Family Matters

by S E Zbasnik

  She chuckled at that and waved him over towards her bed. "Here, listen."

  The assassin stood a few inches away from her reclining form and waited. Heavy whomps of the twin engines firing up for a bit of attention washed across his own heavy breathing, but it sounded nothing like a heartbeat. "I am sorry..."

  "Closer," she grabbed onto his hand and pulled him nearer, his head drifting towards hers. "Now listen."

  His eyes closed as he obeyed, trying to block out the rise and fall of his chest, of hers, of the rising beat of his own heart from her nearness, to find the ship's. Taliesin twisted his head, chasing a sound, not the engines, or not just. There was something else, a thump. Yes! And then a repeat as MGC swirled from one twin to the other. Wooshing through it all were the coolant tubes carrying the ship's blood supply to every gaping organ. A small smile curled up his lips and he nodded, "I can hear it."

  Taliesin's eyes opened just as Variel leaned up and pressed her lips against his own. The assassin was uncertain exactly what was happening, it didn't feel bad. It was a rather pleasant exchange of saliva all things considered, but he knew so little about human customs he froze, hoping that wasn't some great insult.

  Variel leaned back, and blinked heavily. Her words drifted across the small space between them, "I kissed you?"

  "I believe so?" Taliesin answered, uncertain if that was what occurred or not.

  "And not when an insane Jaguar's about to rip our throats out?"

  "No, she was not."

  "Oh... Did you like it?"

  "I did not mind it," the assassin admitted as if he were in school taking a test.

  But she laughed, "Good, I'll keep that in mind." And her head slipped back onto her greedy pillow, finally succumbing to sleep.

  Taliesin bowed his head to escape the low hang of the ceiling ducts and rose away. Slipping off a few lights and shaking his head at the abandoned IV stand he made for the door.

  "Sin," the lone voice called out of the darkness, and he paused with one hand upon the ladder, "next time I'll fondle your ears instead."

  As his hand slipped in shock, Taliesin's chin smashed into the rungs.

  CHAPTER NINE

  "Ease up on it. No, not that much, a little to your left. Okay, now down."

  Orn bit into his cheek as the stick wobbled in his hands, "Do you want to drive?"

  "No!" WEST chirped. "You're doing a bang up job all by yourself."

  The dwarf twisted the ship around, trying to get it inline with the docking clamps for the third time. "Why'd it have to be manual? I hate flying manual, but I despise parking in it," he flicked a few switches slowly twisting the Elation to try and match with the flare light as clamp met airlock, clamp loses airlock, clamp gets airlock back by holding up a data projector in the rain.

  "Almost got it, just a few more meters." Sweat was palpable across the dwarf's brow as a sharp whine pierced across the computer system and then a gentle bong like a pat on the back. They were finally lined up. Switching to 'it's your problem now' mode, Orn slotted in the steering stick and flipped the buttons as the maglocks grabbed onto their hull.

  "And what are you doing up here, anyway?" Orn asked the mincing computer who couldn't stop backseat flying the first time he missed, "Fer said your brain was rice pudding."

  "Right, turtle satchels in the snow. Yes, sir. No, ma'am. Duck!" WEST shouted, before zapping himself off the screen.

  "Bloody thing. It's got as much sense as a gnome's retirement account," Orn muttered, digging anything sugary out of his pockets to calm his nerves. He caught the sight of his bad hand as the glove slipped off, the low battery light was flashing. Boggarts and Bastards. Even if he could charge it, there wasn't time. Well, maybe a one armed dwarf could be more intimidating to the drug mules -- a sign that they're serious about limb chopping on this ship. Ain't no one gonna mess with a one handed dwarf, right?

  He lowered his chair and pushed off, toddering into the hall where his audience awaited him. The captain nodded grimly, her pallor more in tune with a body that'd been dug back up a few weeks later and stuffed with enough MGC to get it dancing. She spoke up, "We're docked."

  It wasn't a question, but Orn decided to take it as such, "Yup, not that it was easy. Especially with everyone's favorite 'The exits are here, and here, and here' jabbering on the entire time."

