by Chris Fox
He reached into his drawer again and this time removed a vape pen, the cheaper cousin to the elaborate one Bortel had used. He eyed it longingly, but didn’t draw from it.
“About three weeks later The Dragon came sailing out of that storm.” Bokken leaned back in his chair, and looked up at Miri, smiling as he found her still attending to the tale. “They were dripping with magic, though I don’t think all of ‘em made it. They had a new fellow too, kind I haven’t seen before. A guy with lightning hair. Crazy stuff. Anyway, they left the system and went to Zoe’s home world I think. I could be wrong. Or they could have been lying.”
“Is there anything else?” Miri purred.
“No, that’s pretty much it.” Bokken’s grin threatened to consume his face. “Hey you—”
“We need to go.” Miri rose smoothly to her feet, and left the room.
“Thanks for the intel.” I patted my pocket gratefully and followed her out.
Interlude III
Siwit very much hated his new post. He hated that he had been abandoned by a shipfather he’d trusted. He hated that Utred acted as if they were friends, but still treated him as a lackey. He hated that Necrotis only spoke to him with scorn, never praise or greeting.
These people lacked honor.
At least shipfather had escaped. He’d no doubt rally a resistance. Why hadn’t he allowed Siwit to be a part of it? What was the value of leaving him behind? Over and over he’d wracked his insufficient intellect, but simply couldn’t fathom the answer.
“Are you ruminating again?” Utred’s pleasant voice preceded the awful clanking of the grisly harness as he crossed the bridge to Siwit’s terminal. “Have you given further consideration to my request?”
Siwit straightened and faced his adversary. He would stand proud, even if the necromancer could overpower his will like an asteroid in the gale. “I have not. You wish a guide to a holy place, and I cannot offer it without first consulting with the fleet. If the fleet agrees, then you may approach. Then and only then may I part with the information. Rip it from my mind if you can, but I will not part with it willingly. If I do so I will never be trusted again.”
“Utred,” Necrotis snapped from Uldris’s seat. She kicked a beer can away from the base with a noise of disgust. “If your pet invites oblivion even one more time I will grant it. Keep him silent, or take him from my sight. If he cannot gather the information you require, then be rid of him. You already have one new pet. Focus on that and stop picking up castoffs.”
“Of course, mother.” Utred raised a hand and sketched a trio of spirit sigils.
Magic overwhelmed Siwit, and he staggered jerkily toward the doorway leading off the bridge. Utred followed him, and marched Siwit like a puppet down to the brig. Siwit was forced to tap the power button for the bars himself, then stepped into his own cell.
Utred tapped the button again, and released the binding as the bars crackled into place. “You are safest here. I cannot have you antagonizing mother. You are a gift for Jerek. The information I seek is not for me, nor for my mother. I want to help someone else reach Sanctuary. If you will tell me what dangers he will face, or what he will need to know in order to safely reach the holy city, then you will be doing all you can to vex my mother, I assure you.”
Siwit considered that, but didn’t answer despite having control of his jaw once more. The torturer and the savior was a well known interrogation technique.
“All right then.” Utred gave a sigh. “You’ll have to languish in there for a while. Hopefully the boredom will convince you to be more cooperative. If not, well, after you starve we’ll begin again.”
Siwit hid his smile as the necromancer marched away. Starvation. Ha. He could keep himself alive with spiritual energy for years. Decades. Longer maybe. Somehow he doubted Necrotis would allow that much time to pass before killing him for his defiance.
As soon as Utred was gone, Siwit moved to the wall and summoned Shard. The soul manifested as a dagger, sharp enough to slice through the hull itself. Siwit drew the dagger down in a line, scraping a deep furrow in the wall. It made little noise, thankfully, though he doubted Utred would come investigate anyway. They clearly thought him a child, easily managed.
They would soon learn otherwise.
Scrape. Scrape. Scrape. Minutes passed. The furrow deepened. And finally he broke through the ship’s skin and into a nerve cluster. Siwit might be deficient in many areas, but necrotech was not one of them. He excelled at building and modifying gadgets. He just didn’t lop off parts of his own body to make them worth using.
Siwit jammed a finger into the nerve cluster, and willed a bit of spirit through his hand. He instantly connected to the data stream running through the ship, little screams accompanying each pulse. Siwit experienced what the ship experienced. He became the ship. He could feel her hull and her great age. He could feel Necrotis high above, perched on the souldrive like a spider in its web.
An ignorant spider.
Siwit might not know the vessel as well as shipfather, but he’d labored here for a decade as a deck hand, and he knew how to avoid notice. Siwit watched the skies around the vessel, the billowing clouds of the outer storm weaker than those closer to the center of the maelstrom itself.
They were moving deeper into the storm, toward the first magnetic eddy. She might survive the ship being obliterated, but Siwit would not. He needed to find a way to get them past the first eddy, but not compromise his honor. He could not lead them to Sanctuary without permission. He would not.
Instead he focused on the bridge, on the whispers that the spirits passed back. Ghostly echoes of the conversation trickled to his ears. It was Utred who spoke. “We’ve gathered a third of their fleet.”
