by LeRoy Clary
Fang was studying other screens and now and then he gave an order to the ship. His actions were crisp, intense, and he seemingly had no time for me and my ignorance. She said, “Is there something I can do?”
“Yes, two things,” he snapped without looking in her direction. “Find me water and a rag or sponge to keep my skin moist and shut up so I can work.”
Kat growled a response under her breath as she located a corner where there were cups and a small pot on a warmer. Below, an orifice issued water at the touch of a button. She filled the pot. There was no sponge or anything of the sort, so she tore the left sleeve from her tunic and used it to dab moisture on Fang.
He made a cooing sound, but his flippers remained busy, as were all six eyes, each on a stalk as long as her finger, and each eye twisted to peer at different parts of the controls. He said, “Comm Room, can you hear me?”
Stone’s voice answered after a moment, “Yes.”
“We were on an intercept course with two ships. Ask the Champers why we were not on our scheduled route and the purpose of the intercept course.”
“I’m afraid the Champers didn’t survive the conflict of our entry.” Stone’s voice was short and crisp.
Fang blinked six eyes at the same time. He said evenly after considering her response, “Okay, we can’t do anything about that now. Remember her eggs are fertilized and will hatch when their time arrives. With the death of the Champers, that might be soon, and then you will have a dozen or more of the little nasty creatures searching for their first meal of flesh. That will be you. The former captain of this ship is also dead. I guess that makes either you or me in charge. Any suggestions?”
“Yes, get us away from any other ships. How many ships are in pursuit? Two?”
“Three were. One was on a tangent course and cannot recover enough to give chase since I altered our direction. The two others are still behind and have altered to follow. They are closing.”
Captain Stone said, “This is just an underpowered tramp ship. We can’t outrun them.”
“No. We will be in missile range in half a day if they choose to use them or threaten us.”
It was deadly quiet. Kat found she couldn’t breathe. Her heart pounded and her mind complained about how unfair it was that she finally had gotten into space, only to be chased by legendary pirates.
Stone spoke again. “Feel up to a little bluff?”
“A hundred percent chance we are captured if we do nothing, maybe ninety-five percent the other. Let’s try your bluff.”
“Ninety-five my butt. Where’d you come up with that? I think it’s more like eighty,” Captain Stone snarled with a hint of humor. She was a captain and used to making hard choices.
Fang snorted what may have been a laugh. I sprinkled more water on his head and neck. He shivered in delight. “Any chance at all is better than none.”
Captain Stone’s voice turned more formal. “There are armed private ships this size. Nobody knows which are and which are not.”
Fang said, “Agreed. But I do not understand your intent.”
“Rotate the ship and aim directly at a location between the two ships. Accelerate us at the maximum, which will slow us relative to them, so their approach will come quicker. Avoid any contact, verbal, visual, or other. Hold your course steady.”
“That’s it?” Fang skeptically asked. “That’s your plan?”
“Not all of it,” she said. “Kat, can you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“Have you ever heard of the limit of distance your power will work?”
Kat’s eyes flashed to the screen and she tried to calculate the distance to the nearest ship. In the past, every time she’d nudged the mind of someone, they were close enough for her to see their responses. It might work further away. But from one spaceship to another?
“Have you?” Stone demanded.
“No.”
“Me neither,” she said. “I want you to sit down and concentrate.”
“On what?” Kat shouted, looking at the only other chair which had the dead captain in it. “What do you want me to concentrate on?”
“Fear. Nothing complicated. The distance may be increased if the message is simple and there are few minds near you. On Roma, there were thousands, maybe millions. Out here, there are few. If you can do it, increase the intensity to terror, and as you do, think of missiles being fired from this ship. Can you do that?”
“I can do it. I have no idea if it will work or not.”
“Kat, I don’t either, but try. That’s all I ask.”
Kat put the damp rag on the seat beside Fang so he could reach it and went to the other chair. The dead captain looked human, with skin whiter than most, or maybe that was because he was dead. Kat pulled him from the front of the chair. He bent forward and slid out, landing on the floor with a dull thud. She pulled on his feet and slid him to the same corner of the room where the water came from, the only empty floor space on the bridge.
She used more water to wash down his chair, she wanted to reach for Fang’s wet cloth to thoroughly wash before sitting down but held off. Her remaining sleeve was sacrificed to dry the chair. She braced herself. Her eyes closed.
Fang reached out with a flipper and dimmed the lights. That seemed to help.
Kat concentrated as Stone said, thinking of the other ships, and tried to send the image of her ship firing weapons. Attacking. Doing so with a fury. That was complicated, so she switched back to fear and anger.
Finding it hard to concentrate on that, she thought back to when she had stumbled into a pit of Schisms, which are a mobile colony of insects capable of stripping the flesh off a native Bandolier before it can leap free.
She had been terrified.
The Schism hoard awoke and erupted.
Bill was maybe ten at the time and screamed in terror as the first of them attacked. He was on the lip of the nest, unable to help.
