by Dan Schiro
“I thought Costigan and his Briarhearts could handle the basic security?” Aurelia said as she strapped in on the crash couch.
Orion shook his head, and the dropship rose into the air with a snow-scattering rumble. “This situation is too hot. They just sent someone to kill us for investigating whatever’s going on here.” His jaw clenched as he silently cursed the hours he had wasted unconscious. “And this is the Collective Fleet we’re talking about.” He frowned as he flipped switches to bring the ion engine online. “Too many variables, too much could go wrong. We need to be there.”
Their hours in the ether routes passed in silence for the most part, and Orion was thankful for that. It gave him time to speed-read the official Dawnstar scripture that had been posted on the datasphere. It gave him time to review the radical group’s previous attacks. And it gave him time to think through everything poor revived Caska had said, everything the faceless woman with the spellblade had said. He was beginning to think that he was onto something much bigger, much darker than a terrorist group’s grudge against a politician. But that was all he felt certain about when they emerged from the incandescent tunnel of the ether route and Orion beheld the Collective Fleet for the first time.
He had read about the Collective Fleet as a young man and marveled, but in all the action of the last day, he had forgotten that he was excited to see this wonder of space-faring civilization for himself. The viewscreen displayed an assembly of millions of separate starships, many very old. Some, like the homes of the Fleet’s aristocracy, were hulking generation ships. These blocky spacecraft were older than human agriculture, carrying millions of passengers and equipped with self-sustaining ecosystems designed for long, sub-ether journeys between stars. The countless smaller ships around these great space-cities ran the gamut. Of the larger, Orion saw repurposed warships from forgotten conflicts, garden ships with double-diamond domes full of green life, mining ships covered in asteroid-mashing drills and gas giant harvesters trailing long nanofiber tubes. Among the smaller, he saw lengthy manufacturing ships, boxy transport freighters, ornate pleasure craft and bare-bones cruisers, all the way down to dropships that buzzed through the flock like metallic gnats.
“Close your mouth, human,” Aurelia said, somewhere over Orion’s right shoulder.
“Are you kidding me?” Orion’s wide eyes gazed at the viewscreen. “That’s amazing.” He shot a snide look over his shoulder. “We finally found something older than you, Aurelia.”
“Must I explain again,” Aurelia sighed, “that being old is not a bad thing among the Green? We don’t spend half of our lives souring and shriveling like you fleeting creatures.”
Orion laughed and looked back at the forward view. “Seriously, though. People from all kinds of races have been coming from all over the galaxy for what — tens of thousand of years? — to join this… this controlled chaos. This tribe of permanent nomads. Over 40 billion living souls, and most of them are born and die without ever leaving the Fleet.”
“All of life, aboard a ship?” Kangor unstrapped from his crash couch and stood, scratching at the orange tufts of fur that had quickly returned to his body. “What a terrible existence. Never feeling the sun on your flesh, never tasting the breeze.” Folding his massive arms across his chest, he shuddered. “The sooner we leave this morass, the better.”
Orion opened a channel to request clearance, and a few minutes later they docked with the waiting Star Sentry at the edge of the Collective Fleet. They debarked to a chilly reception from the SpaceCorps skeleton crew manning the hangar, and Orion told Aurelia and Kangor they could go drink in their quarters if they took Bully with them. Then he flicked his datacube into the air and sent invitations for an emergency meeting with Zovaco Ralli, Mervyn of Claddaghsplough, Commander Vanlith and Costigan. Some 20 minutes later, four of them had gathered in conference room that served as Zovaco’s makeshift political war-room. Another 10 minutes after that, Commander Vanlith entered grudgingly. After a few frosty pleasantries, Orion told his story.
“…and then we bugged out and came here,” he said as he finished laying out what had happened on Corvis Stoat. Everyone seemed to turn their gaze to Zovaco Ralli.
“It’s surprising,” he said, his three large eyes blinking thoughtfully. “Dawnstar.” He shook his bulbous head. “You’re right, of course, Orion,” he added with a glance up. “It doesn’t make sense that they would come after me so… vigorously. I’m not the kind of symbol they usually attack. At least, not until after elected.”
