by L. K. Rigel
He should have stayed neutral in the matter of Char Meadowlark. He should have dropped her off and returned straightaway to Vacation Station. That was the plan, even after she jumped on him when they broke atmosphere.
To be fair, he might have jumped on her too. A little bit. Still, he should have docked and dashed.
It was the hair that tripped him up. That crayon-black color had to come out of a bottle, but then Char’s kisses lacked the tell-tale aftertaste of cosmetic pharmaceuticals. Women who used that stuff tasted funny, no matter what Rani said.
Once he discovered that Char Meadowlark was chemical-free, he noticed she was kind of…well, nice. What was she doing with Mike? She said her sister was his fiancée, but Mike wasn’t engaged to anybody.
Jake was already in the Blue Marble unnoticed in the corner when Char walked through the door. Something animalistic and territorial had swept over him when Mike put his hands on her like she already belonged to him.
The clashing vibes had been obvious. Mike wanted Char, but she wasn’t picking up the signals. An intensely satisfying fact.
Movement, not too far off, caught Jake’s attention. Bare eyes alone, he could see two ships heading up from the planet. He suddenly understood why the fake ID.
He’d wondered what was so urgent Mike couldn’t wait for legitimate papers to get Char Meadowlark off planet. He was the shibbing governor. All he had to do was say jump.
But questions would have been asked.
Mike must have known those strikes were coming. If the Junque had been returning to the surface, would he have warned Jake and Rani not to go?
“Destination ETA: one minute, thirty seconds.” The audionav brought Jake back to the present, and he sent a link request to the V for docking data. At the same time, his personal com buzzed in his ear.
“Rani. I was just about to call.” The Junque turned to line up for docking. “I’m here.”
“Jake, stay away from the docking bay.”
“I see what you mean.”
The V was under attack. Not by DOGs. Too many incoming civilians were trying to land at once. Two personal shuttles had crashed into each other and were heading in a mash-up toward the VIP airlock. Another ship was out of control, spinning on its own axis and on course for an observation deck that jutted out from the main hull.
No sunflowers. No one intent on destruction. Just panicked pilots. Idiots. This was going to be tricky.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“In our favorite storage room behind the arcade,” Rani said, typically calm. Not much flustered that woman. Except Geraldo. “I’m with some people who need a ride.”
“Yeah? How many?” You take people on your ship, you’re responsible for them. Not a complication he wanted even in uninteresting times.
“They saved my life, Jake.”
“Shiba-dang-dib!” A transport flew over the Junque close enough to cause damage if it had any appendages. Jake killed the data link to the V and moved further out on the station’s perimeter.
“That wasn’t aimed at you,” he said into the com. “Things are happening here too. So. People who save our lives get rides, no problem. Can you get down to the auxiliary bay?”
“Precisely what I had in mind, boss. See you there.”
Jake smiled. He hadn’t flown, really flown, the Junque since they installed the data links. Programmed flight was less likely to kill you, but it was also far less fun. He considered it an impressive sign of self-discipline that he refrained from pulling a loop.
He swung the Junque down to the obscure hull door that Tyler had christened the auxiliary bay. It was really a garbage outlet. They’d used it a few years ago to transfer fifty cases of Lagavulin whisky onto the V and sidestep half a year’s worth of red tape. One of Mike’s favors.
“I’ve overridden the lock,” Rani said in his ear. “Let me know when you’ve sealed the tunnel. It’s noisy in here.”
He eased the ship sideways and shot the boarding tunnel out onto the V’s hull. The maneuver only worked because the outlet door was small enough to fit within the tunnel’s diameter. Once the vacuum seal took hold, he compressed the tunnel so only a few feet separated the Junque and the station. He opened the Junque’s door to fill the space with air.
“Okay, Rani. You can pop it.”
He unbuckled and launched himself from his seat then ran through the passenger cabin. In the cargo bay he dug a stunner out of the storage locker. If Rani’s life needed saving, things must be pretty serious.
