mused to himself, only half joking. #
“Just what do you think he meant by that?” Jessica asked her android crewmate from the pilot’s chair. “Knowing Ferron, it could have meant anything.” The captain stewed in her seat. Her rst insnct was to call the cargo chief back to get a beer explanaon of the problem he’d discovered, but she trusted his judgment and let him handle it as he saw t. She re greed her decision seconds later when she saw, at the boom of her eld of view, a small gure moving away from her ship down the length of nanober line. “Ferron Cth, what do you think you’re doing?” she shouted into the comm. “I’m kinda busy right now, Skipper,” he replied, his breathing sounding harried through the bridge
speakers. “Sorry.” The comm channel squelched closed, and all Jessica could do was watch in horried amazement as her crewman dried down the ber line toward the slowly spinning cargo pod like a rotund spider. Tiny white pus from his suit’s air thrusters pushed him along. “I don’t believe his enviro-suit was designed for that sort of acvity,” Cam said. Slumping into her chair, she replied, “Tell him that.” From where she sat, his large body seemed so small and insignicant in the vastness around him. Several minutes cked past as he traversed the line, but once he reached his desnaon he let out some of his safety line and clambered toward one of the pod’s outside walls so that he faced against the spin. A sustained burst of air from his suit’s jets shot out in harsh white streams, crystals of compressed moisture ying out from him like bits of snow. Gradually she could see the pod’s spin slowing. Outrageous as it was, Ferron’s soluon was working. “At that rate, he won’t have much air le in reserve for the return journey,” Cam said, as his cybernec mind processed the data the ship’s sensors gave him. Nodding, Jessica opened her comm. “Ferron, that’s good enough.
Head back in now.” “Just...another...couple...of seconds,” the Dunadon replied stubbornly. She was having none of it. “That wasn’t a suggeson, Chief. It was an order. Move it. Now.” Now.” Aer a few seconds, Ferron said, “Okay, Skipper. Coming back in.” He then dried from the pod and started pulling himself back down the line. “Cam, access the cargo bay grappler controls and start reeling it back in.” “Aye, “Aye, Captain.” C aptain.” Smoothly, the nanober began winding in again, and the freight pod retracted at its former pace. As soon as it and her cargo chief made it back inside the bay and the doors were closed, the captain opened her comm. “Chief,” she said, her voice silky smooth and even, “as soon as you’ve got our package stored, please meet me on the bridge. Thank you.” The temperature outside the ship was absolute zero, and inside the bridge it wasn’t much warmer, with the center of the chill sing squarely in the pilot’s seat. #
“I would like to oer you the
chance to explain,” Jessica said, “why I shouldn’t haul you down to the cargo hold, lock you in the small est container I can nd, and then leave you on the nearest available docking plaorm with nothing but a can opener to get yourself out.” Ferron’s eyes looked straight ahead, and his hands were held behind his back. “One of the reasons you hired me is because I can think quickly on my feet. I see a problem, and I work to resolve it as eciently as I can. That’s what I did here.” Tapping her chin with her right index nger, Jessica nodded a bit too harshly for it to be a genuine expression of agreement. “Okay, and exactly what in your experience led you to believe that you could perform an impromptu spacewalk, and not only that, but one done in a suit that wasn’t designed for it, and , to make it even beer, do it in the middle of an asteroid eld?” Unsure of how to respond, he said, “Skipper, I don’t know what it is you want me to say. I saw a problem, I saw a way to x it, and I acted. If I’d thought for a moment that I couldn’t get the job done or that there was another immediate x, then I wouldn’t have done it. There wasn’t any real danger.” “But there was!” Jessica yelled, slamming her hand on a con-
sole next to her. “The instant you clamped yourself to that line and exited the ship you put yourself in danger. Should I count the ways?” Ferron shook his head, but it didn’t maer. The queson had been rhetorical. “One,” she said, raising an index nger, “you could have run out of oxygen. Two,” another nger went up, “your clamp could have come loose. Three, an asteroid too small or too fast to be detected could have slipped past Cam and blown you into another dimension. Four, a radiaon storm from the Proxius star could have cooked your juices. Five, your suit could have goen torn on the cargo pod.” Before she could get started on her other hand, the Dunadon raised both of his and stopped her. “Skipper, you’re right, okay? I guess if I’d thought about it a few more seconds, all those things might have occurred to me. But they didn’t. I acted, and everything came out all right. Can’t that be enough?” She lowered her head and gave it a slow shake. “No, it can’t, and I guess that’s what’s bothering me. This is so unlike you. You’ve always been smart in the cargo bays. I could depend on you to respect the danger.” “You sll can. The cargo bays re -
ally aren’t as dangerous as you’re making...” Ferron stopped speaking as a thought occurred to him. Aer several long seconds he said, “Is this about me, or about your father?” Jessica locked eyes with her cargo chief for a moment, and then she dropped her head. “I’ve lost one person I care about in that hold. I won’t lose another.” “I’m sorry, skipper. You’re right. It won’t happen again.” Nodding, she said, “It’d beer not.” Ferron sensed that the storm had passed. “If there’s nothing else then, I beer get back and see if anything shook loose.” “Go ahead,” she told him with a sigh. “I might join you later and see if I can’t take a peek inside that pod. Aer all this trouble I think we de serve a look.” The cargo chief chuckled. “Good luck. The locking mechanism on that thing is a monster. Give me a week and a plasma torch, and maybe I could open it. Otherwise, don’t even think about it.” She shrugged her shoulders and turned back to her pilong chair. “Probably for the best. No use scking our noses in where they don’t belong.” Ferron nodded, gave his captain a salute, and walked toward the exit.
“Tell Cam it’s safe to come back in,” she said as she seled into the lowered chair. “Will do.” As the rear doors parted, bodies scaered away from the opening in as nonchalant a fashion as rushing bodies could, and all of them were pointedly not looking at Ferron or in the direcon of the bridge. The Dunadon couldn’t help but smirk. #
Jessica had been having a good dream, one of white sandy beaches, clear waters, endless Zoodien Twists, and the company of a handsome man. But, like all good dreams, it had to end. “Captain, we have a problem,” Boo said, his urgent voice coming from a speaker in the ceiling of her cabin. Grunng, she stood from her bed, pulled on a vest, and le her room. Boo was seated in the pilot’s chair when she entered the bridge, Cam was plugged in at his usual post in the taccal staon, and Duka was standing at the command console. “Okay,” she intoned, “what’s the bad news?” Pressing a buon on the console before him, Duka shook his head and replied, “This is,” before step-
ping aside to allow her a clear view of what it displayed. It only took two seconds of reading to understand just how complicated their life had become. “Oh no,” she muered. On the console was a news feed from the Intergalacc Trade and Transportaon Network. The headline read, “Tol-Yinush Worlds At War.” The Tol-Yinush System was a rarity in the galacc community, in that it was a solar system that had devel oped senent life on two dierent planets at approximately the same me. Their orbits had kept them at opposite ends of the solar system for centuries, but radio transmissions had brought them together decades ago, and despite the hundreds of millions of kilometers that separated them, they’d developed a friendship. That friendship died when, a year prior, a Yinushan governmental ocial was assassinated by a Tolesian dissident. Intermediaries from half a dozen worlds had been working to resolve the maer peacefully, but the news brief said that the peace talks had just ended. Unfortunately for the crew of the Breaking Dawn, Dawn, the fourth moon of Tol was their desnaon. “Crap,” she said.
The E’Loean engineer nodded in sympathy. “What do you think we should do?” Jessica pondered the queson for a moment, and then replied, “I think we should turn around, head home, tell Jack sorry, and hope the Gorawnies don’t decide to take out a hit on all of us.” Duka didn’t give her sarcasc words the dignity of a verbal response, and instead let his scowl do all the talking for him. “Dammit, Duka, what do you think? We complete the mission. It’s not like we have much of a choice.” “There’s always a choice, Jessie,” the old E’Loean told her. Jessica smirked. smirked. “Thanks, but this me I don’t think so. If the cargo belonged to anyone else, I’d agree with you and hold o unl things simmered down, but we can’t. If our cargo doesn’t get delivered, it’ll be our heads on the chopping block right alongside Jack. I’d rather risk a war zone than angering the Gorawnies.” “I agree with the captain,” Boo said. “You would,” Duka replied. The engineer’s downy face sagged for a moment, and then he asked, “What do you think our chances are, Jessie?” “Honestly, Duka, I don’t know.
The negoaons just ended, so I doubt the Yinushan have had me to get a decent number of ships blockading Tol and her moons yet. If that’s so, then I think our odds are good. Luckily, the Coven gate we’re heading to exits on Tol’s end of the system, system, so that’ll be a big help. But, I can’t make any real guesses unl we get there and see what we’re dealing with.” Duka nodded wearily. “Okay. Looks like you’re going to need ev erything this ship has, so I beer get down to engineering and stoke the res. You keep us from geng shot out of the sky, and I’ll keep the engines together. Deal?” “Deal,” she replied, shaking his long hand. As the E’Loean le the bridge, Boo looked up and said, “As soon as we get near the Coven gate I’ll hand her over to you.” “You’re a great pilot, Boo. I trust you to handle whatever we run into.” The Kleeetan looked at her with a horror-struck expression. “Are you kidding me? Captain, when it comes to the crazy stu, I leave that enrely up to you. They say that the gods smile upon infants and lunacs, and I think we’ll need all the blessings we can get.” Despite the troubles that were
brewing, she couldn’t help but laugh. #
As Jessica and the crew of the Breaking Dawn approached Coven Gate 7M9 - Unending Undying Unknowing , she tapped a buon on the arm of her chair that opened a comm channel and said, “Gate 7M9, this is Captain Jessica Quimbly of the private cargo vessel Breaking Dawn requesng permission to transit. Please respond.” The only me she’d ever spoken with a Coven gatekeeper person ally was soon aer she’d taken command of the Dawn. Her father hadn’t trusted the Coven, so under him the ship had never gone through one of their gates. Jessica hadn’t cared for them either, but a problem with a conduit license on her rst delivery run as captain forced her to seek out the Coven and ask for permission to use a gate. The voice that had answered her those many years ago had been unlike anything she’d ever heard before, and the memory of it wasn’t something she enjoyed recalling. “The Coven welcomes you,” was all the voice had said, but those few words had set her teeth on edge with the way they doubled and
tripled in her mind like an endless echo. Since that rst communicaon, her messages had been answered solely by automated response system that let her know if transit was possible and what fees would be charged. So, aer transming her hail to gate 7M9, it wasn’t an understatement to say that she was shocked when the small viewscreen by her right knee lit up to display a gure shrouded in a heavy cloak and surrounded by shiing darkness. “It is a dark and heavy burden you ,” the gure carry, Jessica Quimbly ,” said, his words rebounding in her skull as though she were hearing two voices at once. “We fear that the price you will pay for it is more than you know. But do not let the darkness of others diminish your inner light. Do you understand? ” Her head ached from hearing him speak, but she grimaced through it and replied, “Yes, I do.” “You do not,” the gatekeeper told her, “but “but you will, in me. Now go. Do not send us tribute. You will not prot from this enterprise, so nor shall we.” we.” Mentally recalling the credit transfer Jack had sent, she could have disputed the gatekeeper had she wanted to. Instead she said, “All right. Thanks for the free trip, then,
Gate 7M9.” Closing the comm with a hasty buon press, she shook her head to clear it, and then took hold of the engine throle and pushed it forward. With engines surging, the Breaking Dawn ew forward, pointed straight for the swirling blue and black vortex that was the gateway. Bile rose higher in her throat the closer they got to it. Her skin prickled. “Everyone ready?” she asked of those on the bridge behind her. “Certainly, Captain,” Cam replied without hesitaon. Boo was slower to respond, but his voice was solid when he said, “The sooner we’re away from this damn thing, the happier I’ll be.” With a nod, she ghtened her grip on the throle and pushed it hard to the stops. Energy ared from the rear of the ship as the main engines drove the vessel forward in a rush of power. The swirling eld grew larger before them like a bruise upon the skin of the universe, and her head became light and unfocused while her stomach opped inside her. The feelings of sickness threatened to overwhelm her, but within seconds they were through the vortex and over ten-thousand light years away from the other side. As soon as the Breaking Dawn
passed beyond the nauseang boundary of the Coven gate, the blue-green world of Tol loomed large in the sky. Between them and their desnaon were ve large starships. Only ve ships, eh? she thought. I think we just caught a break. “All right, folks,” she said into her headset. “It’s do-or-die me. Aer this is done, we’re all in for a long vacaon.” Cheers could be heard throughout the ship, and despite the danger that sat before them, Jessica smiled.
