Unconstant Love

by Timothy J Meyer

  “One of ours?” Coz theorizes tentatively.

  “Negative,” Ox supplies a second later, from his vantage near the driftcart’s fuselage. “It’s some off-brand, Ring ConFed thing. Ours are made in-house.”

  This revelation, the unthinkable, takes more than a moment to sweep through the gathered spice rangers. One by one, expression to expression, the full implication sinks into the flight’s members. Some gasp, a few mutter curses of amazement and most exchange more significant glances.

  There’s only one conceivable origin for this driftcart, one that the Gitter Consortium certainly didn’t manufacture.

  “Offworlders,” Commander Hego utters, the word no one wanted to give voice too. “This is a Code Trespass.”

  The bogeyman of all the regiment's emergency protocols, a Code Trespass was the holiest of holies – unauthorized boots on company soil. The vast majority of the troop’s regular responsibilities pertained to asset collection, peppered with the occasional interaction with the native Gitter. The vast majority of their training, however, was in preparation for precisely this nightmare scenario.

  Far as Jag knew, there’d been no honest Code Trespass in living memory. It wasn’t beyond upper management, however, to throw them the occasional drill – shockingly elaborate – to test the response of their crack ranger squad.

  Today, though; Jag is flabbergasted at the timing. His first day dirtside and he stumbles into, at best, a surprise drill and, at worst, a violation of everything the Consortium holds sacred.

  This, Jag can read on the faces of his flightmates, is what they’re all assuming. This is no real emergency; they’ve simply stumbled onto a drill in progress.

  “Cut the chatter,” the Commander’s quick to reprimand, not sharing this diagnosis. “We assume the worst until Upstairs gets us a nullify. Follow protocol.”

  “Affirmative,” Ox barks back, that ironshod training reading its head.

  “Orders?” Maw, his spine suddenly rod-straight, prompts.

  Commander Hego doesn’t give an immediate reply. Instead, she only paces a few feet ahead and seems to consider how best to proceed. There’s no trace of panic in the Darthen’s gait, her harness whistling softly with each calm step. She stoops, her attention focused on the driftcart’s discombobulated grill, and leans back on her hooved haunches, to better examine something he finds there.

  “See something, Commander?” wonders Wad, activating a function of his visor.

  “Footprint,” the Darthen answers matter-of-factly. The word has barely escaped Hego’s beak before the rest of the rangers come trooping around, to confirm what the Commander sees. When he arrives, Jag too spots the great spread of foot traffic that’s passed through this area. There’s the telltale markings of the natives, moving in great enough numbers to signify a water-hunting on the prowl.

  What’s drawn the Commander’s notice, however, is a smattering of smaller prints. Jag squints in their direction but knows, without really looking, these are definitely the work of boots and what's more, boots minus the pronged tracks a harnessed ranger would make.

  “How many?”

  The Commander sniffs. “No more than two.”

  “A scouting party?” Jag ventures.

  “In league with the natives?” Crex counters.

  “Could be the natives were in pursuit,” Maw offers.

  “Cut the chatter,” repeats the Commander, rising fiercely from her crouch. She rounds on her flight, all the rangers snapping to attention. “Orders. Alpha Wing,” she points toward Maw, nodding slightly. “You’re on recon. Follow the prints, gather intel, question the natives. Omega Wing.” She twists to better address Tav. “You circle back. This driftcart didn’t drop outta the sky. Head west, scanners up, and find me the ride they took in.”

  “Affirmative,” Maw and Tav bark in unison.

  “Channel’s open, eyes peeled, rangers,” Commander Hego reminds her troop. “Get sloppy and everything here could be compromised. The weight’s on your shoulders now. Understood?”

  “Affirmative,” the entire flight chants back before bursting into action.

  “Jag,” summons Commander Hego moments later, as he and his comrades of Omega Wing, under Tav’s leadership, are preparing to depart. Clamping down his nerves, Jag goes hustling over and reports at the Darthen’s side. “Good eyes, soldier,” is all she pulled him aside to say. “Shoulda seen the thing myself. No excuse for complacency.”

