WinterStar

by Blaze Ward

  “Necessarily,” Daniel agreed. “She might do it because it becomes necessary later, but I can’t help that. I am going to try to land on the right, forward fin. Is the correct term starboard?”

  “Starboard One,” Kathra said, classifying it for everyone listening.

  “Yes. Very good,” Daniel said. “Could you join me, please? I could really use some company.”

  Yes. She supposed he might. Nothing would prepare anyone for what he was doing. But nobody else on WinterStar could have done it. He was the first man to serve aboard her flagship in several years.

  “Coming alongside, Daniel,” she replied, manipulating her thrusters and gyros to bring her nose around and then start pushing her on an intercept course.

  The Star Turtle was huge. Septagon-sized, without the gap in the bottom. Nearly two and a half kilometers wide across just the shell. Several times that from tip of the snout to the end of that tail, stuck out just like a real sea turtle’s. As she approached, that fin looked large enough that the entire Haunt could have landed on the outside with space to spare.

  Daniel hung in space beside her, glowing enough that she could see him with her naked eye, perhaps fifty meters away. The rest of The Haunt hung around the two of them protectively.

  “I always wanted to do this,” he said mischievously. “Open sesame.”

  Kathra recognized the term from ancient, Terran literature that had apparently infected almost all cultures eventually. The Tales of the Thousand and One Nights.

  In front of her, the fin seemed to split open horizontally, the top retracting from the bottom to open a wide, slit mouth that ran over four hundred meters, from where the fin emerged to the hinge near the tip.

  Curses and joy filled the radio as the others saw the same thing.

  Daniel turned towards her across the space, like he wanted to make sure she was still there.

  “I’m supposed to go in there,” he said. “You’ll come with me?”

  She could hear the fear in his voice. That perhaps she and her people would blast off on their valence drives instead as soon as he was out of sight and he would be left alone with his fears and Urid-Varg’s ghosts.

  “Of course,” Kathra reassured him. “Lead the way.”

  He moved quickly, with so little mass to accelerate. Kathra followed at a more sedate pace, knowing she would have to decelerate at the other end when she wanted to land.

  Inside he came down onto what looked like a firm deck. She would have said metal, but it was too green for anything she had ever seen, much like the rest of the giant ship.

  Still, Kathra flew into that maw and maneuvered herself adroitly. The deck here was deep enough for six of her Spectres to be lined up nose to tail, and perhaps thirty ships wide. And this was just one of four landing bays?

  “Anyone else coming?” Daniel asked.

  Kathra considered it briefly.

  “Erin, Areen, Joane, join us,” she called out. “Kamharida and Iruoma set up a watch cycle and rotate half the team back to WinterStar for now, but keep people in the sky at all times.”

  A chorus of assents as people began to move.

  Kathra began to shut down her engines and power system, but she kept an eye on Daniel, standing in the middle of the deck, alternately watching her, the approaching Spectres, and the place at the body where there appeared to be an enormous airlock.

  What would they find inside?

  Or who?

  26

  He had always wanted to fly. Every twelve year old boy had that dream. Just step out a door and disappear into the sky, escaping all the mundane problems on the ground, but Daniel had never really let those flights of fancy dictate things to him.

  Both his parents had taught him to find joy in cooking, rather than just relying on an autochef and a freezer for everything. Certainement, it was easier. Just stock up on premade food and keep it handy, but it lacked soul. Lacked joy.

  Daniel had been born for the kitchen. Once he discovered that, everything else was easy. And it was all predictable. Ordered. Precise. So many cups and tablespoons of ingredient. Mixed just so. Baked for an exact number of minutes and you have a meal.

  It might not be the greatest meal, but that came later. When you could look at the ingredients and adjust things on the fly to fit whatever your body desired today. Or peek into the oven and decide to leave something for just a few extra minutes to get it perfect, in spite of the time on the recipe.

  When a recipe became merely a suggestion, a roadmap filled with all manner of possible tourist stops you could take along the way.

  There was nothing, however, that had prepared him for this.

  The deck was solid under his feet. He had flown here in mortal fear that it would be like landing on the soft innards of a true turtle, something wet and yielding when he walked.

  Squishy.

  He watched the other three ships join the Commander, powering down and waiting.

  “I’m going to close the garage door now,” Daniel said with as little trepidation as he could manage. “There will be atmosphere after I do. No, I don’t know how.”

  He turned to the ship, staring down the long axis of the fin and tried to calm his breathing. It wasn’t something so simple as pushing a button and letting gears grind. He didn’t have words for it.

  Perhaps need, and the gem translated it. Amplified it? Let him talk to the thing that was the Star Turtle.

  It wasn’t alive. Exactly. Wasn’t an animal that could be trained, like a smart canine. But it wasn’t cold metal, like WinterStar, either.

  Daniel didn’t even have the vocabulary to express some concept that seemed to somehow split the difference between creature and machine. Cyborg referred to those people like Erin that had replaced some organic part with something mechanical, perhaps wired to the brain, although he had never asked her if hers was simply metal, or if she had electronics in it.

  Not his place to bother her. Then or now.

  This thing was both at the same time, rather than two parts connected.

