SeptStar

by Blaze Ward

  “Ogrorspoxu,” Spectre Twenty-Three spoke up. “Not their homeworld, because nobody knows where that is, but the closest you’ll get to a definition of a perfect planet, according to legend.”

  It seemed that Daniel had given the idea much thought already, because he nodded.

  “Yes, that would be a good idea, for a number of reasons,” he said.

  “Such as?” Kathra asked, surprised that he so readily said yes.

  Comitatus, yes, but this went beyond that. At least she thought so. The rest of her women might have different interpretations.

  “The Ovanii,” he said. “They were a star tribe, much like the Mbaysey in their day, but they were raiders, rather than explorers. Eventually the Anndaing and their allies broke the Ovanii, but they must have had interesting ships. This core world of the Anndaing is probably a good place for me to do research. And find more things to translate, since I have access to a number of willing accomplices, eager that their stories not be lost. I would also like to know more about the K’bari.”

  “My concern is the Ishtan, Daniel,” Kathra countered. “If they can track you, you will be far removed from what we can do to protect you.”

  “You could send someone with me,” he grinned. “Iruoma would be a good candidate, since they will never control her again. Areen is also a possibility. Joane is probably the nerdiest, when it comes to learning new technology.”

  “I could also send Yejide,” Kathra smiled slyly, watching Daniel’s eyes get large for a second. It felt good to tease him occasionally. “Remember, Daniel, you have no secrets from me or Erin.”

  His mouth opened to say something, but nothing came out. He tried again with the same result.

  Kathra turned to A’Alhakoth instead.

  “You will never repeat this conversation,” she said simply, watching the woman’s slit pupils open large as well, before she nodded.

  Comitatus.

  “Yejide has had a crush on Daniel since the beginning, but been unable to act on it for a variety of reasons,” Kathra explained, dropping her voice down, just in case someone besides Ndidi was in back helping prep food. “It eats at her, but she is just as stubborn as Iruoma in her own ways.”

  A’Alhakoth turned to Daniel and smiled innocently.

  “So, you’ll seduce all of us at some point, if I just patiently await my turn?” she asked in a smiling voice.

  Kathra felt her jaw drop open. Daniel’s face went white for a second and then turned a color of beet red she didn’t know Rabics like him were capable of.

  “No secrets, Daniel,” she smiled, reminding him. “I have been you, just as you have been me. I might have peeked, but it is obvious that you didn’t. Thank you.”

  Kathra hadn’t really considered the Kaniea woman from that angle.

  Most of the Mbaysey were homosexual, only taking pleasure from other women. Being eighty-five percent of the entire tribe, and all of SeekerStar’s crew save Daniel, made that a necessity, if a woman sought release. But the Kaniea clung to a more primitive, binary model, men and women living in roughly equal numbers, in a society tilted somewhat towards a patriarchy that was slowly breaking down as modernity caught up with them.

  A’Alhakoth would see Daniel as someone she could take into her bed, if she chose. Just as she had all of the comitatus to work with as well.

  Kathra just laughed.

  “Consenting adults,” she reminded both of them of her rules. “And not a threat to the good conduct of the ship or the comitatus.”

  Daniel sputtered, but nothing intelligent came out.

  Interestingly, he never once stopped cutting, nor managed to cut himself in the process.

  Finally, he did put his knife down and drew a deep breath in.

  “Any of the Spectres you have mentioned would be welcome, Kathra,” he finally said. “I doubt that I would need an entire harem, in spite of what Urid-Varg thought was appropriate. But I do look forward to what my ghosts and I might learn out there. This was one of the K’bari worlds that were destroyed by Urid-Varg.”

  “I know, Daniel,” she said, sobering. “And it will help all of us who are Mbaysey, which includes you.”

  He nodded in recognition, but had nothing more to say.

  Kathra turned to A’Alhakoth, catching the gleam of merriment in the woman’s eyes.

  “Let us go do a deal with our trademaster,” she smiled back.

