Escape

by Blaze Ward

  “Would your medical records have survived there?” Lenox lifted up a thing that anthropomorphically almost looked like a tiny head with binocular eyes.

  Perhaps the better to communicate with certain species.

  “Would have, yes,” Lazarus agreed. “They are no longer accessible, obviously.”

  “So noted,” the MedCrawler chirped. “I would like to draw a blood sample, and saliva, to help establish a baseline. Could you hold out an arm, please?”

  Lazarus did so, and concentrated on maintaining his secrets with a more focused, jaundiced eye. He was starting to have to tell lies to the very people who rescued him, so he would need to be able to keep them straight later.

  Ajax was destroyed. His lifepod had been shattered, but perhaps there was something there that could be salvaged.

  Lazarus was a nobody now, not a former combat captain of the Rio Alliance navy, regardless of what Director Wolcott might think. Or ask of him.

  Unless somehow the Innruld ended up being as bad as Westphalia.

  Then he might extend his rage to other portions of the galaxy.

  Chapter Eleven

  Addison

  Dinner. Addison had agreed with Khyaa'sha that the most bland dinner she could prepare would be a good idea. Bowls of various things cooked with a minimum of spices or oils, with everything normally in them now available in bowls and bottles for the rest of the crew to modify as they liked.

  If this Lazarus was truly a former military officer, what other value and experience might he bring?

  Per Kuei, the wreckage of his pod had stabilized. The explosion had converted the aft half to a cloud of expanding gas, propelling the forward compartment away with a soft tumble.

  Should he put the human to bed in a locked cabin while they went to loot it, or have him up on the bridge, where he might save them from pushing the wrong button?

  Dinner would tell.

  With so many different methods of locomotion, everyone had a standard spot they normally sat, with Addison at one end and Khyaa'sha at the other, both poised but not using a chair or bench. Or even a nest like Wybert.

  Lazarus’s legs were too long. He had ended up locating an aluminum shipping container from the storage compartment to sit on. Hopefully, he had not caught the looks of surprise on so many faces that he could lift nearly one hundred pounds to his chest and just carry it across the deck like it was nothing. The human hadn’t even strained or grunted when doing so.

  That sort of physical strength was almost frightening.

  There would be leftovers, as Addison looked over the bowls. Khyaa'sha had made extra of everything, just so Lazarus had something to eat, once he found it. For now, he had carefully taken a taste of everything, and dipped a number of stirring sticks into the various sauces to dab onto his fat, red tongue. That was the weirdest part of human anatomy, he decided.

  And then the human had sat there. Just waiting.

  “You are not hungry?” Aileen asked from her space more or less across from Lazarus.

  “Famished,” he replied with a smile Addison decided was rueful. “However, I’m trying things and waiting to see if any won’t stay down. Or poison me. Those six do not taste good to my palette, so I’ll assume I cannot digest them. These four are okay. Those three were yummy.”

  Addison nodded and respected that logic. Who wants to be rescued from sure death in deep space, and then drink alcohol? Well, the human drank some alcohols, but presumably there was a poison out there that would kill him. Hopefully, Khyaa'sha and Lenox had been able to identify which ones were likely and keep them out of dinner.

  Addison filled his bowl with noodles and vegetables, adding protein and sauce to make a gourmand quiver with anticipation, but he ate daintily, rather than just upending the bowl into his mouth and making a mess like he really wanted to.

  Company. Manners. All that.

  The others ate with their usual gusto. Hiring Khyaa'sha as their dedicated cook had been the best thing Addison had done as a director in years.

  He studied the human. Lazarus might be the single strongest creature he had ever met at this scale. Innruld were a foot and a half taller, but barely weighed more. Their bodies were as long as their faces, elegant and refined.

  They used the lesser species as combat troops and security officers. Workers and servants. Those that didn’t flee into the night and sign on with a cargo ship that happened to smuggle things from time to time. Addison smiled and ate slowly.

