WinterStar

by Blaze Ward

  The Commander’s whole face broke into a smile at that and she laughed once.

  “At least as sane as the rest of us, perhaps,” the Commander continued in a lighter voice. “None of this is actually rational, but I want him to feel safe and protected, as much as possible. He is as much one of us as you are, or the rest.”

  Ndidi turned to Daniel with a questioning look. He nodded just enough to recognize the situation and the need. The situation had perhaps raised him to the level of a god, a mad one, or at least a monster from most of the Mbaysey’s worst nightmares, able to reach inside their minds and change things to suit his own desires.

  The Commander was asking her to spy on him, but doing so in front of the man so he could understand that they were protecting themselves, and not trying to harm him or drive him away.

  Areen could see to whatever physical needs the male might have. Ndidi wasn’t nauseated at the idea, but neither was she attracted to the thought. Her job was to see to him emotional needs. To help him when he just needed to make cinnamon rolls, or some other comfort food.

  To be his friend.

  Urid-Varg had not had any friends, to hear the stories. Only slaves and victims, most likely.

  Ndidi Zikora had to help Daniel. And protect him from himself.

  If that was possible.

  31

  Breakfast. Always the most complicated meal of the day, because these twenty-something women seemed to delight in wanting a different concept of breakfast every day. Daniel suspected that it had something to do with Ugonna always serving the same two or three things, rather than getting outside herself and trying to experiment.

  Breakfast burritos today. Ancient, Spanic comfort food. Eggs, cheese, peppers, onions, and a little pork ground up as sausage to stretch, wrapped in handmade flour tortillas. Chunky red sauce on the side. Eggs and vegetables for those that didn’t like burritos. Cinnamon rolls and fresh fruit for the rest.

  Nobody was getting oatmeal today. Daniel suspected that Ugonna would be desperately offended by the concept, but that woman was only a pedestrian cook to begin with, even after her long years learning the trade. Only her seniority in the kitchen had put her in charge of cooking for the comitatus. Kathra Omezi had specifically looked for someone like Daniel to replace her, relegating Ugonna back to cooking for the rest of the crew.

  And without Urid-Varg intruding into their lives, he suspected that Ndidi would have taken over that role in time, and then replaced him when he finally moved on.

  Would he have moved on? Daniel didn’t have a good answer for that. Probably. Eventually. Being the lone male on the ship, surrounded by women who considered themselves superior to him in every meaningful way, would have driven him back to a planet at some point. Back to finding a few investors. Opening a bistro.

  Starting over.

  Probably changing his name so people didn’t realize it was really him. His mother still called him DQ. Daniel Quentin. Maybe grown his hair long again and affect a beard?

  Except that it was unnecessary now. He was part of the Mbaysey, although he still couldn’t quite figure out how.

  When was easy. Just slay a god and many people will change their opinion of you. However, not always for the better.

  Daniel smiled grimly and studied the women as they ate.

  Kathra Omezi. The Commander.

  Erin. Areen. Iruoma. Kamharida. Joane. All of them the varied, dark tones of the African Diaspora, plus Elyl, who was Spanic, and Stina who was Anglo. There were none like him that were Rabic, but he suspected that was just luck and timing, as there were many of his genetic kin on the ClanStars, refugees happier to live free.

  Only the sharpest warriors were invited to join the comitatus. Plus a pair of cooks, apparently. Daniel didn’t know what that said about him and Ndidi. Or rather, didn’t dare admit to himself.

  That way lie madness.

  So he concentrated on faces. Accepted the good-humored ribbing that the women cast at him this morning, as if he were an honorary woman now. One of them.

  Ndidi had held her own for cooking, ordering Daniel around peremptorily as though he was just a Commis Chef in her kitchen, or perhaps Chef de Tournant. It had been more than a decade since someone else was in charge of a kitchen around Daniel, and he smiled at the concept.

  Yes, she was a warrior peer of the comitatus. The two of them needed to make sure the other women understood that. Gastronomical warfare, as it were.

  “What’s so funny?” Ndidi murmured as she walked by with a carafe of coffee in her hand.

  “I will explain later,” he chuckled. “Too complicated for here.”

  “Have you looked at them?” Ndidi paused and stood by his side for a moment.

  Offering her own strength, if he needed it. It was such a strange feeling for him, but she was his peer as well.

  “Doing so now,” he replied, screwing up his face into a grimace he hoped looked convincing and rotating left to right. He had already lightly checked each woman as he served her, but Daniel knew he was putting on a performance today. Best to make it interesting.

  He knew all these women. Not intimately in the technical sense of the word, but close enough. It had been his duty to feed them. To bring them joy in food, which was perhaps the highest calling a chef could strive against.

  Intimacy of the soul, rather than the flesh.

  Watching them now, he scanned them harder than perhaps necessary, but it had become a defensive mechanism he would need later. One might be a spy, an assassin set to kill him or the Commander. He needed to know their hearts.

  Daniel nearly blinked in utter shock and lost all concentration when he scanned Yejide, Spectre Eleven.

