by S E Zbasnik
"Damn, hit," Segundo leaned back in the chair, and glanced towards the ceiling. "You sunk my calvary."
"When the captain suggested we play X's I believe she was being facetious," Monde said, slotting the peg back into the interface of one of the few board games still left from the old days on the ship.
"Oh," Segundo said, shuffling through the piles of his notes. He only won one game out of their lot after accidentally setting off a nuke and destroying Monde's fleet as well as most of his own. "I can't tell with her."
"I've found that to be true of all humans; think one idea, yet state another," Monde sat up prim in his seat with a small pillow nestled for the small of his back. Age was but a number until your joints started creaking when you rested.
"And orcs never lie?" Segundo asked the supposedly warrior race before him.
"Only about the very important things. The 'white lies,' as you call them, seem a waste of time," Monde wiped a bit of dirt, or possibly an escaped portion of tomorrow's meal off the table and cast his orange eyes towards the cowering human. The lids blinked so quickly at times it was hard to make out he had a spare.
"I imagine you have quite a tale to tell," Segundo said. "An orc winding up on a human ship."
"This is technically a dwarven vessel," Monde responded as if he didn't have a care in the universe.
"You still serve under a human captain."
The eyelids blinked faster as the orc sipped down a drink he didn't offer to Segundo. He wasn't in the mood to pull out the stomach pump. "You are wondering why I do not slaughter her on sight, yes? War, bravado, and all that?"
"Aren't we your sworn enemies?" Segundo asked, eyeing up the not so threatening stance of the orc as he replaced his cup on the only onboard saucer.
"Orcs do not have enemies." Monde tried to search for the proper term, "we have...adversaries."
"Isn't that the same thing?"
"Depends on who's winning the war."
A crash thudded across the table and both players turned to watch the oversized but quiet djinn plop another load onto the table. Gene didn't stop to chat with or even glance at them. It unscrewed a cap from the top of the first pile of tubes and walked off with its treasure. Segundo shuddered as it went. His neck was still sore from the djinn's attack.
"A curious race," Monde said as if he were cataloging an insect, "it is increasingly rare to find one anymore, much less communicate."
"What communicate?" Segundo said, "The thing tromps around the place like a broken golem."
"The mere fact of it, that he is inside that suit is enough to count as communicating," Monde poked at the pile of broken ship currently invading their game space. The petite engineer would not be happy, but she stayed mostly out of the way of the djinn. None on the crew seemed to communicate with him aside from the Captain. Even then, no one ever heard him talk back.
"What do you mean, suit? Aside from the work apron, it looks pretty naked to me."
A panel buzzed to life and the familiar voice of the computer chimed in, "Djinn are a collection of air bound particulates."
"A what?"
"You must work exceptionally hard to achieve sentience without a brainstem," WEST chided from the panel over the sink, its voice echoing inside the empty metal.
"Smoke, the djinn are smoke creatures," Monde stepped in, not necessarily a fan of the child but also not in the mood to break apart another mocking session. He would rather everyone at least try to get along.
"So they use those suits to communicate with the rest of us corporeals," Segundo said aloud solving a problem everyone else already knew the answer too. "But they cannot speak because they're just smoke."
"Your brain must be so insignificant a single image could not be stored upon it," WEST said, "Any djinn that inhabits their emissary suits can speak with the assistance of an internal computer."
"Except for Gene, no one knows why he doesn't talk," Monde cut in, "Most assume it's some vow of his people. The dwarf likes to float the theory that the djinn saw something so awful he lost the will to speak. Occasionally he claims that thing is spying the captain naked."
Segundo was about to ask another question when the galley porthole flew open and the dwarf clomped through as if Monde's mention summoned him. Orn smiled wide, a stuffed bag clutched in his hands. "Monde, I bring presents!" He dropped the bag onto the table, where it shuddered as the shield generator momentarily broke and a few of the bottles escaped confinement.
"Delightful," the orc muttered as he raced to scavenge the free range medicine. "I assume you had no trouble."
