Bringing Stella Home

by Joe Vasicek

  “So what’s the problem?” Stella asked. “At least he respects me now.” Not to mention that he no longer treats me like some kind of sex toy.

  “That’s just it, honey,” said Tamu. “You’re spaceborn, a virgin, and fluent in Hameji. There’s no way he can keep you as a concubine—if anything, you’re wife material now.”

  Stella frowned. “Wife material?”

  “Uh-huh. Wife material.”

  “But—but isn’t Qasar already married?”

  “To four ruthless women, dear, any one of whom can make your life a living hell.”

  At that moment, the bead curtain parted and Engus stepped through. Tamu instantly fell silent.

  “Mistress Sholpan,” said Engus, staring directly at Stella with his beady eyes. “You have summons. Level two, Lady Borta’s chambers. I show you when done.”

  He stepped briskly out of the room, making the beads clatter in his wake.

  “Oh no,” Tamu muttered. “You’re in trouble, dear. Big trouble.”

  “Trouble?” Stella asked, her voice stammering. “How?”

  “Borta is Qasar’s head wife, dearest. She’s the worst of all of them.”

  Chapter 10

  “You ever hear how the Hameji came to power?”

  James glanced up from his bowl of unappealing gray synthmeal at Ilya, sitting across the table from him. “Are you talking to me?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” said Ilya. “I’m talking to you.”

  The sounds of smacking lips, scraping spoons, and two or three amiable conversations filled the officer’s mess hall. A spartanly decorated room barely the size of the bridge, it felt cramped with four of the ship’s nine officers seated around the metal table bolted to the floor.

  “No,” James said. “Why?”

  “It’s an interesting story. Want to hear it?”

  James glanced uneasily at the other people in the room. A few of them looked up at him, but most seemed content to leave him and Ilya to themselves. When his eyes met Anya’s, however, she smiled and fluttered her eyelashes at him. James blushed.

  “It’s not much of a story,” said Vaclav. Sitting aloof from the others at the end of the table, he wore a habitually bored expression on his face.

  Ilya shrugged. “Hey, it’s up to you. If you don’t want to hear it—”

  “No,” said James, leaning over his bowl. “Tell me.”

  Ilya grinned and folded his hands on the table. To his left, Anya also leaned forward and smiled.

  “You know all about the Hameji conquests so far, right?” said Ilya. “From the Outworlds beyond the Good Hope Nebula to Belarius, Tajjur, and now—”

  “Yes,” said James. “I know.”

  A foot nudged his from under the table. James’s eyes flashed to Anya, the only female officer in the room. It’s all right, she mouthed at him with her gorgeous lips. James’s heart skipped a beat.

  “What most people don’t know about is the flood of refugees that came to Belarius before it fell,” Ilya continued. “Have you heard of them?”

  “No,” James admitted. “I haven’t.”

  “It was a few years ago, about half a year before the Hameji smashed Belarius III. The refugees were all spacefarers from the outer reaches—you know, the kind that wander the stars and never settle down. Shipbound tribes not unlike the Hameji.”

  James nodded, even though he knew almost nothing about the Outer Reaches. He didn’t want the others to think he was an idiot, especially Anya.

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Maria, one of the sergeants below Roman. “We’ve heard the story. You ran across some old reports in the defense network back when we did that blockade run.”

  “That’s right,” said Ilya. “You see, I wondered what it was that made the spacefarers seek refuge in settled space. For a nomadic people, that’s a pretty big shift, don’t you think?”

  “Well, yeah,” said James.

  “It was the Hameji,” muttered Vaclav. “They wreaked havoc on the Outer Reaches long before they came here.”

  “But that’s just the thing,” said Ilya. “How did the Hameji do it? How did they drive almost a million starfarers out of a swath of space more than a hundred parsecs across?”

  James looked to Vaclav, but the man shrugged and returned to his synthmeal without an answer.

  “Remember,” said Ilya, “these spacefarers were tough. They squatted on the edges of known space, mining uncharted resources beyond the laws of any government. What’s more, they’re constantly at war with each other—one of their gunboats could take on three Imperial cruisers and come out spaceworthy. Compared to them, we’re just a bunch of softies.”

