“What do I call you?” I asked in my mind.
“Drasheel” she told me. It was a good name. For a moment, I wondered if I had truly left the reprogramming center at all. Was this all just another part of the simulation? A test to discover whether I was still loyal to the Unity government and its aims? But I decided that there was something more. The temple, Voltec, Kris-10. It couldn’t all have been a part of the reprogramming. What would Unity have to gain from showing me these things? And then I thought of my mother, what about her? Had this somehow been her plan for me all along? Or was she simply a sick woman with delusions of grandeur about her son, just as I had always feared?
7
I don’t know how long I slept. Between being in the reprogramming center, with no day or night, and an indeterminate amount of time spent cruising in this stealth vessel, I had lost all sense of time.
“Time to rise,” said an alien directly across from me. His head was like that of a wolf spider, with fine red hairs in a fine fuzz all along his black skin and four arms twice as thick as a gorilla’s. “Today’s the day you start to live for the first time in your life. You know that?”
“I’ve done some living in my time,” I said, imagining the first time I ever stepped into the cockpit and brought the thing up to speeds fast enough to peel the paint off. Seeing that score board light up with my name at the top. Of all my memories, how many actually belonged to me?
“How do you like that?” the wolf spider asked. “No appreciation. I guess he’s happier stewing his brain in that brainwashing dump?
“Heeez scaared,” moaned Dasheel, using her audible voice. Then, I noticed that I could feel Drashlee’s presence creeping up the base of my spine without the need of physical contact between us. Our consciousnesses were bound in some sort of private channel. A feeling of comfort and safety that seems to radiate out of her like the phosphorescent corona that glowed from underneath her skin. I noticed too that her shapely features nestled under her coat. The clothing underneath covered her ample features but still served to accentuate her curves. A smile crept up on her face, and I knew in an instant she could pick up on my intentions. Embarrassed, I tried to dash them away, like sending fingers along a pool of still water. I wondered whether I had any choice about whether or not to betray Unity for my own survival, but what exactly did I have to gain by protecting a government that’s considered me a treasonous threat for no good cause? But I decided better not to allow these thoughts in the presence of Drasheel.
Through the viewfinder in the ships porthole I could see I a busy spaceport surrounding what appeared to be the hollow bones of a metallic moon. Without understanding how or why, I felt a strange affinity for the place, as if seeing a new horizon stretched out in front of me. I guess that made the name of the place an appropriate one. Dawn. Was this a new beginning, or was I really coming to the end of who had I been? Three calming chimes signalled that were about to dock.
The Dawn space port was like five choruses all singing at once, a dance without choreography. The odors of food fought with garbage and feces. Thousands of humans and aliens, hustled, hawked, called, sold, and from what I could guess, stole in the hanger hobbled together from two or more cruisers. Children ran through the stalls of furs, spices, dried goods, fabrics and furniture. Birds that seemed to be made of pure light fluttered kaleidoscopically within stained-glass lanterns. Every stall was the promise of something wonderful. But at the same time my warrior’s instincts told me to be wary of the stalls selling weapons, exotic drugs, and, I presumed, sentient beings.
No slaves, said Dasheel inside my mind. Seemed our mental connection was growing stronger by the minute.
“So what were your intentions for raiding the reprogramming center?”
Freedom is right.
“Seems you pay a high cost for your ideals. I saw dead men on your side back there.” Dasheel’s presence, which I had felt lapping at the edge of my consciousness, suddenly recoiled.
I turned to her, suddenly worried that I might have offended or overstepped. Her face was inscrutable. She nodded in the direction of a warren of stalls close to the center and bid for me to follow. As we moved through the throng, I had to move to keep my eyes on her. She seemed to move through the crowd like a leaf on stormy sea.
Finally, we arrived in a kind of tent lined with and fabric rugs. Aliens of all sorts sat around glass pipes that glowed and hummed as the users sucked the multi-colored smokes from hoses attached at their bases. Together, the tones made a kind of music. The smoke smelled musky and strange, but I had to admit the Torbanini pipes made some beautiful colors and sounded melodic when enjoyed by a group of experienced smokers.
