"Give me a moment," Abaddon said. He gestured to Lieutenant-Captain Shzzzkt. "Pause transmission." He waited until the screen had frozen. "Give me some good news. What do you have on that ship and commander?"
Shzzzkt tapped on his console with his hard, exoskeleton-clad finger and pulled up several images, all displayed around the room.
"Lieutenant-Colonel Derketo, received a silver star, absorbed into the Mer-Levi Confederation shortly after that, granted full citizenship and an honorable discharge based on permanent disability a few days later. She contested it, demanded she was still fit to serve, and took the matter to the Mer-Levi highest court. The court decision states here that, unlike in the Alliance, all Mer-Levi citizens, both Merfolk and Alliance, have no obligation to serve beyond 20 years and she had served at that point over 250. She left the Leviathan homeworld shortly thereafter and joined a group of smugglers."
"Smugglers?" Abaddon asked.
"Just small stuff," Shzzzkt said. "Mostly contraband run between the two empires. Several citations, no arrests."
"What about the Mi'kmaq?" Abaddon asked.
"She's been using it for the past 200 years as a merchant transport for minor water colonies out here in the uncharted territories, most of them Sata'anic defectors. She's an avowed separatist. Never forgave the Mer-Levi Confederation for thanking her service to the Alliance by immediately kicking her out of their military. She's one of around three dozen such pods of pure-blooded Merfolk still left in existence, though due to the inbreeding problem, their numbers have dwindled even more than yours have."
Shzzzkt tapped on his console again. His antennae tilted forward and then trembled. He displayed the image on the screen.
"Her only daughter was killed in battle against unknown pirates," Shzzzkt said more softly. "She has one grandson who she reared herself. His first wife left him because he was sterile, no offspring, currently unattached."
Abaddon nodded. Derketo's curiosity was beginning to make sense.
"Put her back on the screen."
The red-headed matriarch reappeared.
"What is your decision, General?"
"I shall escort my wife to meet with you myself," Abaddon said. "And when I get there, you will not attempt to disarm me in any way. I will bring with me a full contingent of guards, and if you double-cross me, the Jehoshaphat will blast your ship out of the sky."
"We lack foot space for any more than a couple of Terran guests," Derketo said. "You'd best advise them to come prepared to get wet."
Behind him, both his Logistics Officer and Lieutenant-Captain Shzzzkt audibly groaned. If there was one thing the insectoid species hated, it was getting wet. Not that it was a piece of cake to dry water out of your feathers!
The Merfolk leader ended the transmission. Abaddon tapped on his comms pin to summon his second-in-command.
"Major Pharzuphel," Abaddon called. "How is he?"
Pharzuphel's voice sounded enthusiastic, but weary.
"The surgery went well," Pharzuphel said. "Valac woke up and talked to me for almost twenty minutes, and for the first time he was able to wiggle his toes."
"Is he asleep now?" Abaddon asked.
"Yes," Pharzuphel said. Her voice sounded worried. "The doctor said not to expect him to awaken again for many hours."
"Good," Abaddon said. "Order one of the crewmen to sit with him. I need you on the bridge."
Two hours later, they rode a shuttle between the ships even though he had maneuvered the Jehoshaphat so close that his ATO had joked that perhaps he should just leap out the air hatch onto the Mi'kmaq? Sarvenaz clutched his hand. Travel in a space shuttle no longer terrified his wife, but his wrist would bear fingernail marks once she finally felt safe enough to let him go.
"They just want to meet you, mo ghrá," Abaddon reassured her. "To them, you are as much a creature of legend as they are to you."
Sarvenaz's beautiful, mahogany eyes met his.
"You say is woman who is boss of ship?" Sarvenaz said. "Like woman who used to be boss of you?"
"Yes," Abaddon said. "Their culture is matrilineal."
The shuttle bumped against the Phonecia.
"The airlock is sealed, Sir," Sergeant Raum informed them.
Abaddon helped his very pregnant wife heave her expanding midsection up out of her seat. Sergeant Raum and a contingent of airmen zipped up their wetsuits and prepared to storm the Merfolk vessel, but only if it was necessary.