At the tunnel the hull door opened with the grinding screech of metal on metal. Shouts came from the other side. “Wait! You stand back!” A young girl, by the sound of it. “The matriarch goes first.”
Jake yanked the door wider and a frail-looking older lady peeked around at him. She stopped when she saw his stunner.
“There’s no time to think about it, ma’am, but I’m the good guy.” He held out his free hand to help her through the tunnel.
Immediately behind the old lady, a not-so-spry child tumbled out of the door with two more on her heels. “One at a time!” the yeller inside cried, and an orderly line of little girls flowed past Jake into the Junque’s cargo bay.
“Rani?” Jake said into his com, just as her comparatively gigantic self stepped through the hull door.
Bringing up the rear was a child half Rani’s size with striking blood-red hair and silver blazes at the temples. She nudged Rani’s hip like one of Magda’s sheepdogs, then ran to join the matriarch.
Jake looked at Rani. “You want to explain to me how your life was saved by a pack of children?”
Before she could answer, a grotesquely fat man leaned against the door and peered into the tunnel. When he saw Rani, his eyes lit up and he started to come through. “You ain’t going nowhere, you shibbin’ mutant!” He raised a weapon.
Jake fired the stunner. The guy screamed and fell back as prickles of electricity swarmed up his arm and over his shoulder.
“Sure thing, boss.” Rani kicked the mutant hater’s foot through the opening and slammed the door shut with one hand. “After we get out of here.”
They ducked into the cargo bay. As Jake closed the Junque’s side door and retracted the tunnel, Rani headed toward the passenger cabin.
“The matriarch goes first!” said the yeller.
Rani turned and flared her eyes. The irises flashed a fire-like orange yellow color, and the girls screamed. The little red-haired tyrant jumped slightly and her eyes widened, but she held her ground and stared at Rani with defiance.
Jake chuckled. The first time Rani did that to him, he peed his pants. He was twelve years old and scared shitless. It took him ages to believe there was no harm in it.
“The matriarch can’t go first if she doesn’t know where to go.” Rani’s irises returned to their normal metallic red-brown.
“She meant no disrespect, Durga.” The old woman rested her hand on the girl’s shoulder. “I am happy to follow.”
While the new passengers connected their safety harnesses, Jake learned that Rani’s heroes were nine girls between eight and ten years old from a boarding school outside Mexico City. They settled into the passenger cabin as if they were on a field trip. Two immediately fell asleep. A few complained about being hungry.
“We were warned.” The matriarch grabbed Jake’s arm as he passed her on his way to the cockpit. “No one else would come with us. No one else believed.”
“She stole the shuttle and flew it herself,” Rani said. “The Chilean ambassador had stopped to collect her daughter, and the ship was pre-set for Vacation Station. They arrived before things went insane.”
“And the saving-your-life thing?”
“Our friend in the auxiliary bay saw me in the arcade and started screaming about mutants. As you saw, he had a weapon.”
“What about IHS?” The V’s security force was legendary. Troublemakers simply disappeared and were banned from the sky for life, no appeal.
“
As usual, too busy to defend a mutant. Durga stepped in front me and commanded him in the name of the goddess to lower his weapon. The other girls surrounded me like a shield. By then a crowd had gathered and he was shamed into standing down.”
The girl smiled at him as if she knew she deserved praise. “Can I ride in the cockpit with you?”
“You just saved my sister’s life,” he said. “Yes, you can ride in the cockpit.”
The little tyrant sat on her knees in Tyler’s chair, as enraptured by her first clear view of space as Jake had been by his. He had never planned to work in orbit. If he hadn’t been the Emperor’s bastard, he would have become an archeologist. Mythology and religion were his favorite subjects growing up.
But Magda was the Emperor’s favorite plaything; and when the ruler of the world gave his plaything a space ship, she gave it to her son. Studying old gods and heroes was nothing when you could punch through the haze and actually see the constellations that bore their names.
“In the old stories, Durga was a goddess with ten arms who rode tigers into battle.”