© 2009 by Justin R. Macumber
Previously, on Deuces Wild : A shudder ran through the ship. Tristan sat up straight. The klaxon blaed, and a voice over the comm announced, “We’re under aack!”
A
shudder ran through the ship. Tristan sat up straight. The klaxon blaed, and a voice over the comm announced, “We’re under attack!” Reggie jumped up, cking the comm on his ear. “Who is it?” His face darkened. “Again?” He ran for the door, muering, “Third me this month!” Knowing it was fule, Tristan fol lowed—unl the guards stepped in his way at the door. Reggie spun and ordered, “Let him come.” Why would Reggie want him along? Was this a planned maneuver? No maer, Tristan would play it anyway, unl he had an idea of the cards Reggie truly held. As they both ran out the door, Reggie called over his shoulder, “Pi rates.” Tristan Tristan almost snorted as the ship shuddered again. Why hadn’t the pirates used an EMP torpedo yet? “A ship this prey, and you wonder
why you have repeated trouble with pirates?” Reggie half turned, astonishment on his face. “Is that why you had that old derelict?” Tristan Tristan merely glared, and Reggie grinned. “Good show. You always knew how to pull the best cons.” Revelaon showered over Tristan like an icy rain: Reggie sll admired him, looked up to him, even though he had been one of Tristan’s “teach ers.” Was Dray aware of Reggie’s weakness? Was this a test for Reg gie? Circles within circles, wheels within wheels; how many games were being played, and who was playing whom? “Your mind should be on jumping before they disable us,” Tristan said. “Run from a ght?” Reggie’s lip curled. “You’ve goen so.” “Just praccal.” “Cowardly, you mean.” The lights blinked out, and Tristan found himself adri. The expected EMP. Reggie sighed. “Bugger.” Indeed. Especially without knowing if the yacht did, in fact, incapacitate the pirates. With the dim, blue emergency
lights along the corridor, Tristan could see both guards sll training their ries on him—did they think he wouldn’t know their PBRs were now useless from the EMP? It would only be a few seconds unl the microfusion baeries in their PBRs began to overheat to the point they’d have to drop their weapons, and he would have to decide whether to ght. Even with two guards and Reggie down, he’d sll have at least six people to dis able before they retaliated against his friends. He waited. #
The lights icked out, leaving Slap in almost total darkness and oang. He gulped as his stomach complained about the weightlessness. What innaworld happened? The only other me he’d seen a ship go dead like this was when Bertha got hit by a EMP from a pirate. Uh oh. Well, Slap wasn’t going to sit and wait for pirates to come and get him. Carter had told him once that even coded, locked doors could be manhandled open with the power out. He tried to swim to the door—not an easy task. Arms and legs ailing, he bounced o a bulkhead and then the ceiling, wishing he had some “down” for his stomach’s sake even more than for his frustraon at try-
ing to maneuver. Aer pinging o the ceiling, his body moved down ward—toward a chair. As with most furniture on ships, it was clamped down; he snagged it and seled himself so he was aimed at the door, then pushed o with his feet against the chair legs. Too fast! He hit the door with an oof, but scrambled to wedge his arms and legs in the narrow frame. Once anchored, he came to the hard part, trying to get the door open with so lile leverage. Feet to knees braced against the jamb—the sharp edges bing into his legs, he placed both hands solidly on the metal, and began to strain. The door moved a bit, and he wedged his ngers into the crack and pulled, growling with the eort, the opening growing wider and wider. Slap “swam” into the corridor, gazing up and down for any handholds he might use. The closest he found were the fancy wood moldings, which were no help at all. Perhaps if he gently pushed o and ricocheted ricocheted o the bulkheads... “Hey!” Slap twisted to see a guard—his rie oang nearby—bouncing o a bulkhead toward him, much as Slap had been planning to try. His partner was, apparently, trying to un-jam something in his own rie. Slap gulped again, wishing his stomach would sele.
“How did you get out of your cabin?” “I opened the door,” Slap retorted, eyeing the diminishing distance between himself and the guard. “Impossible! It’s too heavy.” Slap shrugged. “If you say so.” Get a lile closer... c’mon... The guard grabbed him by the arm, and Slap tried to pull away, setng them both into a whirling moon. They hit the wall, the guard slamming into Slap’s torso. That was too much; Slap’s stomach rebelled violently. The guard let go, gagging. His stomach subsided, and Slap managed to snag the back of the man’s neck and punch him full force in the throat. He let the body go and turned as the second guard cursed him. He must not have goen his rie working because he dove at Slap with both hands free, teeth bared. Globules spaered the guard’s face—some right in his mouth. He almost convulsed, retching; Slap wanted to laugh—but his stomach lurched yet again, and he spewed right into the guard’s face. The air was thick and stank, which didn’t help Slap’s sour belly, but he swiped at the guard, and caught his shirt. The guard wrestled for a few vomit-slick moments, but Slap’s brute strength won out, and—with only a moment’s hesitaon—he broke the man’s neck.
He closed his eyes for a moment, shaking o what he had just done and willing himself to do what would need doing. These men all worked for Tristan’s old boss, Dray. They were all trained, likely killers. He dismissed Granger’s fancy talk and game playing; this was life or death. Now oang near the ceiling, Slap tried to think. What should he do now? Free his friends? He didn’t even know which cabins they were in, or much about how this ship was laid out. He was on the port side, facing the bridge. Ha—if he could take out the bridge crew... Not likely! But sll—he wasn’t going to go down without a ght, not against Granger’s men and not against pirates! So, the bridge it was. A rie dried near, and he caught it—hot! He let it go with a cry. Did the EMP cause that? If so, would all the weapons be useless? Slap smiled. He pushed o the ceiling and slowly maneuvered his way forward, pinging o bulkheads, sll gulping occasionally, not only because of the zero-g, but from the smell of his own vomit clinging to him. #
Reggie turned to the guards and ordered, “Get those baeries changed before they heat, expand,
and wedge.” Tristan contained his amusement as, before the two guards could even lower their ries, the heat grew to beyond discomfort levels and they had to let go. Both quickly snatched the straps of the PBRs, looking sheepish. Reggie groaned. “Did you think he wouldn’t know?” He eyed Tristan. “Idiots. Should I require your parole, since your companions are sll safely tucked away?” “Need you ask?” Reggie glared at him for a moment, then snied. “Let’s go to the bridge.” Over his shoulder, he called, “You two x those ries then join us.” He nodded fore as he pushed o a bulkhead with both feet. “The nearest ladder is just ahead.” #
Slap grunted and was rewarded by the bridge door opening by inches. The lights began to come up, the door shut, and gravity began to pull on him. Slap realized he had been propped upside down in opening the door—he fell with a loud whu. He rolled, but before he got to his feet, he heard Granger say: “Astonishing!” From his half-kneel posion, Slap set his shoulder and aimed for the direcon of the voice. “How did your friend manage to—ooof!”
Slap grinned with sasfacon as the body hit the wall. Granger’s eyes were closed, but from pain, not unconsciousness. Slap drew back a st, but Tristan snapped his out rst, connecng with Granger’s chin. The lizard slumped to the oor like a puddle of jelly. Slap’s eyebrows went up, but Tristan only said, “Glass jaw.” “Know your enemy?” “It pays.” Tristan stopped, his nose wrinkled, and he stared at Slap in disgust. “Yeah, I know, but the guards didn’t like it either.” Slap nodded down the corridor. “Dead?” “Yeah.” “Then we’re in it now. How many?” “Two.” “Six to go, as an esmate.” “Do we e him up and hide him?” Slap asked. Tristan pursed his lips. “No, Take the bridge rst—and fast. And, we don’t know if they have working weapons, so be careful.” He squaed down and ried through Granger’s clothes. He quickly pocketed several items. Then he took o Granger’s shoes and held one in each hand. “I’ll go rst.” Before Slap could ask how they were going to get into the bridge, Tristan hit the key switch and the door opened. The captain and
both crew members jumped up. He threw both shoes—each hit a crewman in the face. He dove at the captain, and Slap rushed in to take the two shoe-aacked ones. Hing a woman didn’t sit well with Slap, but he had no chance or choice to be gentle. He grabbed both by the neck and lied them, and cracked their heads together as hard as he could. They fell like sacks. He turned to see the captain was down too. Tristan dove into the pilot’s chair and began checking for.... “Pirates?” Slap asked. “Disabled but not destroyed. destroyed. Our capacitor won’t be ready to jump for een minutes, ten for a short hop.” Slap felt everything bulge and contort—which his stomach didn’t like, but he was more used to that than the weightlessness—then everything returned to normal. “I’ve distanced us from them and am seng the ship to auto-jump when ready, weapons on defensive just in case. We have to get the rest of this ship under our control and fast. I’ve locked out commu nicaons, using our old code from Giselle for access.” Slap nodded. “There’s two guards on the deck above with working weapons, probably on their way here by now. And least two more elsewhere, probably
engineering. I need to take them out now.” Tristan swiveled and rose from the chair in a smooth moon. “How?” “Only way is for me to do it my self, before they realize their own people aren’t in charge up here.” Tristan ran to a panel near the door and slid it open. Three PBRs hung inside. Tristan snatched one, grabbed a power pack, thwacked it in place, and tossed it to Slap. Slap double-checked the mulfuncon display, then adjusted the power seng. He looked up to see Tristan heing a rie and nodding at him. “You open the door, I’ll line of sight them from behind the captain’s chair.” “Isn’t there a hatch or something so you can sneak out?” “Yes, but that leaves the two from above. Frontal assault. Now get over here and get ready.” Slap leapt over to stand by Tristan, but before his friend could move, the door opened, and both guards jumped in. Slap seized the one’s rie and yanked—the man ew forward and crashed into the pilot’s staon. Heat rushed over Slap—Tristan cut it ne in aiming at the other guard. “I think you gave me a sunburn,” Slap retorted. “Need it, you’re space-pale.” Tristan swung the rie bu at the head of the man crumpled on the console. Slap winced at the crunch.