“Leaving two-thirds,” Necrotis hissed back, her voice echoed by a dozen sighing ghosts. “And of those, easily half have gone over to the shipmother. They will fight us if I cannot find and break her. In the meantime I must focus on wooing the remaining captains. Would that your sister had remained. She is the most competent fire dreamer among us.”
“And also the least stable deity,” Utred countered. “She will rush into a war we do not want. I cannot believe you left her in that system. There will be nothing left when she is done, and you know she cannot beat the Confederacy by herself.”
“No, but she can wound them.” Necrotis’s voice grew even more vile, and it seemed to pain the spirits to carry her words. “I want them focused on her, and not on us. Your sister is too powerful now. If I do not sacrifice her, then she will turn on me. You won’t survive if that day comes.”
“I know.” Utred’s voice had gone contrite. “I can still grieve. And…if she survives…well, you’ll have more to fear than I will. She’ll stop at nothing to destroy you then.”
“Let her try-try-try,” the spirits sighed, weary of carrying the words. Siwit poured a bit more magic into maintaining the connection. “I possess the Maker’s Wrath.”
As if on cue the Epoch broke through the clouds. A titanic vessel lurked in the storm, almost invisible until they were upon it. He’d never seen anything so magnificent, but the Great Ship filled Siwit with dread. If she controlled this much power, then what chance did the shipmother have? The ship was larger than Sanctuary itself.
If every unseen fleet attacked at once they might be able to disable it, but he wouldn’t wager his soul. The shipmother had to know about this.
Siwit closed his eyes, and shackled the closest soul in the river he’d tapped into. He shaped it and molded it, and gave it purpose. He added a dash of power to keep it from fading to the spirit realm, and then released it.
The spirit screamed away, already seeking Uldris. The shipfather would know what Siwit had seen. Necrotis was trying to trigger a war so that they’d attack this place. When that happened this monster would end them all, and she’d inherit command of the unseen.
He could not let it happen.
For now his defiance was confined to silence and passing along wh
atever he discovered. Soon he’d apparently be shackled to one of Utred’s “pets”, which conjured all sorts of nasty images. He could only imagine what twisted monstrosity Utred had built.
Yet he would have no choice but to obey it, whatever Utred gave him to. At first anyway. The day for escape would come. And who knew? Perhaps he could turn this Jerek to their cause. If Utred had behaved anything like, well, himself, then odds were high that this Jerek didn’t like him either.
“And what now?” Utred demanded of his mother, the spirits still conveying the whispers.
“Now you take the honorbound lickspittle to the human’s station, and you have him lead your pet into the storm.” The scorn the spirits carried suggested she didn’t think much of his plan. “After you fail you will set aside this nonsense and get back to work. We have a war to win. The Confederacy will not be an easy victory.”
“You’re so confident it will be victory?” The spirits brought amusement. “They have the guidance of Inura, the Word of Xal, the Spellship, and a pantheon of motivated and cooperative gods.”
“All of that is true…for the moment. But what if I stripped it all awayyyyy….” The spirits’ voice elongated and Siwit released the spell. He withdrew his finger, and sat upon the exposed Wyrm rib along the wall. A fine trophy that.
The enemy of their enemy was their friend. If he could find a way to get word to the Confederacy, then perhaps they would aid the shipmother against Necrotis. Utred would take him away from this place, into the human station once more.
Siwit had been there recently, and knew it passingly well. He could escape if need be, and make it back into the storm. That would mean abandoning his vessel, and his shipfather’s, but what better choice lay before him?
Or he could clack the bones. He could take the chance that this Jerek held no love for Utred, and hope that he really could provide entry to Sanctuary. That seemed a fable. No one had ever made it inside.
But when he failed, Utred would turn on them both. That gave them common cause, and meant there was hope for escape, or to live long enough to learn the shape of Necrotis’s plans.
Finally, he understood why shipfather had placed him here. He could not run. He would not. He’d stay, and learn all he could, and if the opportunity arose to realize the fantasy of entry to the holy city…well, he’d be the very first inside.
He lay down to rest, but knew excitement would ward away sleep. He couldn’t wait to meet this Jerek.
6
I had plenty of time to study the dat drive Bokken had given us, and Miri stuck around for the duration, perched atop a neighboring table in the Remora’s mess. It was the first time I’d seen her genuinely interested, and not pursuing something because it was a job or it helped her survive. Passion looked good on her, which conjured Vee’s frowning face even though I hadn’t really done anything wrong.
“Look at this,” Miri murmured as she peered at the Quantum’s holodisplay. “There are magnetic eddies at different points, though it isn’t clear what causes them. The gravitational forces could tear a planet apart. There’s no way a vessel’s getting through that.”
I leaned back in my chair and yelled into the hallway. “Hey, Seket!”
A moment later I heard weights hitting mats, and then Seket’s sweaty, but still perfect, face poked around the corner. “Captain?”
“Take a look at these magnetic eddies.” I stood and indicated the area of the hologram that had concerned Miri. “You see these oscillations? If we time it perfectly we can skip our way through the storm, and ride the eddy. Instead of destroying us it will shield us. This is the flight log of someone who’s done it successfully. They called the pilot legendary.”