  Fifteen

  Pasdar stared out of the porthole in his office and smiled briefly at the vessel that had quickly taken shape under his guidance and with the input of his new allies.

  SeptStar, shortly to be flying his flag, with a small crew of the most elite sailors he and his aspbad, Hadi Rostami, had been able to identify from the masses available. Amirin Pasdar was just sad that he would not be able to bring Rostami with him, but Vorgash would need an aspbad like him to make it home.

  Not that anyone in space represented a physical threat to a Septagon, but the man would be facing one of the Vuzurgan, the Grand Nobles of the Sept, if he was not called before an Andarzbad, one of the Emperor’s Councilors, to explain the disappearance of a naupati like Amirin Pasdar.

  Pasdar had split his time over the last month supervising construction of the new vessel and writing up all the reports and information that Rostami would be carrying home.

  More likely, one of the Patrol vessels would be loaded up with as much food and consumables as they could haul, and race well ahead of the rest of the fleet. That would give his leaders time to consume his message and plan accordingly for when Vorgash made it home.

  But not enough time to stop Pasdar.

  Amirin considered what it would do to his reputation, to hare off on this wild chase, when he could have simply returned to Sept space having driven Kathra Omezi entirely from the human sectors of the galaxy. But that would be a failure he was unwilling to admit, as he looked up from his desk and studied the nearly-complete warship in the near distance.

  All Omezi had asked was freedom for her collection of perverted women from the men of the Sept Empire. Escaping into the alien darkness would probably grant her that.

  He would not allow it.

  His orders were already being stretched in terrible ways, but he was still within the letter of them, using the resources of his new allies, both human and Ishtan, to build a vessel capable of chasing the woman.

  You will not escape me, Omezi.

  He put his pen down and flexed his hands and shoulders from the tension that had taken root.

  It was entirely possible that he had crossed some line. Emotionally. Psychologically. Mentally.

  But she would not defeat him.

  Once already, Vorgash had been chased from the field of battle by Kathra Omezi. That alone was worth chasing her to the gates of hell and beyond.

  A Septagon, defeated by a pack of primitive women from Tazo. Nearly destroyed in the process.

  He would have her head on a stake to present to the Emperor before he returned home. That much he had sworn.

  A knock at the hatch caused Pasdar to swear under his breath as he checked the clock.

  How much time had he spent daydreaming of his revenge?

  He opened it to admit Rostami.

  The man entered, sat without comment, and waited, his face composed.

  Amirin knew that he had let himself get out of control and fought to bring everything in his mind to heel. Normally his aspbad spoke without prompting or reservation in the privacy of this office.

  They stared at each other for a long moment.

  Finally, Rostami stirred.

  “Should I go instead?” the man asked simply.

  Pasdar considered it, wondering if he had let his emotions get completely out of hand.

  How crazy had Amirin Pasdar gotten, with such rage in him?

  “What do you see when you look at me?” Pasdar asked in a voice that sounded like a creature emerging from a swamp.

  “I fear that you are not the naupati who to
ok us across the border into Free Worlds space, Amirin,” Rostami said. “Something has changed in you, in a bad, black way.”

  Pasdar leaned back in his chair and stole a glance at the ship in the distance.

  For the briefest moment, it turned into the giant, white whale of legend, at least to his subconscious. That frightened him even more than he realized.

  He had been ordered to chase Kathra Omezi and break her so-called Tribal Squadron. Nothing could stand before a Septagon, but there was also nothing in the galaxy that could not outrun him, so anything he would have tried would be a long, stern chase.

  Only by building SeptStar, in the same yard as SeekerStar and with access to the very blueprints of that ship, had he taken a step that would ensure his eventual success.

  “Yours does not have to be the hand that holds the harpoon, as long as the whale is slain,” someone said.

  It didn’t sound like Rostami’s voice, and the man’s face betrayed a curious confusion when Pasdar turned back to him.