  “Command–” Jag starts to excuse but she’ll hear none of it.

  The Darthen goes so far as chucking Jag on the shoulder. “Bloom of a first day, eh?”

  “Omega Wing!” Tav’s voice rings over the scene. “Airborne in two!”

  In two, Omega Wing is indeed airborne, Jag among them. They roar west, the driftcart disappearing behind them. The greenest of the flight, Jag works hard to keep his heatblades steady, his flying even, despite the trembling excitement burning inside him.

  Any offworlder they might encounter would have a dozen flying war machines to contend with. Armed with ray shields, assault weaponry and blades of pure fire, Jag was one member of the most elite corps of killers the galaxy can field.

  The Stargazers are come.

  Moira hears something.

  She stops to listen, her feet falling silent in the crunchy gravel. As the seconds wear on, Moira knows more and more about this mystery sound. It's unnatural, she knows first, a faint whining or droning. It's coming from the west, she knows next, somewhere extremely distant, but echoed and rebounded by the glassrock formations. What Moira knows last and most profoundly is that the sound's coming towards them.

  Moira Quicksilver spins to peer west and back down the ravine. She rather doubts she'll see anything, considering how far away she predicts the sound's source to be. Moira's surprised, then, when she sees a dull orange glow against the western horizon, like a sunrise both the wrong color, the wrong time and the wrong direction.

  More immediately, of course, Moira sees her two bickering companions.

  “See, that's where you lose me,” Odisseus argues, grateful for this unexpected respite and taking the moment to stop and pant. “Get their attention? Fine. Get captured? No.”

  Nemo starts to explain but Odisseus gives him no window. “What you're–”

  “That's how we lost the plant and the Attaché and everybody's guns,” he adds with a significant glance up at Moira, “in the first place.”

  “What I'm saying,” Nemo corrects, soon as he's given the space to speak, “is that there's no need for all three of us to get captured.” Nemo places a pregnant pause here. “Just the one.”

  The pair of them – Odisseus bent double, Nemo leaning against the rocky wall – stare at each other a moment, an understanding quickly established. As one, they turn to glance at the third member of their company, where she stands, stock still, atop the rise, listening for the sound neither of them have noticed.

  “I will stitch your dick to his mouth,” Moira threatens automatically.

  Nemo is confused by pronouns. “Whose–”

  “Quiet,” snaps Moira, with sudden authority. To their credit, they do quiet somewhat, the argument continuing in hushed tones and nasty looks. The droning sound's only grown louder now, loud enough for Moira to definitely distinguish the telltale whine of an engine.

  “Cover,” she hisses. They turn to consider her again, confusion on both their faces; Moira has no time for this. With a sudden lunge, she grabs Nemo by the shoulder and shoves him, face first, down the side of the dune she's standing on. The Captain can't quite muster an objection before he's rolling down the hill like a nursery rhyme, arms and legs finding no purchase on the slippery sand.

  Odisseus is about to be affronted, to growl some threat at the perceived attack on his saltbrother, when his ears perk up and his expression grows sober.

  Together, Moira and Odisseus go sliding down the side of the dune, with considerably more grace than their Captain. They come to a landing on eithe
r side of Nemo, where he lays in a sprawled heap among his splayed bathrobe and what remains of his dignity. His mouth too stuffed with sand to complain, Nemo's immediately grabbed by the scruff of his robe and thrown against the ravine's overhang.

  All the while, the droning overhead has become a roar, the unmistakeable sound of an engine but different – fluted or distorted, somehow. The glow becomes a flash, flooding the ravine with a second's orange light, before instantly fading away to the east. Deafened by the roar and blinded by the flash, it takes Moira too long to process what she's just seen, the sight so ridiculous.

  In that heartbeat, Moira saw a dozen figures flying overhead, arrayed in a tight vee formation and with open flame bursting from their wrists and ankles.

  When realization does come, Moira's momentarily dumbstruck, her ordinarily calculating mind reeling to catch up.

  “A little fucking warning,” sputters Nemo, spitting sand from his mouth and clambering on his elbows. “Bloom me out.”

  Despite his poor eyesight, Odisseus didn't miss a thing. “Was that...?”

