Keltan's Gambit: Chronicles of the Orion Spur Book 2

by Michael Formichelli

  “But depending on what we find, we might be here a while,” he added as an afterthought.

  She nodded. “That’s true, but as long as this ship can remain hidden, I don’t think another vessel in the system will be able to tell we’re down there. They’d have to be specifically looking for us on the surface, and actively scanning the colony.”

  “Excuse me, but the colony is the only thing to scan in this system,” Captain Fukui stated. “If another ship were to be here the odds are good it would be a pirate ship. If they come while we’re down there, they will scan the surface since pirates don’t like surprises as a general rule. When I was in the Shiragawa Defense Force, we observed such behavior frequently in some of our more vulnerable colonies.”

  Cylus had heard of space pirates before. They tended to stay at the fringes of frontier systems where it was unlikely law enforcement would bother with them, and where unsuspecting targets could be easily preyed upon. They were mostly a nuisance to commerce, as far as he could tell, unless they were Orgnan pirate-slavers who made raids into civilized space. The thought made him shudder. Would the Orgnan bother to raid Calemni? They weren’t near the Orgnan border, so the odds were slim—or so he hoped.

  “I must concur with Captain Fukui. It might be best to simply observe the surface of Calemni IIb from the ship,” Ben said. “We cannot risk your person, master.”

  “We came to Calemni in search of whatever Captain Solus did for Zalor. We won’t be here long,” Lina transmitted to him.

  What if there was solid evidence here that Zalor killed his parents or Yoji? Could that be what Captain Solus was sent to do? Hide the evidence? If that was the case he couldn’t simply return to Kosfanter. His newfound boldness fed his desire for revenge, and it surged within him like a wild beast. If there was evidence, and it led somewhere else, he would follow it to the ends of the galaxy. If he had to kill someone again—even a hundred someones—he would do it. It amazed him to think about, but he knew it for the truth it was.

  Yes, I will let nothing stand in my way, the voice in the back of his mind whispered. He nodded in agreement.

  “We’ll go where the evidence leads, if it goes anywhere,” he said. “I guess we should head in.”

  Ben bowed his head.

  “Please strap yourselves in and prepare for burn,” Captain Fukui responded.

  Cylus became lost in his own thoughts soon after the ship’s turbines roared. The ambient sound in the air returned to the hushed buzz of machinery when the Fukuro reached maximum velocity an hour later.

  “The computer has finished its radiation analysis. There are no pre-existing contacts in the system. We’ll know if there are any contacts in the exit zone in five hours, but I guess it will be smooth sailing on down to the planet.” Fukui’s restraints retracted and she floated out of the egg-shaped chair. The holographic controls floating above the panels in the room vanished the moment her body left the seat. “Please feel free to relax.”

  Cylus nodded. “Thank you, Captain.”

  She gave him a nod. Her tail still held the drink-ball as she sailed through the bridge’s entryway.

  “What do you think of her?” Lina asked when the bridge door dilated shut.

  “She’s polite and professional, basically what I’d expect from someone of Sable’s culture. Those tattoos are interesting; I wasn’t expecting those.”

  “I’ve been wondering about that,” she said. “I wouldn’t have thought to find those on someone piloting a top-secret ship for the Mitsugawa.”

  “Yoji must have seen something in her, I guess,” he said. “Maybe we should have spent more time with her on the way over.”

  Lina shrugged. “She seemed to be content to keep to herself.”

  “I guess. Do you have any idea what she is? I’m still wondering. Is there a sub-species of Relaen with tails not listed on the Cyberweb or something? I thought they all had pale skin.”

  “She’s not a sub-species of Relaen,” Lina said. “I’m a bit confused about what she is, too, but you’re right. The Relaen engineered themselves for life in space, and that included adapting their skin-tones to life in dim light. There are no Relaen, to my knowledge, with dark skin and tails like that. Only the ears and feet look Relaen. Also, that tail is cybernetic.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, I’ve seen things like it. It’s made of artificial-cells and carbon-fibers.”

  “How do you know?” he asked.