  “What?” Pasdar demanded.

  “I did not speak, Amirin,” Hadi Rostami replied.

  Pasdar drew a deep breath.

  Amirin Pasdar had walked right up to the edge of a cliff and had been prepared to leap off it.

  To his death. Socially, if not literally.

  It would be better for him to return to Sept space and find his center.

  Then perhaps he should cause a new fleet of such SeptStars to be built. They were faster than Patrols by a significant margin. Cheaper to build, since they did not rely on gravity field inducers.

  Only in their fragility did they betray themselves, as a Patrol vessel was much more durable and tough. But a SeptStar was far more heavily armed, as a result of all the space freed up.

  “Yes,” Amirin Pasdar said aloud. “We need to change. I will return to Sept space with Vorgash and prepare for whatever follow-up you will need, Hadi. You will take command of SeptStar as soon as the builder trials are complete, and then begin your quest. We will build at least two more secret, forward operating bases on our way home, so that you have a place to return to.”

  “We will find her,” Rostami promised earnestly. “We will destroy her.”

  “I wonder if that is necessary,” Pasdar mused. “If you hound her mercilessly, and you can with this design and a few freighters to keep you resupplied from Ardabil or the other forward bases, then you can cause her squadron to eventually disintegrate. They are civilians, not warriors.”

  “And your friends?” Rostami asked.

  “They will act as bloodhounds, leading you to the cook, who will be at Omezi’s side,” Pasdar said. “They are entirely alien, but I find a pureness of vision in them. I wonder if that is part of my own insanity, when you must live in the shadows at this level of Sept culture.”

  “They will infect me as they did you?” he asked.

  “It is entirely possible,” Pasdar replied. “But they care only to see the cook destroyed, so while they will drive you, they will not lead you astray.”

  “Then perhaps you can return to yourself, once we are away,” Rostami smiled.

  Pasdar nearly snarled back at the man, but then he understood how much of his new behavior was possibly driven by the Ishtan and their single-minded, apparently-deathless pursuit of the cook and his forbears.

  Nothing Amirin Pasdar had done over the last two months would damage his career or social standing, when it was made known at the Imperial capital at Rhages.

  As long as he shaded a few things in obscurity.

  And ordered Rostami to chase Kathra Omezi down in his name.

  Sixteen

  Daniel studied the scrutinizer device Joane Obiakpani, Spectre Five, was carrying. It reminded him of a smaller version of the boxes his custom dress shirts had been packaged in from the tailor, back when that was a thing.

  Back when Daniel had cared about such things.

  Seven centimeters thick and wrapped in black leather to protect the metal and give it friction in your hands. Twenty-one centimeters wide by nearly thirty long, it was heavy enough that it came on a strap you hung around your neck, so it could dangle at your side.

  Portable scanner capable of being programmed to identify and analyze a number of things, including a small compartment at the top which you could open to insert something larger than a gumball but smaller than an orange.

  It would hopefully keep them both alive.

  The rest of the boxes around them in the landing bay were the reason they needed a scrutinizer in the first place. And the reason Daniel hated camping.

  Not the glamorous kind, where you drove or flew up to a tent or yurt someplace and relaxed, but the type where you put everything in a backpack and walked somewhere without roads, reception, or decent take-out food.

  When you had to carry all the food you would eat, so it had to be simple, light, and rather bland. Cornmeal and wheat flour. Egg replacement mix. Dehydrated meat. Equally dehydrated sauce.

  Pedestrian cooking that involved throwing things in a pot, adding water, and bringing to a boil.

  There was no art to it. No soul.

  On the other hand, nobody could even begin to predict how long they would be away from SeekerStar. There was no way to carry enough food, in any form, for two humans.

  They would bring consumables for a week or so, and already have worked their way slowly through Anndaing food options, using this portable scanner to make sure neither of them were accidentally poisoned or intoxicated along the way.

