Asarlai Wars 1: Warrior Wench

by Marie Andreas

  She turned to Bathie as another thought hit her. “Can you have a crew scan the Fury and the three Flits as well? I seriously doubt anyone out there had time to tag us during that fight, but you never know. Their tech is beyond us. Oh and, Mac, go space your flight suit.”

  The squawk that answered was reassuringly normal. “What? Why? Do you know how long it takes to break one of those in just right? I took that thing everywhere!”

  “Don’t really care, flyboy,” Vas said. “That suit was out there, they could have bathed the entire area in trackers. Dump the suit.” She sighed. “You can have one of the Warrior Wench flight suits.” The ship had come with a limited number of extremely high-end flight suits. Vas had been holding them back so there wasn’t a knock down fight for them.

  Mac’s face went skeptical. “Really? I thought you weren’t letting anyone have those?”

  “Well, if you don’t think you deserve one.…” Vas shrugged.

  “No, no, no! I’ll take it.” He grinned. “Thanks, Captain.”

  “Get fitted once we’ve finished our hops. I have a feeling we won’t be staying on Home long.” Vas nodded to Gosta and Flarik. “Can I speak to the two of you in my ready room?”

  Both followed her in silently and took their seats. Vas took a breath to settle herself. The talk with Nariel had helped but the fact was, it was going to be a long time, if ever, before she got over Deven. This had to be done.

  “I need a new second-in-command. Normally I would wait a bit but we have to consider ourselves at war. Therefore, we can’t wait. You two are the most likely candidates, so I wanted to start with you.”

  Neither appeared comfortable with her words, but Flarik looked almost ill.

  “Captain, I respectfully have to decline. I would not be a good choice.”

  Vas kept her face neutral. She agreed completely. However, she also knew that with someone like Flarik, that admission had to come from her. This way she’d support whomever Vas chose.

  Gosta now looked completely ill. Unfortunately for him, he was the best choice.

  “Captain, I—”

  Vas came around to the front of the desk and held his gaze. “I know you don’t want this. No one wanted this situation to come up. Nevertheless, you’re the best choice. People listen to you, Gosta.”

  The two bobs in his neck wavered up and down a few times before he spoke. “But I can’t enforce things. People may listen to me, but they don’t…fear me.”

  Vas turned her look to Flarik, someone people did fear. She didn’t have to say anything.

  “Do not worry, Gosta. People do fear me.” She ruffled her head feathers and put her most predatory look on. “I will make it clear that not listening to you will make them answer to me. Between us, we can make a serviceable second-in-command.”

  Vas smiled. It turned out even better than she’d hoped. With Flarik backing him, Gosta would be able to take control should something happen to her.

  “Thank you, both of you.” Vas went back to her chair and checked her computer. The scans of the ship were still running. They had time to resolve a few more things. “Now we need to put things together and fast. Who in the hell is behind this?”

  Gosta relaxed. “I believe there is more than one group. With different yet somehow connected objectives.” He glanced at Flarik. “The Rillianians, the Graylian monks, and the gray ships. I believe they may be working together. But I’m not sure to what level. We have to assume the gray ships are from somewhere far outside the Commonwealth.”

  “Do we know what they are trying to accomplish? Where is the Commonwealth on this?” Vas turned to Flarik. “Did we find out who those ships were that entered Mnethe V space just as we left? Did we get anything from them?”

  Gosta bowed to Flarik to go first.

  “They belonged to the Welischian consulate. The ambassador has a small fleet under her flag. They are Commonwealth, but only stick to outer rim.”

  Vas swore. “Which puts them with the Graylians most likely.”

  “There’s more,” Flarik added. “They were reported destroyed two months ago in a mysterious accident. And at the same time, two of the larger Graylian monasteries were abandoned.”

  “Damn it. They could belong to anyone now, but my money is on those monks. Did they see us leave?”

  Gosta watched his screens again. “I don’t think so. Xsit tracked when we picked them up on our scanners. They shouldn’t have seen us unless they did a log search of the gate.”

  Which they could do if they were still Commonwealth. However, unless the entire system had gone bad, three ‘destroyed’ ships couldn’t use any known codes to search a gate. At least that was good news.

  “As for the Commonwealth itself, it’s unclear. The person you spoke to may have gone rogue and still had channel access. Or it could be deeper.” Gosta said. “But unless you want to go to the Commonwealth home worlds, we can’t get close enough to any of them to tell.”

  “No, we’ll stay away from that option. We’ll maintain blocking until I have reason to feel otherwise.” She looked at her two officers. Both were clearly exhausted. She’d had time to collapse. Whether they wanted to or not, they needed it as well.

  “The scan still has some time to run, and Mac and I can get ourselves to Home. I want the two of you to both go talk to Nariel.” She waved off both complaints before they could be launched. “No options. I did it. You two do it. Then to your quarters. Get some rest, meditate, whatever. I have a new challenge for you.”