  “I spent a lot of time sneaking out to clubs when I was a teen. There are whole groups of people who get cybernetics to take on alien or animal traits. She’s not the only one with a tail I’ve seen.”

  “Oh,” he said. “So, her species doesn’t have a tail. I still don’t know what she is. Are the ears cybernetic, too?”

  Lina shrugged. She looked about to say something but stopped herself. “I don’t suppose it much matters what she is, right? We live in a galaxy where tech has made each one of us look like whatever we want. The sad thing is, it hasn’t changed what we really are beneath it all.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We humans are still bastards. We go around pillaging planets for resources and betraying each other for power. You’d think all this technology would have changed that, but it didn’t. We’re still the same as we were thousands of years ago.”

  “That’s an uplifting thought.” He sighed.

  “Sorry, I don’t mean to bring you down.”

  Cylus waved his hand before him. “It’s all right. You know, maybe we haven’t changed much as a species, but if appearances don’t matter as much as they used to maybe there’s an opportunity there to concentrate on the person beneath it all.”

  Lina’s lips curved up into a smile. “That’s awfully idealistic of you.”

  “Is it awful?”

  “I didn’t mean it like that. I’m just surprised, but in a good way,” she added.

  He shrugged. “Maybe I’m just thinking out loud. I don’t know.”

  “I do.” Lina got out of her restraints and floated up to him. “Come on, let’s get to know this captain of ours.”

  He nodded.

  “If it’s all right with you, master, I shall remain on the bridge,” Ben said.

  Cylus gave him a sidelong look. It wasn’t like Ben to be reluctant to follow him, but there was no harm in letting him stay. He probably wanted to continue to monitor the area for hostiles.

  “Okay, Ben. No problem,” he said and followed Lina out.

  It took a while to find Captain Fukui, not because the ship was that big, but because he kept getting hung up on turns and slamming into bulkheads while trying to navigate the freefall environment. If he had any doubts about his lack of space skills, the bruising trip through the Fukuro-maru put them to rest. Lina was a lot better at it, and he marveled at how she made navigating with gentle pushes as she glided through the air look easy.

  Captain Fukui was in the ship’s galley. It was a small room, hardly bigger than one of Cylus’ closets, with cooking and rehydration equipment built into the walls and ceiling. On one side a small, steel table was bolted to the floor. They found the captain sitting on the circular bench surrounding it. She had her tail extended and wrapped around the table’s single leg to hold herself in place while her hands were busy with a long instrument she held against her body. Shaped like an upside-down “Y,” two sets of four strings ran up the length of it, and met at the top where the captain’s fingers pressed them into a lined board. Her long toe-fingers plucked at the strings on either side of the split base, producing quiet metal twangs that could barely be heard over the sound of the ship’s air circulation system. Her eyes were closed, and she appeared to be rocking back and forth to the melody the instrument produced.

  Cylus looked at Lina and shrugged. The gesture almost sent him flipping over, but she caught his arm before he struck the corridor wall.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “Oh, sorry.” The captain opened her eyes and lo
oked at them. “I didn’t realize you were there.”

  “It’s our fault. We didn’t mean to intrude,” Lina said.

  “Sorry.” He felt a wave of embarrassment wash over him.

  Captain Fukui took her feet off the instrument and set it down on the table. It must’ve had a magnet in it because it stayed where she set it down. “Can I help you with something? Is everything okay?”

  “Fine, um, it’s fine. We just came down to say hello, I guess.” Cylus felt like he was swallowing his tongue. “Sorry.”

  Fukui’s dark eyes darted back and forth between them. “Are you sure?”

  Lina took in a deep breath. “Sorry to intrude, we’ll go.”

  “Would you like something to drink?” Captain Fukui asked.

  Cylus and Lina looked at each other, and he decided to make the most of the situation. “Sure.”

  “What would you like?” the captain asked.

  “Water, I guess,” he said, wishing he could have Axiom instead. Even if there was some on the ship, though, it was a bad idea. He didn’t want to pass-out and sleep through what was to come.

