“No, he will not. But I do not think the knights will be beating you up anymore. They will likely think of more subtle ways to make your life miserable in the future. They risked too much by sparring with you. The captain could have easily found out, and they’re not above punishment.”
“How long can this go on?” I groaned. I wanted to move on with my assignment aboard the ship, and I didn’t want to be watching my back every moment while a member of the crew. It seemed like this game Leith and Olav were playing could go on endlessly.
“It will take a very long time for them to see you as anything more than a traitor. They have been burned in the past, and they have never forgotten it.” The doctor smiled at me. “Do not worry, I think you are loyal to the Stalwart and her crew.”
Right now, she looked like an angel with a halo encircling her head. Dark brown hair framed her delicate facial features, and my attention was drawn to her plump lips. They were curled into a calming smile, and I imagined what they would taste like. The white coat she wore over her dress shone like a heavenly light, and I guessed the healing wards were somehow playing tricks on my mind.
“I need to replenish the ship’s medical supplies while on Ecoma. Would you like to accompany me, Squire Lyons?” she asked me.
I still had a little trouble breathing, and the smirk the doctor gave me made me forget how to form words, so I nodded. I didn’t know whether it was the aftermath of the regeneration chamber, but her expression seemed to imply something a little more than accompanying her on a supply mission.
But that was stupid. The doctor was at least ten years older than me. She wouldn’t be interested any sort of romance.
But I was really interested in her.
“What is it?” Dr. Lenkov asked. “You were laughing.”
“Oh . . . Nothing. Just happy to be alive.” I hadn’t realized I’d laughed aloud, so I tried not to say or do anything awkward again.
“I’m glad, too.” The beautiful woman touched my hand lightly, and I wasn’t sure whether it was the caring caress a doctor gave a patient or something a little more.
She fluttered out of the room, leaving behind a floral scent that set my heart aflame.
When I returned to the squire quarters, my equipment was cleaned and inside my trunk. None of them were repaired, so I figured I’d use the repair kits I’d bought from Elle on the items that wouldn’t need an enchanter’s attention. When I finished retracing the rune on each item, I sent Mom 5,000 KPs and watched my balance update.
Current Kingdom Balance: 3,395
Total Kingdom Points Earned: 15,500
Then I recorded a video message for Mom. She would be surprised at the amount of currency I transferred to her, so I lied about our last mission. I told her that it was mostly boring humanitarian aid work which paid very well. I ended the recording and scheduled the attachment for when we passed our next rune beacon. Lying to my mom didn’t feel bad because she would only become distraught if she knew how eventful my assignment had been thus far.
By the time I’d finished assigning the message to Mom’s address coordinates, I was tired and hungry. My exhaustion won in the end, and I passed out on my bed.
For the next week, while Matthias jumped us from one rune beacon to the next, I tried to keep out of the way of Olav and Leith. Thankfully, that wasn’t too hard because I either spent long hours repairing my gear or sparring inside the battle room with the other squires.
The ease with which the knights had dispensed with us increased the tempo of our training. Even the twins exchanged mugs of beer for swords and shields. After they turned in their loot from the previous mission for new upgrades, we tested them in practice matches.
Casey finished her time in the regeneration chamber, and she repaired the rest of my gear from the damage it had taken during the bout with the knights. My helmet’s visor caused her some difficulty, but she managed to find a similar model from the armory and transferred the retractable screen. The enchantress then inscribed a Speed rune onto my new boots for a small fee. I tried to give her more currency, but she refused it.
Elle and I shared drinks a few times in the galley, and I was slowly getting to know her. Underneath her prim and proper veneer, there was a playful and flirtatious woman. That side of her personality hardly came out, and it was only after a few drinks.
The night before we arrived on Ecoma, the crew celebrated in the galley. Beer flowed, music blared, and laughter burst from every mouth. Olav and Leith weren’t glaring at me anymore, but they refused to acknowledge my existence. I figured they still despised me, and my loss in the battle room had only made them think less of me.