The hatch opened. His men moved out, and from beyond the doorway he could hear the sound of his men hitting the water. Pulse rifles were designed to work in any environment, even under the water, but the high-pitched whistles of greeting which met his men were friendly, and within moments Sergeant Raum stepped back to inform him everything appeared to be in order.
The Mi'kmaq had a narrow walkway to load and unload goods, but the cargo area was flooded as were all chambers in an aquatic ship. Instead of electricity, most systems operated via biochemical processes. His men treaded water around a handsome, auburn-haired merman who Abaddon recognized from the images Lieutenant-Captain Shzzzkt had pulled up in his bio.
"You are Nirari?" Abaddon asked the man. "Son of Derketo?"
"I see you have done your homework, General," the merman grinned. Unlike his Alliance-reared mother, Nirari wore his emotions openly. He gaped at Sarvenaz, and then reared up out of the water onto his tail and bowed. "Right this way, baalat. My mother is very anxious to meet you in the flesh."
Nirari crashed back into the water and disappeared beneath the surface. A second merman gestured towards a narrow catwalk which crossed over the pool for those not gifted with fins or tails. It was too narrow to pass two at a time, so Abaddon went first, while Sergeant Raum took up the rear. The rest of his men had already taken to the water, and while they could swim, without sufficient headroom to spread their wings, the appendages were little more than obstacles.
As they moved, they passed tank after tank containing various kinds of sea life. It appeared Derketo and her pod still engaged in smuggling, only it was the transport of desirable species to be reseeded in various colonies.
Sarvenaz gaped when they got to a tank with a narwhale. Abaddon almost bumped into her when she stopped suddenly and pointed at the distant animal relative of Leviathans.
"Why that fish have horn?" Sarvenaz pointed at the tank.
"For protection, I guess," Abaddon said. His habitually stern expression softened at the sight of her eyes sparkling like a little girl. "I don't know all that much about them. Only that they're even closer to extinction than we are."
"They smart?" Sarvenaz asked. "Like fish-men?"
"No," Abaddon said. "They're just animals."
He glanced at their Merfolk escort.
"We rescued her from a Free Marid medical parts dealer," the merman said. "There's a huge black market for powdered narwhale horn. She is with child, just like you, baalat. Our matriarch has been searching for someplace safe to relocate her and her calf."
Sarvenaz took Abaddon's hand.
"Maybe she like come to Earth?" Sarvenaz whispered to him. "She look like sea-children. Ones you say like ancestors of sea-men? Maybe they get along?"
Her eyes sparkled. Having come from an island surrounded by the sea, this was Sarvenaz's way of hinting she would like the creature for a pet. When she was like this, curious like a child, it made his chest hurt … in a good way.
Abaddon lifted his wing to muffle his voice.
"I'll see what I can do." He snuck a kiss, and then rustled his grey feathers, pretending he had done no such thing.
They passed through more corridors of cargo-pools until they got to a large central room. Dozens of pure blooded Merfolk were in attendance, although a few of them bore hints of having, at some point in the past few centuries, crossed bloodlines with the Leviathans. Most Mer-Levi didn't care which species their children looked like, but separatists liked to look the way the Eternal Emperor had created them.
"General Ab
addon," Derteko said, her voice resounding through the chamber. "It is a privilege to finally meet your wife, Sarvenaz."
"I pleased to meet you too," Sarvenaz said in still somewhat halting Galactic Standard.
"We asked you to come here for this meeting, baalat," Derteko said, "because as you know, all hybrid species are at a crossroads. We have a decision to make about our continued evolution. Shall we go quietly into that dark night, for we no longer have enough genetic diversity to survive the way we are? Do we intermarry with Leviathans and lose the genetic features that make us Merfolk? Or do we take a chance and see if we can help your husband find your homeworld, in the hopes that the human root race will allow us to remain who we are?
"What you want from me?" Sarvenaz asked. Her expression was open, but wary. She was a gifted stateswoman. After all, she'd shut Lucifer up!
Derteko's green eyes crinkled up into the closest thing that Abaddon had seen to a smile. He could see where Nirari had inherited his charm.
