Games of Command

by Linnea Sinclair

  Love Mommy, he said just now. But when Kel-Paten had been in the cockpit with her, it was Loooove Mommy. She didn’t know if it meant anything; if she didn’t have such a natural ear for linguistics, she wouldn’t have noticed the difference in tones. It was probably nothing. Tank also had at least four different-sounding purrs.

  Other words were simply indecipherable: squeals and chirps and coos that sometimes found their way inside usually decipherable words. Blank-cooo-ket, Tank had said just before pouncing on Eden’s makeshift bed in the main cabin. Sass had scooped him up so that Reilly could take his rightful place. Reilly…

  Sass hesitated. He had been with Eden when she’d ordered her CMO off duty. But the last few times Sass glanced back in the cabin, she hadn’t seen the black furzel.

  “Tank, where’s Reilly?”

  Friend? Friend hunting. Run run jump. He stretched one hind leg. Tank protect.

  Hunting? Tank’s images in her mind were tinged in browns and greens. Did Eden awaken to let Reilly go outside at some point when Sass was occupied with a sensor program? She couldn’t have. A double chime sounded whenever the main hatch opened.

  She checked the security logs just to be sure. The last time the main hatch was accessed was when she’d gone out for an exterior inspection of the perimeter sensors, just after Serafino and the admiral left.

  If Eden had opened the main hatch—or even an emergency hatch—it would be on the log.

  It wasn’t.

  “Where’s Reilly hunting?” she asked Tank, and pointed out the viewport. “Outside the ship?” She hadn’t seen as much as a slitherskimp. She couldn’t image what the furzel would hunt out there.

  Run run jump! Tank answered. Friend hunt ugly smelly light. Here. Not here. Bad smelly. Safe here. Tank protect.

  Ugly smelly light? Sass tried to decipher the phrase she’d heard so often in the past few hours. Was there something in this planet’s light spectrum that furzels could see and humans couldn’t? Something dangerous, a form of radiation their sensors couldn’t detect? Eden had checked for all known parameters, but so much about Haven-1 seemed to border on the unknown.

  “Where is the ugly smelly light, Tank?” She picked him up and held him up to the viewport. “Out there? In the sky?”

  There. Not there. Here. Not here.

  “Where, Tank? Don’t talk. Show me. Think a picture, if you can.”

  Think picture?

  “When you look at the ugly light, what do you see?”

  Bright blue with green swirls flowed through her mind. Just color. It could be a blue ball or a blue box or a blue huntership from close up. Nothing recognizable. Damn.

  “So it’s blue. Can you take me to where you saw it?”

  No ask, please? Reilly not like. Danger to Mommy. Tank protect!

  “I understand, but this is important. Tell Reilly that. You have to show me the ugly light.”

  Danger to Mommy!

  “But you and Reilly protect me and Eden. You’re big furzels.”

  Tank rubbed his head thoughtfully against her arm. O-kay. Maybe. Tank protect. He wriggled in her grasp. She let him go. He jumped to the deck and gave himself a shake, then trotted toward the main cabin. She stripped the restricting regen unit off her shoulder and followed, tiptoeing past a sleeping Eden Fynn. Tank stopped at the engine-compartment hatchway and pawed it.

  Sass hit the release to open it. “Ugly light down there?” she whispered.

  There. Long time. Not there.

  Not direct radiation from the planet’s sun, then. She tucked the fidget under one arm and climbed awkwardly down the ladderway, her damaged shoulder protesting. “Where in here?” She put him on the floor.

  Plumy tail aloft, he trotted to the far-port bulkhead and a smaller maintenance accessway. There. Long time. On Big Ship first. Leave Big Ship. On here. Now small here. Big out there.

  A sick, cold feeling formed in the pit of Sass’s stomach. Big ship. That had to be the Vax. Something that was on the Vax had moved to the Galaxus. Something ugly and smelly and bad. Something the furzels hunted. Something the furzels protected them from.

  This was definitely not a problem with an unknown level of radiation.

  She pulled the datalyzer from her utility belt, then flicked on its hand-beam function and, squatting down, tabbed open the accessway cover. She played the light up and down the narrow duct and watched readings on the screen, looking for any kind of mechanical device. Something with a blue screen or light on it. Did this Faction that Serafino so feared have an agent on board the Kel’s prize huntership? Did that agent plant a tracking device, a bomb?