  It helped that A’Alhakoth’s metabolism handled most human food well. She actually had fewer allergies than some of the other women in the comitatus, when it came down to it.

  Something of his pique must have communicated itself to Joane, as she looked up at him and smiled, that gap between her front teeth drawing the eye down from the poof of hair she always managed to keep looking good, even after stuffing it under a flight helmet.

  “Maybe you should take some seeds?” she grinned.

  Daniel scowled up at the woman standing there. Up, like he did most of the comitatus.

  She was just as immune.

  “Thought about it,” he grumbled. “But that requires all manner of soil bacteria be introduced into their ship, in addition to what we’ll be bringing personally. Plus whatever they’ll have that will infect the soil in return. And I could only bring enough for perhaps one or two pots, so we’d have the choice of tomatoes, peppers, or perhaps squash. In a few months.”

  She shrugged. Before Daniel had come along, the comitatus hadn’t eaten nearly as well. A poor tribe focusing on getting enough nutrients into young, growing bodies so that they could turn out to be big, strong women like Joane. Or Kathra.

  Actually having food that was a pleasure to eat was something that he had done to spoil them, when all it used to take was the occasional trip to a TradeStation for dinner.

  At least he’d ruined them for poor cooking. It was a good thing Ndidi was going to be better than him, one of these days.

  Kathra and Ndidi approached now as other women started loading boxes and gear into the SkyCamel. Erin was already aboard, doing her preflight and unwilling to allow any other woman to fly Daniel over.

  The two of them had a most complicated relationship, but it worked. Erin had had to pull rank on several other women in the comitatus for this duty today.

  Daniel paused to make sure he was ready to face the aliens when he arrived. Dark pants. Long sleeved shirt. Heavier, button-up overshirt, since nobody ever kept their vessels as warm as the Mbaysey did.

  Under it all, the bodysuit that he had inherited from Urid-Varg after he had killed that salaud. And the gem, resting comfortably at the top of his breastbone. It might look like it had been embedded, and nobody but Daniel could remove it from him while he was alive, but it was just attached.

  He liked to think of it as a symbiont, rather than a parasite. The ghosts in his mind as a result of its presence were generally helpful.

 
; Beside him, Joane was wearing the current uniform of the comitatus, courtesy of a massive sale of fabric at a Sept TradeStation years ago.

  Heavy boots to mid-calf designed for planetside terrain as well as station treads. They were a rough, matte brown that didn’t require stupid amounts of time and effort to keep clean, mostly because the Commander didn’t believe in lining all the women up for regular inspections.

  The comitatus these days wore long pants tucked in to the boots and made from a reasonably heavy denim they had found at Soomi, someone closing out nearly one hundred long-bolts of the stuff, all in a soft orange somewhere midway between sand and flame. Daniel had called the color tangerine when he first saw it, and that name had stuck ever since.

  Jackets worn on other ships were the same material, lined and then waterproofed, because every damned TradeStation has thermostats controlled by men and kept three to five degrees cooler than Kathra kept WinterStar. Black pullover shirts under the jackets stood out against the brightness of the fabric.

  Like the rest of the comitatus, Joane had a bolter pistol strapped to her thigh, available in a hurry if she needed to take someone down with a compact particle projector fed by ammunition disks.

  Kathra wore an identical outfit as she approached, including the pistol. Beside her, Ndidi had taken to wearing the same sorts of dark colors Daniel preferred in the kitchen, where they did a reasonable job of hiding stains and you didn’t need to stand out.

  Drawing attention to yourself was for your cooking. Nothing else mattered.

  “Try not to get lost out there,” Kathra teased with a smile as she came to rest near them.

  It was an old joke between the two of them at this point.

  “See what you can do to improve my harem while I’m gone,” Daniel grinned back.

  He was the only male aboard SeekerStar, ninety-nine point whatever percent of the time. Urid-Varg had originally chosen to take the Mbaysey as his hostages because that sick salaud had wanted to have an entire tribe of women as sex slaves.