  She flicked up the computer screen and turned it toward them. They’d gotten some hopefully useful data on their mysterious gray ship friends during the fight. “I need you both to analyze this and look for weaknesses. Also look at anything we gathered on their ground troops.” She shook her head. “I should have tried to bring a body back with us. We don’t even know what species they are. Deven,” her voice caught just a little, but it was getting better, “Deven scanned some data of them on the planet. It’s in the system too. Report back when you find something.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Two months later they were still no closer to finding solutions. The data from the gray ships proved nothing except they weren’t from this galaxy. A confirmation of what they already suspected, given the tech the ships had used.

  They’d made it to Home for repairs, and aside from a brief sighting of Marli’s ship on one of their hops, hadn’t run into anything dangerous or troublesome since then. Vas thought of trying to flag down Marli to tell her about Deven. However, the Scurrilous Monk seemed to be leaving the system very quickly and Vas didn’t want to get in her way.

  Whatever was going on within the Commonwealth was growing. Nothing official, but the channels for the outer rim planets indicated fewer contacts between the council center and the outer rim offices. It was as if the Commonwealth was closing in on itself, not caring what worlds on the rim were being lost in the process. If this was how the Commonwealth died, it died with a whimper, not a bang.

  The unprovoked attacks on small outer planets continued and Vas and her crew found themselves running more refugee rescue missions. The pay was next to nothing. Most often it was nothing. However, there weren’t any other real jobs in the outer rim, and Vas didn’t want to go further into the Commonwealth center to look for work. Thanks to Deven’s last job, they were going to be solvent for a long while.

  They’d broken the Graylian monks puzzle completely thanks to a bedridden and bored Hrrru. So far they’d recovered two more of the pieces of the Victorious Dead, which had been hauled back Home to be dug out of their trash coating and then stored. Flarik had allowed them to pull in a few more pieces to try and help build morale, but she still felt that leaving at least some out there would be best. The monks were obsessive and by taking out the first three pieces in their ritual training exercise, Vas and her crew had effectively shut down their training completely. She had no idea what they’d been training for, but given the recent events, she had to assume
that stopping it was a good thing.

  Vas had fallen into a routine: find out where the next piece of her ship was, see if any refugees needed help, and try not to think about Deven.

  It had been going fine until she had a very vivid dream of him and woke up almost screaming his name.

  “Damn you, get out of my head.” Vas’s people often carried on conversations with the dearly departed, it was one of the few traditions she’d kept when she’d fled the barren rock she’d grown up on. However, talking to his shade didn’t get the dream out of her head. It was far too passionate to leave quickly. “Bastard,” she said as she shoved the dream into a dark corner and got dressed to go to the command deck.

  They were en route to the fourth part of the ship, when another attack on a small moon colony prompted a detour. That many of these attacks occurred within the systems containing her ship pieces couldn’t be a coincidence. Why these gray ships were destroying harmless worlds was another unanswered question. So far the ships were avoiding any of the more heavily defended planets on the outer rim.

  Vas was just leaving her room when a klaxon sounded and an impact jolt slammed her into the wall and she tumbled to the ground. She picked herself up and ran to the lift. They were going through a small gate, rarely used. Had it exploded?

  The command deck was in chaos when she reached it. Gon was in the pilot’s chair, and while he had some flying skills he wasn’t nearly as good as Mac. The ship was surrounded by huge pieces of debris.

  “Where’s Mac?”

  “He’s off shift right now,” Gosta said as he rapidly made some adjustments on his console. Gon was fighting to keep up but another piece of debris hit their shields. It was smaller than the first but the impact was still clear on the screen.

  “No offense, Gon, but get Mac up here now!” Vas threw herself into her command chair and called up the specs. They’d managed to come out of the hypergate right into what used to be a small moon and the remains of a population ship. A quick scan indicated no intact ships were in the area.

  Mac must have been awakened by the first jolt. He was half-dressed as he ran onto the command deck. Gon gratefully cleared way and took over another console. Mac got them clear of the debris field.

  “So who were we supposed to pick up? Please tell me they weren’t on that moon. Or ship.” Vas scowled at the screen showing the shattered moon.

  “Refugees from Zario, attacked a few days ago.” Gosta paused as his sensors brought in more data. “They were probably not on the moon, neither it, nor the planet it was circling were suitable for life, but that ship was theirs.”

  Vas slammed her fist down on her console. The gray ships had never gone after refugees this aggressively. Not since Mnethe V.

  So why chase them down and attack them again?

  “Do we know anything about them? Zario’s a simple ag planet. Why would they want to slaughter them?”

  Gosta ignored her question but pointed at something on one of his screens. “I’m actually picking up life signs on that planet.” He glanced up. “It was abandoned a few centuries ago. Not enough water to support life.”

  “How many?” Maybe they had gotten off the population ship before it was destroyed.

  “Not many. No more than forty or so. We could easily fit them in a shuttle to get them up here. Just long enough to drop them off somewhere else.” He added the last defensively. He knew how Vas felt about strangers on her ship.

  She pondered the screen before her. A support ship from Home could be sent out, but she had no idea if the ships who did this would be back or not. This was something new for them. She needed to get the innocent victims of this oncoming storm safe. It was what Deven would have wanted. She let herself have a small smile at that thought. Deven would be proud of the work they’d done in the last two months. His credits from that last job had gone toward setting up another refugee planet to take the pressure off Home. Much to Grosslyn’s relief.