  "Good work, Orn," Variel said, her fingers not poking into her side.

  "Fantastic work, absolutely brilliant. I only lost my lunch five times," that simpering side of matrimony whined as his skin shifted out of the sickly green shade so many humans turned in space.

  "Only five? Damn, shoulda tried harder," Orn muttered to his wrapper as another mint slipped down to join the others in case they got lonely.

  "Fight on your own time, we need to plan," Variel said, not that she didn't grin at the overloaded bag trembling in Marek's hands.

  "Get off the ship to a customs agent, sit on our assess for a few hours, have the insides of our kidneys microwaved, then down to the planet for some good old fashioned drug buying," Orn laid out their plans with a cheerful wave of his fingers at the end.

  "Oh, is that all?" Marek said. "And if they find the dwarven bits inside of you?" he asked his wife.

  She shook her head, "They won't."

  "You're cocksure about that then?"

  Variel grumbled, "I've done it before, all right." And nearly died in the process, Orn thought back to a very long, very terrifying day. "Just don't act suspicious and we'll be fine."

  "Yeah, fine. Don't give me that look. I've done this before too," Marek said, looking like a wet rat unclogged from a toilet and dragged into the light of day. The thick beads of sweat may have not just been about the rumbling in his stomach as the artificial gravity didn't entirely adjust for Orn's fancy flying.

  "Well I best be getting back to my ol' cockpit then," the dwarf said, inclining his head towards the bridge. "You two seem to have your hands full and all..."

  "Orn, you're coming on this too."

  "Oh? I thought with your beloved, better half by your side you'd be full up on whiny man babies," the dwarf pouted.

  She blinked slowly, uncertain what he was getting at. "I never..."

  "Ah, crap, sorry that was Ferra," Orn said. "I get you two mixed up sometimes."

  Variel leaned back, "Really?"

  "When yer both riding my ass, yes." He paused as he played over what just fell out of his mouth, "Shit..." Needing a distraction he threw out, "Why aren't you taking your assassin? He seems to be offering his services persona non gratis lately."

  Variel switched from trying to not think about how often Orn confused her with his wife, to not thinking about where he learned latin. "Taliesin isn't a part of this, but I need you. You're my ace in the hole."

  Orn's clouded face lit up at that. "I am? I never been an ace in a hole before. Been in a few holes...and then some."

  Marek rolled his eyes, probably out of jealousy he hadn't thought of the quip already, "You cannot be serious."

  But the captain had reached her limits of humoring him. Throwing the briefcase into his arms she shouted, "You want to do this alone? Fine by me. We'll wait here while you shuttle down to a planet and felicitate the deal all by yourself."

  Marek accepted the briefcase covered with three large daisy stickers plastered across the front from the previous owner and stared down at the ground. Summoning some sense of self worth out of his fancy shoes he lifted his head high and took a step forward. Variel folded her arms and leaned into the wall, her entire being as cold as stone. Marek gnawed on his lips and glanced around before dropping the briefcase back down, "I...I don't know where the door is," he finally admitted.

  Variel sighed, and lifted the case from out of his lightly grasping hands. "Right, we do this my way. Orn, lock the bridge."

  "Why?"

  "That's 'Why, Ma'am?'" Variel barked causing Orn's jaw to drop until the mint rejoined society on the outside. She chuckled, "I'm just shitting you. Gods
know what's poking around this exchange station and in case Ferra's busy I don't want them trying to take the Elation for a joy ride."

  "Riiight," Orn said, slipping off his glove for the rare palm print. He never used the damn thing and Variel had about five other lock down codes she could toss up when the mood struck, but no one in their right mind would try to steal their hunk of junk. Its very existence was a theft deterrent system. "Course there's always elf boy. If Fer's got her head stuck inside some tubeamajig he could go all elfy and shiskebob the thieves up."

  The palm readout beeped and the bridge door creaked closed, crying at the injustice of having to be used for the first time in years. As Orn slipped on his gloves, he said, "You know, now no insane knight's are gonna break onto the ship and try to steal it since we bothered. It's galactic law."