"Oh no, none, everyone in the clinic was real polite. The captain, however, said she was gonna, let me think...'Gouge out your eyes and use your stupid head horns as a doorjamb' if you ever sent her to another parasite clinic."
"She said exactly that?" He asked, afraid he over stepped his precarious perch.
Orn shrugged and peeked over at Segundo's battle array. "More or less. Damn squirt, remind me to never put you in charge of my wars."
Monde relaxed, more or less was code for Orn pulling shit out of his ass again. It took everyone onboard the ship all of a week, maybe two if you were particularly thick, to adjust to Mr. Lidoffad's particular quirk of telling a lie whenever the truth was dull, and two if he thought he could get away with it. Monde dropped the few bottles into the bag and rummaged a bit, "Did you remember the artificial plasma?"
"I'm just the messenger boy. After Ferra called, the Cap'n was in a right fit, dumped the bag into my hands and stalked off. Something about fixing the damn thing herself."
"She has seemed particularly stressed as of late," Monde commented, still digging through his latest acquisitions.
"Yeah," Orn snorted, "What she needs is a nice long screw against..."
"The MGC transmission," his wife cut in as she traipsed into the mess hall herself, Gene's swiped tube cap in her hands as she inspected the damage. Her hair was half collapsed after the altercation with the pair of goblins. It was a minor thing, a few curt words exchanged about the bucket nature of her ship, followed by a few less curt swings of her spanner. The important thing is they would all walk away from it...eventually.
Brena followed behind, her own skirts ripped clean up the middle. It was almost worth the split lip Ferra nursed to watch the high elf waddle through half the station trying to maintain her dignity as she grasped the torn cloth together. Still, the girl didn't blush or cringe once. That was some serious granite to crack.
"I was gonna say bulkheads, but risking beta radiation and third degree burns for a little something something sounds like the Cap," Orn looked at the high elf and waggled his eyebrows. He shifted a candy stick to the other side of his mouth as he leered, "Aye, Miss?"
Brena blinked slowly at the dwarf inching into her personal space, and tried to not glance over at his wife who seemed to be busying herself with the frosted pantry. "I believe I shall turn in for the evening," she said while tracking Orn, afraid he might make a sudden move. She backed out of the room, her hands still gathering the torn cloth to maintain whatever dignity she hadn't spent.
Orn snorted as she went and looked to his wife. Ferra extracted the frozen leg of something so coated in ice crystals there was a small possibility it came with the ship. She held it to her lip and mumbled over the frozen dinner, "What do you think you're doing?"
The dwarf tapped his head in conspiratorial fashion, "I got it all figured out."
"You couldn't find your ass in the middle of an ass storm," Ferra said, her brain too frazzled from the noise and heat of the day to form a proper comeback. She yanked out one of the chairs and crashed beside Segundo, who was feeling very out of place all of a sudden.
Orn followed his wife's suit and pulled up his chair, always on the hostess side of things so he could watch every entrance into the galley. "Nah, it's about them elves. I figured out why they're still onboard."
"Oh, have you now," Ferra dropped the frozen leg and gingerly touched her face; it
was gonna take awhile to heal. Monde glanced at her wound but offered no advice. He and the elves were legally supposed to pretend they never saw each other. If there was a major medical emergency he could intervene and she could do the same if he burned a hole through the med-bay's floor, but cultural embargoes were tricky things to work around.
Orn grinned even wider as he tilted his chair back, "Ay-yup. It's so simple, I don't know why I didn't think of it sooner."
"You do know simple," she responded.
"The captain and the elf have a thing," Orn folded his hands in what would have been a suggestive manner to a dwarf. It flew over the heads of every other species at the table.
"A thing?" Segundo asked, letting curiosity run away with his spleen.
The orc stood and loudly proclaimed to the ship, "I believe I have everything I need to restock my lab. I shall be off, before a certain dwarf implants his boot so deep inside his mandibles I shan't be able to remove it. Good day, Mr. Quito." Before Orn could respond, Monde walked out, trailing after Brena, turning a right to her left.