I was glad to still be part of the crew, so I didn’t care about their opinion.
Although Captain Cross had said the mission was mostly R&R, I felt like trouble tended to follow the Stalwart and her crew. So I wasn’t sure what to expect on Ecoma when I went to bed that night, merry from the beer and laughter.
The next morning, I donned my formal squire attire comprised of a blue coat, shirt, and trousers. My hangover wasn’t very severe, so I figured I was finally getting used to the incredible amount of alcohol the crew members seemed to drink.
The other squires changed into their formal uniforms and anchored themselves in the stations inside our quarters. I took position beside Neville and secured myself with the belts.
After Richard activated a small view screen beside the bathroom door, we watched the Stalwart’s thrusters propel our starship across the blackness of space toward the gas giant.
The Caledonian database’s entry on Ecoma was sparse, but I learned that their civilization had managed to flourish on a planet uninhabitable to regular humans. A planetary body with deadly electrical storms would make terraforming nearly impossible, so I wondered the extent of the peculiarities to the empath’s biological structure and how they managed to survive on a gas giant.
Living on Dobuni my whole life, I’d rarely seen humans who lived outside the Triumvirate Kingdoms. A combination of fear and excitement stirred my stomach as I watched the Stalwart descend into the planet’s atmosphere.
Chapter 4
The view screen inside the squires’ quarters showed purple and orange hued gas clouds swirling around the Stalwart after the planet’s atmosphere engulfed our ship. Lightning streaked from one side of the screen to the next, and I hoped our rickety starship would survive a strike if we were unlucky enough to catch one. Even though I’d seen it withstand an attack from dozens of pirate vessels and a Cachalot warship’s vast array of weapons, I still couldn’t dismiss my fear. I could face powerful enemies in battle, but an atmospheric entry sapped all of my courage.
My past reared its head whenever I was inside a ship headed planetside. Dad had died during a planetary descent, so I much preferred deployment portals. I remembered little of him, but Mom always said he was one of the greatest knights. Whether or not that was true didn’t matter because he’d cared and protected my mom and me until his dying breath. His missions were all off-the-books, so I couldn’t trace any of his RTF history except for his first assignment as well as his time and place of death: my third birthday, and an unregistered planet.
I shuddered as I thought about suffering the same fate as Dad. I imagined a series of lightning bolts striking the Stalwart’s hull, and then the starship falling through the planet’s atmospheres before crashing into its rocky core.
“Don’t worry,” Neville said from beside me. “The command team know what they’re doing. The shielders will keep the storms from damaging the hull.” He must have noticed me tensing up, and his words calmed my nerves a little.
Awe melted away my fear when a giant creature appeared on the view screen. Transparent fins glided its hulking abdomen through the storms. The Stalwart moved toward the monstrous creature, and when we got closer, I realized it wasn’t entirely organic. It reminded me of Matthias since most of its organic body parts seemed to have been replaced with artificial ones, but its
husk was that of a once living creature.
Our starship looked like a gnat approaching a giant whale. One of the creature’s many eye sockets flickered open, and the Stalwart moved into its skull via an airlock tunnel. I guessed the eyes served as docking stations. The area outside our ship vanished, in its place was Captain Cross standing in the Stalwart’s bridge.
“We’ve arrived on the Den Ark,” he said. “Remember you’re representing Queen Catrina on this planet, so be respectful.”
The squires and I unclipped ourselves from the anchoring stations and made our way to the hangar. The knights were waiting inside, and I approached Moses.
“You ready to see some crazy shit, Nick?” he asked me.
“Yes, sir!”
“Let’s hope we don’t have any trouble like the last mission, eh?”
“I’m not keeping any more secrets,” I said.
“I know.” He nodded at me kindly, and for some inexplicable reason of his own, I knew he trusted me.