  Lazarus finally took larger samples of the three bowls and ate some. Vegetables, noodles, and the meat of a Galumph. Dumb, slow, and tasty, the furry hexapods were a dietary staple on every planet Addison had ever visited. The sauce was a roasted redfruit that mellowed as you heated it with spices and turned into a good base for many other dishes. If Lazarus could digest it happily, it would make supplies so much easier.

  One other weirdness crossed his eyes as he watched. Wybert ate a gruel pudding designed for his kind. Khyaa'sha put some on Lazarus’s plate and the human took a dab. It must have been good, from the way his eyes opened suddenly and he sat up straighter.

  And then cleaned every bit of it off his plate and into his mouth.

  “Close enough, yes,” the human said to the cook.

  “It serves a similar purpose, and has similar medicinal qualities, Lazarus,” Khyaa'sha smiled and went back to her own meal.

  Crap, did he have to feed two Ilount now? That stuff was expensive. Still, Lazarus might make it worthwhile.

  Everyone settled down to enjoy themselves finally.

  “Lazarus, how are you feeling?” Addison asked as Remahle started to clear plates.

  The Kr’mari had kitchen duty this week.

  “Okay,” the human seemed to answer honestly. “At present, everything is digesting, but I have taken a number of prophylactic medicines just in case, so I expect some level of lethargy soon.”

  Addison took a breath and leapt into the unknown.

  “We have been able to locate a portion of your escape pod,” he said simply, watching the ripple of electricity that passed through the human. It was almost like seeing a fellow Churquen writhe across hot sands as fast as he could move before he scorched his tail.

  “How much?” the human’s eyes got big, but at the same time, somehow private.

  Must be a biped thing.

  “A section of the front,” Addison answered him. “The aft was annihilated in the explosion. What was forward that we might salvage?”

  “Depends on where the cut is,” the human’s eye now focused on a spot on a distant wall, near the ceiling. Memory trace. “Engines and star drive aft. Engine room forward from there. Small cargo hold. My quarters, large cabin, kitchen, small quarters, bridge.”

  “More than a third survived, less than half,” Addison envisioned the sleek needle he had seen before, so bizarre to be perfectly symmetrical on the long axis. There were so many more interesting ways to build a ship.

  “Maybe right through the kitchen then,” Lazarus breathed.

  “Why would your quarters be clear at the back, if you were the pilot, Lazarus?” Aileen spoke up, surprising just about everyone at the table. Normally, she was the quiet type who solved three dimensional puzzles to stow cargo in the smallest, most accessible way before going back to her books.

  “The ship was actually a courier design,” He turned to her and Addison noted the way his voice grew softer and less…something. Harsh? Commanding? Arrogant? Something. “One pilot, hauling some important admiral around, with an aide or two. The engines made noise and needed watching, so the pilot would handle those duties. Made sense to put them aft, when the ship could fly on autopilot.”

  “Auto-what?” Aileen asked.

  “Auto-pilot,” Lazarus replied with confusion. “Pre-programmed instructions. How do you handle those tasks?”

  “You have not met Cormac, Lazarus,” Addison interrupted. “He’s our NavCrawler, and handles things when Kuei is off-duty.”


  “Fully sentient?” Lazarus seemed appalled at the idea. “Isn’t that dangerous?”

  “He’s just another crew member, Lazarus,” Addison found his own voice taking on an edge. “Cormac’s uptime is measures in decades at this point. Possibly as much as a century.”

  “Interesting,” the human mused. “My kind experimented with such systems early on, but decided against them. We just automate things to dumb computers and then set parameters while retaining oversight.”

  He paused, studying the sky again.

  “But if we cut at midway, then the kitchen might have survived,” Lazarus said, turning to Khyaa'sha with a hopeful smile. “All my personal belongings are probably destroyed, so I’ll just have to start over.”

  He seemed to slump in defeat. Addison could understand that.