  “Your point being?” Maria asked, an annoyed scowl on her face.

  “Put it together yourself,” said Ilya, shooting her an irritated look. “The Hameji were badass way before they came after us.”

  “So what about these spacefaring refugees?” James asked, a little too hastily.

  “I’ll tell you,” said Ilya, turning back to him. “They were the survivors from the first Hameji wars—the ones who refused to join the original Hameji tribes. And you know what? They should have won—they had the Hameji outnumbered and outgunned.”

  James shifted uneasily in his seat. “How do you know this?”

  “The refugee reports were pretty interesting, so I hacked into their main flagship and downloaded the ship’s log.”

  “Isn’t that supposed to be impossible?” said James. Ship logs were hardwired to the main astrogation computer, with no other interface except the terminals on the bridge.

  Ilya snickered. “To you, maybe. But I have my ways.”

  He put an arm around Anya’s waist. To James’s dismay, she scooted closer to him and started stroking his back.

  “The records of the battle were fascinating,” said Ilya, squeezing Anya’s waist. “The Hameji made a surprise attack from nearly five light-years out.”

  “Yeah,” said James. “So?”

  “Five light-years, kid. Their ships were scattered across almost thirty million klicks of space, yet they coordinated the attack with perfect precision. Sound familiar?”

  “Yeah,” James lied.

  “So you can tell me what happened next.”

  James fidgeted with his spoon and nervously tapped his foot. Ben would know, he thought to himself.

  “They…regrouped?”

  Ilya let out a sneering laugh. “Wrong, kid. Dead wrong.”

  “Don’t be so hard on him,” said Anya, shrugging off Ilya’s arm. “He’s just a kid.”

  James’s heart fell. I am not ‘just a kid.’

  “The Hameji never regroup,” said Vaclav. “They wear down their opponents’ defenses and cripple them with a perfectly synchronized fusillade of jumped nukes.”

  “Exactly,” said Ilya. “Which makes you wonder, how can they possibly coordinate an attack like that when their ships are scattered across so much space? It’s as if they have some form of instantaneous communication beyond our current level of technology.”

  Maria sighed and shook her head, while Vaclav returned to his food. James, however, found himself becoming more and more interested.

  “How could they do that?” he asked.

  “You want to know?”

  “Yeah,” he said, trying not to sound too eager. “How?”

  Ilya shot Anya a glance, then turned to James and narrowed his eyes. “You ever heard of the Tenguri system?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “It’s the location of the Hameji homeworld. They—”

  “I thought you said they live on their ships. How can they have a homeworld?”

  “They’ve still got to get their resources from somewhere, kid,” Ilya snapped at him. “Besides, Tenguri isn’t much of a system. There’s only one planet: a hot Jupiter with an orbital period of only three days.”

  “So how is that the Hameji homeworld?”

  “They don’t live there, you moron. They worship there.”

>   James frowned. “Worship?”

  “Yeah, worship. Don’t you know your history? Thousands of years ago, when Earth was still a fresh memory, people believed that the stars and planets were the homes of the gods and goddesses. That’s how Gaia Nova got its name—the new mother goddess, or New Earth. Surely you know that.”

  James bit his lip and said nothing. He didn’t like how Ilya was talking down to him—as if he were just a boy.

  “The Hameji still hold to those old ways,” Ilya continued, “but they’ve completely rebuilt the pantheon. Instead of worshiping Gaia Nova as the central goddess, they worship a god named ‘Tenguri.’ They believe he’s the supreme creator of the universe. So, like any good pagans would, they named their home star after him.”

  “What do we call that star?”

  Ilya shrugged. “I don’t think we have a name—just a catalog number. The name doesn’t really matter, though. What matters is what the records said about a Hameji grand council.”

  “A grand council?”

  “Yeah—a council of all the starfaring fleets and tribes, just before the Hameji launched their campaign. Those who refused the invitation were the first on the chopping block when the fighting started. Those who did attend were…transformed, shall we say.”