In the corner was an older human whose shirtless chest I assumed was meant to advertise his virility even in his advanced age. He was perfectly bald from his forehead to his crown, with long salt-and-pepper hair that fell along the sides of his head in ringlets. His long beard seemed like an extension of the same, with more white than black. He took a melodious drag from the hose perched in his fingers and sent the smoke from his tattooed lips in a ring of red, then yellow, then finally green, motioning towards Dasheel with his other hand. She approached his circle and sat down cross-legged on a small square piece of thin fabric on the floor in front of the pipes. I took a seat beside her. As soon as I sat, the seat expanded, becoming plush and providing me with greater support.
The old man took another drag and regarded me thoughtfully for a moment. Then, he said, “we’ve met somewhere before.” It was a statement, not a question. I wondered whether this was some sort of a test of mettle, or maybe of my truthfulness. Because while I didn’t want to start off my time in Dawn by pissing off some elder who obviously had some status here the idea that we had met wasn’t just weird, it was fucking ludicrous.
“I’m not sure what you mean,” I said.
“You said that the last time,” he said, seemingly a little disappointed. He looked at me like a child unhappy I wasn’t joining in on his game. Then, I felt Dreshell’s tendril touch my arm, and suddenly I felt a rush of unfolding understanding. “Your name is Terutoshon, but you’re known as Teru. You’re the greatest pilot in Dawn.”
“I saw what you did there,” replied Teru. “It’s not playing fair when you let her help you.”
He bit the hose gingerly with his yellow inciscors, producing a sharp tone, then he moved his lips to make a sound like long, low and mournful whine, letting bluish purple smoke steam out of his mouth as he played. Finally, he breathed deep and released it in a cloud that rose in time with the crescendo of the song.
“I’m a pilot too,” I said. Teru nodded, taking another long and lazy drag. “I was one of the best.”
More tones, then a green gasp of smoke escaped Teru’s lungs. “In another life, perhaps. But here you’re a bird flapping its wings in a lake.”
“What did you bring me for if not to fly for you? To do something for you. I’m useful to you somehow. I have to be.” Teru kept on smoking and playing.
“Do you see another one like yourself here?” asked Teru finally. I looked around. What did he mean? Another pilot? Another human? We were surrounded on all sides by aliens of all races, but we appeared to be the only two humans in the place.
“No,” I said.
“Forget what you see. Remember what you know,” he said. The riddles were starting to wear thin, and I wondered how intoxicating the smoke from the pipe was, and for how long he had been sitting there smoking it before Dasheel and I arrived.
“I can stack up against any pilot you have flying for you.” Teru raised an eyebrow.
“There isn’t a pilot here who wouldn’t just as soon spit in my eye as smile at me. The Wings of Dawn don’t fly for anyone. There are pilots, and then there’s me. I’m a pilot, but I don’t fly. I could beat any of them, and they know it. As long as they know it, it’s true. That’s all. I’m no leader. I’m just the fattest old lion in the pride.”
“It’s the females
that hunted,” I said, remembering something that Harley had once told me about the behavior of lion prides. She had an obsession with the extinct animals of old earth since she was a child. She had said it proudly when she told me.
Teru scratched himself by way of an answer, gesturing with his hose for me to take up the one in front of me. I looked to Dasheel, who had her hose poised in one of her tentacles. She nodded, seeming to say that it would be alright and that I could trust that it wasn’t a trick. The hose buzzed as it touched my lips, giving off a sour note. The foul-tasting smoke made me want to spit, but I managed to get a few flat notes before pushing the cloud through my teeth. Then, I felt a queasy sort rush, almost as if I was scratching and itching at the same time. My eyelids and head drooped a little and the cushion beneath me collapsed on one side to compensate for the shift in my balance.