Seket’s shoulders squared, and his face became a kilo less serene as something like indignation fought to make an appearance. “Legendary for this broken age, perhaps. Let me see that.”
I loved that his professionalism made this personal. That boded well for our survival. Seket had been divinely sent from the past, and we still didn’t know why. Maybe for this. I also didn’t know enough about piloting to understand just how legendary this Daito was.
I knew how legendary Seket was, though. He’d saved my ass countless times already.
“Hey, Jerek?” Rava’s concerned face broke into the doorway, her hair tied into a tight ponytail and her jacket swapped for pajamas. “Briff isn’t waking up. Can you come take a look?”
“Are you serious?” Her expression said she was. I turned from Seket and Miri without a second thought, and sprinted out of the mess and up the corridor toward the crew quarters.
Rava ducked into her own room, not Briff’s, so I followed her. Briff lay curled in the corner next to her bed, discarded potato chips and empty energy drink canisters littering the floor around him and the holodisplay unit. Rava gingerly stepped over the mess and onto the bed.
I rushed over to Briff, and activated my sight. Briff’s newly acquired life magic shone like a star, but there was nothing else out of the ordinary. He’d wrapped his wings around himself protectively, and now resembled a Briff-sized egg.
“Could he be molting?” Rava whispered. I had no idea why.
“I doubt it.” I pressed a hand against his scales, which were warm to the touch. Not terribly concerning, but hotter than I’d like. The wings were usually cool. “He’s way too young to molt. You need to be at least a century old. Briff’s only sixty-five. I’ll missive Visala and see if she knows anything about this. She knows more about Wyrm physiology than anyone else we have access to.”
Rava nodded gratefully as I departed and headed up the hall to my own quarters. I slipped through the door, and once it had closed behind me moved to the holoscreen. I fed it a mote of fire, and waited as it requested a connection. Hopefully Visala’s curiosity got the better of her.
“My time is valuable.” The words came before the old woman’s frowning leathery face filled the display. “I do not accept missives from people who turn over power to those who utterly lack a moral compass.”
“But you just accepted my missive,” I pointed out. Damn. I wished I could have the words back.
“What do you want, Jerek?” Her eyes narrowed.
“We’re worried about Briff.” I glanced over my shoulder at the part of the ship where he lay. “I’d say he was molting, but he’s too young. He’s folded up his wings, and is wrapped up in the corner of Rava’s quarters.”
“He’s cavorting with your sister? I don’t know who will ruin who. Is the cocoon hot?” Visala raised a finger and picked at her teeth, then removed a piece of gristle which she promptly wolfed down.
“It’s a bit warm, but not hot, no. Not for a Wyrm.”
“How long has he been like that?” She licked her chops like a great cat, and yes, it was as unnerving as you’d expect.
“A few hours?” I wasn’t certain when it had started, but Rava would have come sooner if it had been much more than that.
“If he’s still in the cocoon tomorrow, then he’s molting. If he wakes before then, then he’s close to molting, but needs more magic to fuel the process. He will be hungry when he wakes. Do not be the closest food.”
The missive died. Guess we were done then.
I hadn’t quite made it back to my feet when frantic knocking came at my door. I’d been about to leave anyway, and made my way over and pushed it open to find Miri waiting, her expression concerned.
“A battleship just broke the mists.” She hurried back toward the mess, and I followed.
Seket watched a live broadcast on the Quantum, which showed the station, and a smaller, but not too much smaller, battleship emerging from the storm. The hull had been rusted beyond recognition, but the cannons underslung along the prow were no less lethal for it.
The vessel slowed as it approached, and stopped at a reasonable distance. I assumed that Utred was aboard somewhere, and that we weren’t about to be blown out of the sky. That would be anticlimactic, and also a terribly bad way to die.
“Yes, Captain.” Seket shot to his feet and sprinted for the bridge. He left a trail of sweat in his wake and all over my chair, which he’d taken when I left. Weak.
“I don’t have any heavy gear.” Miri drew her spellpistol, and offered a defenseless shrug and a smile. “I have magic though. If they come for us I’m well suited to take down a large number of unliving. I may not like Inura, but I’m not an idiot. I took covenant before we left. You know he offered a physical union to seal it?” She leaned in closer. “I said no.”
I closed my eyes and inhaled a long, slow breath. A lot of problems were piling up, and options were narrowing. Miri’s technique was flawless, but her timing was terrible.
“Print some salt grenades, please.” I stepped back from her and offered a grim smile. “We’ve got work to do.”
The Quantum beeped behind me. I turned and willed it to play, and it connected to Administrator Bokken. He wore a sickly smile that said he did not want to be placing the comm. “I’ve been contacted by our visitors. They have requested you fly out to meet them, as soon as possible. Someone named Utred is waiting for you to dock. He said to bring warm clothes, and enough food for a long trip. He also said if you run for the storm he’ll, ah, blow up the station and sift through the corpses until he finds something that matters to you.”