  James frowned. “Transformed?”

  “Don’t listen to him,” said Vaclav. “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

  Ilya shrugged. “I’m just telling him what the log said—nothing more, nothing less.”

  James couldn’t ignore his curiosity. “What did it say?”

  “It said that this particular tribe’s chief came back from the council terribly sick, with a glow in his eyes that didn’t seem entirely human. He died a little while after, prompting his sons to declare war against the Hameji.”

  “Wait—that’s it?”

  Ilya grinned. “That’s all that was in the log. Though if you ask me, I think there’s a connection between that council and the Hameji’s faster-than-light communication abilities. Maybe they found some way to link their commanders’ minds together, so they can talk to each other instantaneously. Maybe they’re all one giant hive-mind.”

  Maria sighed and shook her head. “That’s impossible,” she said. “Ilya, you’re just putting crazy ideas into the kid’s head. You’ve got nothing to go off of but your own damn speculation.”

  “Well,” said Ilya, shrugging off her accusations with little apparent concern, “maybe I am wrong. But if I am, answer me this: how are the Hameji able to conduct such perfectly coordinated attacks?”

  No one had an answer. Anya ran her fingers through Ilya’s hair, eying him with a sultry look on her face. James scowled.

  “Why should I believe you?” he asked.

  “Because you have to believe something,” said Ilya, his voice soft and deadly. “If you don’t, then you really will go crazy.”

  * * * * *

  Ben filed past the soldiers into the windowless room and formed a tight circle with the other prisoners around the edge of the walls. He couldn’t help but notice how different this place was from the rest of the obsolete mining facility. The walls were drab and gray, but not as rusted and corroded as the rest of the station. Perhaps this room was part of a new wing—or perhaps the soldiers had taken them to a different ship.

  Stella, he thought, more as a dumb reflex than anything else. Must find Stella. He shook his head and cast the thought out of his mind; it brought back too many memories of the prisoner ship. Too many memories of his powerlessness.

  I’m sorry, Stella, he thought to himself. I’m sorry I was too weak to save you.

  Once all the prisoners were sitting in a circle—all fifty or so of them—the soldiers left the room. They had barely left before half a dozen men in gas masks came in, carrying an antique, wooden table unlike anything Ben had seen.

  It was small, only about a meter tall, with a large, bulbous jar set in the bottom like a fuel tank, full of boiling water. A long hose, about as thick as two of his fingers, lay coiled like a snake on top. Both the table and the hose’s mouthpiece were inlaid with ornate gold and silver images. Ben stared, entranced, at what appeared to be dragons and monsters devouring planets and stars. Storms of fire circled around demon-like creatures with fangs protruding upwards from their lower jaws. The images were as frightening as they were exotic.

  The men carrying the table stopped at the center of the room and set it down. While they unwound the hose and adjusted some unseen knobs, a striking young man strode into the room. He was young and dark-skinned, with a sharp face and a razor thin beard that stretched from his sideburns to the point of his chin. His eyes were a thick hazel color, set deep in their sockets. He wore the crisp gray fatigues Ben had seen on the Hameji officers on the prisoner ship. Though the man was only of medium build, his body seemed to radiate power.

  Ben felt drawn to him at once.

  The young man stopped at the center of the room and systematically looked each of the prisoners in the eye. As he went down the line, Ben felt a thrill from the man’s penetrating gaze.

  “Men,” he said, addressing them, “I am Sergeant Voche of the Hameji Empath Corps. Hear me speak!”

  The man spoke the Gaian dialect with a thick, foreign accent. His “v”s and “s”s were long and sharp, like knives.

  “I understand how you feel,” Voche continued. “You feel weak, alone, and powerless. Some of you may even be wondering why you are still alive.”

  He paused. Ben’s heart started to beat faster.

  “But the truth,” said Voche, “is that your minds have been cleansed and your spirits purged. Purged of what? Purged of the filth and squalor in which you have unceasingly wallowed since birth. Purged of the shameful weakness of that diseased and bloated society that spawned you.”