“Your mouthwork is poor, but that’s not your problem. It’s your frame of mind that’s wrong. You’re probably thinking that as you inhale you’re letting it in. But really you’re letting what’s inside come out.” My head swam. Lights and smoke cascaded in my brain. Notes and color all converging and coming together in a combination more intricate and overwhelming than anything I’d ever experienced. It was like bonding with the neurolink, except that I wasn’t the one who was in control. The cloudy colors contorted to form faces: Golden Boy, then Harley, Celesst, then my mother. Then, after a moment, the buzzing subsided and I was staring at Teru, mostly solid except for a slight ripple at the fringes of his beard.
“How’s that for unity?” he asked. I nodded slightly, careful not to rock my head any more than I had to. “Bet they don’t give you this stuff in the Unity prison factory,” said Teru. “Want to know what else you’re now allowed to do?”
No clanging of boots. No klaxons sounding. No scoreboards. No bucking for rank. My first day flying in Dawn was unlike anything I’d done when I was in the control of Unity. After I’d met with Teru, Drasheel showed me where I would be staying. A small pod in a larger complex converted from an old shipping freight container. I think it must have been an old shipping compartment that was used to haul goods from port to port. Look at me. Spent my whole life having to be of value to someone else. The military, the people of Earth. Now here I was. Freight. I rose without an alarm. Got up and started doing the basic exercises I’d started my cycle with every morning since I was a child.
I was given breakfast by Drasheel, a kind of wild oats and berries in hot water, then she asked me without having to ask, how I wanted to spend my time. She probably knew the answer before I said it, and she didn’t need a telepathic connection to my head either.
“Just take me to my ship.”
The hanger bay was filled with every variety of junker I’d ever laid eyes on, and plenty I’d never seen in vids. Nothing as slick as what I was used to piloting. The most common ship among them was the NM67 Legionnaire, slick in its time but now practically an antique, at least for anyone on the front lines. Easy enough to steal by the raiders, since the wrecks litter any major battlefields from the robot wars. Alien ships too. Scorpions, Rattlers, Bloodletters, Red Claws. Not their real names, of course. Just the designations we’d yell at each other through our cockpits as one would come screeching at us.
All the ships had some heavy damage, and all of them were missing any distinguishing marks of planetary origin or allegiance, I’m guessing not by accident. Drasheel must have sense a little disappointment on my part, because I felt her fingers touching mine.
“It’s not about the craft. You’re the starfighter. A ship is just a vessel.” Her voice rang in my head. True enough, I supposed. A bucket of bolts in the hands of a true blue flying ace could run circles around a wannabe with a MK7 Phantom. Then again, there were a lot of good pilots. And if I ever came up against once with better tech, I wondered how I was gonna limp away from a dog fight alive.
There was a circle of roughnecks assembled in the far corner of the bay. I scanned them quickly and recognized a few I’d seen from my liberation back at the reprogramming center. The wolf spider was there. Teru was not.
“Well, look who it is,” said an eight-foot tall bulbous-headed alien with long thin limbs jutting out from every direction on his body. A Sphree, and an especially aggressive one. His people don’t wear clothes, so they often have some trouble assimilating the concept when they’re among populations where it’s fashionable to do. This one wore a purple skirt around his upper body and long socks tied around his neck and various limbs for decoration, which I presume that he must have picked up in one of the market stalls. “What do we think of this one, boys?”
“Burnout. Probably,” said the wolf spider, whose name I discovered was Throx. “But, then there’s always the chance…”
Two of them stood as silent as sphinxes, their arms crossed. Heavily tatooed, green skinned and muscular. One had a finely trimmed beard and looked to be the senior. The other one had a crescent moon around one eye a scar on his cheek I’m guessing wasn’t part of his body art plan.
“Heard you met with Teru,” said the scraggly human from the station.
“That’s right,” I said.
“Ask you a lot of questions, or just smoke himself in a stupor?”
“He had some spiritual insights. Or so that was what we seemed to want me to think that they were.”