  And not a problem he needed to solve today either. He hoped.

  Daniel focused his mind on the turtle’s and somehow told it to close the bay door.

  There was gravity in here. He hadn’t processed that until just now, but once inside the bay, down had become down. Something similar to gravity inducers, he supposed.

  Lights came on. Or were already on, and became brighter. Bioluminescent strips in the ceiling, because they glowed like ten million fireflies behind a thin sheet of film, rather than the stark, white, electronic illumination he was used to.

  The roof came down. One of the women cursed absently on the radio in his ear as it did, but she was just saying the thing aloud that he didn’t have the courage to express.

  The deck jarred. Not bad. Not even an earthquake. Perhaps as much as the wake of another boat passing under your own keel as it went by.

  The lights went to full. Air flooded the chamber. Daniel knew it would be sufficient for him to walk around without the energy shield that had been protecting him until now, and for the Commander and her comitatus to exit their own ships safely. Well, Erin already could, but she had been prepared to save his life if he needed her.

  Just as she had been prepared to end it.

  Was that the definition of true friendship?

  “It’s safe now, Commander,” Daniel said after a bit.

  Again, he didn’t know how he knew it, but he did. Was his mind extending to encompass the ship as well? It didn’t have an ego of any sort. Had Urid-Varg supplied that?

  So much nobody knew, and Daniel would be fine not ever having the chance to ask that salaud.

  Commander Omezi emerged from her ship first. The Spectres were capable of landing on the surface of a TradeStation or Planet, but rarely did, so the docking hatch was at the top of a ladder up from the deck inside. She climbed up into the light, walked across the left wing of her ship, and climbed down a series of notches in the side of the
hull that Daniel had been unaware of until now.

  He felt better, just knowing she was here. Kathra Omezi wouldn’t be able to do much of anything, but she could make the decisions he couldn’t.

  The other women emerged in quick order. Erin still retained her deep-space suit, but had removed the helmet and hung it from her hip opposite the pistol she wore on the outside of her thigh.

  Daniel hoped it would be unnecessary.

  Hoped.

  Quickly, he found himself at the bottom of a bowl, looking up at the women in front of him. He was used to that with men, being only one hundred sixty-eight centimeters tall. It had taken some getting used to when most of the women he saw on a daily basis were taller as well.

  And warriors, while he was just a cook.

  “Ready?” the Commander asked simply.

  “No,” Daniel replied. “But that can’t be allowed to stop me now.”

  He took a deep breath as he turned and began walking towards the thing his mind interpreted as an airlock. It wasn’t, not as he or anyone else understood the concept, but again, that was going to describe so much of what was coming, wasn’t it?

  He had seen a particular plant once. The major part of it was a funnel, like he might use to pour vanilla from the large bottle in the pantry into the small vial he used when cooking. Wide at the top and narrow at the bottom. What had struck him at the time was a bit of leaf, if he could call it that, that would be triggered when an insect entered the tube to get to the nectar at the bottom.

  Bees were apparently favored, as the plant ignored them. Anything else crawling around got trapped inside when that leaf closed and locked, for lack of a better term to describe it. A cork going into a bottle, so that the ants could not escape when the plant emitted digestive juices and killed them.

  The outer hatch to the airlock looked just like that leaf as he walked up to it.

  It did not help his sanity that the doorway was large enough that the Commander could have flown her little fighter craft in here. And the other three women probably could have joined her in theirs, if everyone was careful in their piloting.

  Someone could have held a petite concert in here, with the outer hatch closed to hold in air and sound.

  Daniel entered the mouth of the galaxy’s largest carnivorous pitcher plant and held his breath.

  There was a smell in here after he remembered to release his shield. That just made everything worse. He hadn’t smelled anything except his own sweat before.

  He considered asking the women what they smelled, but terror took hold of his tongue and rendered him mute. Instead, he swallowed past the frog in his throat and focused his mind on the ship around him.

  “Everyone ready?” he did manage to squeak.

  They were, so he told the flower to trap them inside.

  Airlocks make noise. Mostly as a reminder to people that really heavy equipment was moving around and they need to be out of the way. But also because death pressure was usually waiting just around the corner from you.

  This one moved silently, uncurling from a side like a flower petal rather than pivoting on a heavy-duty hinge.

  Daniel watched in patient awe as he was sealed in with the others, and then they moved down toward the narrow end of the concert hall. The room seemed to have the slightest incline, but maybe just enough to roll marbles, or cause water to drain, rather than any sort of slope that made walking difficult.

  The inner hatch to the thing he had to call an airlock was the same as the outer, but this one was only thirty meters wide, rather than the sixty or so of the outer one. It responded to the need he tried to communicate, and opened into another warehouse.

  “Merde!” he nearly shouted as the hatch cleared.

  The woman around him reacted in a similar manner.

  After a moment of staggering forward, his brain caught up. Flight deck. Airlock. Storage. The things around him were more than a dozen space craft of one type or another, parked rather haphazardly.

  Like one might do if being mind-controlled and brought here to serve a conqueror?

  Daniel shivered uncontrollably for a moment, but a hand on his shoulder seemed to break the spell. He turned and looked up at the Commander.