  The masked men carefully fed a substance that looked like dead grass into the table, turning the boiling water a deep red. Ben caught the smell of something burning.

  “All your life, you have been weak,” Voche continued, his voice steadily rising. “All your life, you have been alone. Your planetborn society has kept you constantly at the breast, gorging you on the milk of its own fornication. You have never known the power that comes from unity—complete and total unity.”

  The men in gas masks walked the hose to the edge of the circle. They gave the mouthpiece to one of the prisoners across from James. He inhaled deeply and coughed hard, expelling white smoke that smelled like overripe fruit mixed with diesel.

  “But now, you have been purged of your weakness. Now, you are prepared to learn the true meaning of power—to be knit together in one body, perfectly united.”

  The men started making their way around the circle, passing the mouthpiece to each of the prisoners. As they moved down the line, the room slowly filled with a smoky white haze. Though the stench of the drug repulsed Ben at first, the taste was surprisingly pleasant. It had a peculiar relaxing effect on his muscles, even when smoked secondhand.

  “Breathe, my friends,” commanded Sergeant Voche. “Breathe the breath of Tenguri, and receive the power of the gods!”

  The mouthpiece soon arrived in Ben’s hands. It was made of gold and fashioned in the shape of a dragon’s snout. Ben stared at the ferocious eyes embedded at the base of the node, sharp, pointed teeth lining either side right to the smoking tip.

  He placed the golden dragon snout in his mouth and inhaled.

  The taste of the smoke exploded in his mouth, a hundred times stronger than before. He coughed and swooned, nearly blacking out. A tingling sensation began at the top of his head and swept over the entirety of his body. Colors and shapes filled his vision, and a thousand disjointed thoughts flooded his mind like chattering voices in a crowded hall. Soon, the mental noise blended together, and a kaleidoscope of sensory data overwhelmed him.

  All at once, he saw everything that was happening in the room—everything the others saw, everything the others felt. One hundred eyes and ears, fif
ty racing hearts, and fifty panicked minds. Pain, convulsions, and vomiting. A thousand indistinguishable thoughts bombarded his consciousness, as he simultaneously writhed on the floor in a seizure, drowned in his own vomit, screamed in horror, and passed through the terrible emptiness of death.

  “Do not be afraid!” Voche shouted, his voice rising above the torrent of awareness that gripped them all. “You have been freed from your bodily prison to become one with the spirits that surround you. Receive the breath of the Lord Creator, and let it purify you.”

  The boy who had once been Ben stared with the eyes of the Many at the faces of those vessels which had once been closed to him. Voche’s speech echoed through their ears like the voice of a god, calling them to a single point of focus within a sea of chaos. Their eyes turned on him, staring from every angle.

  “You are Brothers of the Red Dragon,” he shouted. “I am your commander, your brother, your father. I will teach you the true meaning of unity and will lead you to strength and victory!”

  The godlike words felt like the tender caress of a mother to her infant. Swimming in volatile shades of consciousness, the boy without a name stared into Voche’s eyes and rejoiced with the Many at their new-found father.

  * * * * *

  “So you are the one they call ‘Sholpan.’”

  The remark was more of a stated observation than a question. The middle-aged woman who spoke stood with her arms crossed over her chest. From her long, green dress and the obstinate scowl, Stella recognized her at once as the woman she’d bumped into in the hallway on her first day.

  “Yes,” said Stella. “And you are—”

  “Lady Borta,” the woman snapped.

  “Ah.”

  Borta’s private apartment stretched almost twenty meters from end to end—an unthinkably huge room for an interstellar spaceship. Compared to the concubines’ quarters, it felt like a cathedral. Glass mosaics of green vines and rich fruit lined the walls and floorboards, while to the left, a small fountain, surrounded by a cascading hydroponic garden, filled the room with the soft sound of trickling water. That must be why the air smells so clean in here, Stella realized. Other furnishings included a computer terminal, a series of food processors, and several couches. A normal door—not a bead curtain—separated the front room from the private quarters.