“Engineering?” “Let’s go,” was Tristan’s answer. Granger was sll out cold. Slap stepped over him and followed his friend, checking behind them, nger on the trigger of the PBR. Carter and Addie should sll be locked in their cabins, so he should be safe in shoong anything that moved. Should. “How big is the crew on a ship this size, do you think?” Slap whispered. “Minimum of eight. Not counng Reggie or the captain.” “Two to go.” “At least, probably more.” As they approached the stern, Tristan murmured, “Engineering spans two decks. We have no idea where they’ll be, or even how many. Be careful.” Slap nodded. “And try not to miss and make a mess of engineering either.” That would denitely not be good. “I’ll try.” Tristan snorted. “You open the door, I’ll go rst.” Slap nodded and took the right side, by the key switch. Tristan glanced at the MFD on his rie and nodded. Slap hit the entry switch and the door swooshed open. As Tristan entered, a voice behind Slap yelled, “Don’t move!” Disobeying, Slap whirled and found himself in an aiming stando with a guard.
“Drop it,” the man snarled. “You drop it.” “I said, drop it!” From inside engineering, Slap heard the sounds of parcle beams zapping. Dammit, he was supposed to be covering Tristan’s back! “You drop it!” “I’m not playing games, you igno rant dirtsider! Orders or not, I’ll take you out if I have to!” “You do, and Tristan’ll take you out. We’ve cleared about the whole ship. Even your boss. Play nice, and he might let you live.” The guard laughed. “You think I’m afraid of that cocky popinjay? Monsieur Lefèvre is the one to fear, fear, not that traitor!” “Then go ahead and shoot.” The guard hesitated. “I’d—” Zzzzzt! The man’s charred body fell, and Slap spun to see Tristan in the door of engineering. His friend hit the key switch. “En gineering is cleared—and sealed for the moment. Let’s go back to the bridge.” Tristan began walking. “With only two of us, any remaining crew could evade a sweep, but if I lock down all three decks...” As they approached the bridge, Slap stopped to look down at Granger, sll slumped over. “Tristan? Think he’s really out or faking it?” “Keep an eye on him if you wish. I’ll be through here in a minute.” Tristan ducked into the bridge.
Slap raised the rie, just in case. That dandy wasn’t going to catch him napping. True to his word, Tristan wasn’t long. “The decks and cabins are all coded now. We can sweep each deck, and if any of Dray’s men are hiding, they’ll not easily evade us.” He gazed down at Granger. “Let’s gather all the refuse and space it.” Slap’s jaw dropped, he pointed at Granger with the muzzle. “He ain’t dead!” “Neither are a few others. Let’s just nish the job.” “I ain’t murdering anyone who ain’t dead already!” “What do you want to do, set them up in cabins and serve them aperifs?” Slap didn’t know what “aparateefs” were, but Tristan’s sarcasc atude stuck in his craw, and he took a step forward, gring his teeth. “I ain’t killin’ ‘em!” “They’d murder you if they got the chance!” “I don’t care! If they’re alive, they’re staying that way!” “What do you suggest then? They’re a danger to us while they’re on this ship.” Slap thought a moment. “A lifeboat.” # The door opened, and Slap grinned to see Carter sing in a
chair, head in his hands. He looked up and jumped to his feet, eyes wide. “You really did it!” He ran toward them. “How did you do it, Sir?” “I had no choice,” Tristan replied laconically. “Slap muscled his way out when the EMP hit.” Carter chuckled. “I’m not surprised. What did you do with all of them?” “The dead we consigned to space. The living”—Tristan glared at Slap, who glared back—”we put in a lifeboat. We’re going to set them on course for Cassiopeia Staon with the distress beacon acvated right before our next jump.” Carter’s eyebrows lied as he looked from one to the other. “Ah.” Carter frowned. “Where’s Addie?” “We haven’t let her out yet,” Slap said. “Saved the best for last, did you?” Carter asked with a smile. Tristan didn’t look amused. He nodded at Slap. “You can let her out. I’m going to the bridge.” As Tristan strode down the corridor, Slap asked, “Any idea which cabin she’s in? We actually found you rst by accident. We just started at the one end...” “No, sorry. s orry.”” Slap handed Carter a PBR. “Here. I doubt there’s more bad guys hiding in cabins, but just in case, Tristan says to keep a rie handy.”
Carter hesitated and then took it, nodding. “I...agree.” The two connued down the port side to the next cabin. Slap readied his weapon while Carter stood by the key switch on the side. They exchanged nods, and Carter opened the door. A gasp followed by a shrill squeal told Slap before seeing the mass of curly hair that they’d found Addie. She rushed forward to hug Slap, but pushed back, her nose scrunched up. “Ew. You snk.” Slap laughed. “Wait ll you see the forward corridor.” Then he sighed; cleaning that up wasn’t going to be fun.
© 2009 by L. S. King
The Company Series by Kage Baker Tor Books, 1997-2007
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ime travel is a great thing for science con writers to play with, but it poses a problem for the writer. One way to write me travel is to totally ignore the fact that the “science” behind it is slim to nonexistent, and just have a jolly good romp through me. The other approach is to explore all of the philosophical and scienc problems that mucking up the meline creates. Kage Baker, in her mammoth Company series of novels, gives us both. In the process, she has created one of the most enjoyable science-con series to come about in years. In the twenty-fourth century, a cabal of sciensts discovers me travel and forms a company named Dr. Zeus, whose mission is to plun der the past for prot in the present. They have limitaons, however, in that it is impossible to modify the known past, so the Company must operate in the shadow of the known meline and acquire its products (such as rare plants and works of art, etc.) behind the scenes. If a manuscript or painng is known to
have been destroyed in a re (such as the Library of Alexandria) then the Company’s operaves will be found plundering like mad just before total destrucon. But me travel is expensive, so the Company develops a process to make its operaves immortal, creating super-powered cyborgs. These cyborgs do all the retrieval that the Company needs. In order to know what happens in history, the operaves have a Tem poral Concordance that details all of known history. There’s only one lile catch: the Concordance ends in 2355 and no one knows what happens aer that date. The series opens in the dungeons of the Inquision where a young girl who has been sold by her parents to a group of witches now nds herself. One of the Company’s cyborgs noces that young Mendoza has the potenal to be an operave, and so he removes her from known history. She receives the enhance ments, is assigned as a botanist, and then is sent on her rst mission to 16th-century England in the reign of Bloody Mary to save some rare plants. Along the way, she falls in love with a mysterious and enig-
mac anabapsc protestant who eventually has England’s own version of the Inquision catch up with him. At the end of In the Garden of Iden, Iden, Mendoza is distraught at having lost her mortal lover, thus establishing one of the major plot lines of the series: the discovery of why seeming clones of Nicholas Harpole of 16th-century England keep on recurring throughout history and causing trouble for Mendoza. And what do Nicholas and Mendoza have to do with the mysterious events of 2355? The enre Company series runs for a total of seven novels and three short-story collecons, as well as a few short stories in other Kage Baker collecons and one novel that takes place in the Company universe, but is not part of the series (also reviewed this issue). The story, to say the least, is complex. The cast of characters is enormous, with doz ens upon dozens of cyborg operaves (although the main cast is only about two dozen in size). Each novel is a self-contained story, although not self-standing: you need to read the series in publicaon order to understand what is going on.
But each novel is also strong in its own right. Kage Baker is a very ac complished writer who can create very disnct characters, even doz ens of them, and keep them consis tent. Her sense of comedic ming is nearly awless and there are plenty of comedic moments throughout the series, especially in the second novel, Sky Coyote. The earlier novels in the series— the ones that take place in our own past—are by far the stronger stories. As the series progresses and gets more complex, more me is spent trying to keep all the balls in the air and the forward momentum momentum suers, but it is sll an enjoyable series. My one major complaint, however, is that the ending doesn’t deliver all that is promised. Even though the nal novel, The Sons of Heaven, Heaven, is the longest novel in the series, it sll rushes over too many of the dangling plot lines, tying most all of them up, but in an unsasfying way for many of them. The novel needed to be twice its length to give everything the me it needed. But don’t let that distract you from reading the enre series: In the Garden of Iden, Sky Coyote, Mendoza in Hollywood, The Grave-
yard Game, The Life of the World to Come, The Machine’s Child, and The Sons of Heaven, as well as the short story collecons, Black Projects, White Knights; The Children of the Company; and Gods and Pawns . My wife and I are into our third reading of some of the early novels and love the whole world that Kage Baker has created. Reviewed by Mahew Sco Winslow
© 2009 by Matthew Scott Winslow
Empress of Mars by Kage Baker Tor Books, 2009, 303pp
I
n the late twenty-third century, the Brish Arean Company set about colonizing Mars. At the me, Earth has succumbed to polical correctness and anyone even slightly outside the norm is put into hospitals to make them “normal.” When looking for colonists who are more independent of spirit, the British Arean Company naturally plunders these asylums. Also, the Celc peoples have recently realigned themselves, creang a haven of po-
lical incorrectness for those who may be omnivores or a bit more aggressive than the norm. So, who beer to sele Mars than they? It doesn’t take long, however, for the BAC to realize that Mars is a losing prospect, and so they pull out their support, ring most of their employees. Without pay, this eec vely strands most of the populaon of Mars on Mars with no hope of returning home. One such red employee, though, is Mary Grith, who has three young daughters she has to support, so she sets up Mars’ rst tavern, the eponymous Empress. She is, of course, frowned upon by the neo-Puritanical BAC and so exists in a delicate balance, providing a service many of Mars’ denizens want while being unappreciated by the ruling corporaon. The Empress of Mars tells the story of how Mother Grith and her ragtag band of employees and acquaintances set about creang a life for themselves on a harsh and forbidding planet. Originally a Hugo-nominated novella, The Empress of Mars is an associaonal novel, or as the cover describes it, “set in the world of the Company.” But that’s about all you need to know about the Com pany series to enjoy this novel. (See
previous review for more about the Company.) Because it is expanded from a novella, this book is more episodic than most of Kage Baker’s novels and focuses more on the development of the various characters than on any forward-moving plot. It is, rather, an idea -- colonizaon and independence -- that moves the book on than any conict as in a more tradionally ploed story. But that’s not a aw -- not at all! What the reader gets in exchange is a wonderful character-based story. In the 15 or so years she’s been professionally published, Kage Baker has made a name for herself as an author who can write fun, fastpaced novels full of well-rounded characters. With The Empress of Mars, Baker proves once again that she is more than just a one-story or one-series author. Reviewed by Mahew Sco Winslow
© 2009 by Matthew Scott Winslow
Three Unbroken by Chris Roberson Solaris, 2009
O
n the red planet, Fire Star, the Middle Kingdom has engaged in a long and cruel war with the Mexic Dominion. For twelve years the bales have raged, both on the surface and in the heavens around, but at last the forces of Imperial China are able to engage in a major oensive. This oensive will involve all branches of the Imperial military: the Armies of the Green Standard, infantry; four corps of the elite Bannermen forces; and the Interplanetary Fleet Air Corps. Three Unbroken tells the story of this oensive push through the eyes of three individuals, each a member of one of the military branches. Niohuru Tie is a member of the Manchu elite who joined the Bannermen because he was red of the spoiled apathy of his youthful friends and is ashamed that his relaves are more concerned about bureaucrac tles than truly serving the Empire. Ara Amonkar joined the Air Corps to escape from the strictures of her Hindu culture so that she could y. And Micha Carter, from Duncan, Te jas, sees joining the army as a way to escape his past. Readers of other stories set in
Chris Roberson’s “Celesal Empire” will also enjoy Three Unbroken. The events in the novel take place roughly simultaneously with those in The Dragon’s Nine Sons. One nds again Roberson’s likable characters and his energec, page-turning style. Knowledge of the rest of the sequence of stories enhances one’s pleasure in reading Three Unbroken, Unbroken, but is by no means necessary. Three Unbroken would serve as a ne in troducon to Roberson’s series. There are many ways in which I like Three Unbroken even more than The Dragon’s Nine Sons. One of the cricisms I had of the earlier work was that Roberson could have done so much more in the telling of the story by drawing from the vast wealth of Chinese literature. Three Unbroken moves in that direcon. Each of the novel’s sixty-four chap ters is paired with a chapter of the I Ching (complete with hexagram). The coupling of the epigrammac I Ching chapters with the events of the story works in a subtle way, but I, at least, felt it added avor to the story. It is similar to reading Japanese haibun or the interacon between verse and prose in certain Chinese novels. (The large number of shorsh chapters also increased the readability of the book.) I like the three main characters
of the novel quite a lot, even more than the two principals of The Dragon’s Nine Sons. Their personal movaons for military service are convincing, and it is enjoyable seeing the three act with courage and honor in oen dicult situaons. Two of the storylines intersect in interesng ways, though I do wonder if the novel as a whole could have been even stronger if all three storylines had connected. There is plenty of room to follow the sub sequent careers of any of the three characters, should Roberson feel so inclined. One cricism that carries over from my reading of The Dragon’s Nine Sons is the depicon of the Mexica. Yes, these are very bad men. But they are men. One of the most fascinang subjects an author can explore is why men do bad things. I wish that there was more depth to the Mexica. But the enemy in Three Unbroken is more alien than any bug-eyed monster. I by no means insist on a postmodern anhero in every story. But frankly, any story that paints the villain so black scares me a lile. (Though, as with my reSons, this view of The Dragon’s Nine Sons, cricism borders on reviewing the book I wish the author had wrien instead of reviewing the work he actually wrote.)