  Variel thudded him on the shoulder and said, "Come on, we have a date and we don't want to be late."

  A goblin bumped into the trio standing upon the landing dock, her trunk splitting open and a trio of watches falling from the crack. "Please to forgive me," she said while scooping up her illegally obtained booty.

  Orn touched his forehead and handed her the last of the time pieces as Variel walked off towards the ticket line. It was Marek who inched away from the green skinned creature, the complexion mottled like a path in early fall. She didn't have hair, it was rare for goblins to grow much beyond the occasional stray bit in between folds of skin, but a hefty blue bow circled her neck. It made the creature appear as if she were a present no one wanted to unwrap.

  The clawed hand dropped into Orn's false fingers and she gripped it, thanking him for his assistance. As she turned to the human, her knotted joints creaking from the movement he jumped back, terrified she could give him some disease. The goblin tilted her head to the side, the lizard like eyes blinking as the under eyelid claimed the whole orb slowly. A gurgle called over the comm and she jumped to attention, stuffing the bag under her arm and scuttling off.

  As Marek breathed a sigh of relief, Orn jabbed him in the side, "Way to keep inconspicuous. Why not start babbling about the impurity of the galaxy while you're at it?"

  He felt a cool breeze follow where the dwarf jabbed him and looked down at the glittered tear in his expensive trac suit. "You little pipsqueak, look at what you did?"

  Orn rolled his tongue in his mouth as he picked at the fraying edges of the fabric, "I'd call it an improvement."

  "Orn, Marek," Variel called from the line currently containing almost all the other denizens of Dock 13.

  The two men glared at each other, but dropped the fight to join the only one who seemed to have a clue what was going on. She passed a pair of shuttle passes to each, the green hologram of the ship's silhouette glinting off their PALMs in the harsh light. "We're in luck. Apparently it's some holiday up here so almost no one's heading down to the planet. Should be quiet at least."

  "Who has a holiday on a transport station?" Marek asked as he pushed open the brochure button on his ticket.

  "Transients with access to crepe paper," Orn said getting a chuckle from his captain. "So we wait?"

  "We wait," she said, nudging her head towards the winding line of other bleary eyed denizens wanting to get somewhere, anywhere but here.

  Marek prodded through the screens, trying to read up on the safety instructions for shuttle transport. In the event your head becomes dislodged from your body, attach the oxygen mask to your neck stump first or ask a companion to find the decapitated organ.

  Orn took the chance to catch up with his all time favorite person standing in the line, "How's the gut?"

  "Fine," Variel muttered through clenched teeth.

  "Fine, that famous human word that means everything but the textbook definition."

  "Now's not the time to talk about that, Orn," she said, nodding her head towards the guards, a pair of trolls in horned helmets to obscure their faces. Not that humans could tell the difference anyway.

  The dwarf followed her line of sight and nodded his head, "Fine. See what I did there?" Variel sighed loudly. "How about we talk about this husband of yours? Right peach, salt of the earth that one."

  "I didn't have to like him, I just needed him alive," she said diplomatically while turning her eyes on the humanity sore.

  "Like? How can you stand him? How did you not slice his throat the first moment of your wedding night?" Orn asked in a stage whisper, then horror filled his eyes, "There weren't a wedding night, was there?"

  "What do you think?" Variel asked, then backtracked as she realized just what her dwarf thought, "No, gods no. Standard demands of the marital contract."

  "You can put 'No Sex' down on your marriage license?" Orn asked.

  "No, yes, sort of. It's complicated," she said realizing aside from some outlandish movies where people chase each other in spaceports and declare their undying love on the wings of rockets, she knew little about weddings or love outside the narrow world of the Crests. The military had its own culture that at times bore little resemblance to the civilian one they swore their lives to protect. It suited both sides quite nicely.

  "So, never once? Not even when you were bored and trapped at home in an ash storm and nothing good was on?"

  "I can happily say that never once occurred in my life."

  "I bet the elf's happy." It was an offhand comment and Variel caught herself before she grabbed the dwarf's collar and yanked him up to her face.

  "Elf?"