  “I’ll have the same.” Lina moved into the small space and squeezed herself in at the table opposite the captain. Cylus joined her.

  Fukui got them each a drink-ball of water from a refrigerated cabinet above their heads and pulled herself back into her seat. Her tail retracted behind her, and she strapped herself in place with a seatbelt built into the bench.

  “I don’t mean to be rude, but what is that? I’ve never seen one before,” Lina asked as Cylus squeezed his drink-ball to pop out the straw.

  “It’s a Relaen musical instrument called an uul. It’s one of the few things that has survived the endless wandering of space from the home world.”

  He looked at the instrument and then back to her. Was she Relaen?

  “One of the few?” Lina asked.

  Fukui nodded. “Thousands of years spent in environments that require frugality to survive meant a lot has been lost. Not everything though.”

  “Where did you learn to play it?” he asked.

  “From my father,” she said.

  He glanced at Lina. “Was your father Relaen?”

  “Yes.” Captain Fukui looked sad for a moment.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you.”

  She looked up at him. “Oh, no. I am sorry, Baron Keltan. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

  “What? No, you didn’t. I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable,” he said back.

  “You didn’t.” She pressed her lips together, staring down at the instrument on the table.

  Lina cleared her throat. “Can we hear what it sounds like?”

  Captain Fukui brightened. “Yes, of course.”

  She gave the instrument a tug, lifting it off the table and resumed her former posture to give her feet access to its stringed legs. She placed her fingers on the board with care and Cylus heard the ship’s PA speakers snap to life.

  “What would you like me to play?”

  “Anything you feel like,” Lina said.

  “Play something sad,” Cylus said on impulse. The request earned him a look from Lina, but Fukui nodded and started to play before she could object.

  Notes flowed from her fingers to the PA system. The first to sound in the air was deep and sustained. Her finger slid up on the board, altering the pitch to something high and tinny. The next note was haunting, like a cry in the night. More followed, the melody formed like a stream over stones, rising and falling in smooth succession.

  He was transfixed. His eyes stared at the vibrating strings but his mind wandered out of the room, off the ship, across the light-years to Anilon. A feeling blossomed in his gut, a longing to stand on the paths of his garden feeling the cool breeze off the lake on his skin. He remembered the feel of Anilon’s gentle sun, and the flowers of the wild vines with a scent so sweet it verged on sickness in his nostrils. The feeling became a pressure in his throat that he could hardly stand to swallow around. It built within him until he could no longer bear it, and tears threatened to burst forth from his eyes.

  “It’s beautiful,” he said in his husky, gravel-laden voice. “I’m sorry.”

  He wriggled out of his seat, heading for the door. Behind him the music stopped.

  “My apologies, Baron,” Captain Fukui said.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again, and fled.

  The yellow and orange gas giant of Calemni II cast its fiery light through the small bridge windows. Half an Earth day passed since they sat with Captain Fukui in the ship’s galley. When he and Lina arrived on the bridge Captain Fukui was back in the egg-chair. A sidearm, he noted, now rested in a holster strapped to her hip.

  Ben acknowledged them with a nod from his seat by the port terminal.

  “We’re on final approach to Calemni II-b,” she said after they strapped themselves in. “I’m still not getting anything on the comms. Space should be alive with radio traffic, or at the least, the colony should be querying us about our intentions. This silence worries me. I’ve been scanning the planet since we got within a few-thousand kilometers. There’s some kind of storm down there, but not much else is moving. Here, please look.”

  Cylus accepted the ship’s prompt and a translucent image overlaid his vision. All he could make out were shifting colors, mostly golds and browns.

  “What am I looking at?” he asked.

  “That’s the visual spectrum of the planet surface. Switching to thermal.”

  The overlay blinked, replaced by a black field with green and blue blobs in it. It took him a moment to realize that the shapes resembled those of buildings as viewed from the air. One had a white spot ringed with red. A set of words appeared above it identifying it as a possible power source consistent with an active fusion reactor.

  “And now an active microwave radar scan.”