I like the mass market paperback format for both The Dragon’s Nine Sons and Three Unbroken, Unbroken, and I applaud Solaris for publishing the novels. Indeed, I hope Roberson may nd a publisher like Solaris to print future Celesal Empire stories in a similarly format. However, I found the number of typos in this printing of Three Unbroken distracng at points. The substuon of “far” where “Fire” is meant (p. 308) I found especially painful. Hopefully these issues will be addressed in a future prinng. But these cricisms are relavely minor. Three Unbroken is rollicking good fun in the best tradion of military SF. I enjoy each installment of Roberson’s sequence more. I will denitely be looking for the next in stallment. Reviewed by Donald Jacob Uitvlugt
© 2009 by Donald Jacob Uitvlugt
The crew of Alacrity stole the Haddirron navy airship Royal Steed out from under Lieutenant Gillings’ brother and made straight for help from The Friar of Briar Island. For his part, The Friar was caught on the horns of a dilemma—turn in the crew and keep the favor of the Haddirron Navy, or protect his friends and draw the ire of the enre Navy. Unwilling to consent to that Devil’s bargain, he drugged the crew and staged them so they looked dead and showed them o to the Haddirron Navy. He was proud of his soluon right up unl Cooper Flynn ap peared back from the dead, looking for the rest of his crew.
Two days ago
T
he man walked into the bar, which wasn’t hard considering that it had no walls to speak of, just a thatched frond roof and some bamboo poles to hold it all up. But what the sandy bar lacked in walls, it made up for in three things; temperate breezes, a remote locaon, and many variaons of rum. The man looked at the bartender, a local, and held up one nger. The bartender
threw a towel over one shoulder, grabbed a mug that had started its life as a coconut, and splashed some run in it. The man glared at the bartender unl the coconut mug was reasonably full. “Nice day,” oered the bartender. “Leave the bole,” said the man, and that concluded the pleasantries. The bartender backed away from the bole and returned to his stool behind the bar, where he produced a knife and a piece of driwood and resumed whiling. The man took a healthy slug of the rum, coughed a couple of mes, and sipped it with a lile more care aer that. Twenty minutes later, a spry old coot with a permanent squint and a limp ed up to the dock and crabwalked up to the others. He bellied up to the bar and hung his walking sck on the edge. He looked right at the bartender, placed his hands on the bar, and cleared his throat. “Ackem, ahem. Cack.’” He spat and took a deep breath. “’Beware the whimsical parrot,’” he intoned in a high, raspy voice. The bartender never stopped whiling. The man at the bar to the le of the aged sailor shook
his head. “You can skip the passphrase—there’s nobody here but you and me and the barkeep.” The man placed a gold coin on the counter. “And he hasn’t seen anything.” The bartender put down his whittling, walked over and made the coin disappear, picked up another mug, blew into it, wiped it out with his towel, and placed it in front of the old salt. He splashed some run into the mug. He wandered back to his stool and started whiling again. The old-mer said, “Ah, it’s been too long since I wet my whistle.” He cackled in laughter and tossed back the rum with one pracced movement. He smacked his lips and wiped his lips with his bony wrist. “Passable rum! So what leads you to request the humble services of Blind Bart?” The man looked over at him for a moment. He held out his index n ger and dragged it between them from le to right. Blind Bart’s gaze followed it the enre way. “But you’re not...” Bart broke out in a wheezy breezy laugh and slapped the bar, causing his empty mug to rock. “Ahaahaha! That’s what they all say.” He pushed his mug forward hopefully. “There was this mishap when I was ship’s navigator for a ship.” “Or two,” quipped the bartender. Bart shot him a black look and turned to face the man at the coun-
ter. “And what do they call you?” The man looked at him from cold, unblinking eyes. “You can call me Red,” he said with a tone that suggested that would all he would vol unteer. Blind Bart squinted and gestured at the man’s dark brown hair. “But you, ah...” “I hear you know where I can nd a man.” Bart nodded and caressed his empty mug with his hand. “I know where lots of men are; Navy men, island men, farmer men, aristocratic men, men of the cloth, fat men, skinny men, kept men, shepherds, beggars, warriors, assassins, bounty hunters...” “I hear you know where I can nd a specic man,” interrupted Red. “I hear you know where I can nd Cooper Flynn.” Blind Bart’s eyebrows went up. “Aaaah, you want to nd the Man Who Fell!” He nudged his mug again, and his host grudgingly lled it for him. Bart took another healthy slug. He wiped his mouth on a grimy sleeve. “I can nd anyone, however, I cannot guarantee that they’ll be among the living. I hate to take your money on a fool’s errand. But as long as we’re speaking of money, what is it worth to you?” Red told him. Bart nodded. He conded, “In all candor, I should tell you that Fly nn is my friend, or was.” Red shot
him a venomous look but named another, higher gure. Bart whistled. “Meet me here in one week. If Cooper Flynn is sll among the living, I’ll tell you where to nd him. If he’s not, I’ll tell you that, as well.” “Whether he lives or not maers not. I must see him with my own eyes.” He waved his hand for em phasis. “You know—for senmental purposes.” Bart nodded and raised his mug to drink again. Red’s arm shot out and he grabbed Bart’s wrist. “There’s one more thing. If you don’t want to earn your own moniker, you won’t tell anyone I’m looking for him.” Bart blinked but held his mug. With a subdued voice, he said, “I haven’t goen this old by accident. Meet me here in a week, and bring the gold. The passphrase will be...” Red slammed the bole on the bar, making Bart jump. “I can be your friend, or I can be your enemy. Meet me here in one week, and I will be your friend.” He stood and paed the side of Bart’s face just a lile too hard and quit the place, the coconut mug sll rocking on the bar. Bart stroked his face as if to clean it and then reached over and helped himself to the bole. He looked at the bartender. “That man will never be my friend, Ben,” he said quietly. Ben pointed the knife at him. “The Barracuda is no man’s friend.”
“True, true.” Bart pulled up a stool and lit a pipe. When he had it going, he said, “He’s well out of his normal territory. When did a legendary cold-blooded freelance assassin sail into these waters?” “He showed up a day ago. What are the chances Cooper Flynn really does live?” Bart pued on his pipe. “Slimto-none. There’s something else. Somebody who can aord The Barracuda has a price on Flynn’s head, be he quick or dead.” “How can a dead man have a contract on his life? And who would want a dead man to die that badly?” “Well, if anyone can pull that o, it is Cooper Flynn, so I’m not too surprised. It’s not the Qanin—the word from the palace is they’re vic ms of their own secrecy and paranoia.” “Who did them in?” “One of their own, a member of Flynn’s crew.” crew.” “Oh, good. So it’s some other well-heeled shadow organizaon.” Ben nodded toward Bart. “What will do you rst?” “What else can I do? The Barracuda obviously knows I work for The Friar. He likely knows what his fate will be if he goes to Parrot Bay by himself, so he’s contracng with a known informaon rat who has fewer scruples than the old pirate himself.”
“So your cover remains intact, at any rate.” “So far,” said Blind Bart. “So far.” He rapped his pipe against the sole of his worn leather sandals and put it away. “Be careful. He’s ruthless and careful. Don’t underesmate this one.” “I haven’t goen this old by accident,” repeated Bart. He sadly returned the bole to Ben and picked up his cane from the counter. He waved the cane in farewell as he walked away to his ship and sailed o to nd a man who either wasn’t among the living or wouldn’t remain that way for long.
One day ago Bart’s rst stop was Briar Island. He sailed around the point of Parrot Bay and across the straights separating Parrot Bay and Briar Island. He sighted the jagged tooth-like rocks of the Dragon’s Maw and steered straight into the shadowed depths. He made out the barely-visible dock and sidled up nice and gentle-like. Blind Bart nimbly jumped over to the dock and ed o the lile sailboat. He lit his aromac pipe and walked past the docks, through the caverns, and into the heart of the elevated briar palace. He greeted everyone by name, and all the guards
let him through without stopping. He came to the next-to-the-last sentry, a mountain of a man with a barrel chest, bulging biceps, and the tan of one who spent his me outdoors shirtless because he liked to show o his prowess. He kept eyes-front like it was important, and without looking, slowly held out a wicked sta and a massive forearm to stop Bart’s progress. Bart took a step to the side but was rapped in the chest with the sta for his trouble. “Back, grandda. Nobody passes me.” Blind Bart smiled when he was scheming, a scary thing because of all his missing teeth. “Your mother passed you. She told me as much on the same bed not an hour ago.” That arrested big-and-fearsome’s aenon. “You leave my mother out of...” Bart darted under the ape’s outstretched arm and loped, cackling, into the fern foyer that served as the outer oce in the great tree palace. The sentry’s protests faded behind him. Bart smiled, knowing the oth er was conned to his arched post as surely as if he had been bound there by chains. Bart pushed through the veil of fronds and stopped, aghast despite himself. Grimion was gone from his tradional post. Instead of the muscle-bound paragon of power
who served as The Friar’s personal bodyguard when he was at the Briar Throne, this nal sentry was slim, of normal height, and was seated o to the side of the room behind a small teak table playing Unitaire. He looked so uerly normal that one might be forgiven for missing the disncve curved, slender, single-edged blade with a long grip in the sheathe strapped to his back for easy access. Bart shivered, knowing what it took to earn and skillfully handle a weapon like that. It was Mok Moire himself, the Friar’s com pact but uerly lethal Champion. Mok’s gaze icked up just long enough to size Bart up and nd him wanng before he returned to his game. “Blind Bart, as I liveand-breathe. What brings you out of Parrot Bay?” If anything, Mok’s facules were even sharper than his blade, which was saying some thing. Bart realized Mok played at Unitaire because no-one would play him at Feudal Baleelds. Baleelds. Bart hadn’t known that Mok even knew his name, much less anything about him. But it stood to reason that there was more to being Champion than simple prowess with...well, any weapon. It was a lifestyle. lifestyle. It was something that spilled over from simple weapons mastery into every area of one’s life. Mok was formida ble at anything he put his hand to. Today, he put his hand to cards.