Mervyn wore a puzzled expression on his simian face. “And you say she had one of the Engineers’… manacite weapons? True E-tech?”
Orion decided to say the word that Mervyn wouldn’t. “A spellblade? Yeah.”
“Odd.” Mervyn scratched his gray pate with thick fingers. “That sounds a solid rank above the naïve souls they usually send to do their dirty work. Did she wear their symbol?”
“No, no, nothing like that.” Orion’s mismatched eyes went distant as he swiveled his chair and looked out the wide windows that ran down one wall of the room. “She certainly didn’t seem like a religious fanatic. She had too much…” Orion gazed out at the endless flotilla for a moment, tried to find the right word and failed. He shook his head and swiveled his chair back to the table. “I don’t know what to call it.”
Commander Vanlith cleared her throat and brushed back her straight black hair. “Speculate for me, Mr. Grimslade.” Her eyes pierced Orion like two icy nails. “Why do you think she left you alive?”
Orion shrugged. “She could have killed me, but she didn’t because she wanted to know who I was.” He laid his tingling right hand on the glass conference table and looked at the silver glyph tattooed on his wrist. “But the way she did it… or rather, didn’t do it… made me feel like it was only because she thought she could always come kill me later.”
Commander Vanlith leaned back and folded her legs. “You almost sound impressed.”
Orion smirked. “I must admit, I love a woman with confidence.”
“I’m not interested in your taste in women,” she said, her glare scathing. “I’m much more interested in the unregistered E-tech aboard my ship.” She aimed a manicured finger at the mark of the spellblade on his wrist.
“Weapon?” Orion held up his hand. “It’s not a weapon. It’s a tool. And it’s part of me. I am it, it is me.”
Vanlith rolled her eyes and pursed her lips to bark back, but Costigan interceded. “All due respect, ma’am.” He nodded his flat top in her direction. “It’s old magic, sure enough. But a spellblade’s no more dangerous than a Lady of the Jade Way or a vycart.” He chuckled and looked at Orion. “Or probably that beast of a dog.”
Vanlith arched a dark eyebrow. “And is that supposed to make me feel better, Mr. Costigan?”
“All that aside, for the moment,” said Zovaco, ever the diplomat. “How does what you learned on Corvis Stoat affect us while we visit the Collective Fleet? Should I expect another attempt on my life?”
“Don’t worry, Zo.” Orion narrowed his eyes and attempted a confident nod. “I’ll be shadowing you the whole way, along with Aurelia and Kangor.”
Mervyn stamped his walking stick on the floor of the conference room. “These will be formal events aboard the ships of the Fleet’s royal houses. We can’t have mercenaries like you traipsing about with armor and weapons.”
“Merv, just relax.” He shot his best smirk at the old kingmaker. “Firstly, my crew cleans up nice. Secondly… well, we are the weapons.”
Chapter 13
“Stop fussing,” Orion hissed at Kangor as their shuttle docked with a huge, onion-shaped generation ship called the Kasia Tal. “And you,” he added to Aurelia, “stop scowling. Really, it’s just for a few hours.”
Planted in seats across the aisle from him, his friends chafed at the formal clothes they had to wear to accompany Zovaco into t
he High Admirals’ Ball. Kangor shuffled his huge feet, uncomfortable in the finely made leather moccasins, silky black pants and gold-embroidered red tunic, especially where its high collar squeezed his wide neck. And Aurelia, who usually wore nothing more than a few light silk wraps, frowned incessantly at the fine cloth of the heavily brocaded black-and-gold gown that squeezed her breasts and bound her hips.
“Clothes,” Aurelia said, her voice dripping venom. “A silly convention of lesser carbons.”
“Clothes such as these, at least.” Kangor scratched lightly at his chest with his clawed hand. “No protection. Limited range of movement. No way to carry gear.” He glared across the aisle at Orion. “Designed to be useless, really.”
“Looking the part is not useless,” Orion snapped, wearing clothes that matched Kangor’s but in much smaller sizes. He glanced up the aisle to see if Zovaco and Mervyn were listening, but the politicians looked immersed in an intense conversation of their own at the other end of the cabin. “Look, I hate this kind of dress-up game too. Reminds me of way too many things my father forced me to attend when I was a kid.”