  No box, Mommy.

  Box? Mechanical device. Tank had seen the images in her mind.

  “Okay. No box. What am I looking for?”

  Yellow eyes glared at her. Ugly. Smelly. Light! If the fidget had added “you stupid human!” to his comment, Sass wouldn’t have been surprised.

  Okay. Ugly smelly light. She sniffed. Nothing smelled out of the ordinary, but then, furzels had a wider range of senses than she did. She took a deeper breath. Nothing.

  Ugly smelly light! Tank shoved past her and, before she could grab him, jumped through the small opening, directly into the narrow ducts that ran behind the bulkheading.

  “Tank, no!” Gods’ blessed rumps, it was going to be hell getting him out of there. When she did, he’d be filthy. And if there was something dangerous in there…“Tank, get back here now!” She angled the hand beam in his direction, caught a swish of his—now filthy—tail.

  He stretched his short, pudgy body up on his hind legs as if reaching for something. She brought the beam up as well.

  Then she saw it.

  She had no idea what it was, but she could see something vaguely oval, faintly glowing, pulsing blue-purple-black. It was about the size of Eden’s medicorder or smaller. It didn’t look like a device, but she didn’t discount that it could be. It registered as a complete unknown on her small datalyzer.

  Tank poked one paw toward it.

  “Tank, get away from that thing now!” She didn’t even try to disguise the note of fear in her voice. Her heart pounded.

  Tank protect. Safe.

  “You’re not safe. Get away!”

  Safe. Small Bad Thing. Fidg—furzel bigger. Blink stronger. Watch! He slapped at the light with his paw. The light skittered sideways, undulating, purple fading to black.

  Holy lubashit on a lemon. The damned thing was alive. Sass yanked her pistol from its holster, the datalyzer now in her left hand.

  Bad Thing not like Tank, not like Blink. There was a distinct note of pride in his voice.

  Blink? Another word she was probably misunderstanding. “Get back here now. Or no more cream. Ever.”

  Cream? Food, sweet!

  “Jump back up now!”

  Jump? No jump. Go Blink!

  Go blink?

  Tank disappeared. One second he was there, the next he wasn’t. Frantically, she played the hand beam back and forth in the duct but could find no trace of her fidget. The…thing on the outer bulkhead pulsed darkly but didn’t move. Then something butted her thigh.

  She glanced down and saw golden eyes and a smudgy, dusty, furry face.

  “Tank!” She hugged him hard against her.

  He made a soft ooof noise, then: Tank protect. One furzel hunts. One furzel protects.

  “This,” and she motioned with her pistol to the interior of the duct, “this blue-purple thing. This is ugly smelly light?”

  Very small Bad Thing. Ugly. Smelly.

  “And Reilly…hunts this? He’s down here?” She glanced around. In her surprise at finding the thing in the accessway and her fear for Tank’s safety, she’d forgotten about the older furzel. “Where’s Reilly?”

  Run run jump!

  Greens, browns assailed her. The smell of wet soil, the sound of leaves and branches cracking.

  Friend hunt Big Bad Thing. Very big. Very bad. Bad Thing hunts, kills. Furzels protect.


  It took only a moment this time for the scenario and sensations to come together in her mind. And when they did, she didn’t like what she’d figured out at all.

  She shoved herself to her feet and lunged for the nearest comm panel. “Eden! Get your ass out of bed. Reilly’s taken off after Kel-Paten and Serafino. And there’s some kind of nasty creature hunting them all.”

  Eden Fynn, CMO and Zingaran Healer, shelved her worries about her furzel and—per the captain’s orders—focused on analyzing the small glowing oval stuck to the outer bulkhead. Ugly smelly light. Bad Thing. She couldn’t judge if it was ugly or not, and it didn’t have an odor she or her bioscanner could detect. But it did emit light.

  As for bad—she was working on that right now. Empathically. Telepathically she couldn’t pick up anything without touching it, and there was no way Tasha would permit her to touch it, even if she could somehow manage to squeeze into the narrow duct. Just as well. Something she couldn’t define told her that touching Bad Thing—which is what she and Tasha agreed was the most useful name for it—wouldn’t be pleasant.