Bart hooked his cane on a dangling root and walked carefully into the room, both his hands in clear view. Mok’s gaze locked on Bart with what appeared to be benign interest, an illusion Bart didn’t purchase for a single moment. He licked his lips and chose his queson carefully. “I’ve been hired to nd Cooper Flynn.” Mok hesitated the barest moment before playing his next card. “By whom?” He didn’t point out that Flynn was dead, he didn’t queson the quest, he went straight for the salient answer. Bart normally had no shortage of self condence—a man of his age and reputaon needed to believe he could do anything to survive for long out on the edge of things—but being around Mok inmidated the perdion out of him. Bart considered his oath, his audience, his eyesight. He noced Mok’s index nger was pressed lightly on the top of draw pile; he was waing. “A... predaceous sh told me.” Mok bounced the idea in his head. “Ahum. Well. Aren’t these waters a lile distant for a devil-sh?” Bart forced himself to breathe. This one was fast! Mok drew his card, the quiet sound loud in the acouscs of the room. “Then by all means, be about your quest.” Bart very much wanted to smoke.
“I wouldn’t want to antagonize something that cranky with that many teeth.” Mok waved it o. “For a sh like that, his teeth are sharper than his snap. I wouldn’t worry about it. Do your thing, nd your guy.” “You think it’s, uh, safe to sh? I wouldn’t want to lose anything dear to me, like my ngerps.” Or my eyes. Mok laid down a full stateroom with a ourish and smiled. “Leave the shing to the shermen. Find your guy. You’ll be ne.” Bart looked ahead into the throne room. “I really should see the Friar.” Mok re-dealt. “He’s not in there. Find Pikir and The Friar won’t be far aeld.” “Where do I nd Pikir?” Mok smiled lazily and started drawing cards. “Go home and get a good night’s sleep, Bart. Then you’ll know where to look. You can exit through the throne room.” He started thumbing through his cards and pung them in order in his hand. The interview was clearly over. That went prey fast for Bart, so he thought it through. Bart’s home wasn’t on Briar Island, and the throne room was tradionally olimits to anybody when The Friar was about. “Through the throne room? But aren’t you...” Mok seemed amused. “I’m here to protect His Grace from assassina-
on.” That’s when the rope grew taut in Bart’s head; the Friar was with Pikir, Pikir wasn’t in the throne room, therefore the throne room was empty. Bart might run into Pikir— and by extension The Friar—if he returned to Parrot Bay. But if the Friar was across the water over at Parrot Bay, who was Mok guarding over here? And then Bart got it and smiled. Mok wasn’t here to keep someone away, he was here to lure someone in, acng as a chum-pot to lure in any assassins sning about for blood in the water. Bart nodded and thanked Mok and le the natural palace with a renewed sense of purpose. He pied the assassin who made it as far as the Fern Foyer looking for trouble. ~ Bart didn’t navigate straight straight back to his boat. He ate quietly around at the end of one of the food halls scaered around the island and spent the night in a guest coage. He more he wanted to do before he returned to Parrot Bay. Today
As long as he was on Briar Is land, he knew one more person who might know where to nd Flynn should he actually be alive. He charted a course deep into the hid-
den caves on the other side of the Briar Palace. If anyone knew where a not-so-dead Flynn might go next, it would be Chain, Flynn’s ace me chanical prodigy. It took Bart a couple of hours to track down the trail to Chain’s rooms. Bart borrowed a torch and wandered a number of meandering dark stone corridors before coming to a heavy wood door. He tried opening it, but it was latched. He pounded on the door with his cane. It took some me before the door opened and Chain stuck his bespectacled head out. “Yes?” “I’m Blind Bart. I’m looking for Cooper Flynn and would like to talk with you if you have a moment.” Chain scowled. “You don’t look blind.” “I was a navigator for my career. It’s a long story.” “...which I don’t have me for. Pity. Good day.” He started to close the door. Bart quickly said, “The Friar told me you might be able to help me.” Chain shot him a look through his small round lenses as if to divine the truth through sheer force of examinaon. “Flynn was sll alive the last me I saw him. I really can’t help you. Good day.” He started to shut the door. Bart’s cane shot out and prevented the door from closing. “There’s something you should know before
you shut me out...” Chain’s voice changed from disinterested to brusque. “There’s something you should know — there is nothing you can say that will change my mind. Remove your sck or I will remove it for you!” Bart searched for any leverage at all, and then his impish intuion prompted a mental image of the game devoted to leverage, Feudal Baleelds, which in turn prompted a name, one name most associated in his head with using leverage leverage to his advantage in combat. “What was I thinking,” Bart cackled smoothly. “Of course, you’re right. Even Mok agrees there’s lile chance you’ll be able to help me. I should just gracefully concede.” He withdrew his cane. “So Mok said I shouldn’t expect you to oer me much me, maybe a few minutes, and thank you for your me when I leave.” Chain glared at Bart through the one eye visible through the crack in the door d oor.. “Of course, Mok conceded that if I found even one clue, it would be well worth it.” Bart waited, scarcely breathing. Finally, the door creaked and opened. Chain stood aside and gestured for Bart to enter. “Don’t touch anything,” he said through gried teeth. “I will hold you and Mok responsible while you are my ‘guest.’” Blind Bart quickly stepped in
while Chain bolted the door behind them. Bart looked around. Chain had set up a large, natural cave as a kind of drydock / sailing ship workshop. Natural light spilled into the cavern through gaps in the ceiling and torches lined the walls. A dim light at the end of a long, covered tunnel channel appeared to open out to the seas on the opposite side of the island. There were workbenches and tools galore. If there was an order of sorts among all the strewn tools and parts of things, it only made sense to Chain, because Bart couldn’t make it out. Chain waved a large wrench under Bart’s nose. “When I say I will hold you and Mok responsible, you understand I mean just you. I don’t bother Mok, and... Just don’t touch anything.” Bart bobbed his head. Chain leaned against a workbench and crossed his arms. “Very well. Ask away.” Bart pulled out his pipe. “Mind if I...” Chain glared at him. “I have am mable materials all over the place. Yes! I mind!” Bart regreully put away his tobacco and put the cold pipe in his mouth. He started pacing. A small, ski-looking boat rested in the wa ter tethered to the dock. The design was a lile odd—Bart odd—Bart didn’t see any sail or masts. There was, however,
two small angled pipes, one on each side of the deck facing backward at a 45 degree angle. And there was what appeared to be wisps of white eming from each. “You said the last me you saw Cooper Flynn was on your way to Haddirron City?” “While preparing an oensive on Sylvan holdings on Yempher, we were ambushed by our own Navy and clapped in irons onboard a naval airship. I had recently come into possession of design informaon too important to allow mere na ons to frustrate us. Captain Flynn and I hatched a plan and we implemented it. We passed over the port at Roarke’s Island. I secured a skypack and dove overboard before anyone knew I was gone. I dried down to the port where I secured passage to Parrot Bay and then here to Briar Island.” Bart nodded. “I’ve seen the oating airship and heard about those wonderful skypacks. Intriguing.” Chain’s eyes lit up. “If you think that’s excing, you will be very interested in my latest work.” He walked over to the small strange cra. “You said you were a navigator? Hm. As long as you’re here, you may as well help me with an experiment. I need you to scramble up here. Step up on the ski and go a and take the ller.” Bart laughed and stayed put, and Chain stopped puering long
enough to x his aenon on the lile navigator. Bart said, “You, ah, said not to touch anything.” He chortled and slapped his knee. Chain shrugged. “The hallmark of any great inventor is the capacity to change his mind in the face of fresh insight. Also, I’ll need to watch the power gauges. Hm. Did you ghten that last valve?” Bart started walking up the ramp. “The what? Did I who?” Chain frowned in concentraon. He looked up, distracted, and broke into a grin. “Nothing, I was talking to myself, there. I am used to being alone in my workshops. It is a habit completely natural to me here by myself. I feel less natural in the com pany of others. Now, take that ller. When I engage the power, steer us toward the light.” Chain stopped. “What I’m about to show you is se cret. You cannot tell anyone about it unless I say the word. I have given my own word to some powerful and dangerous men.” Bart assumed his place at the ller. “This is an odd ller. It protrudes up and back in the air instead of in the water? It’s huge! How will I steer her? I don’t see any way to get the wind, no obvious way to propel her along.” Chain broke into a rare smile. “Leave that to me.” He put on a pair of goggles and tossed a second set to Bart. “You’ll want to don those.”
Bart looked at them skepcally. “Whatever for?” Chain cast o the rope tether and hopped aboard. “With the speed we’ll be going, these will keep the wind and bugs out of your eyes.” “Speed?” “You’ll want to hang on ght. Here we go!” Bart donned his goggles, set his cane down, grabbed the ller with one hand, and wondered if he really knew what he was geng into. There was a lurch as the ship rose ten feet into the air. Bart chanced a look down and back and saw a huge, gleaming propeller, twenty feet or so by his eye, and then he heard a steam whistle sound and the propeller started turning. Bart rethought his cavalier hold on the ller and grabbed on ght with both hands. The propeller quickly picked up speed and the sky ski quickly picked up speed. Bart had been on various racing sailing cra before, but in short order, he was going faster than he’d ever gone before. The damp air of the tunnel plastered his face and he was glad for the strange goggles. The shaded tunnel made it hard to see, so he steered straight at the small but growing bright spot at the end of the tunnel. “Hold her steady,” roared Chain happily and they soared quickly toward the opening.