  “Well, it is my plan at present to send Aileen over after dinner to see what we can salvage,” Addison said. “Given your potential medical situation, I would like to have you and Lenox on the bridge with us so you can advise her.”

  Lazarus wanted to complain. Wanted to volunteer for the duty. Addison could see that in his eyes, even as shrouded as they were. But he also understood that they didn’t trust the human.

  Not yet, maybe not ever. What bombs or ugly surprises might he work up, if left alone in the wreck? Best to not find out.

  “Lazarus of Bethany,” he muttered cryptically, but the human nodded, turning to Aileen. “You’ll have a camera so I can identify things for you?”

  She nodded, still constrained within herself like normal.

  Aileen was also the best person he had in zero-gravity. She lived in something similar every time she hit water.

  “Good,” the human pronounced, turning back to Addison. “How soon do you want to go?”

  Chapter Twelve

  Lazarus

  There she was.

  Lazarus stared at the remains of his most recent command with even greater regret than he had encountered putting Ajax into her repair orbit and abandoning her until he could return.

  The koch still had a slight tumble, but the pilot, Kuei, was in the process of addressing that. She was an Australian kangaroo. Or the closest Lazarus could imagine in space, since her skull was wider, but her face was just as emotive and her eyes didn’t seem to miss anything.

  Living with aliens, even for a few hours, had given him a much stronger understanding of how non-bipeds approached the concept of clothing. It served two purposes for humans: warmth and pockets.

  This ship, this Shiva Zephyr Glaive given the constraints of translating across at least two and maybe three languages, was kept at a warmer level than Lazarus had kept Ajax. If he was going to be doing anything physical, he would probably leave his jacket shell off and just live in the T-shirt.

  Kuei Akeley, like Aileen and Remahle, had fur. Not much, but it covered her in a thin layer that probably insulated her against all the temperature extremes she might encounter on a spaceship. Her arms were scrawny, like so many of the rest of the crew, but her thighs were bigger than his, almost as large as the tripod tail she rested on at her station.

  Over that, she was wearing what Lazarus could only classify as a jumpsuit, sealed up the front, except it didn’t have sleeves or legs. A leotard, maybe? Except baggy. And with one big pocket across her stomach where he presumed a pouch, and several more pockets around it.

  Standing, she was maybe five feet tall, but those legs and that tail offset her torso and Lazarus figured she weighed at least as much as he did. She did have a smile for him as he intruded onto what she made obvious was her domain, so he trod carefully.

  The koch was out there. Part of it. Not really tumbling that much as it drifted across deep space. Lazarus presumed it would eventually enter a cometary orbit, unless the planet that had been nearby when all this started had enough pull to drag it along, or capture it a year from now if it was still here.

  The radio came live as Lazarus listened

  “Aileen, this is Addison,” the Director spoke suddenly, jarring Lazarus.

  The being’s name was Addison Wolcott. Director Wolcott, except everyone else called him Addison. Not a familiarity I have earned yet. Perhaps soon. They had been good to me so far.

  “Go ahead, bridge,” the Yithadreph woman replied over the comm.

  “We’re about to capture the hulk,” Wolcott said. “Radiation levels are too high to keep it aboard the ship, but you should be fine for now.”

  The Director clicked something and turned to Lazarus with slitted eyes that seemed to convey confusion rather than hostility.

  “What were you using to power your vessel that would make it that radioactive?” he asked.

  “Uranium and thorium in separate generator systems,” Lazarus replied. “Not pure-enough uranium to achieve critical mass, but enough to make things hot if it exploded. You could probably wash everything with water if you wanted to and reduce the radiation to much safer levels.”

  “I don’t have the space back there, at present,” the director shook his head. “Or the spare water. Maybe we’ll push it into a safe orbit somewhere and come back for it later.”

  Wolcott nodded what looked like thanks and turned his attention to the big screen.

  The room wasn’t huge, like some of the battleships Lazarus had been on, but it was much roomier than the cabin on the koch, and probably about half the size of Ajax’s bridge.