  But whether it would be lethal—fatal—she wasn’t sure. Yet.

  It was almost dead. That much she did sense, if her comprehension of life essence was valid for its species. That was also in agreement with what Sass could decipher from Tank. Reilly had hunted this smaller piece of Bad Thing and somehow neutralized it.

  And now Reilly was gone, run off into the forest on this strange planet.

  No, don’t think about that. Find out what this creature is. That’s the danger. Not this place. Besides, Sass was back in the cockpit contacting Kel-Paten and Serafino right now. They’d find Reilly. He’d be fine.

  She relaxed her mind once again and probed.

  Sensations trickled through her. Weakly, but there. It felt as if she watched a vid from a distance. But, no, wait. Not a vid. She recognized the man. Her ex-husband, his face, lips twisted in a sneer. He was younger, she was younger, a holo-catalog suspended before her. She remembered the dress she wanted to buy, a soft swirl of blues and golds. Beautiful.

  “Doubt they make it in a size big enough for you.”

  Her ex-husband’s voice. His harsh laugh.

  Her shame. His cruelty. She wanted to curl up in a ball and die….

  “Eden!”

  Sass, shaking her shoulders. Tank frantically pawing her leg.

  “Eden, snap out of it.”

  “Huh?”

  “That thing just got bigger.”

  It took a moment for her to shake off the feeling of unworthiness, of ugliness, the horrid memory…

  The purple oval glowed more brightly now. And it was slightly larger, plumper. If light could be said to be plump.

  “Gods.” Eden exhaled the word. She understood suddenly. “It was reading me. Feeding off my memory, my emotions.” No, not her memory exactly. But a much more intense version of a minor memory. Her ex-husband’s comment had only irritated her at the time; she’d grown used to them by then. But linked to Bad Thing, the memory was crushing. Horrible.

  And Bad Thing loved it.

  “It’s like a parasite, feeding on hatred. Fear,” she told Sass, letting her friend draw her to her feet. “If you can link to it, it grabs something you remember, makes it worse, until you want to die.” She stopped, the import of her words coming to the fore. “That means every empath, every telepath that it comes in contact with is at risk.”

  “Maybe not just empaths,” Sass offered. “What if that’s what happened on Degun’s Luck or those other ships before that? Officers and crew on a ship that shows no sign of attack or intruders, all dead from fear.”

  Eden stared at her, comprehension coming with crystal clarity. “We stopped at Lightridge. Degun’s Luck was berthed there. Maybe this thing killed the crew and then, still hungry, came on board the Vax. Tank told you it was on the Vax, right?” When Sass nodded, Eden continued: “And from there, for some reason, it went to our shuttle.”

  “We were headed for Panperra. Big station. Lots of people,” Sass suggested.

  “And it can split itself. Or there’s more than one.” Eden grabbed Sass’s arm. “Part could still be on Lightridge, on the Vax. People will die, and no one will know the reason!”

  “The furzels know. They hunt it. They trap it using something they call a Blink.”

  “Blink?”

  Sass nodded. “I pressed Tank for an explanation while you were down here running an analysis on it. He sent me thought pictures of a telepathic energy shield, like a force field. Furzels create it from this Blink space. Tank and Reilly encased that thing. That’s why it didn’t affect me when I was close to it. But you probed it. Tank felt that, dragged me down here to stop you.”

  Eden looked down at Tank, rubbing against her leg. “And Reilly?”

  Sass nodded. “He went after the admiral and Serafino because the rest of that thing,” she motioned to the glowing oval in the duct, “is out there, after them. Given what those two feel about each other, and given that Jace is a telepath, there’s a lot of hatred for it to feed on. And who knows what else if it gets to that outpost.”

  “You warned them—”

  “I tried. Pinged them twice.” Sass tugged at the strap of the rifle slung over her shoulder. It finally registered with Eden that the captain had donned her jacket and was dressed in full battle gear. “They’re not answering. Is your telepathy strong enough to reach Jace?”

  An icy hand closed around Eden’s heart. Jace? Jace!