  “Do it. Contact them and tell them we’ll be down with a shuttle. I want you, Terel, Flarik, and Nariel there along with a support team. We’re going to scan these people carefully before they come onboard. Understood?”

  Gosta smiled then quickly dropped it. “Aye, Captain. We should be ready to go in half an hour.”

  The refugees were right where they were supposed to be, not that there would be many places to hide. The landscape was covered in rubble, rocks, and refuse, but nothing taller than a small child.

  The leader was a small older man of mixed heritage, appearing to be part Xithinal and part Silantian. An odd combination to say the least, but clearly harmless. Most of the people with him were even more so. Old people and young children, though no babies. Judging by their lack of belongings, they’d obviously been rushed off their home world quickly.

  “I am Bhotia. Thank you for helping us.” He was gracious in his greeting, but kept looking over his shoulder.

  Vas took his hand. “I am Captain Tor Dain. Might I ask what you’re looking for?” Her team spread out as they began interviewing and scanning the refugees.

  “Something here has been hunting us. Ten of our people have been attacked since we were forced to flee down here.”

  Vas pulled out her blaster and nodded for the rest of her team to arm themselves.

  “How long ago? Is it nearby? What kind of beast?”

  Bhotia shook his head, his neck folds old and mottled with age wobbled with the movement. “They were taken three days ago. I am not sure, but I believe it may be a diflin gaul.”

  Xenobiology wasn’t her field. “Terel, have you heard of a—”

  Vas’s question ended in a scream as out of nowhere a mass of weight, claws, and teeth slammed into her and tore open her left side. She swung around and got it off shortly, but the brute was huge and was easily three times as heavy as she was. Her first blaster had been ripped out of her hand on impact, but she grabbed the other from its holster and fired point blank into the thing’s scaled chest. She heard the others shooting at it as well. The creature dug into her a few more times before it finally shuddered and collapsed on top of her.

  Yelling and screaming pierced the air as Vas fought to stay conscious. After what felt like hours the pressure on her torso lifted and the animal was rolled off of her. Terel dropped next to her feeling for broken bones and doing temporary closures on the gaping holes. Vas winced as stabbing pain flooded her when she tried to speak.

  Terel shook her head. “Don’t. Your right lung is punctured. I can fix it, but we have to get you on the ship.” She looked over her shoulder and her frown deepened. “Damn it, Bhotia says this isn’t the only one. We’ve got to get everyone out of here.”

  Without waiting, Terel slid a hypospray into Vas’s neck. Vas tried to fight back. She didn’t want them just loading everyone on the ship. But darkness crept along the edges of her vision. Suddenly a new form appeared on the edge of her sight. Reaching out for her.

  Deven.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Vas swore as the world went sideways. She had to stay awake. That was Deven. She knew that was Deven! The part of her that was still rational pointed out that her former second-in-command had been blown apart two months ago. However, he looked awfully good for a dead man. The drugs wouldn’t let her keep her eyes open and she felt them roll back in her head. Damn it.

  ****

  Gosta watched Vas twist as they transferred her into a medical bed on the Warrior Wench. She was barely alive from the injuries and yet she was fighting the coma drug like a tiger. He could serve with her for a hundred years and still not figure that woman out. She finally started to lose consciousness, her eyes focusing on something far beyond him. “Deven,” she muttered, then was out.

  Terel turned toward Gosta. “What did she just say?”

  Gosta felt a sad pang well up. He never knew if Vas had realized how she felt about Deven. However, Gosta knew. “She called out for Deven.” He frowned as a dark thought hit him. Some cultures felt you saw th
e dead when you were dying. “Tell me the truth, how bad is she?”

  Terel’s face crumbled. “Not good. That beast shredded her up inside. A traxliann gaul shouldn’t have been there.”

  Gosta frowned. “Agreed. We didn’t lose anyone, but it wasn’t for lack of that thing trying.”

  Terel fixed more long-term tranqs for Vas. “No, I mean it really shouldn’t have been there. And Bhotia claimed it was a diflin gaul. Those could survive on such a world, but they’re smaller, more scavengers than predators. This one is a traxliann gaul. They’re water creatures. This planet is too dry. If we hadn’t killed it, it would have died in a day.”

  “So how long had it been there?” Vas had tasked Gosta to resolve her growing collection of mysteries. She wasn’t going to be happy to find out yet another had appeared.

  Terel soothed Vas’s forehead as the stronger drug kicked in and slowed her heartbeat. “I’d say no more than a few hours. It couldn’t last more than a day in that environment. Someone didn’t care, nor did they care that it would be obvious this wasn’t a natural attack.” She tapped her chin in thought, her humming going up an octave. “You brought the body on board, right?” At Gosta’s nod she continued. “Make sure to keep it in secure storage. I’m going to check and see what else we can find out from it.”

  Gosta nodded, then went to the medical comm. “Gon, make sure to keep that monster in a cool bin. Terel will need to conduct studies on it.”

  “Aye, Gosta. Not sure why she’d want to. But I’ll go back and secure it.”