  The field blinked again, replaced by a gray one that resolved into a colorless overhead view of the colony below. He made out streets, pipelines, and the huge cylindrical structures of the fuel refinery station. Strange lumps could be seen strewn about the streets.

  “What are those?” he asked.

  “Zooming in,” Fukui responded.

  His vision magnified. The lumps gained textures. He could make out angles and variations within them. The longer he looked the more his brain parsed them into individual parts making up a whole. He realized he was staring at a head, arms, a torso—

  “Bodies?” he said aloud.

  “I believe that is so.” Captain Fukui shifted the scan around, zooming in again.

  There was no doubt. The bodies of hundreds of humans, Cleebians, and Achinoi were scattered about the streets below them. Many looked desiccated, the flesh shrink-wrapped to the bone beneath.

  He felt his chest constrict.

  “Shit,” Lina whispered.

  “I’m going to focus on one of the houses,” Captain Fukui said.

  The view shifted. At first he saw an arched roof made from long, corrugated panels, then she adjusted the wavelength of the radar and the roof became transparent. Inside the structure he could see a bed, chairs, a desk, and more bodies. There were at least six intertwined in a heap. These looked putrefied, with large sections of flesh missing. Fukui shifted the radar again and their vision descended a level. The ground floor was a mess. Tables were overturned, chairs broken apart, and windows shattered.

  “What the hell happened?” Lina asked.

  The image of Hagus’ kicking feet flashed in Cylus’ head. He felt his stomach churn followed by a rush of pleasure. The combination made him ill. What the hell is wrong with me? he wondered.

  “I don’t know.” Captain Fukui shifted their focus to another house, and then another. Each one was like the first. Furniture and personal items were in complete disarray, and bodies were everywhere.

  “It’s almost like they attacked each other,” Lina whispered.

  Cylus’s vision abruptly went out of foc
us. He felt himself sway.

  “Like a dream, one-hundred percent infection,” said a voice in his head.

  “It looks like they tried to barricade the door,” Lina said.

  “They did. They were fighting for their lives. That one has a cutting laser in his hand. You can see what he did to the first one through the barricade,” Captain Fukui said.

  “We geared this batch to induce a berserker rage in the subject population. They tore each other to pieces,” the voice continued in his skull.

  “Cylus, do you—Cylus?”

  He barely heard her; the ship dropped out of his perception. He was standing in a plush chamber decorated with chairs and a coffee table loaded with magazine crystals. He could hear people talking through a fancy rectangular door.

  “Cylus?” He felt Lina’s cool fingers at his face, but couldn’t see her. “Are you all right?”

  His heart started to pound. He knew he shouldn’t be where he was, but it was important for him to be here. The voices became more distinct and made his chest constrict almost to the point where he couldn’t breathe.

  “I’ll get the medical kit,” Captain Fukui said.

  “I did my part, I steered him towards Thein, but the stupid Abyssian didn’t take the bait.”

  “Do you think yourself clever, human?”

  “Do you know where he’s going at least?” A voice said. It was familiar to him, but he couldn’t place it.

  “Not even Zalor’s contacts have been able to trace down the source of Daedalus’ involvement.”

  He felt his body convulse. Spots winked in and out of his vision. He couldn’t breathe, but he couldn’t leave the room either. He was frozen in place as though he were in a paused Cyberweb simulation.

  “What’s wrong with him?” That was Lina’s voice.

  “And now you might want to take care of that little issue in your sitting room,” the male voice said.

  Terror flooded his mind. He had to escape, he had to get out of here now, but he couldn’t move. His mind went into a raw, animal panic, trying to find a way out even though he knew there was none. He was a statue awaiting a hammer. The chamber doors slid open. A thing that looked like a man stepped through. He was gray-skinned like a corpse, with long black hair pulled into a tight tail, and smelled of latex. His chin was narrow and pointed, making his skull appear tear-drop shaped. His eyes were huge, black all over with a ring of blue sparks in the center. As Cylus met them they grew larger, consuming the whole of his visual field until all was darkness except for those horrible blue sparks.