"A thing," Orn continued. "Think about it. Why else would she keep a pair of dulcens onboard if she wasn't boffing one of 'em?"
"The same reason she keeps you onboard, as potential food incase we're ever stranded," Ferra muttered but didn't rise from the table. Every now and again she'd listen to her husband's prattle to appease him.
"She's otherworldly," Orn began to count off a list on his fingers, "a bit cross, prim, with ice in her veins and enough face paint to keep a clown college in business. Exactly the type that could tame our poor mysterious Captain's heart."
"You believe she is with...the female elf?" A very dangerous burn crept along Segundo's cheeks as thoughts he'd never had before nor thought possible flared across his brain. "How...how would that even work?"
Orn blinked slowly at the kid, uncertain how he made it to adulthood and remained so green most gardeners would toss him back.
Ferra rubbed her head and whispered, "Orn, your ass is blowing so much smoke I'd think you ate Gene. The captain isn't fucking one of the dulcens, or anyone else onboard for that matter."
"Hello, Captain Variel!" WEST chirped up from the sink.
The three guilty heads snapped around towards the entrance, Segundo even staggering to his feet and smashing his knee into the table. It rattled and tossed Ferra's ice leg to the ground with a heavy thud. Each conspirator held their breath, waiting for the dark haired head to poke around and then hurl each of them off the ship, but only the steady hum of the ship's lighting answered back.
Slowly they each turned back to WEST's panel where it buzzed before responding, "Made you look."
Taliesin lowered his eyes as he opened his ears to the life before him. The swirling patterns of the universe were always there, if one knew how to read them.
A young child, possibly from one of the stocky races, drops a small fruit. It catches under the heel of a besuited man in a hurry, tossing him straight into the folded arms of a female boggart who takes it as a direct insult to her ancestors. Her balled up fist misses the dodging man and lands into the flinching backside of a passing ogre. Then the real fun begins.
It was a pattern, twists of blues and reds converging to craft the purples of conflict, that could play across every pit stop, every high class bordello, every back alley that made up this wide galaxy. Learning to spot them, to anticipate their climax, to dodge their denouement was what gave the elves their supposed psychic powers. It was easy to appear mystical at foreseeing the end if you already saw the same movie a hundred times before. For the Assassin's Guild, this knowledge served every member well.
Taliesin wasn't reluctant to sign his pair of centuries to the guild, it was prestigious. Not just any dulcen would be accepted, you needed the correct branch after all, which his family had in spades. Cleaning the universe of the detritus slipping through the sieve of an unconnected police system was an honor, one some of his fellows brandished as a gold medal to any dignitary they could charm a cabin upgrade out of. Yet he preferred the cold and cramped life, bouncing from one rentable room to another, seeing the other side of the galaxy. The one he was supposed to be helping to wash away.
A rare smile twisted up Taliesin's lips as he imagined anyone having the power to wipe away the grime of Vargal. He was young by elf standards, but in some ways his time off Cangen gave him a depth of the organic psyche centuries past his age. The ogre limped past him, gingerly touching its goblin wounds while the businessman continued to whine about his ripped suit to the very bored security guard about to rob him blind.
The assassin shook his head lightly and disengaged from the shadowy corner he tried to find a moment of calm inside. Tale as old as time, as the humans liked to say. He bit his own tongue as the thought crossed his mind. Stumbling, always stumbling down that bottomless pitch. Brena would read it across his face if she were here.
A harsh voice piqued his wandering attention, crying across the vast swaths of color of life. The rare absence of color, the break in the pattern. Some saw it as black -- endless, warm, and treacherous; others as a white light -- blinding, harsh, and sterile. Taliesin tried to see it only as his landlord.
"Your sign clearly says two for one," the captain argued with a rambunctious pair of sirens, young enough to be out in the world without the voice locks before their temptress abilities manifested. They peddled sets of hair combs, their own yards of green hair piled high with as much merchandise as they could jam in.
"Nonsense," the small one warbled, the voice stumbling like a baby gital waddling through its first hunt.