  Moira can only nod. The very sight of them passing transplants Moira immediately back to her teenage self, all giddy and speechless at coming so close to her childhood daydream.

  “Moons're we boned,” Odisseus remarks, slumping back against the glassrock wall behind him.

  “Boned? What?” Nemo brushes clods of dirt from his beard. “You pushed me down and then it was loud.”

  “Spice rangers,” Moira blurts, the word coming unbidden to her lips. She turns on him, all color draining from her expression. “Stargazers.”

  Nemo scowls and points a finger skyward. “That was–”

  “Yup.”

  He then twists that finger around, now pointing east. “Headed–”

  “Yup.”

  “Hence,” Odisseus explains, for Nemo's obvious benefit, “boned.”

  The Captain absorbs this news stoically. He stares at his hands where they're spread, finger splayed, in the sand. For a long moment, he says nothing and his eyes scan back and forth in search of answers, like they're hidden somewhere beneath his filthy fingernails. “Fernhollow threw us off schedule,” is the brilliant conclusion he eventually comes to.

  Moira snorts. “You think?”

  “Let's be clear, though,” Odisseus makes the point. “It was you locking the keys in the ship that actually threw us off schedule. Actually.”

  Too lost in contemplation to hear this criticism, Nemo slaps a hand, suddenly and violently, against the sand. “Sure would be nice to have that fucking Attaché right about now, wouldn't it?” He presses the heel of his hand against his forehead, eyes slammed shut in concentration. “Only one thing to be done,” he informs them, shrugging one shoulder helplessly.

  “I don't suppose,” Odisseus sighs, “you mean head back to the ship and forget this whole–”

  Nemo explodes in frustration. “What're the chances that's what I–”

  “No,” Moira interrupts and they both turn to consider her. “He means we press on and get my damn pistols back.”

  “And how,” Odisseus growls, thwarted again, “do you propose we do that?”

  In response, Moira rises from her crouch and stares away east. “Stay here.”

  It's remarkable how silent and swift Moira can be when she loses her baggage train of two complaining numbskulls. She makes impressive time across the inhospitably rocky terrain, scrambling up ridges, wriggling through ravines and heading ever eastward. The spice rangers long gone, Moira follows their trail nonetheless, the orange glow and dull thrum of their heatblades echoing off the glassrock walls.

  In moments like these, she pines for her days of itinerant bounty hunting – no nonsensical schemes, no incompetent accomplices, no impossible odds.

  She'd contemplated a career change the entire way from the Splitspine nursery, northeast across the wasteland and up into the rocky uplands that fringe the box canyon. Made ornery by being outvoted, Odisseus grumbled every step of the journey and Nemo took each complaint as a personal slight, fueling an unending argument that swayed back and forth. The one mercy came from Gi's blessedly cooler night, the hateful sun sunk beneath the horizon and not about to torment the offworlders any further.

  To Moira's surprise, she comes damn near the Skyscratch nursery before her suspicions are confirmed. Hugging a glassrock boulder to stay out of sight, Moira takes the slightest peek at what she suspected, where it stands sedately at the crest of a dune up ahead.

  A single spice ranger, the moonlight glinting off the contours of her harness and her assault rifle, stands at attention atop the hill. Posting a sentry, Moira knows, is a very bad sign; the Stargazers must have reason to fear that someone else might intrude on their business in the Splitspine nursery. What's more, the sentry represents a challenge too steep for Moira to tackle alone.

  She must, quite begrudgingly, seek the aid of her incompetent accomplices.

  “Nemo, I need you,” Moira forces herself to admit, soon as she's returned to the ravine where she'd left her companions. In all the time that Moira's been away, they've accomplished exactly nothing; they still squat in the sand and they still squabble like the siblings they are.

  Nemo makes some noncommittal noise of complaint when Moira returns with her demands. When this fails to stave her off, he adds a flapping gesture of his wrist, warding her away as he might a bothersome insect.

  “Now,” she insists, with all the authority of a displeased parent.

  “Take Odi,” Nemo offers instead, thumbing a gesture at his aghast saltbrother.