  He couldn’t say she understood, because the only people who really did were dead and trapped in the gem, but she had at least some level of empathy.

  “Anybody recognize anything?” she asked the other three.

  Daniel wandered forward with the women, but space ships had never been his thing, once he was eight and past those sorts of dreams. The four women moved like big cats stalking in the high grass.

  Each remained in sight of the others, but they spread out and touched things in passing. He heard casual conversations, but they were talking in a technical language so dense that he only understood about one word in five.

  They appeared to be pleased, from what Daniel could tell.

  “Three other fins?” the Commander turned back to ask him.

  It took a moment for the words to achieve coherence.

  “Yes,” he finally translated her. “This one was the primary. The creature was right-handed, if I understand my own memories, but there are probably smaller inventories at the other three ports. Is it important?”

  “Salvage,” Commander Omezi said. “Or perhaps that’s not quite the right term. These are collectibles, Daniel. I’ve never seen anything like many of them, so we might be able to sell them to a museum or a collector, if we can find a way to sneak them to the right TradeStation.”

  “Sneak, Commander?”

  Daniel felt his brow furrow. More.

  “Nobody should ever learn about the Turtle, Daniel,” she said distinctly. “But we might be able to sell off some of the things Urid-Varg has acquired in his time. That is, if you would like to.”

  “Me?” he was aghast.

  “You,” she said, boring in on him now. “This is legally all your property now, Daniel. By right of conquest, if nothing else. My comitatus couldn’t have gotten in here to salvage anything without you doing all the work to date, so if you’ll allow it, I’ll find a way to sell some of this gear and split the profits with you.”

  “Oh,” he said emptily.

  Had there been anywhere to sit, he would have collapsed into it, just because standing was a bit much right now. But there was not, so he just sort of rocked back and forth and tried to process himself as a mighty space pirate.

  It didn’t sound any less silly the second time, either. Or the third.

  “Is it worth anything?” Daniel finally asked, giving up on the other line of logic.

  “I’ve never seen some of these design architectures, Daniel,” she replied.

  “That’s bad?”

  “That’s good,” she corrected him. “That means they are alien to some degree. Cultures the Sept and the Free Worlds are not necessarily trading with today. Where did he come from?”

  “Huh? Oh. Uhm, inwards, sort of,” Daniel tried to explain it. “Except he crossed a vast darkness. Twice, actually. Once a very, very long ago, and once more recently. Does that make any sense?”

  “Galactic arms?” Erin asked, having snuck up on him from his blind side and nearly causing him to jump over one of these ships with a shout. “Sorry. You okay?”

  Daniel tried to breathe in a normal manner, but his body wasn’t having it, so he just huffed and puffed like a badly-tuned engine burning alcohol.

  “Wound perhaps three shades too tight,” Daniel finally turned to the woman and explained. “I’ll be fine in a few years.”

  At least she grinned at him before turning her more-serious face to the Commander.

  “That’s my guess,” Omezi said. “He was very old and very powerful, but probably just exploring the galaxy and capturing things that tickled his fancy as he went, rather than forging some sort of stellar empire, like the Sept.”

  “Oh, he did that, too,” Daniel perked up. “They got angry and tossed the salaud out on his ass after a
while.”

  Both women had fallen silent in a way that made Daniel extremely nervous.

  “Is everything okay?” he asked carefully.

  “When was that, Daniel?” Commander Omezi asked.

  He struggled.

  “Very old memories, Commander,” he offered, closing his eyes and trying to make sense of the visions. “I can see the night sky, and it was his long enough to change over time. How long does that take?”

  “Thousands of years,” Erin spoke up. “Every star moves in relation to others, but the arms generally move in concert. It would take a very long time for them to change alignment.”

  “Oh,” Daniel said, more at a loss for meaningful words than anything. “Then he left and began to wander, but his body finally got old, so he captured a new one and rode it.”

  “Vampire?” Erin asked in an off-hand voice.

  “Something,” the Commander agreed. “Daniel, can your radio communicator reach outside the ship?”

  He thought about it for a moment. Listened to the voices in the back of his mind come to some sort of consensus. That part made him even more nervous.

  “No,” he shook his head. “The hull is too…something. Hold on. Let me try something.”

  He thought really hard at the ship around him. It was like being inside a blanket that was just thin enough to allow light through it. One of the lights got brighter, at least in his mind.

  “Can anyone hear me?” Daniel asked in a conversational voice.

  “Spectre Four here,” Kamharida replied in a voice that seemed oddly modulated.

  But then, the crystals he was using were organic in nature. And he had apparently turned into some strange sort of sorcerer along the way.

  “Kam, this is Kathra, checking in,” the Commander spoke now. “Everything is good here for now, so cycle everyone back aboard WinterStar and I’ll reach out at some point with more news. There will probably be things we can salvage, even if we can’t move the ship itself.”

  “Understood, Commander,” Kamharida replied.

  “Should I leave the line open?” Daniel asked her.

  “Can you connect to WinterStar?”

  “Ife here, Commander,” Ifedimma was suddenly on the line, clear enough that she might have been standing next to them.