Led by Captain Cross and Commander Reynolds, the crew exited the starship. I immediately shivered from the frigid temperatures and pulled my blue squire coat closed around my chest. I wasn’t wearing my Runetech armor, so it was only simple woven fabric keeping me from freezing entirely.
“Holy shit,” Nathan said with an exhale. He craned his neck to gaze up at the vast docking station, and I did the same.
The chamber was at least fifty meters high, and catwalks comprised of a mixture of bone and some sort of pinkish substance crisscrossed above us. I’d seen dozens of eye sockets earlier, and they’d looked tiny, which meant this creature was bigger than any ship in the RTF’s fleet. Maybe even bigger than Bratton Fortress.
“Is this thing alive?” Richard asked, and he gestured behind us. “It looks like it’s breathing.” The bulkheads were covered in a pink membrane, and they retracted and expanded like they were inhaling and exhaling.
I was too awed by this Ark creature to answer the squire. None of the knights seemed concerned by the strangeness of the place, and I figured they’d been here before.
Drones buzzed above us like insects on a mission, and their sensors scanned each crew member with a neon light. All the machines bore specks of rust and scuff marks that suggested they were old and in need of a mechanic’s attention. They seemed to be the only artificial objects inside this living chamber, and I guessed they were remnants of a trade deal with another planet.
“What do you think the Ecomese will look like?” Neville asked. “They’re evolved humans, so they might be completely different to us.”
“Please don’t let them be ugly.” Nathan stared upward and held his hands together in a mock prayer.
A shiver crept down my back as I thought about meeting the Ecomese. If they were anything like the strange vessel housing them, they would be unusual and unnerving.
Captain Cross chuckled dryly at the squire’s remark. “Prime Minister Treyin will greet us shortly,” he stated with a puff of frosty air.
After a few minutes shivering and breathing on my hands to stop them from freezing, three figures descended from a catwalk to meet us. Sheer white gowns draped over their slight frames, and I could easily tell the one in the center was a female and the two escorting her were males.
Dull grey skin pulled against angular facial features while three narrow incisions I guessed served as gills ran down their cheeks. I could see blue blood pumping through the veins beneath their skin, and every so often, a light in their bloodstream would spark for half a second before going out. The trio barely looked human, but there was elegance to their forms.
The two males stopped about five meters away from us and hit the floor with their diamond-tipped staves. The female continued walking, and she stopped in front of the captain to raise a hand and bow her head. Her silver hair was finely braided along her scalp, and her eyes were tiny slits below an elongated forehead. She was incredibly beautiful in an otherworldly way, and I was frozen as she opened her blue-lipped mouth to speak.
“Greetings, men and women of the Royal Trident Forces. I am Prime Minister Treyin of the Den Ark. Welcome to Ecoma, and to our beloved Ark.”
“It’s been some time, Treyin!” Captain Cross marched to the woman and embraced her. The men at her side stiffened, and a placating hand from the minister caused them to stand at ease and return their staves to rest on the floor.
“You forget I’m not the same person you met all those years ago,” she said to the captain. “You must remember propriety.”
“Of course,” he said. “I told my crew the same. But it’s been so long since I’ve seen you. Are you well?”
“Very well,” the woman said with a regal nod. “Although I haven’t heard from you in at least two decades. Strangely, you don’t appear to have aged a day.”
The captain smiled. “I owe that to low-stress levels. Commander Reynolds has been keeping my crew in working order for me.”
Prime Minister Treyin peered over the captain’s shoulder, and her narrow eyes seemed to grow three times larger. “Vanessa!”
For the first time, I saw Commander Reynolds grin broadly, and there might have even been a little wetness in her eyes.
“Treyin,” she said. “Are you enjoying your return to your homeland?”
“Very much so,” the minister said. “My days of adventuring have come to a close. Now, I mostly sit in the throne room and watch the storms.”
“So there’s peace among the Arks?” Captain Cross asked.
“A relative peace, yes. They don’t trouble us as long as we remain within our agreed boundaries.”