Aurelia folded her arms across her chest. “Oh, the horrors of wealth and privilege.”
When the shuttle pilot gave them the green light, Orion and his partners rose and led Zovaco and Mervyn onto the Kasia Tal. Orion had never stepped aboard a ship so large, and the colossal, bulb-shaped vessel seemed a world unto itself. It carried millions of passengers, keeping them all fed and happy with hyper-growth hydroponics and closed-loop waste recycling systems that had been perfected for a long, sub-ether route haul. Manacite drives had likely been added to the old beast before the pyramids had been built on Earth, but who were the brave souls who first decided to strike out into the darkness without them? Orion had to admire their moxie. They had left their homeworld knowing that they would be but a distant memory by the time the ship found a new home. Then, somehow, somewhere along the journey, the Kasia Tal had been folded into the vastness of the Collective Fleet. In a way, this ship carried a history as weighty as that of the planet Earth itself.
They met an official escort at the end of the docking tube, and Zovaco and Mervyn exchanged a complicated series of bows and gestures with what Orion understood to be the undersecretaries to the High Admirals. They were curious creatures, with bio-modifications that gave them a variety of skin tones, limbs, tails, wings, antennae and cybernetic parts. No two looked quite alike, and Orion had a tough time determining if they fit in the male and female boxes that so much of the galaxy did. As they walked to an elevator, Orion saw that the fleeters kept everything spotlessly clean. From the tasteless air to the stainless-steel floors to the black glass of the walls, Orion saw not so much as a mote of dust or a fingerprint.
They hopped into a large, well-polished gravity lift, and though it didn’t feel like they were moving, Orion sensed the gentle thrumming and knew that they were. Inertial dampeners kept the passengers on their feet while the elevator raced up, down and sideways to transport them through the onion-like layers of the massive spacecraft. When the mirrored doors to the gravity lift opened again after a few minutes, they had arrived at a cathedral-sized ballroom as opulent as anything one might find on the galaxy’s richest planets.
Gentle symphonic music twined with the savory scents of fine food, and a chorus of bubbly conversation quieted as they stepped out. Huge, gold-latticed glowglobes bobbing near the arched ceiling threw bright light on a few hundred curious creatures mingled on the glossy tiles of the onyx floor. Like the small mob of undersecretaries, the creatures here seemed as varied as the outrageously bright clothes they wore. Orion saw wings, tails, tentacles, scales and cybernetics meshed together in scores of different combinations. Pausing for a moment, he called on his training and let his senses drink in every detail. Who knew which one might save Zovaco’s life?
The crowd parted politely as their retinue made its way for a brightly lit dais on one end of the glittering hall. The regalia-bedecked creatures smiled, nodded and waved as Zovaco passed, obviously excited for their guest of honor to arrive. Zovaco took his time as they walked, acknowledging a gaunt giant bio-modified for zero-gravity on one side, stopping to quip with a gaseous fazziano in a containment suit on the other side. Orion glanced up at the wide dais and saw six bizarre figures arranged in a semicircle. Still watching the crowd and keeping pace with Zovaco, he leaned over to Aurelia.
“I take it those are the High Admirals?” Orion asked with a nod to the stage.
Aurelia nodded, her brassy eyes roving. “Yes, and you’d do well to step carefully around them.”
Orion hazarded a smirk. “Don’t I always?”
“I’m serious, Orion.” Aurelia flashed him a glare. “Those six are as powerful as kings here, and descended from families just as old as any planetary royalty. Each has thousands of ships at their disposal, and the only thing they respect here is the firepower of their peers.”
“You can always count on mutually assured destruction to hold things together,” he muttered as they approached the last few feet of their long stroll to the stage. Yet before Zovaco and Mervyn could step foot on the platinum-plated staircase, a thin s’zone delayed them.
“Mr. Ralli?” said the alabaster-skinned humanoid, his glossy, dark eyes wide and eager. He had a dingy speckling of yellow flecks on his hairless head and a press badge clipped to the vest of his black suit. “I’m Draper Jalathea, from Dragon Nebula News — would it be possible to get your thoughts on the sector’s workers’ rights crisis?”