"We charge what we charge. No more, no less," the second's voice was stronger, jumping a bit through the shifting grass. She'd be fitted with her locks soon.
The captain sighed loudly, her own hair bouncing as she shook her head in frustration. It must have not been a promising day. "Fine, give me two sets in the green and another of the yellow with the seeds."
Taliesin took the moment to approach, "Purchasing something for yourself?"
Anyone else would have jumped at the assassin's words, or perhaps glanced around guilty at being caught with their hand in the proverbial porn jar. She simply rose a bit off the counter and said, "I know a guy that goes gaga for siren stuff. Says it helps him 'embody the proper feminine form.' Hey, the yellow, not that piss colored tan!" She shouted to the girls scampering to unload their less popular merchandise on the human paying closer attention than they suspected.
The first siren dropped the bag onto the counter -- the shield shivered like moonlight across a river -- and punched in a few numbers, "That will be two songs of sorrow."
The captain grabbed the scanner and passed her PALM over top, letting the computer do all the calculations. It beeped and she scooped up the bag while her hand flashed a receipt. As she turned to leave, one of the siren's waved a cheery goodbye and sang, "Please come again."
Her notes trilled across Taliesin's spine, dredging into his mind a vision of home. Not his familial home, but an imaginary one full of warmth and joy like something out of a soup commercial. Even elves were not immune to the siren's call. He wondered momentarily what the captain felt as she yanked out the few combs and stuffed them inside her pockets before turning off the bag.
"Adjusting for the exchange rate, you were rather cheated, captain," he said, falling behind her as she bounded towards the section of Vargal cleared for food consumption. The family friendly stations called it the food court, going so far as to elect a food king and queen every hour to entertain the consumers. Vargal called it nothing because it didn't see a reason to waste everyone's time.
Variel didn't turn to acknowledge her tail. "I know, but I'll get triple that from Lady Grey. And don't call me captain. I hate it." She grumbled the last part to herself, but elf ears could pick up on a whisper through a wall.
"I ask for forgiveness. I thought it was a sign of respect," Taliesin stumbled over his words as he mentally ticked over every time in the p
ast six months he called her that. It was not looking good.
"It's all part of Orn's little joke. First day we met he called me captain. I told him not to, so of course he won't address me as anything but. And now he's got everyone else on the ship thinking and saying the same thing."
"I did not realize," Taliesin mumbled, watching the clip of the back of her boots, that ragged hem of her pants skirting over the filthy floor of the station. "If I may be impertinent, why do you keep him employed?"
Variel rolled her shoulders, "Because I need his wife, and she'd probably notice if I killed and taxidermied her husband. Eventually."
"If you were to slide one of those chattering child toys inside it, you may have a few months respite."
The captain paused and, for the first time, glanced back at her resident assassin. He lifted his head to her questing eyes as she asked, "Was...did you just tell a joke?"
Taliesin brought his fingers to his lips and tapped them in concentration, "Joke? No, we elves require everything in our lives be as serious as the sunrise and twice as uninspiring. We cannot joke."
He tried to maintain his concentration, but as a heart warming smile broke over Variel's face, his own straight man pulled at the corners until he grinned like a loon.
She laughed a bit, trying to clear her head, before turning back to her destination, but over her shoulder she said, "Huh, it's funny. I had no idea you elves could have dimples."
"They are my greatest secret," he lied smoothly, trying to keep the banter light and innocent.
She didn't stalk away, or curse him off, so he took a quick glance about and increased his gait to stand almost beside her. Variel shifted her head but didn't say anything, seeming to enjoy the company without wanting to appear as if she did.
"You're without your escort," she said. "Brena back on the ship?"
"Yes. She requested some 'decompressing time.' I believe that is code for writing in her diary."
"Diary? Really?" Variel's eyebrow rose but she didn't turn to look at him, her eyes still tracking the denizens of Vargal. A pair of shifty trolls held a goblin upside down, shaking him like an obstinate condiment bottle. More than likely it was for currency, but it could also be part of some game. The goblin did seem to be smiling.
