“Huh?”
“Point us at the transit point, and kindly prepare for rather substantial acceleration.”
She’d forgotten Toren was even back there. But she complied, angling the nose of the Profit and Luck towards the aether transit point visible just past the Imperium vessels. Her ship responded sluggishly.
“Ok, we’re—”
Her words were interrupted by a massive roar and she was pressed backwards into the leather of her seat as they shot forward. The entire ship was shaking with what sounded like one, long, sustained explosion.
The enemy corvettes were a blur as they passed by below, the Profit and Luck moving too fast for their gunners to even track. Arla fought with the yoke to keep them on course, and a glance out the starboard porthole showed her that the forces of the acceleration were bending what was left of the aetherwings backwards.
The brass-ringed transit point came up at her alarmingly fast. To her sides she saw a few desultory shells from Imperium ships fly past, but as she got closer to the transit they stopped completely. Even the Imperium wouldn’t risk destroying a transit point just to stop a single tradeship.
She leaned hard on the yoke to set them on the right approach to the point, almost clipping an aetherwing against one brass edge in the progress. Another split second and they were through.
The ship was cold as they limped into orbit around Serratt Hold, and not just because of Arla’s frosty mood, either. Toren had burned up practically all of the Profit and Luck’s trill oil with his makeshift rocket.
He’d poured it into the garbage lock, at the rear of the craft, before lighting it and opening the lock. With a spare rubber hose he’d emptied the tank into the lock, pumping it smoothly for a sustained burn and giving them the speed necessary to escape the Fifteenth Fleet.
That his presence had made it necessary to escape the Fifteenth Fleet in the first place was a matter of some contention with Arla.
“So you say you’re a naturalist.”
“Yes.”
“So the Imperium government dispatched an entire aetherfleet for a single naturalist.”
“It does seem that way, yes.”
“I’m still not clear on the ‘why’ of that.” Her arms were crossed, as much in anger as to keep warm. They’d burned everything they had to burn, extra clothes, papers, and some of the wood cabinets inside the ship that her father had carved, in the first few days on the aetherlane. But it was almost a week to Serratt Hold, and they’d finally had to resort to wearing aether diving suits without the helmets to keep from freezing to death. Even then Arla’s teeth chattered constantly. The Carth, used to such conditions on his home world, simply slowed down his circulation and went into a light hibernation.
Arla and Toren had been over this same ground half a dozen times already during the flight. Each time he’d cagily avoided an outright answer, or plead ignorance, or simply refused to answer — her threats, anger, and cajoling notwithstanding.
This time was no different.
“It would seem we are in the same boat, then.”
Her teeth ground together. “Fine. Then I’m under no obligation to take you to New Aurelian. The contract Rahith signed was for one passenger, and your name’s not on the manifest.”
“If that is your wish I certainly won’t oppose you. We’ll pay for your repairs when we reach Serratt Hold, and then book transport with some other trader.”
His face made her want to punch him. The thick beard almost hid the calm line of his mouth, and his dark crimson eyes, a typical Hasani trait, betrayed no hint of anger or disappointment at her decision.
She could have forced it out of him at gun point, of course, or held him at bay with the Ellis while she searched the valise the Carth had lugged on board, but she couldn’t violate a man’s property or mind just to satisfy her own curiosity. He had already pledged to pay for the damage to her ship and several capitals more besides to make her whole for the violation of her contract terms. She had no right to expect more according to the Compact’s own guidelines.
The rest of the journey was spent in peevish silence.
As the bright beacons that represented the Serratt Hold aetherlane exit approached, Arla unscrewed the bulky gloves of the diving suit and gripped the maneuvering controls. Experienced aethership pilots could pull out of a ’lane at almost anyplace they wanted, deftly playing the forces of aether and gravity against each other to avoid being pulled apart by either as they made the transition. Her father could do it, but only when he had to. For most pilots, nineteen-year-old Arla included, the only option for leaving a ’lane was at designated transit points, where the aether current slowed enough to allow a safe transition back to regular aetherspace.