“Yes, of course,” Zovaco said with his usual engaging timbre. Orion noticed that the s’zone seemed to be coming forward to shake hands with Zovaco. Zovaco offered him a slight bow, the correct s’zone custom of course, before the other man could fully extend his hand. “But I’m afraid I can’t keep the High Admirals waiting,” continued Zovaco. “Perhaps you could schedule a short interview with my campaign chief?”
Mervyn of Claddaghsplough nodded. “Yes, yes, workers’ rights in the Dragon Nebula.” The silver-pelted great ape stepped up and shook the s’zone’s hand emphatically, a custom common for Mervyn’s people. “That’s a cause near and dear to Zovaco’s soul, and a major part of our agenda when he wins a seat in Parliament next quarter…”
Mervyn stepped aside to speak with the reporter, and Zovaco approached the gleaming steps. Still at the politician’s heels, Orion glanced back at Aurelia and Kangor. “Spread out and mingle,” he told them hurriedly. “See what you see for threats. Then one of you come relieve me in an hour.”
They nodded and split off into the crowd, Aurelia smiling and smoothly inserting herself into a nearby conversation while Kangor stalked off like an angry sore thumb toward the overstuffed buffet tables along the far wall. As the six undersecretaries climbed the platinum-plated stairs and lined up a few steps behind their respective Admirals, Zovaco Ralli glanced back at Orion. “Shall we?”
“Let’s do it.” Orion glanced around the room one more time. As his eyes fell on Mervyn and the s’zone reporter moving off in conversation, he felt an itch flare in his subconscious. “I’ll hang back with the undersecretaries, but I’ll be close.”
Zovaco shaded his thin-lipped mouth with his hand. “Close enough?”
Orion chuckled. “I’m very quick.” But what was bothering him, what was the thought on the tip of his tongue?
Zovaco took the stage and the crowd applauded politely. The High Admirals arranged in a semicircle around the crystal-slab table stood and greeted him, and again a complicated exchange of bows and gestures took place. From what Orion could see, the Admirals looked just as extensively bio-modified as the rest of the party. One, tall and lanky with an equine face, had six mechanical arms grafted to his long torso. Another had mystskyn-like scales that shone white instead of green, and leathery white wings as wide as any freyan. Another had a supple moss-like pelt covering her body, and the smallest of the group seemed
to be nothing more than an encased brain mounted atop a mechanical spider. Orion speculated silently on the age of each as the High Admirals finally invited Zovaco to sit at the table with them.
Orion took a post with the other undersecretaries just beyond the light of the jeweled glowglobe that floated above the Admirals’ table. As servants appeared and set the table for the Fleet’s traditional tea ceremony, Orion dug at the itch in his subconscious. What had he seen, what had he heard, that had tripped his instinct for danger? He gazed out at the crowd on the ballroom floor and propelled his mind into Blooming Flower, the discipline the old durok said would help him see “the invisible strings connecting everything.”
His mind split into two functioning but separate pieces. Half scanned relentlessly for danger, for any sign of a threat coming Zovaco’s way. The other half poured over every detail he had absorbed since walking into the ballroom. Some 20 minutes later when Zovaco had just finished the first round of the 13-stage tea-drinking ceremony, the letters finally snapped into place in Orion’s mind.
As he exited Blooming Flower, the pieces of his mind ground back together painfully. He pulled his brass-plated datacube out of a pocket in his red tunic. “Priority message to Kangor Kash,” Orion said, palming the device and speaking in a low voice. “Come to the stage and relieve me immediately.”
A few minutes later, the barrel-chested vycart lumbered up the steps to the bright dais. No one seemed surprised as the undersecretaries had already cleared him for security, but Kangor skirted the outside edge of the circle of light on the stage nevertheless. “What is it?” Kangor asked when he reached Orion.
“The reporter from… what the hell’s wrong with you?” he asked when he saw the anger smoldering in Kangor’s fire-orange eyes.
“These perverse creatures,” Kangor snarled, his voice low. “They treat me like I’m some curiosity — the last of the mighty vycart, the death rattle of a great beast.” He shook his head. “They talk about me like I cannot hear them.”