  "Brena sussed him out right away, doubt she'd like sharing you," the impish grin that covered so many wanted posters across pub bathrooms returned to his face.

  "Orn, are you ever going to give this up? You know about dulcens."

  "Being married to a tennen, yeah I got the gist. Bow to take a shit, flare your finger when picking your nose, say bless you when licking someone's sandwich."

  She wanted to ask just what he really thought dulcen's did, certain that Ferra had a long list of faults when she was in a particularly foul mood, but settled on, "Then you know how dulcens and humans don't mix. They're rather snotty about it really."

  "Eh," Orn waved his hands, upset they were getting off track. He'd wanted to rave against Marek but it trickled back to his wild theories about the captain's love life. That seemed to happen a lot lately. She must be trying to sidetrack him off of something really juicy. "When all this is over you're gonna owe us big you know, mopping up two of your messes in as many months."

  "We'll see," she said, aware of how much trouble she'd already put herself in and how much more she was about to place everyone else in.

  "'We'll see,' I know that one. That's human talk for no."

  "Orn," Variel started, rolling her eyes towards the guard who waved the next set of victims on. "Get up here in line. You're going through first."

  "I am?" He dropped the wrapper he'd been fiddling with. "I never get to go first."

  "Yeah, well, if there are any problems at least you will be on the other side along with...MAREK!"

  Her husband's head snapped up guilty as he subconsciously inched away from a young elf, her head bowed over a book bound in paper, thick curls covering most of her face. Variel glared -- she could read all of his discretions across his face. Poor girl probably tried the old "I'm reading" maneuver. When that didn't work she'd put in music to cut off his prattle and finally settled on hiding behind her hair.

  Orn glanced around his captain's legs and spotted her husband making a Marek of himself. "Daddy!" he shouted getting the death glare, "Daddy! Mommy says you're gonna take us to see the big waterfall. Are ya, are ya, are ya?"

  Variel buried the grin as Marek offered some lame apology to the elven girl and sulked away from her towards his "child" that was now bouncing up and down asking for "Upsies!"

  "Get ahead of me in line," Variel said to the whining man. He grumbled something under his breath and slipped behind Orn who was now dancing back and forth talking about how he had to potty. "And don't pout, that girl's got a good couple of h
undred years on you. Shameful, robbing the grave like that."

  "NEXT!" the troll's bellow rumbled below their feet like a quarry rockslide, and Orn stepped forward into the doorway as a red light zoomed over and across his body. He giggled, "That tickles." One of the trolls watched from the viewscreen, pushing buttons to test the opacity of his skin. Non-corporeals had a separate deck they had to use with special scanning techniques but it didn't stop some from trying to fake through.

  "Clean," the lead security dwarf said, and motioned for Orn to skip through.

  Marek was next, his eyes shut up tight as scans extracted every fold in his body. It was probably his imagination that the trolls were crouching over a shot of his lower region and giggling behind those horned masks. Probably. The dwarf didn't even bother to look at the readout, he knew a twitchy traveler when he saw one. "Clean...that means you can move on through," he said as the human continued to shake in its baked potato outfit.

  Finally, it was Variel's turn. The only challenge to the group. Smiling politely to the two trolls, she walked into the scanner as it adjusted for her height and size. Marek tried to sneak a peek at the screen through the blackened glass but got a glare from the lead dwarf. On the third pass of the red light something beeped. The light zoomed in and the beeping happened again, then a heavy thunk.

  "Ma'am," the dwarf said curtly, "Could you step over here please?"

  "Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit," Marek shook like a leaf.

  "Calm down before you wet your trousers. I ain't sharing a seat with a man who shart his pants," Orn kicked into the human's shins.

  Variel was the perfect image of confused tourist. "Is there a problem?"

  "Yeah," the dwarf said slowly, "something showed up on the scans. Let me see your briefcase."

  "Oh, of course," she said laying the blue metal across the desk. He flipped open the top and ruffled inside through a pile of protein bars, their wrappers glinting in the harsh lights.

  "I get incredibly peckish on trips," Variel said, "low blood sugar you see. Very nasty business that."