They’d passed hundreds of such points in the week of travel they’d spent on the ’lane, and seen other ships pulling in and out of them. Arla was aiming for a very specific point. One that, she hoped, would shield them from the wrath of the Imperium long enough to ditch her troublesome passengers, fix up the Profit and Luck, and be on her way to some fringe world to lay low for a while.
Once they transitioned safely out of the aetherlane and through the transit point it was only a short few hours to their destination.
Serratt Hold was, technically, alive.
It was one of the last of the great carkoni and it made the vast spinning wheel of Port Otero look like a child’s bicycle compared to its bulk. Ten battle cruisers as big as Authority’s Fist could fit, lined up end-to-end, inside the immense breathing chamber which was the home to most of Serratt Hold’s inhabitants. Aetherium deposits glittered all along the outside of the knobby, pocked carapace of the beast.
Hundreds of years ago creatures like this used to haunt the aetherlanes, swimming through the currents and preying on ship and crew alike with their powerful pincers and vicious teeth. They’d been hunted almost to extinction, or rendered mindless and tamed like Serratt Hold by determined parties of boarders and marines, who’d fought through the great monsters’ natural defenses; parasites as big as a man that mindlessly attacked any intruders, much like the white blood cells in Arla’s own blood attacked an invading virus. Every now and then, tales drifted from the galactic fringe of ships and convoys lost to dark, indescribable monsters, but here in the central worlds only lifeless husks, or half-dead zombies like Serratt Hold remained.
Serratt Hold had been a roving trading port for decades now, staffed by descendants of some of the first boarders to invade and lay claim to her. Arla’s father had brought her here several times over the last few years. It had become a haven of sorts for Compact traders as, though its captain swore nominal fealty to the Imperium, and a garrison of dragoons was stationed to keep the peace, neither the captain nor the dragoons were very vigorous in enforcing Imperium taxes and laws. It helped that the commander of the dragoons happened to be the captain’s nephew, and that a stream of anonymous gifts had persuaded even the most law-and-order of the rank-and-file dragoons to look the other way.
A low whistle sounded from the door behind Arla.
“I’ve read of beasts like this, and seen the woodcuttings, but I’ve never viewed one in person. The words and illustrations do not do it justice.”
Arla ignored the man as he floated into the bridge with her. Her hands were already losing feeling in the frigid air, and the cold only served to remind her of how much she despised him.
She hailed the carkoni and a flurry of heliograph signals from one of the lidless eyes of the great aetherbeast directed her to steer into the vast maw and gave her a docking berth number in the breathing chamber as well. She aimed the ship outwards, tracing a lazy arc to bring them head-on into the razor-lined mouth.
“Incredible,” Toren whispered.
As they passed the jawline of the creature and entered its gaping maw the scale of it became even more apparent. A virtual forest of pitted, ghost-white teeth, each twice as tall as a man, extended around them in all directions, growing steadily smaller as the
Profit and Luck followed the line of paraffin beacon orbs deeper inside. They passed other ships leaving the port, none of which Arla recognized. There was so much space inside the mouth that she hardly had to adjust course to avoid any of them, and she never had to shorten her damaged ’wings.
They also passed several discrete Fetler emplacements, rotating barrels protruding from blockhouses built out of hollowed-out teeth. Arla didn’t remember seeing quite so many the last time she was here. The Compact’s weakness and the Imperium’s negligence had contributed to a rise in pirate activity lately. There were even rumors that some of the bigger pirate fleets were actually privateers, secretly granted funding and letters of marque by the Imperium to target Compact traders and interests. It looked like the owners of the Hold weren’t taking any chances.
As they entered the throat, the beacon orbs became fewer and fewer. Replacing them was a soft, diffuse light that seemed to come from the walls of the massive, circular passage.
“Is that the Carkoni Radiance?”
“No, it’s the starglow of the gods. You’re dead and this is Hell.” The chattering of her teeth somewhat lessened the effectiveness of the sarcastic retort. Of course it was the tharn damned Carkoni Radiance. What else would it be?