“So what do you think?”
“I think I’m too evolved to believe in any kind of mumbo jumbo bullshit. Especially from some pilot past his prime.” The crew gave a collective, “Ooooh,” impressed with my brashness, or maybe just teasing me for the fun of it.
“That old bastard is hero,” said another human. This one was massive, built like he could lift cargo with his eyelids. “He may look to you like some old wash-out, but I’ll bet he’s got heart like you never will.” He scratched at the stubble on his chin, flexing the tattoo on his bicep. It was the waxing skull and dagger of the Space Commandos. I jumped back to Lenix and that holding cell.
“Crazy Larry?” I ventured. He smiled, seemed pleased at the mention of his epithet.
“Something like that,” he said. He was dressed in the loose baggy clothes of an outlaw but his posture betrayed his past as a Commando. I can’t say that I was relieved to see “one of my own” since Space Commandos were about the furthest thing from kith in my structured former existence. But I guess if he could survive here so could I.
“Maybe I misjudged. Teru must be a stronger leader than I thought if he’s got you defending him. I never knew Space Commandos to be loyal to much of anything else.”
“I’m still a soldier,” said Crazy Larry. “Only now all I serve is Lady Fortune. Not Teru. He’s on a whole ‘nother level. Spiritual like. He’s guided by some higher-level shit.”
“I got no use for his two-bit philosophy. I’m a pilot. I believe in what I can see.”
“We think the same,” said the Sphree.
“So, show us what you’ve got.” I was expecting something like this. Tryouts. The Wings of Dawn weren’t going to take just anyone. Only the finest dregs and riff-raff the tidal pool of the universe could see fit to pull together.
“What’s the game? Speed trial? Combat simulation? Target practice?” the crew exchanged knowing looks with each other.
“We don’t go in for games here,” said Throx.
“We’re going on a raid. Telexian colony ship. You pull your weight, you get a cut. What do you say?” Nobody in the galaxy had any love for Telexians. They were like locusts, spreading everywhere, eating everything. They seemed to exist for nothing more than consumption. Plus, their eggs were valuable on the black market, which is the only kind there is in a place like Dawn. But, a raid on a civilian population, if you could call it that, didn’t exactly gel with the values of the military I was raised in. And how could I trust my new compatriots to have my back in a real firefight? Especially in some second-hand hulk they pawned off on me? Didn’t seem like I had much of a choice though. Either I could go along wit
h the raid or bow out from the Wings of Dawn.
“I’m in.”
The yoke of the Legionnaire jumped out of my palm, sending the craft into a listless kind of roll. I grabbed it back and yanked hard, overcorrecting. I had seriously underestimated how clunky flying without the neurolink would be. How the hell did pilots every do this before? The controls were sluggish and, often as not, would send me careening off in some random direction. And I hadn’t even limped to the warp gate (is that what these are called?) yet.
What the hell had these raiders done to this heap to make it fly like this? I was starting to think I was being set up for a fall. Had they really pulled me out of that prison just to watch me fry in some malfunctioning hunk of junk? You’re the starfighter. The ship is just the vessel. Yeah, right.
“Arre youuuuu okaaaay?” came Drashell through the intercom, in her ghostly, underwater voice through the intercom system in my cockpit. The display window the right hand corner of my display was so fuzzy that I could barely even make her out visually.
“Fine,” I answered, just trying to keep steady. Half of me wanted to bail out and just head back before I even reached the jump gate. But this was a test, and I’d never run away from one of those before. You’ve done this before. I was surprised at the thought. Where did that come from? Teru’s burnout mysticism? How did that find its way into my head?
“Coming up on the jump gate,” said Oryn, the scraggly human in the corner screen, “Execute specs for jump coordinates now.”
“What, you mean manually?”
“That’s right, flyboy. Hope you didn’t skip stellar trigonometry and adaptive telemetry in that fancy military academy of yours.”
Alpha Wing Page 9
