Mission Pack 3: Missions 9-12 (Black Ocean Mission Pack)

by J. S. Morin

  “Mayday. Mayday. We are survivors of the Earth-registered vessel Mermaid, currently aboard the derelict vessel Sokol. We have no main power, no life support, and limited oxygen left in our EV suits. Please, someone respond.”

  Roddy admitted his desperation when he added the word “please.” He couldn’t honestly recall the last time he’d used it.

  Ten seconds was still too short a wait, but this time, ninety seemed like long enough. “Mayday. Mayday. This is the wreck of the Sokol with two desperate salvagers stranded on board without life support. If anyone can hear this, I’d—”

  “Sokol, this is the Rampage Across Great Plains. I hear your call. We answer. Do you have coordinates?”

  “THANK YOU! Rampage Across Great Plains, we don’t have nav comps up. Can you use our signal as a beacon?”

  “Sokol, yes, we can. Based on transmission times, I am told we should have you in scanner range very soon. I am Captain Tu Nau, and I am pleased to be lending aid to one who understands my native language.”

  Roddy blinked. It was the earring. It had to be. “Sorry. I’ve got a magical charm that translates languages for me. I hear it in my own native… well, technically not my people’s native tongue. I’m laaku, but I grew up in an English-first school prefecture. You know… Human Standard. Sorry if I messed up your ship name by understanding the origin.”

  Roddy might have elaborated. After all, talking to anyone friendly was a more welcome relief than getting to a washroom after a night’s drinking. But Amy still had Roddy in hand, steadying him against the wreck’s tumble. “Are you insane? Shut up! They’re on their way to rescue us. Don’t piss them off.”

  “A laaku wizard? How unusual.”

  “Um, not personally. I’m just friends with one. He’s not with me now. It’s just me and one human female on board. We took a smaller ship out for this salvage job and got attacked by Eyndar.”

  There was a bellowing grunt over the comm that reverberated through Roddy’s sternum. “Those loathsome dogs. They wouldn’t have dared if we were closer by. I apologize if our patrol was lax. But pardon me for asking… a laaku with a wizard friend who travels the darkest parts of the Black Plains… Your name isn’t Roddy by any chance?”

  Shit. Roddy had died at some point during the repair work and hadn’t noticed. Because there was no way in this lifetime that some random ship captain off the far edge of nowhere knew his name. But, Heaven or Hell, he played along. “Sure. That’s me. Rodek of Kethlet. Roddy for short.”

  “By my children’s names! I earn my place in heaven tonight. It is an honor to speak with you, and will bring me great satisfaction to lend you aid. Your name is spoken loudly by the stuunji exiles.”

  Click.

  A tumbler fell into place and suddenly things started making sense. Hadrian IV. The Gologlex Menagerie. There had been two stuunji prisoners at that diabolical zoo—one male, one female. The aftermath of that jailbreak had been chaos, but he supposed that the survivors had more cause to remember their rescuers than vice versa.

  Mort had once told him about an old human superstition called Karma. It was the belief that doing good or bad deeds led to the same sort of mojo coming back to you. Roddy had seen plenty of contraindicative evidence to blow it off, but there was little else that could explain this stuunji starship captain being in the middle of nowhere and happy to personally rescue one Rodek of Kethlet.

  “That’s me. Outlaw savior, at your service.”

  # # #

  The copilot’s seat was someplace Mort had rarely been in any vessel. But alone aboard Don Rucker’s shuttle with just the pilot for company, he didn’t see the harm. He had tinkered with the tiny vessel’s gravity stone—a sad little grapefruit-sized hunk of Martian basalt—until he was satisfied with the feel of the seat against his backside. For what might turn out to be the last ride of his life, he at least wanted to travel in comfort.

  “Why me?” his pilot asked. The bull-necked brute had an easy hand on the controls and a familiar hint of Martian accent that suggested he was suppressing a bourgeois upbringing. “Eight guys you said no to. Me, you let fly.”

  Mort shrugged, keeping his hands tucked into the front pocket of his sweatshirt. “You have an honest face.”

  That drew a snort from his pilot. “Sure, pal. Whatever you say.”