  The Captain/Director had a chair thingee in the middle of the room, facing the big screen and the physical windows that looked out into space. Kuei was on the starboard side and the NavCrawler Cormac had a docking station to port. There were four other stations facing the wings, two on either side.

  “Aileen, stand by,” Director Wolcott said from his little hillock throne that he was coiled around and seated atop, just like a Rio Alliance Captain would have done.

  “Kuei, all yours.”

  Lazarus watched the Vaadwig woman—the sentient ’roo—deftly work a series of controls on her board and a golden beam of light suddenly leapt into space. Lazarus didn’t remember color, but he’d already been wound a little too tight at that point, wondering if he was about to need his bolter rifle for some ignominious last stand or something.

  It grabbed the remains of the koch and stilled the tumble. Shiva Zephyr Glaive was already moving at the same pace across the cosmos, so that wasn’t difficult, and the dead machine was all of about fifty yards away.

  “Aileen, this is Kuei,” the Helmswoman said. “We’re stable. As you bear.”

  As you bear. In Earth history, that was the order for guns to fire without a central command. Fire when you had your chance.

  Here, they were sending a dire otter woman in a spacesuit across the empty gap to try to loot his old ship for supplies, valuables, and hopefully food.

  A figure appeared on the screen, floating gracefully across the gap. She didn’t land hard on her feet, like Lazarus would have, requiring boot magnets to catch him from bouncing. Instead, all four limbs touched at the same moment and she landed more like a cat. From a pouch, she pulled a net and expanded it out while sticking it to the hull with a magnet of its own.

  “About to enter,” Aileen said.

  Lazarus had given her the codes to the door, but with the back half ripped off, there might not be power for it, and she could just enter the gullet from the aft anyway.

  The main screen cut suddenly and Lazarus was looking out from a camera mounted to the top of the woman’s helmet. It was always strange doing it this way. You wanted to have them linger on something when they kept moving, or keep moving when they went still.

  But she was an expert at this, according to the Director. Probably far more time in a suit than Lazarus had, since most of his time was spent in labs and drydocks.

  Down the hull she went and Lazarus had a chance to see the break. It might have gone right through the refrigerator unit, from the way the hull was torn here. She rounded the corner and her helmet lights punctured the darkness.


  Lazarus let go an unconscious sigh of relief.

  “Aileen, on your right,” Lazarus spoke aloud in as calm a voice as he could manage. “Those two doors are a refrigerator on the bottom and a freezer on the top. Everything inside the freezer is probably fine, but in the lower unit things might have exploded when they froze. Exercise care, or did you want to try to remove the unit as whole and extract it?”

  “Bolts to floor and ceiling?” she asked.

  “Floor and side wall, across the top, yes,” he said.

  “We’ll take a look at that later,” she replied. “Pantry?”

  “Latched cupboard doors above the unit and forward,” Lazarus said. “There were also some aft.”

  “Acknowledged,” Aileen’s voice was more calm than his, but this was just another job to her. “Moving forward.”

  Lazarus watched her move out of the common space that the kitchen represented and enter into the hallway again. The small quarters were here, a place where one or two aides to an admiral could travel, assuming they required separate quarters.

  Not all of the admirals Lazarus had known in his time kept things that discreet.

  She opened the door with a magnetic lever she attached, after trying the keypad. Inside, the room was perfectly standard, everything latched down and held in place, just as it had come from the factory, since it had only flown once and Lazarus hadn’t slept there. His own cabin would have been far more messy right now, had these folks blown the ship’s nose off instead.

  Aileen kept up a full running commentary as she went. Lazarus answered questions, but most of what she was seeing was pretty obvious and self-explanatory.

  “Moving to the bridge,” she said after a few moments.

  There.

  Lazarus had never seen a ship where the pilot had triggered the ejection system. The top half of the compartment was gone. Both flight seats were gone, although he couldn’t remember seeing the second one in his tumbles.