They broke out into the daylight and Chain cranked up the thrust even more. “To starboard!” Chain yelled. Bart pushed the ller to port to turn the ski to starboard. It wasn’t easy—the tail assembly was huge and the air was ghng against him. Chain canted the ship to starboard as well, and they ski leaned into the turn, nimble as bird. “Hang on,” said Chain. “Let’s see what she can really do!” The ski lurched and the loud whirr of the propeller became a roar. And then the ski really took o. ~
They learned to communicate by hand gestures, turning this way and that, climbing and falling, darting this way and that like any nimble bird. It was terrifying. It was exhilarang. I’m actually navigang, thought Bart, and the years of hidden shame at his earliest failures blew away with the screaming wind. He felt younger than he’d felt in de cades. He didn’t even know where his cane was. Aer a meless shakedown, Chain brought the ski to a halt one thousand feet above the surface of the ocean. They met mid-ships and slowly walked to the front of the ski. “That was incredible, and this view is incredible, unlike anything
I’ve ever seen,” said Bart. “How did you innovate that?” Chain looked at the deck and had a private laugh. “You seriously wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” he said, nally. “Let’s just say that when I was in a creave dry spell, I received some help from On High that gave me a dramac breakthrough in my designs. Everything I’ve done since then has built on that leap.” “What manner of energy did you harness to drive the propeller?” “Steam! I drive a turbine with a mixture of powdered coal and petroleum. This gives me consistent power at all altudes.” “Amazing! I like what you’ve done with the big propeller,” said Bart. “It seems a bit heavy, but maybe you can make one as big out of lighter and stronger materials. The inverted ller is interesng. Have you considered wings like a bird to assist with turning?” “I’ve considered many things,” said Chain. “All I lack are funds, me, a trained manufacturing crew of inspired designers who can think for themselves but take orders from me, and a much bigger workshop. Lacking all that, I get by with ingenuity and short sleep-cycles.” “Well, it has been the thrill of my long life to take this shakedown voyage with you,” said Bart. Chain stuck his hand out, and Bart took it
warmly. “I was wrong to be so brusque,” said Chain. “You can y with me anyme. I guess we should talk about what you’d like to know and where you’d like me to drop you o in your pursuit of someone who probably isn’t alive.” He actually sighed. Bart’s eyes twinkled. “If you’d told me this morning what I’d do today, I wouldn’t have believed you. Perhaps today is a day for miracles.” Chain shrugged. “Well, where would you like to be dropped o?” Bart looked down at the water, thinking, and then cocked his head. He pointed down. “Chain, do you see what I see?” Chain joined him at the rail, squinted, and ran to a box secured by the steam stacks. He unlocked the box and returned with a telescoping magnifying glass. “It’s two Haddirron airships,” he said. “One appears to be following the other. The one below us appears to be running for Parrot Bay.” Bart said, “Do you recognize any of the crew?” Chain adjusted the glass. “The one below is isn’t a standard Haddirron naval crew. They’re wearing all manner of colorful garb, much like... No. It couldn’t be.” “What? Couldn’t be what?” Chain started laughing. “Unless I miss my guess, that down there are my former crew, and they’re up to
their old tricks.” He swung the glass out to look at the ship chasing them out at the horizon. “I gather they’ve stolen another airship, and that’s the Navy behind them in hot pursuit.” He closed the glass carefully and strode back to the box. “We’ve got a change of plans. We’d beer get back to Parrot Bay and alert the Friar.” He stowed the glass and re locked the box. “And unless I miss my guess, that lot there will have any answers there are to be found about the fate of your late friend, Cooper Flynn!” Four hours ago They made their arrangements and said their goodbyes before Bart resumed his post at the ller and Chain engaged the steam turbine. They made it back to Parrot Bay ahead of the eeing stolen airship and Bart helped guide the ski in toward the dock as Chain dropped altude and eventually seled down into the water, the ski gliding forward and gently nudging the dock. Chain quickly ed o and hurried o to nd The Friar. Bart regreully retrieved his cane went the other direcon. Hiding in the underbrush, he saw Chain approach The Friar. He waited for ten minutes as they spoke, and then Chain turned and walked back toward the ski. The Friar and Pikir
spoke for some me, and then they split up. Who to follow, The Friar or Pikir? He thought he caught move ment out of the corner of his eye following Pikir, and his intuion told him to sck with Pikir, so he did. Pikir spent the next half an hour meeng with various locals. Bart couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it had the air of planning something that required coordinaon, and Pikir was the coordinator. What were they doing? Bart idly brushed at insects and kept his eyes open. Something niggled at the back of his mind. Maybe a younger man would have gured it out by now. Or maybe it was up to a the shrewd to decipher the problem. Perhaps age wasn’t always the thing. Pikir came out, but he was wearing a dierent shirt and seemed to have more energy. Bart eyebrows narrowed, and then he smiled. It wasn’t Pikir, it was the son, Mikir. It must have been a moment for epiphany. He looked up into the trees. There were birds there, he could see them, but they weren’t talking to each other. Bart smiled. He wasn’t alone. He didn’t see anyone moving, but knew someone was out there, also watching. Bart wondered if the other watcher knew it was Mikir who was now on the move, not his father. Mikir walked o down the trail. Bart waited. A shadowed gure rose
up not twenty feet away and silently followed. But who was it? Sure enough, somebody big and quiet was tracking the one who he apparently thought was The Friar’s right hand man. Was it The Barracuda? It was too dark to tell for sure but Bart wouldn’t be surprised. Bart waited a few moments and then went the other direcon. Pikir was sll in the building, and Bart had an idea. The Present
Cooper Flynn stood, sword drawn and held lightly at the throat of The Friar of Briar Island. “You owe me a story,” said Flynn, standing o to his right, dashing with the amber glow of the seng sun lighng up his face. The Friar swallowed, the apple of this throat grazing the edge of the sword. “Put down your sword, my friend, and we’ll talk.” Flynn said, “Ever since I’ve known you, you’ve been ahead of me, us ing me as one would use a pawn.” He leaned close, the edge of the sword touching the Friar’s exposed throat. When he spoke, his voice was so, and slow, as inmate as a kiss on a cheek. Or the slice of a blade. “I...am not...a pawn...now.” The Friar’s eyes widened slightly and he tried to draw even further back. “Please,” said the Friar. “I am done with intrigue. I have exhaust-
ed my gambits. I am back on my heels. You are armed—I am not. You are young—I am not. I swear to you, I am no threat to you tonight, with or without a sword.” Flynn’s eyes glinted. “I am not a fool. You are always as much a threat with or without a sword.” He started walking around the Friar, keeping the sword’s aspect consistent as he strolled. “All the me I’ve known you, you’ve expected people to follow you, and when they don’t know what you expect, you make them follow you anyway whether they know it or not.” He stalked slowly around behind the Friar and started around the other side, the edge of the blade more promised than felt. “Here’s the thing—I’m not the man you remember. I’ve been places I can’t explain and have seen things I can’t yet convey.” He started around the other side and started to come back into The Friar’s view. “But I’m back now, I’m not exactly sure how. And I know some things without knowing how I know them.” He stopped in front of The Friar again. “And when the me comes, and the situaon warrants, I may be called upon to lead, and you may be called upon to follow. I need to know that I can depend on you as you have depended on me. Do you have it in you to be as courageous a follower as you were a leader?” The Friar did not answer at once.
Finally, he said, “What are the stakes? Briar Island?” Flynn gestured up with his thumb. The Friar nodded. “Haddirron?” Flynn gestured again. “The ocean naons?” Flynn gestured again. “The world?” Flynn bellowed and whirled the sword over his head, driving it deep into the sand between The Friar’s feet. He le it quivering there and stepped back holding both his hands out to his sides in the nal gesture of what appeared to be everything. “Would you be willing to follow if the stakes were so high?” The Friar took a deep breath, stroked his throat in thought, and then placed his hands on his knees. “Yes, I believe I would. But I would want to have the help of good friends.” He smiled. “And I know just where to nd them.” The Friar stood and stretched. The Friar was closer to the sword. He looked at the sword in front of him and then at Flynn. “He would be proud of who you’ve become,” he said quietly. “Who?” “Your father.” ~
Mikir was watching the clearing as the sun set. He had his hand on the hilt of the sword at his waist. A man cleared his throat behind Mikir’s back, and he turned. The Barracuda stood behind him
with his thumbs in the sash at his waist. He towered over Mikir. “Pikir, I presume,” he said. “The Friar’s right-hand man.” Mikir started to protest but The Barracuda waved him to quiet. “No-no, don’t protest your identy. Your reputaon precedes you. I know that wherever The Friar goes, you’re not far be hind. I also have reason to believe Cooper Flynn is talking to your Mas ter, and I have need of his presence. Be so kind as to let him know I’m here. You go rst.” The Barracuda heard something in the clump to his le. “’Beware the whimsical parrot,’” and Pikir stepped out where the light from the clearing revealed his features. “I believe I’m the one you’re looking for. I see you’ve al ready met my son, Mikir.” The Barracuda said, “What...” before the business end of a heavy wooden cane whistled out of the darkness to his right and felled him . He made a rather large sound as he collapsed unconscious unconscious to the jungle oor. Blind Bart stepped forward and stood over the fallen bounty hunter. “Please give my regards to The Friar and his guests,” he said grinning. ~ Flynn blinked once, slowly. “What?” The Friar gestured toward the sword. “I swear on your father’s
sword that I speak the truth—your crew is not dead, and I am not your enemy.” He sighed. “Indeed, I am one of the few friends you have le.” The Friar’s statement was rewarded when the p of Flynn’s sword wavered and then dropped. “You knew my father?” “Knew him? He made me who I am! And now it appears I may be in a posion to repay the gi. Rum?” Flynn snorted. The Friar nodded. “I am a man of my word.” He snapped his ngers. “Pikir! Rum for our friend!” Pikir stepped out of shadow. “Very good, Your Grace.” The Friar took a step toward the bench where two tankards were being lled. “Shall we?” Flynn stayed put. “You’re going to need another mug.” The Friar stopped and looked back. “Oh?” Flynn yelled over his shoulder. “Gravin, come dip your oar.” The Menorran Merc stepped out of shadow and sheathed his sword. The Friar’s smile vanished. Gravin said, “Where is Bola, and when can I talk to her?” Flynn gestured to the hanging pirate baskets. “The Friar says she’s over there taking a nap. The Friar says she’ll awaken shortly.” Gravin frowned. “She doesn’t look like she’s taking a nap. She
looks dead. If she’s dead, somebody is going to join her in the Beyond.” Flynn stood and clapped him on the shoulder. “Tell you what—relax and take a break for a bit. If she doesn’t wake in a reasonable span, you can kill these two. Deal?” Gravin grunted and stood at what looked like a parade rest, his hand resng on the ha of his sword. He didn’t look relaxed. Flynn turned back to the Friar. “You said something about rum? We may as well have that nip while Gravin here waits for the resurrecon of the dead.” He accepted a mug of rum. He gestured toward the merc. “It is a mighty good thing you are, as you say, a man of your word.” Mikir and Blind Bart stepped out of the woods into the clearing. Mikir said, “Your Grace, this man has news you will want to hear.” Bart stepped forward. “Cooper Flynn, as I live and breathe. You are alive!” Flynn said, “Bart, is that you? You old coot! What brings you here?” Bart rested on his cane. “I bring news of a bounty hunter they call The Barracuda. But rst, I nd I am somewhat parched.” Flynn mooned for a mug. “Bart, would you like some rum?” Bart smacked his lips. “Don’t mind if I do!” Flynn handed it over. “Here you
are, my friend. You’ve earned it!”
© 2009 by Johne Cook
Previously, Previously, on Thieves’ Honor : The crew of the occasional pirate freighter, Marna Vega , connues to run into obstacles in their eorts to nd and rescue Finney, the pilot, who has been taken by bounty hunters employed by a former port governor, Tarquin, as revenge for killing the governor’s grandson. The latest problem concerns the purchase of fuel from a fence named Skippy whose cooperaon has been less than willing. Meanme, Finney is sll hearing her dead grandfather’s voice, but she gains a lile hope when one of the governor’s servants, a rebel spy, promises to help her escape. However, Tarquin decides the only way to keep Finney in line is by depriving her of her knees.