  “How come,” Odisseus starts to speculate, a new beachhead in the eternal war between saltbrothers, “whenever somebody's actually gotta put your idiotic plan in place, you've always got a migraine or a very important comm or have to carry the torc–”

  “Hey,” Nemo counters with a pointed finger, suddenly all business. “Were Two-Bit here, he would tell you that my forehead felt very hot and maybe I should go lie dow–”

  “It's gotta be you, Nemo,” Moira hates to inform him. “It's a stealth mission and Odi would make too much noise.” She pauses, putting the slightest hint of plead in her voice. “You're the only one who can do it.”

  At Moira's words, something changes in Nemo's aspect. “Well,” he starts to swagger a little, rising from his slumped position, “if I'm the only one–”

  “Trouble?” Odisseus wonders, in that concerned voice of his.

  Moira purses her lips and shrugs a little. “Hopefully not.”

  They make considerably worse time returning to the sentry's post. Nemo is a chore to chaperone, Moira shushing him every step of the way and shepherding his graceless ass over the rocky terrain. Soon as they're within spitting distance to the sentry, Moira yanks him behind an outcropping, gives Nemo his instructions, listens to him repeat them – twice incorrectly – and then sends him on his way.

  The dune the ranger's posted on is comprised of two slopes – one smooth and one not. The unsmooth slope is all loose glassrock gravel, a noisy and cumbersome climb. It's this direction that Moira sends Nemo, with another assurance of how vitally importance his silence and stealth are to the mission.

  Sure enough, not thirty seconds after Nemo's disappeared on his errand, there's the unmistakable sound of loose scree and muttered curses, deafening loud in the quiet mountain pass. Possessing two ears and a brain between them, the spice ranger is instantly alerted. Rattling something clipped into her HUD's comm, the ranger hustles three steps towards the source of the noise and towards discovering Nemo – and that's when Moira has her.

  Approaching up the dune's sandy side, Moira is the paragon of stealth. So distracted by Nemo's blundering, the spice ranger is surprisingly easy for Moira to ambush. Ten stalking strides is enough to put Moira at arm's reach. As the pinkskin humanoid ranger opens her mouth to speak, Moira strikes.

  One hand she clamps over the ranger's mouth, to ensure she doesn't say anything into the live comm. The other h
and she twists into a Hungry Zakoosa and crushes the ranger's windpipe, to ensure she doesn't say anything ever again. There's a wet sound as Moira feels something inside the ranger's throat break beneath her fingers.

  With a savage kick, Moira deals with the rifle, sending the weapon clattering away onto the gravel. Taken wholly by surprise, the ranger hasn't the wherewithal to activate her heatblades. Instead, she simply wriggles like a caught fish, as she suffocates on her own green blood. Moira waits patiently for the struggling to cease and realizes that the comm's transceiver is inches from her own mouth.

  “Confirm,” the patched voice on the other end demands. Keeping her voice level despite the murder she's currently committing, Moira prays to all the moons the pinkskin didn't speak with some distinguishable accent.

  “Negative,” she growls, unable to keep the exertion completely from her voice. “False alarm. Small landslide or something. No organics.” Completely guessing at terminology, Moira waits a few agonizing seconds to see how good her imitation was.

  “Affirmative,” comes the reply through the comm, seconds later. “Stay sharp, Tav.”

  “Roger that,” Moira answers and the channel clicks dead.

  In her arms, Moira feels the pinkskin go limp. Unable to bear the weight of ranger and harness, she drops the corpse, the machinery whining as it crashes to the ground.

  “Can you keep it down?” exhorts Nemo, as he comes panting up the ridge. “This is supposed to be a stealth mission.”

  The threat neutralized, Odisseus is summoned and the scene is doctored some. Initially, Moira wants to strip the ranger of her harness, granting them some small modicum of firepower against the rest of the troop but Odisseus makes the inevitable point about an embedded tracking device. Better, then, Moira reasons, to pitch the whole corpse – harness and all – down a nearby crevice and let the Stargazers sort the mess out. She'd be found, no questions there, but the longer any spice rangers have to search for her remains, the better.