The original men to board these monsters of the aetherlanes had been surprised to find that the interiors of the beasts were lit, sometimes brightly so. Many deep sea fish on watery planets exhibited the same type of luminescence and, of course, the mating glow of the Tal-Ruitha was well-known enough to be the subject of poetry. Some beings of science postulated that the light inside the aethermonsters was not for mating purposes, or even to attract prey, but had developed to aid the living parasites which fought off invaders, fixed breaches, and helped break down large food pieces for digestion.
Many even held that these parasites had once been shipwrecked traders, who had devolved over the centuries to mindless creatures that served the carkoni, as their symbiotic relationship grew. The parasites had been exterminated long ago on Serratt Hold, and the captain and other owners of the trading port now filled most of their roles. It was the subject of several jokes in the various pubs and taverns of Parnum’s Town.
After a turn to avoid the toxic digestive chamber, the Profit and Luck emerged at last from the passage and into the breathing chamber. The light coming off the walls was brighter here, and several large mirrors, strategically placed, amplified it and cast the little city below them into something approaching true daylight. The massive chamber stretched out for miles. Along most of its surface a veritable jungle of algae and other, less recognizable, plant life sprawled, their effluvia providing oxygen to the creature and atmosphere to the chamber.
Spread out along roughly a tenth of the bottom half of the chamber was a sizable trading city. Buildings of polished bone and still-living cartilage, shaped and carefully cultivated into spindly towers and airy warehouses, jutted upwards in the low gravity. Tethered aetherships floated at the ends of docking minarets, and clockwork harvesters trundled along the algae farms at the outskirts of Parnum’s Town.
Arla had requested, and been granted, a docking berth inside one of the cartilage hangars. In weighing the necessity to be discreet versus the desire to escape quickly, she thought the covered space of the hangar preferable to the open visibility of a docking minaret.
“Go wake your friend. As soon as we land I want you off my ship.”
“Of course.” And he was gone, floating through the hallway behind her.
As she lowered the aethership, retracting ’wing segments to let the low gravity of the monster pull them in, she angled for a wide landing pad of transplanted chitin. It was twice as wide as a tarryball pitch, and half again as long, and was surrounded on three sides by long hangars of smooth, off-white cartilage. She brought them down just outside the hangar bay marked ‘17’ in tradespeak numerals, and then, with one segment still extended, she glided the ship forward under the arching roof. A few careful turns of the crank and the Profit and Luck settled softly on the chitin floor.
Gravity had gradually resumed in the ship during the descent, but it was weaker here than on a proper planet, and she had to remind herself not to push off from her seat too quickly lest she sail into the bulkhead above her. Checking her Ellis was in its holster, she made her way gingerly to the rear of the ship.
She needn’t have worried. Inside the passenger cabin, both the Carth and the stowaway Hasani were gathering their things and making ready to depart. She watched them from the doorway for a moment before going to open the rear hatch, grunting as she spun the wheel to unlock it.
The hatch swung open with a clang, and warm, humid air rushed in. After dropping the wooden ramp she yelled behind her, “I want my payment and then I want you off my boat!”
The Carth shuffled down the ramp, carrying the heavy valise and still moving slowly after its recent hibernation. Toren followed him, and held out a leather package to Arla.
“I am terribly sorry, for what it’s worth.”
She scowled, but took the package and opened it.
“There’s a little extra in there, for your troubles.”
She had to hide her surprise; nearly four thousand capitals worth of gold in there, if it was real. A bite into a cube pulled at random confirmed it. She made herself choke back an involuntary ’thank you’ directed at the Hasani man’s retreating back.
As her pair of ex-passengers made their way out of the hangar a flash of silver caught her eye. Two berths down, reflecting the light from a new arrival, sat a curiously shaped, oblong aethership. An uneasy feeling bubbled up from the bottom of her stomach.
She hopped down the ramp, taking its whole length in two bounds with the low gravity, to get a better vantage point. The nose of the ship came into view and the sick feeling in her stomach intensified into full-blown alarm. On its nose was a shiny section, exactly the size of a Compact Affiliation Sigil.