And now, on Thieves’ Honor: tep two. Step three hundred. It didn’t maer. No way she’d survive the Western Desert, a bland, pragmac name for stony expanse of sand extending to the dust-hazed horizon. Guns or sand. Guns or sand. Guns or — “Ready, aim—” “Must I put you in constant re-
S
membrance that I, not Gregor, am your employer, and this is my revenge?” Tarquin’s querulous voice shrilled like a rusty intake fan. “Turn her around. She must see the weapons that will cripple her last few hours of existence.” Finney planted her feet. Sand . The two guards approached once more, and reached for her arms. She grabbed the barrels of their guns, pushed down then yanked them toward one another. Startled, the men did not release the weapons, but red. Light burst from one barrel, burning a hole through the opposite man’s shin. He screamed and fell, dropping his weapon which, from the way the other man danced and squirmed, was loaded with burrower rounds, bullets whose heads released on impact and clawed under the skins of their targets before chewing deeper unl the vicms died, their insides a blended pulp. Latent vibraons shuddering through her limbs, palms snging from the hot barrels, Finney grabbed the guns, tucked the stocks under her arms, and ran. #
Flanked by his remaining con -
scious bodyguard on the le and Wya on the right, Skippy’s broad form yawed from side to side as he waddled through the alleys, leading the way to the fuel depot. When the hot breeze caught his sizeable garments, he looked like an ancient schooner in full sail. Ezra walked with the captain, who hadn’t spoken since this strange little procession le the warehouse. He wore that expression again—his mouth a straight line, his face an empty horizon—as if anger, frustraon, or fear did not exist. How’d he do that? And why didn’t he talk about Finney? Everyone else did. She was the reason he’d literally looked down the barrel of a gun. So why did Kristo have nothing to say? Almost two days since Finney was taken—hard to believe—and not quite three since the captain almost died, yet here he was, walking around with a only a sling to prove it, as if it supported a sprained wrist rather than protected torn chest muscles. They rounded a corner and entered the town’s shabby plaza just as the breeze kicked up again, tugging Ezra’s shirt. The tranq gun snagged on the loose hem, and he realized he was the only one with a weapon in hand. He tucked the pistol into the back of his waistband before any townfolk hollered for the
constable. constable. “Captain?” “Mm?” “Why do we keep tranquilizer darts in the rst aid kit?” “First aid kit’s for emergencies.” “Medical emergencies, yeah.” “Stayin’ alive ain’t a medical emergency?” “That would explain the boxes of ammunion and the assortment of whiskeys.” Kristo chuckled. Now, that’s the captain Ezra knew. In the center of the plaza crouched a broken-down fountain, a trickle of muddy water cung a dark track down the center post. Children and dogs played in the empty basin. Old men in broad-brimmed hats lounged under awnings. Skippy listed toward a shack with bars on the windows and a sign swinging from the porch roof—”Shari an Jale”—but Wya jingled the bag of colonial coin, Skippy corrected course, and Ezra smiled. Nothing like a good leash. Disguised as a big pile of junk surrounded by bigger piles of junk in the scrapyard, barrels and crates rose in uneven stacks: Skippy’s fuel depot. The bodyguard tossed back the corner of a tarp, revealing a pyramid of metal boxes branded with an eye, the iris a stylized Q. “Is there anything Quantum Industries doesn’t do?” Ezra muttered.
“Peel potatoes and wash dishes.” Wya ran a hand over the top crate. It was narrow but deep, and resembled a cartridge case. “Reckon we oughta crack one open, captain, and check the grade?” Skippy glanced at his guard. The back of Ezra’s neck prickled. Kristo stepped forward, and nodded to Wya. The steward stued the bag of coin into his pocket then ipped the latches, one at each end of the container, and lied the lid. Skippy shoved Wya, and sent him staggering into a row of dented hull panels that toppled against the rusted wreck of a kayak-cla ss runner. Wya slid down a sheet of metal unl he landed in the dirt, his head hanging forward. He didn’t move. The bodyguard rammed the bu of his gun into Kristo’s chest. The captain hunched forward, a sick pale, but he grabbed the stock with his right hand and shoved back, the mouth of the barrel catching the other man in the throat. Eyes bulging, the guard gurgled and choked, but he didn’t go down. Ezra picked up the lid and swung. The guard’s head snapped sideways, and he dropped, blood running down his face and muddying the ground. He wasn’t dead, but he wasn’t moving. Not for a while. Skippy grabbed the handles to
heave the case. Ezra lied the lid and raised his eyebrows at Skippy, who set down his load and backed away from the stack. Kristo kicked the bodyguard’s gun under a heap of discarded ribbing. “When you gonna learn, Skip?” He winced, adjusted the sling, then stepped up to the fence, whose sunreddened face dripped with sweat. “You change security, you change storage locaons, but you never change your ways.” Kristo hooked a thumb in his gunbelt. “I could ask you why, but I’m not much interested. I’m gonna wake up Wya and your guy, and you’re gonna help us haul these cases back to Marna.” “My pay?” “Your goon broke Corrigan’s hand.” “An accident.” “You ordered your men to shoot me.” “The light was in my eyes.” “That how you greet everybody?” Skippy shrugged. “Just the ones I try to cheat.” “Right. What’s a lile dishonesty among friends?” “Indeed.” Skippy lied his hand, and re glowed deep in the barrel of the “cheater” in his st. Since Ezra had joined the crew, he’d learned almost everything
about card games, except how to play, and a cheater was so called because it could be concealed just about anywhere, and could blast a hole through the table and into an opponent. “If you walk away with the nest grade of fuel in my stores,” said Skippy, “I will be paid.” Kristo smiled. “And what will you tell the rebels when they come to collect?” “My men aren’t looking too well. Seems they were set on by a pirate crew. Looked like the gang ying a dilapidated old girl called, let me see, the Marna Vega.” Again, Skippy shrugged. “What’s a poor fence to do?” He pointed the cheater at Ezra. “I do so dislike rearms.” #
Projecles Projecles whined past her head. Small sand explosions kicked stones against her legs. Finney stumbled, righted herself, altered course toward a rocky ridge. “Idiots!” shrieked Governor Tarquin. “Inept, overpaid buoons!” Just as Finney gained the ridge, something slammed into the back of her thigh. She staggered, fell forward, lost her grip on the guns. They slid down a slope, and she rolled af ter them, landing face-up at the bot-
tom, snatching short breaths, feeling every stone she’d encountered on the way. Hands clamped around her boots and dragged her under a low rock overhang. A man’s voice—”Don’t move”—and a shadow blocked the light then disappeared. Running feet, many of them. Gunre. The world fogged. Finney blinked it clear again. She propped herself up on her elbows and looked down. Blood soaked her le leg and pooled in the sand. She fumbled with her belt. Pain stabbed. Sight blurred. Oh, God. Oh, God. Grandfather ? If ye die, Gracie, who will tell the truth about Andronicus? The belt whipped from her slack grasp and wrapped ght around her upper thigh. “Grab the black bottle from my bag.” The same voice. “Blast! Why couldn’t they use hot rounds instead of slugs? If they insist on poking holes in us, at least they can cauterize the wounds.” “Don’t reckon they aim for us to stay alive.” Another man, a lile younger by the sound of his voice. “Besides, re’s tricky to shoot.” “Give me your knife.” “It’s not dark yet. Are you sure she’s the one?” “Look at her face and arms. Look at those wrists. Willa said she’d been shackled and beaten.”
Something burned Finney’s leg, but she couldn’t inch away from it. Couldn’t move at all. “Any casuales?” “Only theirs, but the garrison is mustering.” “Tell everyone to fall back. I’ll bring the woman.” “Go now, while we can cover your retreat.” Dragged once more into the sunlight that blazed beyond her closed eyelids, Finney was lied, not slung over one shoulder or stretched across both, but cradled as she had not been since childhood, when parents or grandparents carried her to bed. Aye, unl ye became a wee giant of a lass, and near broke our backs . “Grandfather.” “No,” said her bearer between breaths, heartbeat pounding against her ear as he ran. “An ally.” “Kristo?” “Not that, either.” Light dimmed. Air cooled. Gunre mued. She tried to open her eyes. Other hands took her. “You four come with me.” His voice echoed. “As soon as the others pass through, we close the gate.” Gracie. Gracie, keep yer wits. I think yer rescuers are rebels. #
The kid ducked, raising the lid like a shield. The cheater’s re, foiled by distance and thick metal, slid across it and disintegrated in a shower of sparks. Skippy cursed, pulled the trigger again, but only a trickle of smoke curled from the barrel. “Takes a minute to recharge.” Kristo grabbed the gun and threw it over the rubble behind Skippy. “Now pick up the crate.” A radio call to the crew brought them running: Corrigan with an arsenal draped over his shoulders and across his chest, Mercedes with her medical bag, Alerio with a motorized contrapon on wheels that allowed them to haul all the crates back to the Marna Vega in one load. Kristo sll ordered Skippy to carry one. “Why?” “General purposes.” “What?” “Old Earth expression.” Kristo applied a length of rusted air duct to Skippy’s ribs, prodding him forward. “Means I’m making you carry it. Just because I can.” Mercedes examined the unconscious bodyguard, bandaged his wound, but le him asleep. Slumped on the stack of fuel crates, Wya Wya rubbed the back of his head, grumbling as Alerio directed the homemade cart through a pot-
hole rather than around it. Then Wya shot a scowl at Skippy and muttered something uncomplimentary. “Why’d I ever agree to do busi ness with ruans?” Skippy complained. Wya pulled the bag of money from his pocket and gave it a good jingle. Beside Kristo, Ezra didn’t speak, just looked straight ahead and walked with a long, relaxed stride far dierent from the short-longshort stuer of a gait when he’d le the ship, and Kristo felt a sinking in his stomach. I’ve just lost a cabin boy . “How’s your conscience?” he asked quietly. “Not sure yet.” Kristo nodded. Fair enough. At the ship, the crew stored the fuel, securing some in the hold, some in the engine room. Skippy helped, Corrigan encouraging his parcipaon by occasional casual gestures with a monster of a handgun. “So,” Skippy said, his round ruddy face streaming, and his loose garments no longer blousy but clinging and dark with sweat. “My pay?” “Caused us an almighty heap of trouble, captain.” Corrigan cradled the long barrel in the crook of his arm, the one with the bandaged
hand. “Don’t reckon he deserves pay, what with the shoong and cheang and such.” “But Captain Kristo!” Outrage swelled Skippy’s voice. “What about the condion of my men? What about the rebels who’ll be wanng that fuel?” He drew himself up as tall as a stubby spine allowed. “What about honor among thieves?” “Honor, my big toe!” Corrigan hauled back a foot to boot Skippy down the gangway, but Kristo shook his head, and the mechanic planted both feet on the deck. Kristo held out his hand. “Wya.” The steward frowned, but gave him the moneybag. He stepped up to Skippy, looked him in the eyes, and saw a icker, a inch. “Here. Take your pay. It’s more than your labor is worth, and it’s the last you’ll get from us.” He dropped it into the man’s plump, blistered palm. “We’re pirates, re member? Next me, we’ll just take what we need.” Kristo nodded toward the open hatch, and Skippy turned. In the distance, black smoke rose, and ames stabbed the underbelly. “My fuel!” Skippy wailed, running down the ramp and up the dusty street.