  Areen had overcome her own inclinations to occasionally explore her occasional bisexuality with Daniel. Most of the women considered the concept little better than bestiality, but he knew that and did not let their ideas bother him.

  Yejide looked at him now with a sharp longing balanced tightly against her own upbringing, plus her relative shyness on the topic. There was also a note of deference to Areen, as if the other woman might have staked a claim around him and no others were allowed to cross.

  Daniel could reach out with a hand and touch her. In his mind, each of these women were like the long control panels of a musical recording studio, or an atomic power plant. Hundreds of dials and gauges and knobs and switches, measuring every aspect of their minds and souls.

  Yejide was trapped and unsure how to overcome herself. Desire at war with socialization.

  It would be the work of a moment to adjust a few settings and free her. It was so wrong that he felt a burst of nausea threaten to overcome him.

  The Left Hand of Evil.

  “Daniel?” Ndidi whispered sharply.

  He clung to her voice like a life preserver. Let it draw him back out of himself before he became the very thing he considered the most vile in the entire universe.

  Urid-Varg.

  He pulled a deep breath into himself and physically turned so that Ndidi was the only person he could see. She reached out a hand and placed it on his arm. He tried not to flinch as she did.

  Touch grounded him as well. He blinked rapidly and tried to breathe.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “I touched them all,” he whispered in a guilty tone. “Deeply. I have never done that before. You can learn unsettling things when you do that.”

  “Such as?” Ndidi turned now to face him, the rest of the room forgotten.

  Daniel drew a sigh inward and considered. The Commander had instructed this woman to know his secrets that she could perhaps keep him as sane as was possible. And Kathra Omezi trusted her to do that.

  “Yejide would like to sneak into her chef’s cabin some evening to explore certain desires and feelings,” he said quietly. “But she never will. Her upbringing will prevent her. And she will be unhappy as a result.”

  “Should you talk to her about it?” Ndidi asked carefully.


  “The woman has never given any outward sign that I am aware of. Probably none that the rest of you would notice,” Daniel said. “It would be a betrayal of the sanctity of her mind for me to even know these things. Worse, for the slightest moment, I considered adjusting her so that she might be less frightened of herself and more forward.”

  The way her eyes grew wide for a moment told him she understood. Feared him, just a little, perhaps. But that was the path of the mad god, so easy and seductive.

  “Evil,” Daniel continued.

  Ndidi nodded shallowly. Watched him like a hawk as he just stood there and tried to become human again and not some foul beast from the pit.

  “Can nobody help her?” Ndidi whispered back.

  “Not until she decides to admit these things to herself, let alone one of the others,” he grimaced. “I must live a complicated double life, even as I am trying to help the Commander and save the Mbaysey from the Sept. I will tell you and the Commander things that cannot get out, ever, Ndidi. That will be the only way I retain some shred of sanity.”

  “Understood,” she squeezed his arm once and then seemed to settle as he watched. “You should go sit with Kathra and let her know everything is safe.”

  “And you?” he asked, not moving.

  “We need to begin planning a lunch that will bring you peace, Daniel,” Ndidi replied. “This will be a very hard road for you, and nobody else can assist.”

  He nodded, turning to find the Commander’s concern written on her face.

  She knew.

  Not the details, but perhaps the weight he bore. But she was The Commander. He would expect her to be that many steps ahead of a simple cook when it came to games of power and death.

  32

  Kathra rubbed her eyes in frustration and considered the three people on the other side of her desk. The door was closed and nobody would open it now without an invitation.

  And a damned good reason.

  Erin sat to the right, facing her. Ndidi was in the middle. Daniel was on the left.

  For a moment, Kathra considered the symbolic image of one chef protecting the other from the rest of the comitatus. Not entirely an inaccurate description.

  “Nobody?” she asked again, just to make sure she had heard the report correctly.

  “Correct, Commander,” Daniel said simply. “All of the ship-side crew has now cycled through to eat with the comitatus at least once over the last month. I have scanned them all, touching most deeply enough to be sure.”

  She heard a catch in his breath and focused her attention on the man.

  There were lines there that hadn’t been present six months ago. The gray along his temples was far more pronounced than it had been, but she had never met the rest of his family to know if he was merely showing his age younger than most men, or if she was causing him to use himself up at an accelerated rate.

  Nobody knew what the powers of the conqueror exacted as a cost, either.

  “But?” Kathra asked after it was clear he was done talking.

  “But I agree with the original assessment, Commander,” he said. “My gut tells me that there is a spy, and we have somehow missed them.”

  “There are twenty-two ClanStars,” Erin spoke up. “Average population around three hundred people each. Two WaterStars. ForgeStar. IronStar. WinterStar. Tribal population close enough to seventy-five hundred souls. How do we find one grain of sand on that beach, if we’re not sure that it even exists.”

  “I do not know,” Kathra replied. “But we do know that WinterStar is secure, so we just need to pay better attention to communications security when we approach the TradeStation over Carggi. ForgeStar is fully loaded with trade ingots and bars, so we’ll park the Star Turtle a few systems away and move the tribal squadron close enough to put a full detachment of SkyCamels in space, along with The Haunt, just in case the Sept do put in an appearance, especially over a colony that far beyond their current boundaries. From there, my plan is to head out to the Free Worlds and find places we can sell used shuttle craft. At least the ones we don’t want to keep, or know how to fix.”