Frantically she scanned the hangar, then the landing pad outside. She saw a small figure, darting along the edges of the pad, ducking in and out of hangar berths. As it came closer she could tell it was a Weeg, and it had a very familiar look.
She hop-ran to the door of the hangar. “Wait! Toren, Rahith, something’s wro—” but as she reached the landing pad, and the two fugitives turned back to the sound of her voice, she saw she was already too late.
Overhead hurtled three Imperium stingwhips, and even as she dropped to one knee and drew the Ellis from its holster a squadron of dark crimson-clad dragoons spilled around the sides of the hangar, their Morely repeating rifles held at-the-ready underneath black spiked helmets.
They moved with precision, surrounding Toren and Ry’th while a squad advanced on Arla, kneeling exposed in the hangar bay door. For a brief second she considered running, but the eight rifles pointed at her didn’t waver, and she’d never get past the hovering stingwhips in her already battered ship.
She lowered her revolver to the ground where it was retrieved by a sneering Imperium officer while two troopers wordlessly hoisted her to her feet and steered her towards Toren and Ry’th, the muzzle of a rifle digging painfully into her back. These dragoons were far too disciplined to be the local garrison, and she didn’t recognize the patches on their shoulders, stylized ruby-red human skulls, as belonging to any known unit in the Imperium navy.
As she was corralled in with Toren and Ry’th her fear gave way to anger.
“You thrice-damned zast-drinkers. I’m not even part of this!”
The officer of the dragoons answered her, “Yours is the ship that blasted out of Eutheri a week ago, or would you like to try explaining that Fetler damage in some other way, free-trader cur?”
How had they gotten here so fast? She spared a glance at the mysterious oblong aethership in the hangar behind her. The Weeg was nowhere to be seen.
One of the hovering stingwhips dipped and landed lightly on the chitin in front of them. Almost immediately its main hatch opened and a ramp w
as run out to the ground. Down the ramp came two dragoons, wearing the same curious skull patch as the others. They took up positions on either side as behind them emerged a tall, sinewy Hasani woman from the stingwhip’s depths. She moved down the ramp like a predatory felai, gracefully deliberate and visibly dangerous. Behind her marched two more dragoons.
The Hasani woman wore the impeccable dark crimson uniform of an Imperium Aether Admiral, and the red-gold star pinned to her breast marked her as a member of the Royal Family. Her auburn hair was done up in a severe bun. As she came closer, Arla started. She recognized the sharp lines of that grim face from lithographs and recruitment posters; this was no low-ranking cousin or third-rate family-by-marriage. Before them stood Tel Rani, Princess of the Imperium, and second in line to the throne.
The woman’s blood-red eyes passed over Arla with scarcely a pause, and settled on Toren.
A thin lipped smile crept over the woman’s face, and Toren spoke, his voice tight with anger.
“Hello, sister.”
Her smile widened.
“Hello, traitor.”
At least it was warm in here.
“My name’s not Toren.”
“So I gathered.”
He looked almost sheepish or, at least, as sheepish as one could look while strapped to the side of a corvette holding cell, floating in the zero gravity of aetherspace.
She let the silence hang before continuing, “I knew you were a big lout, I didn’t realize you were first in line to the throne of the whole tharn-damned Imperium big.”
“I’m sorry—”
“Do you have any idea what kind of suffering I’ve had to endure because of your government? Your father?” she bit out.
“Look, I know, that’s why—”
“No, you don’t know! You have no idea what it’s like to be persecuted and harassed for just wanting to trade freely, to live your life as you’ve always led it. You have no idea how it feels to be forced to take more and more dangerous jobs because Imperium pressure has scared planetary governments and commercial aggregates away from doing business with you. Until one day you’re forced to head up a Compact aetherium mining expedition into the fringes, and you never come back, and the last thing your daughter receives from you is an official condolence letter from a Compact representative.”
Defiant, She Advanced: Legends of Future Resistance Page 5