The satisfaction on her face was priceless.
Jake set the Junque for the Imperial station. “That’s interesting hair for such a young girl. Does your matriarch approve of ingesting enhancements?”
“I used to have brown hair,” she said. “But it changed when I talked to Asherah.”
“Asherah?” The name sounded vaguely familiar.
“The goddess of life and fertility.”
“Oh, that’s nice.” Shib, who were these people?
Durga knitted her eyebrows, apparently not pleased with his lack of piety. “She told me to save Rani.”
“That was brave of you.”
“No, it wasn’t. I knew I wouldn’t die. Asherah says I will live a hundred and fifty years.”
A bright flash went off below, momentarily obscuring the view. Another nuke. In China this time.
Durga stood on the chair and leaned over to the corner of the window, oblivious to the mushroom cloud. “There goes Vacation Station.”
Jake canceled the flight program and turned the Junque for a better view. The station was breached in several places where ships had collided against the hull. He scanned the bays for a place to pick up survivors.
Two transports with sunflower logos rammed the station side-by-side and blew up on impact. Another bright light flashed east of the China strike, this one in New Korea.
“Don’t be afraid.” Durga stood beside Jake’s chair and patted his hand.
Wonderful. He’d saved a band of religious nutjob little girls.
“Did you see that?” Rani stuck her head in from the passenger cabin.
“Which? The signs of nuclear Armageddon or the end of the V?”
Rani slid into Tyler’s chair and motioned for Durga to sit on her lap. Until now the girl had made a good show of bravery, but she seemed to welcome Rani’s comforting hug. She rested her head on Rani’s shoulder and let out a heavy sigh.
Poor kid, Jake thought. She’d done some heavy lifting today. She might be a nutjob, but her goddess delusion had saved her and her precious matriarch and the other girls. Saved for what though?
The V entered de-orbit, and flames consumed the structure as it plummeted through the atmosphere. Jake had to remind himself to breathe. He hated everything the V stood for, but he knew people who worked there.
The bulk of the station crashed somewhere in Guangdong Province, sending up so much ash and fire it was as if a monstrous volcano had erupted. In orbit an eerie void separated the few ships that hadn’t docked or crashed into the station. They drifted, still intact and alive with nothing to lock onto. A smaller shuttle pulled out of formation and hurried away.
“The panic setting in out there,” Jake said. “The I’s defenses are solid. We need to get back now.” He glanced down at the planet. Australia was coming up, but the cloud cover was too thick to see anything. At least, he hoped it was cloud cover.
“Go ahead and call her,” Rani said. “It’s worth the risk.”
“No, it’s not.”
Magda was still alive or she wasn’t. Knowing would change nothing. He couldn’t even be sure she was in New Melbourne. If there were more DOGs out there, he didn’t want them latching on to the Junque’s communications signal.
One more time, he set their course for the I.
He wondered how the others were doing in the passenger cabin, but not enough to go back there and find out. Shibbing shibad, a cargo of children. Well, they would be taken care of at the Imperial station. There were hundreds of kids living in the workers’ section.
Maybe there was a child psychiatrist on board.
“Why do you have this?” Durga traced the tattooed SJ on Rani’s cheek.
Rani squeezed the girl’s fingers and kissed them with maternal sweetness. She would make a good mother—not that she’d ever get a license. Even Mike couldn’t fix that.
“This is my mark,” Rani said. “My sign to the world where my commitment lies. With my service to the Space Junque, I am complete. I need nothing more.”
“I don’t know yet where my commitment lies.”
“That sounds serious from one so young.” Jake gave the girl his charming twinkly smile to no effect. She stared at him dubiously then turned back to Rani.
“Asherah will tell me. I have a mark too. Do you want to see?”
She pulled her shirt sleeve down to expose a black widow spider tattooed over her left shoulder and upper arm, complete with hourglass. “Asherah gave it to me when she changed my hair.”
“Now that makes me mad,” Jake said. “That’s just abuse.”