  That got a smile from Erin. Several of the ships apparently required more limbs than a human had in order to control everything at once. All of them could be powered up and held air. Erin or one of the others, with Daniel watching, had moved them all out onto their various landing fins. Fifty-three strange craft, some of them reeking of boundless age and exotic cultures.

  Whether anyone wanted a ship that they could perhaps not repair or maintain was an entirely different question, and why she would try to find a wealthy dilettante with a thing for exotic space craft to add to their collection.

  “Will the turtle be safe, alone in space?” Ndidi asked a perceptive question.

  “Without testing larger weapons than we have, I do not think someone could damage the ship,” Daniel replied. “Notwithstanding the Ram Cannons or Axial Megacannon from a Septagon, which I simply do not know how to compare. If I am not there, nobody could board the ship without first doing so much damage to the hull as to render it destroyed anyway.”

  “Perhaps we should hide it better?” Erin spoke up.

  “What would better look like?” Kathra asked.

  “Daniel, how deep into a gas giant’s atmosphere could the ship continue to hover?” the woman asked.

  Kathra watched the man’s eyes lose focus in a way she had come to associate with him asking the ghosts in the gem for their knowledge. What must it be like to have hundreds, or perhaps thousands of people on call, if you could get them to speak in harmony, rather than the dull cacophony he had described as their normal noise?

  “Sufficient that you would have to be in close orbit,” Daniel said. “Looking straight down with scanners making much noise.”

  “Could you park it there and then fly up to space to rendezvous with WinterStar?” Kathra asked, seeing where Erin was headed.

  “Oui,” he said. “Easy enough. Probably a very pretty view, if I took a camera with me to capture the storms and clouds from inside them.”

  “Perhaps another time,” Kathra smiled. “I want to run this much more like a combat operation than a tourist caravan.”

  “As you command,” Daniel nodded to her, sobering.

  She dismissed the three of them and focused instead on the list each of the ships had provided. With ships mining comets for water and organics, and ForgeStar turning asteroids into all the metals they needed for IronStar to turn into machinery components, the squadron was largely self-sufficient. The ClanStars produced a little surplus food, over feeding the five specialized ships, but with raw planetary systems to explore, the squadron routinely produced significant amounts of various refined ingots, usually iron and copper, but nearly all of the metals in some amount.

  That became trade with various worlds, allowing them to purchase all the little things that the tribe needed, if they refused to be bound to a single planet.

  It also became a point of risk, as they had to fly the squadron into a system in order to get everyone moved around. That gave the Sept a place to trap them, if they could.

  The ships could flee, easy enough, but if they lost all that metal, it would be a season of poverty again, like when she was young.

  Kathra smiled though, when she considered selling alien space ships to collectors. Could she really break the dependence on TradeStations? Perhaps buy or commission a FarmStar capable of feeding many more people? Or several more ClanStars, to give them place for a population boom to expand their numbers? Space was ruthlessly exploited now, but there was still an absolute number of tribal members that they could support.

  What if they weren’t limited anymore?

  What if they could be free?

  And if the Sept decided to complain, what if she decided to destroy a Septagon to make a point?

  What could the future be like for a daughter she needed bear soon?

  33

  It was a moment of déjà vu for Erin, approaching Carg
gi TradeStation in SkyCamel Six. The planet below wasn’t that much different from Renneth, at least seen from space. If she was leading six SkyCamels this time, rather than flying solo, and had the entire Haunt out there protecting her, that just measured the risks of this mission in much starker terms.

  Daniel was riding along with her. The ancient term for such a person was shotgun, back when a coach had a person armed with such a weapon to keep bandits at bay. The Haunt would do that for her just fine, but she did appreciate having him present, along with whatever weird powers he might possess to do things to troublemakers.

  Carggi was about as boring a station as they ever visited, but everyone was still keyed up. And Daniel could protect her and the other camel pilots in ways nobody else understood.

  That helped.

  “Six leading,” she said into the radio. “Docking imminent.”

  “Spectre Two,” Kathra replied by way of acknowledgement, using the woman’s usual callsign. The other five pilots were shuttle regulars, rather than comitatus, but they appreciated that she would be there when they hit the station, off schedule, off season, and loaded to the gills with metal and goods to trade.

  Kathra was clearing the decks, metaphorically as well as literally, before that next adventure began.

  Erin threaded the needle of the dock and let the station grab hold of the SkyCamel. She powered things down as the grav inducers took hold and unbuckled. Daniel was already standing and moving to the rear of the craft for the outer hatch to open.

  He looked a little silly, with that lime and white outfit just visible at the edges of his regular clothing, though covered over with long pants and a long-sleeved shirt, but that just meant that nobody would notice him doing things. His gloves were rolled up and stuffed into a thigh pouch if he needed them, but she had her pistol and a knife. If the other five Camel pilots weren’t currently comitatus, they were still veterans, having seen enough TradeStations and bar fights, so they could take care of themselves.