"Tell us about your homeworld, baalat," Derteko said. "What are your oceans like? What are your people like? Is it true that you still have in existence on your world the aquatic mammal from which we and the Leviathans were all descended? What are they like? Are they as smart as you? Would your people like us? And if we help you, would you have a place on your homeworld for not just Angelics, but for all hybrids that choose to follow your husband?"
The Merfolk gathered around Sarvenaz like little children, eager to hear as she told them about her seafaring people, the warm waters which surrounded the island she used to call her home, and the tales their people had about the sea-children who would rescue shipwrecked sailors by nudging their head above the water and shoving them towards the shore.
At some point they coaxed Sarvenaz into the water, not difficult to do as she missed the warm waters of her home. The Merfolk played like children, not the hardened warriors the Eternal Emperor had bred them to be, but like the very sea-children of Earth.
The matriarch called her kin to order. Only the sound of water dripping off the ceiling and the occasional fin breaking the surface broke the silence.
"We shall help you," Derketo said. "But there is a price for that help."
"We have some credits," Abaddon said, "but not the full force of Hashem's treasury. We are, as you probably know by now, renegades."
Derketo's expression turned grim.
"Several months ago all trade in this sector suddenly dropped," Derketo said. "Usually the Free Marid run contraband through here, but first it increased, and then they were suddenly all ordered to go home. About six months ago, we came across a jury-rigged distress signal on a pre-sentient planet. We found there a shipload of Free Marid smugglers. They claimed they'd been put off there by the Light Emerging."
Abaddon leaned eagerly forward on the guardrail.
"Do you have the coordinates?" Abaddon asked.
"I shall share them with you," Derketo said. "But there is more. This sector has always been a hot spot for transdimensional alien abduction myths."
"I am aware of the stories," Abaddon said. "Mostly crackpots, every single one of them discredited."
"Perhaps you should not be so quick to dismiss what you do not understand," Derketo said. She held up her hand before Abaddon could contradict her. "I don't know if there are really creatures that can pass from one universe to another. All I know is that there have been some pretty strange things going on in this sector."
"What kind of things?" Abaddon asked.
"We were scheduled to deliver goods to a Free Marid base that was built into an asteroid," Derketo said. "When we got there, we found a memorial to the men who had been stationed there. The inhabitants were Free Marid, but the burial they'd been given was Alliance."
"Burial?" Abaddon asked.
Derketo gestured to a large, bulbous orb to her left. The insides of the globe glowed green, and then in the middle were images of a makeshift memorial and the words that had been hastily engraved into it by a laser cutter in Galactic Standard, the Sata'anic language, and the original Marid language as it had been before Shay'tan had annexed their group of homeworlds centuries ago.
'Here lie the worldly remains of eighteen men, ritualistically murdered by the Tokoloshe for reasons we have not yet fathomed. This asteroid is hereby declared a memorial for the dead.'
"It's the Marid which is most telling," Derketo said. "We researched it after we found the memorial as we were left with a large, undelivered cargo that somebody had paid for and would want. There are only a handful of men in the galaxy who would have known how to conjugate their adverbs properly in the high, temple language which Shay'tan suppressed and not the common low tongue still spoken by the Free Marid resistance."
"Brigadier-General Israfa," Abaddon guessed.
Derketo nodded.
"Are you willing to show me where this memorial is?" Abaddon asked.
"Yes," Derketo said. "But there's a catch."
Yes. A catch. There was always a catch when dealing with a private merchant. It was a reality he'd long ago come to accept.
"What is it?" Abaddon asked.
"Once we show you where the memorial is," Derketo said. "You will take us with you. There is nothing for us here anymore. The matriarchs of the pods have all taken a vote. We want to cast our lots with the humans."
"I will need to discuss this with the other ship's captains," Abaddon said. "And I want to know who is coming with us, if I can trust them, and whether or not they have any kind of criminal record which would make inclusion unwise."
Derketo laughed.
"We all have some kind of record. Just like you do, General. Not only has Shay'tan put a king's ransom upon your head, but now so has Parliament!"