“It’s my totem,” Durga said. “It makes me happy.”
A broken-off piece of a ship passed close to the window, going the wrong way to have come from the V. The audionav reported debris in the line of trajectory and said, “Acquisition target unavailable.”
“That’s not good.” Jake sent the docking data request again manually.
“Shouldn’t we be in visual range?” Rani pulled Durga’s shirt back over the disturbing tattoo.
“Maybe it was a mistake to keep the com turned off.” Once again, Jake switched to manual pilot and took the Junque out of the programmed flight path. He sent the data link request manually, with the sinking awareness that no answer would be forthcoming.
In that moment, Jake understood what Rani had not yet grasped. The Imperial station was gone.
Marked
In a corridor that looked like every other corridor, Char heard a Ppod door slide shut behind her. She didn’t know how she got there or even where “there” was. She pulled out the compad stuffed in her flight pants and keyed in com center. A lovely green light blinked on the wall twenty feet away.
Images clung to her like a dream she couldn’t shake. Jake. The woman with blood-red hair and fairies on her shoulders. Worse than removing a holofilm headset. After a holo, reality snapped back pretty much instantly. This was no dream, no holofilm. Reality wasn’t waiting conveniently outside her head.
She had spoken with god.
A god. Goddess. She couldn’t prove it, but she believed it. That’s why it was called a delusion.
Shouldn’t she feel better? Comforted or some kind of crap like that? Asherah had given no comfort. The “revelation” was terrifying.
The end was shibbing nigh.
Soon you will meet your sister.
Sky was definitely dead then, and Char was about to be. Maybe she should be comforted knowing that the afterlife indeed existed. Heaven or hell, here I come.
A few more turns and she didn’t need the lights to find her way to the deserted com center. Mike had left a note: No luck. Gone to use secure com in orbit runner. Back soon.
How normal. A search for an emperor lost in a space battle. Nothing like what Char had to share. The gods are real, and one of them spoke to me.
No. No. No. This had to be some kind of narcosis. She ran a cross-annex systems
check, but it confirmed low ammonia and acetone levels. The oxygen mix throughout was optimal. Nothing to cause psychosis.
A piece of debris hit the ceiling and bounced off like a bird flying into a window. She remembered something the goddess had said. Commanded, to be more precise. Open your eyes to the world below.
The annex was dayside over North America, past the Sierras and close to the Mountain Zone. Not yet over the Garrick Sea. A few light clouds and a lot of smoke. Every urban center she could make out was burning.
Smoke. Asherah had whined about the tragic lack of holy fire in the material world.
Char searched the monitor table and desk drawers for candles, then the supply cabinet in the corner. No luck. She welled up with tears. The goddess would be so disappointed.
Cripes, what was happening to her? She was a scientist. She wasn’t going to start worshipping gods, cripes’ sake.
In the search for candles, she spotted the agronomist’s shades behind his entertainment screen. The sleek design was solid in her hand, slightly heavier than she was used to. ISS issue, of course, a phoenix logo engraved on the sides.
The shades molded automatically to fit. Colored lights sparkled in the air, and the word c-a-l-i-b-r-a-t-e-d flashed in front of her then disappeared. She had a clear line of sight, but when she moved the slider she lost her balance and fell against the table.
She readjusted the magnification level and lay down on her back on the floor to solve the balance problem. Much better. Looking up at the ceiling was starting to hurt her neck.
The shades’ auto-acquire feature grabbed onto a partial sunflower logo on a drifting piece of hull. Ack. Char moved her head to break the grab and tried again. Come on, come on. Find the Space Junque.
What was that Jake thing in the strawberries? Asherah had called it an Empani, one of Samael’s glories. Char figured that Samael was another god, but what did it mean? That thing had looked and felt exactly like Jake. In its arms she’d felt loved, cherished, but it was a lie. Maybe that Samael god was interfering with Asherah by playing with Char’s mind.
The goddess had commanded Char to share the revelation. Ha. Share the hallucination, more like.