Commander Reynolds smirked. “So you’re bored?”
“Not at all! There is plenty here to keep me occupied.” The knights approached the prime minister, and they exchanged a few words. They were all acquainted with her, except for Moses.
“It is a pleasure to meet you, Treyin,” the shield knight said after the other knights had spoken with the woman. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“Only good things I hope?” the empath asked.
Moses smirked. “Mostly.”
She gave him a playful grin in return, and then she addressed the rest of the crew. “Come, let me show you to your quarters.”
The minister and her armed attendants escorted us out of the docking station. Lumbering robots covered in a gleaming gold alloy carried shipping crates in their arms and transferred them through the twenty-meter wide organic passageways. They seemed to serve the same purpose as our servitors, and I wondered what level of intelligence they exhibited and how the Ecomese controlled them.
“What the hell do you think this place is?” Richard opened his arms and gestured at our surroundings. He seemed increasingly nervous the further we ventured into the creature, and I couldn’t blame him. If I wasn’t so curious, I might have turned tail and ran back inside the Stalwart.
“She is an Ark,” one of the men who escorted the prime minister said. He smiled proudly as he walked beside us. “She was once a being known as a behemoth. After certain technological modifications, she now serves as our home and protectress against the planet’s electrical storms. We need the energy to survive, but too much and we become volatile.”
“Like a bomb?” Nathan asked as he shot a wary glance at the male.
“Exactly,” he replied, and then he fixed his slitted eyes at me. “Every evolved human on the Ark could become explosive should we absorb too much storm energy.” I watched the grey skin on his temples flicker to an auburn hue. “I sense this makes you nervous.”
“A semi-organic creature filled with explosive creatures?” I said. “Nah, I’m totally fine with that.”
The Ecomese male smiled at me, and I saw cascading rows of needle-pointed teeth. I might not have believed his explanation if I wasn’t walking beside a man who seemed more alien than human. A race of humans who absorbed energy to the point of self-combustion wasn’t much stranger than a civilization living inside an organic creature large
r than most Leviathan class carriers.
Nathan suddenly whirled around, and I had to grab him before he wandered in the opposite direction. “Where are you going?” I asked.
“Back to the ship. I’d rather be in there than with a whole bunch of human bombs.”
“There is no need to flee. We have measures to prevent such mishaps,” the man said before he set his eyes on me again. “I sense fear in the others, but there is no fear in you. Only anxiousness.”
“I’m nervous because I know technology can fail. Yet I’m not afraid because I also know this Ark wouldn’t be standing if every Ecomese person was seconds away from detonating. I think you came up with a way to control your biology so you could build a society.”
And what a society it was. I hardly believed these people could live among each other when they all read emotions like status readouts. Captain Cross had said only the social elites owned the implants capable of masking emotions, so I wondered whether this man also possessed one.
“You are intelligent,” the male said. “It is true, we now control our volatile states. We spend a few weeks in the upper regions of the ark every season, and that is enough for us to absorb the requisite energy required to sustain our lives but not become volatile.”
Now I understood how these humans had evolved on a gas giant with intense electrical storms. They used the extreme weather for sustenance.
“How do you know Caledonian?” I asked. “Do all of you learn the language?”
“Prime Minister Treyin has a great respect for your kingdom. She taught me and a few others the language of your people, and we taught others in turn,” he answered. “There are many among the Den Ark who speak Caledonian.”
Led by Treyin and her attendants, the crew walked through the breathing passageways, passing other Ecomese males and females. There weren’t any children, so I guessed this was what served for the military section of the Ark.
We all entered a teardrop-shaped elevator and ascended hundreds of meters to arrive at a deck with a similar organic structure. This deck’s warm temperature didn’t make me feel like my blood would freeze. The glistening sweat streaming down the Ecomese man’s angular face made me think his people didn’t appreciate the heat as much as I did.
Space Knight Book 2 Page 5