It was Derketo's frankness, more than anything else, which made him decide to trust her. She was a tough old bird, just like him…
A squeal of delight brought his attention back to his wife, still swimming amongst the Merfolk. She was no longer awkward due to her expanding abdomen ripe with their daughter, but as agile as any mermaid who had grown up in the sea.
"Come now," Abaddon called to his wife. "It's time to go, mo ghrá."
With underwater clicks and audible high-pitched squeals that sounded like the giggles of little girls, the Merfolk who'd been swimming around Sarvenaz this entire time picked her up via her arms, her legs, her torso and her feet, and floated her back to the pool's edge.
~ * ~ * ~
Chapter 97
February: 3,389 BC
Earth: Pars Sea
Mikhail
“Squeee.grrrr.click.k.k.rrrr?”
“Eeeek.squeel.click.click.click,” a second voice returned.
Mikhail felt a sub-audible series of thrums, felt more in his body than with his ears. He felt a bump, and then a second bump as someone pressed against his wings and pushed his head above the surface. The water was warm and pleasant, and the sensation was one akin to floating weightlessly in a dream, a dream from whence his mind refused to wake.
“Wheeee,click.whirrrrr,” another voice spoke. The language seemed familiar, like the tune to a nursery rhyme, and yet he couldn’t quite understand the words.
Every now and again a squeak fell into place. Man. Hurt. Shore. Whoever they were, they spoke neither Galactic Standard nor Leviathan, but an older dialect, much simpler in its structure. More bodies pressed against his wings and legs. They took turns bumping him to the surface and cradling his head as they swam. He tried to get his eyes open, but he could not get his body to work.
He drifted back into the darkness. A tree stood above him, heavy with fruit, while above him whirled a star-lit sky. Nestled into the shelter of his wings, the black-eyed girl sang what it would be like when they grew old enough to perform the ceremony of Grá Síoraí. As she sang, his pain subsided until it felt as though he'd been beaten up, but not irrevocably harmed.
“Rumble.rumble.rumble.whirrrrrr.squeeee,” one of the rescuers said. There was only one w
ord in that sentence he understood, but he understood it clearly. Shallow.
Within his own body, he felt the sub-audible clicks that most aquatic mammals used to gauge the depth of water, a natural form of sonar. The clicks came faster. He could hear waves breaking against a shore.
“Click.click.click.whoammmmmmm." Wake up, friend.
He resisted opening his eyes. As soon as he woke up, the Other One always receded until all he could remember was the night they had sat beneath a tree, singing a song about a future which never came. A lump rose in his throat and made it hard to breathe. He had lost one mate, and now someone had taken the other.
“Grrrrrrr.click.grrrrr.grrrrr.squee.squee.squee!"
Within his dream the black-eyed girl no longer sang a song of love, but the song of a huntress ruthlessly pursuing a kill. Amhrán had always warned him she must never sing in anger, but he had never understood why until he had felt her death-wound.
"Amhrán!"
Mikhail sputtered as the hands which had kept his head above the water suddenly disappeared. There was nothing like inhaling a lungful of salt water to force someone awake! One of his wings struck a surface beneath his feet. He realized the water was shallow enough for him to stand.
The sun blinded him as he finally opened his eyes. All around him, the water teemed with bodies.
“Eeeeek! Eeksquee.eek!” his saviors cried out with happiness.
The sun was now high in the sky, perhaps mid-morning and not the moonlit sky of when he had flown after the Sata'anic gunship. A dark shape poked out of the water mere inches from his nose.
“Weeek,weeeek,weeek,click.click?”
His savior was neither Merfolk nor Mer-Levi, but a man-sized creature similar to a Leviathan, only smaller, with a grey, brown, and pink-speckled hide. Unlike the somewhat flattened nose of a Leviathan, this creature had an elongated jaw suitable for catching fish. While she did not possess the enlarged cranial bulge that housed the Leviathan's vast intellect, the creature which stared back at him had eyes which were still curious and intelligent.
Sword of the Gods: Agents of Ki (Sword of the Gods Saga) Page 96