  Silence.

  Eden shook her head. “No,” she said. Damn him.

  “Get your gear, Fynn.” Sass’s words were clipped, her expression grim. “Tank’s going to fix that Blink shield. Then we’ve got a long, hard jog ahead of us.”

  Go Blink!

  Sass watched in amazement and disbelief as her fidget disappeared and reappeared before her eyes. It was as if he’d jumped in and out of a hole in the engine-compartment bulkhead—except there wasn’t one. Now she knew how he’d gotten out of her cabin and into Eden’s to visit Reilly when the door was locked.

  Go Blink!

  With those few movements he repaired the small rip in the shield around Bad Thing, once again a darker shade of purple when Sass cautiously peered into the accessway. Dying. Eden had confirmed that much.

  She picked up the purring fidget, holding him close against her shoulder, then climbed up the ladderway to the main cabin and Eden, her thoughts on what might even now be threatening Lightridge and the Vaxxar. Threatening Kel-Paten.

  I can handle what’s out there, he’d told her.

  She had no doubt the Tin Soldier could. With his cybernetics and PsyServ’s emo-inhibitors, he was one six-foot-three emotionless son of a bitch. But he was more than the Tin Soldier. He was Branden. He had bypassed all those emo-inhibitor programs and loved her.

  If Bad Thing caught up with him when his emo-inhibitors were off-line, his loving her—or hating Serafino—could well get him killed.

  She pushed the fidget through the hatchway and then pulled herself up into the main cabin. Eden was sealing her backpack on top of the tangle of blankets that was her makeshift bed.

  “Ready?” she asked the CMO.

  “When we find him,” Eden said through thinned lips, “I don’t know what I’m going to do first: kiss him or kick his ass.”

  Sass didn’t know if Eden was referring to Serafino or Reilly. It didn’t matter. She understood the feeling only too well.

  She made one final check of the gear and spare power packs on her utility belt, then hoisted her own backpack over one shoulder. “Let’s go.”

  Run! Jump! Run!

  THE FOREST

  “Shit.” Jace Serafino stared through the binoculars at the ship sitting on the tarmac on the edge of the small outpost. An outpost that—based on all previous data—should still be a good hour’s hike from here. And a ship that—based on his personal experience—had no possible way of being there. He knew exactly how and when he’
d lost the Mystic Traveler to that slimy son of bitch Rej Andgarran. Almost eight years ago. Being ambushed and then trussed up like a kurii hen was far from the high point of his career. Having his ship stolen by Andgarran was even worse. And he’d never had a chance to steal it back, because Andgarran disappeared a few months later and hadn’t reappeared in U-Cee or Triad space since.

  But how in hell had it gotten here? The same way the Galaxus had?

  He lowered the binocs and studied the readout on his handheld again. “It’s real. Whatever it is.”

  “Having trouble recognizing your own ship?” Kel-Paten asked, his voice low. They were on the edge of a hillside, crouched down among thick bushes and haphazard stacks of felled trees. Trees that, Jace guessed, at one time populated the field now occupied by this unexpected landing site. At the moment, with the deepening shadows of late afternoon, they also provided excellent cover.

  “She’s not mine. I sold her years ago,” he lied.

  Kel-Paten’s silence irritated him. He wondered if the ’cybe knew the truth.

  “And it’s still not the Traveler.” Or was it?

  “Logically, I agree, it shouldn’t be the Mystic Traveler. But even if I didn’t recognize her configuration, there’s her name emblazoned on her port side.”

  “Dream about her nightly, do you?” Jace had held back from needling Kel-Paten to this point, but this was something he could no longer resist. It was one of the reasons he missed the Traveler so much. She was the one ship to take the infamous Tin Soldier down a peg. “Is she part of your sexual fantasies too?”

  Kel-Paten shot him a hard look. Jace answered with a raised eyebrow but let it stop there. They had larger problems than his desire to see Kel-Paten squirm. Problems like nonworking comm links that required Kel-Paten to order him to check in telepathically with Eden.

  Jace had no intention of taking orders from Kel-Paten and wasn’t about to open any kind of telepathic link to Eden Fynn. There was too much at risk. More so now that he stared at a ship that was but wasn’t his.