Shouts passed from building to building like a bucket brigade, and streets clogged as people ran toward the re—water pails, canteens, even cups, in their hands. “Now we’re adding cruelty to our list of acceptable acvies, captain?” Mercedes gestured so forcibly that the sleeve of her lab coat rode almost to her elbow. “It’s in the scrapyard.” “What about sparks? A whole town! Homeless!” Sahir will be ne , Kristo wanted to say, but resorted to the facts. “Sahir modied a few of Alerio’s home made bombs to set the blaze. He’s a master gunner. Lots of experience with anything that catches re or goes boom.” “Don’t patronize me, captain.” “Don’t second-guess me, doctor.” Mercedes folded her arms and stood at the hatch. Sahir would have created an inert barrier to contain the ames, molding re the way a sculptor molded clay. Kristo could remind her of that, but she was in no mind to listen, and he was in no mood to argue. Somemes silence was the in ert barrier. Kristo stood with her, watching for the ship’s rotund cook. A minute later, a sooty, dusty, sweaty Sahir slogged around the corner of
the now-empty street, waved, then bent at the waist, digging a st into his side. “Fool’s gonna give himself a heart aack,” muered Mercedes, grabbing her bag, and Alerio red up the contrapon. It raled a lile, probably because it was constructed of salvaged parts and there were only rudimentary tools aboard the Vega, Vega, but it worked just ne for fetching exhausted crewmembers. As soon as they were aboard, Kristo closed the hatch. “Let’s go get Finney. Fi nney.”” #
Hanging from the rough, arched ceiling, a single row of lamps ex tended deep into the tunnel, an arrow of light piercing the dark. Finney followed it, the so ferrules of her crutches skritching along the grit-covered oor. Her wrists and ribs bandaged, her le thigh wrapped in a dressing, she was s with gauze and belonged in a cot, but aer so many years of falling asleep to the hums and rales of a ship, she couldn’t rest in the total silence of a stark white room. A leg wound throbbing in me with her heartbeat didn’t help. Day and night did not exist here, only the constant diused glow of
the lamps. Voices tangled in so echoes along the corridor, but the rooms she passed were empty. Rescued by rebels and alive— thank God—but with no sense of place, no way to mark me, hobbling along a tunnel leading nowhere, haunted by disembodied voices. Even Grandfather’s had abandoned her. She clapped the crutches together, stretched the wounded leg before her, and sat. Thin, loose, white hospital shorts didn’t shield her from the cold stone, but she wel comed it. Leaning back her head, she looked along the luminescent arrow of light. For millennia back on Earth, wars were fought with arrows, and bows were weapons of choice for heroes in many of the old paperback adventure books Kristo collected. He’d loaned her a few; she’d returned most of them. “We have weapons that shoot re, that send out energy pulses, that launch all sorts of projecles, but we sll have old-fashioned bullets. Wonder what colonial troops would do if the rebels went Robin Hood?” She laughed a grim lile laugh. “Would you join them then, Kristo? Would I?” She shrugged. “Yeah, I know you want to run away some day to the unexplored reach es of the universe, but why not do
some good with all that military training? You can’t leave without me, anyway. Alerio and Corrigan can keep Marna running, but I know how she likes to y.” Then a dread thought crossed her mind. “You haven’t found another pilot, have you, Kristo?” “Who’s Kristo?” The medic— what was his name?—jogged name?—jogged along the tunnel. He grinned. Good-looking guy. A lile weathered, but good-looking . He squaed beside her. “We don’t have much anesthec, so you talked during surgery, and you gave this Kristo an earful. Something about Rebeka and stupidity and a guy named Bosko who, as I recall, ‘didn’t deserve it,’ but you never did say if he deserved beer or worse.” “Beer.” Finney pointed a crutch in the direcon of her room. “How far?” “A lot farther than I would have thought possible for someone in your condion.” In your condion? He made her sound delicate. Now that she thought about it, he wasn’t all that aracve. He examined the stained dressing, laid the back of his hand to her forehead —”Gonna have to put you back in the hole”—then lied her and the crutches in one scoop.
“Put me down.” “I don’t know how you even got out of bed.” “Put me down.” “I get it, you’re tough, but don’t be stu—” Finney slugged him in the shoul der. He grunted, and his grip loosened. “All right, all right.” She seled the crutches under her arms, and swung down the corridor with more energy than she felt, arms shaking, right leg aching from taking the extra weight. “What is this place?” “Abandoned bunker.” The medic troed to catch up. “Colonial gov ernment used to keep a full regi ment here. Well, not here, but in Fort Horao. This was a fallback posion. Then, someme aer the war ended, they blocked the entrances with concrete.” His chuckle was a lile breathless. “We love salvage.” “Who saved me?” “Other than me?” “You have my undying gratude.” “Good one.” “Aer I was shot, who dragged me to safety? How did anyone know who or where I was? And why bother?” When he didn’t reply, she stopped, looked at him, and raised her brows.
“Daniel brought you here. You’ll have to ask him.” “All right then. Take me to him.” “Not unl we redress that wound, and you get some rest.” Fussy, fussy . He reminded her of Mercedes or Alerio, needing to take care of something: she, people; he, engines. Or maybe the medic was like Wya, ddling with numbers and paperwork, counng and recounng money as if reassuring himself it was there. “Anybody ever call you mother ?” ?” “Mostly they call me a pain in the posterior.” Something ckled her skin. She looked down. Blood no longer stained the bandage but seeped out from under it. He spread his arms. “Now will you let me carry you?” She nodded. As he reached for her, she thrust a crutch at his chest. “Don’t get any ideas.” “Yes, ma’am.” “The name’s Finney.” #
Ezra sat with his back to the wall and both feet on the bench, his arms crossed on his drawn-up knees. The captain had set the ship down in the desert so the crew could strategize.
Ezra had been useful back in that hovel of a town, but he knew lile about Tarquin, and less about strategy. He’d been shot at, he was red, he needed food and a shower, and he missed Finney. “Horao’s an old garrison town”— Kristo tapped a solid green circle indicang an oasis on the map pro jected from a telescreen onto the galley table—”but old doesn’t mean unoccupied. If Tarquin’s there, she’ll have her own guards, but she’l l make sure colonial troops take point.” “She will tell story.” Sahir leaned his thick forearms on the table. “She will be innocent. Vicm of crime, ac cident, betrayal.” Alerio pushed his glasses into place with a forenger then folded his hands. “You mean she’ll kill folks, but she’ll have a good excuse.” Sahir nodded. “Always.” “We know her surface reason for taking Finney is revenge for a relave’s death, but now we think Finney’s just bait for us. Why us?” Sahir shrugged. Kristo grabbed the back of his neck, as if the muscles were too ght. “If this is a game,” said Mercedes, “I’d like to know the point.” “The point of any game is to win. By capturing Finn, Tarquin made the opening move.” Kristo stood.
“Unl now, we haven’t been able to make a countermove.” “You stopped the extracon team from taking us,” Ezra said. “I’d call that a countermove.” Alerio unlaced his ngers and rolled a rapid beat on the tabletop. “And we could make beer plays if we knew her endgame.” “We’re small me. Maybe she’s not aer us.” Mercedes rested her chin in her hand. “Who else might want to save Finney?” The captain didn’t answer, just paced the galley, everyone watch ing even if they didn’t look at him. They all seemed to know something Ezra didn’t—not about Finney, perhaps, but about the captain. “No family living,” Kristo said at last, sll gripping the back of his neck. “No friends but us.” “Now, I call that a sad state of aairs.” Wya ipped a pencil end over end, tapping each end on the table. “Do we know where Finney is—exactly?” is—exactly?” Flip, tap. Flip, tap. Flip, tap. Corrigan grabbed the pencil, snapped it in half, and threw the pieces across the galley. They bounced o the stove and rolled across the oor. Wya plucked an other pencil from his shirt pocket, but a low growl from Corrigan sent the pencil sliding back among
the others. Alerio pressed a nger against his mouth as if in thought, suppressing a smile. “Sergeant Frank said she was in a house just outside Horao.” Kristo returned to the map. “We dress like the naves, do a lile reconnoiter, then form a plan.” He turned o the telescreen. “Load your guns, get some food, do whatever you need to do. We hit Horao in een minutes.” The crew scaered; Ezra followed the captain. “What is it, Ez?” “I want to return this.” Kristo halted, and looked down at the anque pistol and the belt wound around Ezra’s arm. “It’s a good gun.” “Figured it must be a family heirloom.” Kristo pulled the gun from its holster, and held it up. Light curved along the barrel. “My father taught me how to shoot with this. Belonged to my great-great-grandfather.” He slid it into the holster, and strode once more toward the wheelhouse, speaking over his shoulder, “Keep it oiled and in a dry place. Should last a couple more generaons.” “But?” The captain rounded a corner and out of sight, footsteps echoing along the passage.
“But,” Ezra said quietly, “what about your family?” Tap-pause. Tap-pause. Tap-pause. Ezra turned. Wya approached, ipping and tapping a pencil on a clipboard. “Way he gures it, you are family.” Something squeezed Ezra’s chest and pulled, like a st around a ripcord. “I have a family.” “Yeah. So?” “Wh-what about my parents?” “No guarantee you’ll ever nd them.” Wya tucked the pencil behind his ear, and crossed his arms, the clipboard at to his chest. “Government hasn’t.” No. They kept an almighty hush over the fact that the passengers and crew of the Elsinore disappeared, along with most of the research. Ezra suspected the government wasn’t even looking; maybe they didn’t want the sciensts found. The Vega’s engines woke from their idle, and the ship shuddered to life. Ezra and Wya braced their feet on the oor and their backs to the wall as the Vega rose. She wasn’t going far, and the topography wasn’t steep, so her incline was shallow, and a solid stance kept them upright unl she leveled. “You know”—Wya pushed away from the wall—”you don’t have to re that gun.” He ran a hand up the
back of his grizzled hair unl it bris tled out in black-and-white spikes. “But, if I were you, I’d wear it.” “I’m willing to ght, but killing?” Ezra shook his head. Wya looked at him. “Killing’s got nothing to do with it.” #
The garrison commander stood at aenon when she arrived, borne on a lier to the fort, and she allowed him to approach. One did not wish to appear weak in the presence of one’s inferiors, so she was propped against a sumptuous mountain of cushions as if she merely reclined for the pleasure of it rather than the necessity, and a skillful servant had applied a layer of rouge to her cheeks, mimicking ruddy health. Somemes, appearance carried one’s weight—though she would rather possess true youth and strength than this mere mask of vitality. “Greengs, Governor Tarquin.” The commander saluted, his face and uniform sll bearing streaks of dirt and blood. She inclined her head in a single regal nod. “What news, Commander Claudius?” His chin dipped—just a hair’s breadth, but it dipped—a V formed between his brows, and
his nostrils ared, as if he breathed noxious air. “We lost them.” “How many of theirs did we take?” “Four dead, no prisoners.” She smiled. Claudius lted his head. Her smile widened. “You did not expect I would be pleased by such numbers.” “No, Governor Tarquin, I did not, nor that you would not require a squad to track your fugive.” “When one srs up a nest of quenya bugs, they do not scaer. They dig in, under the skin.” “Unpleasant, but true. What has that to do with the rebels?” “We’ve srred the nest, com mander. Now we know where they are.”