Kat had been so scared her empathic mind took control and the vicious beasties hesitated at her mental emanations, then rushed back into their crevasses, giving the pair of human creatures time to escape. The instant the ground had given away and she fell had been scary enough, but when she’d seen them emerge from all around, mandibles snapping audibly, expecting an easy meal, her mind had taken itself to new heights of fear.
She fed on that memory.
Her mind remembered landing in the bottom of the pit and the tiny clicking of their thousands of mandibles and claws. That sound had haunted her for years. On bad nights, she still awoke covered in sweat and screaming in terror. Only Bill knew why. He was always there to comfort her.
Not now.
She recalled and enhanced the memory, adding bits and pieces until she trembled and sweat poured off her.
In the background, she heard Fang say, “Our forward momentum has ceased. We will accelerate in their direction beginning now. I am adjusting our course to aim at the nearest ship. We are on an attack approach.”
His voice sounded calm and under control. Kat took herself back to the gritty dirt at the bottom of the pit, which had been the bony remains of victims of the small savages. She felt the sweat on her forehead and wanted Fang to return the favor of wiping her down with cool water.
No, she didn’t want that. She needed the terror and fed it to her mind, suggesting to the minds on the other ships that it would be better for them to shear away than meet us head-on and be destroyed.
Only a well-armed private ship would dare attack. Any fool could see that, she thought and knew it was true.
Fang’s calm voice abruptly interrupted her thoughts. “One ship has changed course.”
I sat up.
“The second ship has also veered away,” Fang’s voice reported tersely. “And Captain Stone, Kat, and I are going to have an in-depth meeting about what just happened. How and why the ships diverted is of great interest to me.”
Captain Stone said, “Agreed. Fang, can you change our course again?”
/> “Do you have a destination in mind?”
“Taranto Six.”
“Never heard of it. Wait, I see it on the inquiry screen. Out near the border, is it?”
“That’s where we’ll find my ship.”
“Excuse me, Captain, but it appears you own two ships, one with several passengers who are as terrified as the rest of us from whatever Kat did to us but without knowing why. It might be a clever idea to attempt to calm them using the same method.”
“When the two ships chasing us are no longer on the screen,” Captain Stone said. “Kat, you can then send calming thoughts to everyone. Not before they are no longer pursuing us.”
Captain Stone secured the comm room and went with Bill to the bridge where they found the airtight hatch sealed and locked. At their knock and calling her name, Kat opened the door from the other side.
Kat appeared haggard, tired, and scared. She paused, looked at them, and said, “You look as awful as I feel.”
“Is that supposed to be a joke?” Captain Stone asked as she swept into the bridge area, taking it all in with a sweep of her eyes.
“No,” Kat said, as she slumped into the swivel chair, tears threatening to spill from her eyes. “No jokes.”
A look passed between Stone and Bill, then both turned to Fang, who nodded in greeting. His features were unreadable by them. He said, “Me too. No jokes.”
“You too, what?” Kat asked.
“Me too, scared. Afraid. Almost terrified a ship is going to fire missiles at me.” All of Fang’s eyestalks avoided looking directly at Kat.
Captain Stone said, “You did a wonderful job and maybe saved all our lives. Both of you. I have never heard of an empath that broadcasts a feeling to a group over distance. We all felt your fear. I suspect every crewman and passenger on this ship did too. Most importantly, both pirate ships turned away and I assume that was either because of our fake attack, or your ability to scare them. We are going to do a lot of research on empaths after this is over. Bert will be busy for months.”
Bill said to Kat in a confidential tone, “It was the Schism pit from when we were children that you were remembering, right? Where you almost died? That’s why it was so powerful?”
“Yes, I thought about that for inspiration. I didn’t know all of you would also feel my fear. I’m so sorry.”
Kat appeared mortified, as well as exhausted, mentally, and physically. The body of the dead ship’s captain still lay sprawled haphazardly on the floor in a corner. Fang occupied the other pilot’s chair, using a wet rag to keep his skin damp. Stone noted the rag he used was the sleeve from Kat’s shirt.
Kat went up in Stone’s estimation again. For a girl who had never worn a new shirt in her life to tear off a sleeve to help a friend showed the same kind of loyalty that she had found in Bill and Bert. Unfortunately, she hadn’t found it in many others in her experience. Her past was somewhat limited to traders who traded crewmen on their ships like changing underwear. They came and went according to their whims, or the requirements of the ship.
Life on a trader was traditionally like that. Temporary. One trip at a time. Few long-term involvements. It was a way of life chosen by them. Worse, were the people on each planet a trader dealt with. Traders never got to know the residents, the people or traditions, only the buyers, and sellers, each attempting to outwit and out trade the other.
Then there were the crude entertainment sections of each spaceport where relationships lasted a few hours, and the planet-bound did their best to separate the crews of traders from any credits in their accounts—and they were incredibly good at doing that. They were worse than buyers and sellers.
All of which made Kat’s little crew so different.
There was also the addition of Fang. She cast a glance in his direction. She didn’t know what to do with Fang, nor did she know much about the green thing other than it had evolved in swamps. She knew it was intelligent, far more so than she, she suspected. It also dealt with the soft underbelly of society.
But Fang was also a piece of an unknown puzzle. She was beginning to suspect his present occupation was not what he wanted to do for a living, and if he could be trusted—she allowed the idea to hang there.
Bill said, “If we are in control of this ship, there are things we need to do, beginning with removing the body of the captain.”
Stone forced her attention back to the present and noted how Bill had decided what needed to be done and said so without hesitation. Again, she was surprised. A little test was in order. She asked, “What else?”
Bill knelt at the side of the body. He touched the neck, examined the area on one side, and said, “Puncture wound. A needle. Probably an injection of poison. That’s what killed him.”
She asked, “What else do we need to do?”
Bill looked up. “Remove his body, first. Preserve it in an airlock or freezer for the authorities. Find any video recordings of the bridge if they exist. I’d think something as important as the bridge would have at least one camera.” His eyes swept the room, and he gave up trying to find it. “We also need to notify the passengers—tell them something to calm them down. And the rest of the crew, too. They need to know what’s happening and that the Champers and their captain are dead.”
He was doing well, she thought. Far better than most would have. “Anything else?”
“You already have a destination in mind, but there is one thing.”
“Yes?” Stone asked, suspecting he would come up with the right answer.
“The Champers lived in the comm room. One or two of its minds was always awake. Champers never leave their posts. So, who gave the injection to the captain?”
Well done, she thought. Bill was a linear thinker. He saw a problem and followed the trail step-by-step to a logical conclusion. In other words, his mind worked a lot like hers and that of good engineers. He would grow to be a man who could easily command a ship.
She hadn’t seen that aspect of him before and was elated at the discovery. Engineers are always needed on a ship, but someone who can take command is hard to find. Stone bit down hard and forced herself to quit complimenting herself for the actions of others. She put on her captain’s hat and pointed. “Fang, what do you need to pilot this ship?”
“A mister to spray damp water on me would help make me comfortable. Or a pool of stale water to sit in and insects to munch.”
“Done,” she said. “Can someone get me a connection to speak with Bert?”
Bert’s voice came over the Dreamer’s speakers. “I am here. I sort of helped myself to access the audio network on the ship when we first arrived.”
Even she had to break into a smile. Then she said, “I’d like you to relocate to the bridge and give Fang a hand with whatever the two of you come up with.”
“On my way.”
Stone gave a curt nod to herself. That is the way a crewman should react to an order. She glanced at Kat. “Go get some rest. I suspect your mind needs it after what you did.”
She would tell Bill to help Bert build a comfortable tunnel, or at least place a pile of clothing in the corner for Bert to climb under when he needed it. The list of tasks increased. Each time she thought of one thing, two, or three more needs appeared. She decided it was time for a distasteful task. Between the swivel chairs was a small command post, and on it, the basic routine functions for the ship.
She sat in the empty chair and said to the computer, “Access ship-wide communications, all compartments.”
A small ping told her she could speak. Without thinking about it so much she would confuse things or make them worse, she said, “This is Captain Stone of the trading ship Guardia speaking. I’ll keep this short and answer more questions later. Pirates have killed your captain and tried to capture this ship. I have taken command and changed our destination. For the passengers, I will meet with you later and explain all I know. For the crew, you will assemble in the galley as quickly as you can get there. Captain Stone, out.”
“Short and bitter,” Fang said as Bert waddled into the room.
She gave Bert a casual pat on his shoulder as she passed by, and said, “Lock and seal the hatch behind me. Remember, there is still a murderer on board.”
Fang said, “I’m glad you remembered before I had to remind you.”
She paused at the hatch. “Do either of you have any idea of who it is?”
“You know as much as me,” Bert said.
She stepped through and waited to hear the pop of the seal setting and the finality of the slide-lock fitted into place. She strode the passage and ignored two calls for her attention from anxious passengers. Inside the galley, six crewmen waited, the full number remaining alive. They were looking even more anxious than passengers.
No sense in introductions or delays. She didn’t have time for them. “I am Captain Stone. When we reach our destination, you are free to leave the ship or remain on the crew. I will have no say and will not punish you for either choice. However, while in transit, you are the crew, my crew, and you will perform your duties as usual. I will accept no less. Questions?”
“What happened to our captain?” A blue-tinged reptile on two stubby legs asked in a lisping voice.
“Murdered. Next question.”
“By you?” another crewman demanded.
“No, by someone on this ship, but not by me or my friends.”
“Are you claiming this ship as your own?” the first to speak asked, not in an accusatory manner, but out of curiosity.
“I own and command a trader and have no interest in this ship other than as transportation. Same as you. I will settle the matter with the rightful owners upon arrival but have not even given that consideration yet.”
“You have changed our course to a new destination, I heard,” a too-thin, female humanoid said.
“I have. We had a close encounter with three pirate ships, and they may pursue us. Your Champers was taking us right to them.” Telling the truth was the easiest way.
The thin female continued, “Pirates? Really? I’d like to verify what you say about our captain with the Champers.”
Captain Stone turned slightly to face her. “Your Champers was ripe with eggs and wished to return to her home planet. When we demanded that she alter course away from the warships, there was a fight. She lost and is dead.”