  Blue skies parted before them as the shuttle rose through the Ithacan atmosphere. It wasn’t supposed to be a long trip, but Mort found himself wishing that it were. Traipsing off into the unknown was a daily expectation with Carl. But there was a difference between bragging about rolling up your sleeves and strangling an alien deity and heading off to actually do it. That was just a little too unknown for Mort’s taste just then.

  “It’s Samson, isn’t it?”

  The pilot grunted. “Yeah. I suppose the boss gave you the full run-down on me?”

  “No. Nothing like that. Is that a hint of a New Singapore hitch I hear in your accent?”

  “What are you, some kinda comedian? Listen, I’m just supposed to fly you down to the surface of that moon, wait for you to do God-only-knows, and fly you back. We’re gonna be landing on visuals. There’s no way to tell if there’s oxygen down there. And you won’t be able to use a comm. So don’t mind me if I’m not in a mood to get chatty.”

  “Never been good with comms anyway, so that’s no loss.”

  “Think you’re being cute? It’s Mort, right? Mind me calling you Mort since we’re probably both gonna die pretty soon here?”

  The stars emerged, freed from their prison of overexposed light as the shuttle left the atmosphere behind. “Fine by me. I let our damn dog call me Mort. Don’t see why Don Rucker’s dogs can’t do the same.”

  Samson jerked the ship’s handlebars and swung them around. Ithaca reappeared in the front window. “I don’t have to take yap from a punk wizard. Gimme one good reason not to drag you right back to the boss and tell him to find someone else to fly you.”

  “Because if you blow your gig with Don Rucker, you won’t be able to send money home to your parents.”

  Samson went pale. “Who you been talking to? Are you poking around inside my head, wizard?”

  “Mort. Call me Mort.”

  Taking his life into his own hands, Samson grabbed Mort by a fistful of his sweatshirt collar. “How do you know about my parents?”

  “I’m friends with your sister.”

  The hand released in an instant. Mort gave a tug and a squirm until the bunched cloth at his neck sorted itself into a comfortable arrangement.

  “How do you know Esper? She’s off at a convent or something.”

  “Esper’s been a busy girl this past year. I’ll make you a deal. Put us back on course for that miserable little moon over yonder, and I’ll trade you stories of Esper’s recent exploits for embarrassing ones from when she was little. Sound fair?”

  If nothing else, it would give Mort something to keep his mind off the coming confrontation.

  # # #

  Tanny looked well. Her skin had darkened where exposed to the sunlight, which was no cause for alarm among her people. Muscles carved clear lines across her arms and stomach. She glistened with a sheen of sweat. Her garments consisted of an elastic-fabric top that she’d normally wear beneath clothing and just covered her milk glands, paired with a pair of tactical pants that had been cut off well above the knee. Like her fellow marine refugees, she was barefoot.

  Kubu was surrounded by a forest of spears before Mriy made her way into the camp, flanked by a pair of spear-wielding marines of her own. There were fifteen of them, more than Mriy had suspected would be traveling together in a single group.

  “These friends of yours are a pain in the ass, Rucker,” one of the marines grumbled.

  Tanny strode over to Mriy, casting a wary eye in Kubu’s direction. He whined in wordless reply. When she stopped within arm’s reach, Mriy knew it was a show of boldness. Was Tanny daring her to strike out? Was she counting on her comrades to save her, or
was she that confident in the strange magic her new god had imbued her with?

  “Stop following us. You’ve got the ship. The jungle’s ours. Leave us alone.”

  Mriy inclined her head in Kubu’s direction. “He is young. He doesn’t understand why we would leave you by yourself.”

  Spreading her arms, Tanny took a step back. “Do I look alone to you? I was alone out there in the Black Ocean with you idiots. I was alone in my own head, burnt to a crisp on chem.” She closed her eyes and took a deep, noisy breath, possibly enough for her insensitive nose to smell the fragrances of the plants all around. “This is freedom. These are friends who helped me instead of keeping me in a bottle. I’m not going back with you.”

  “Kubu stay?” The canid lay with his head on his paws, staring past the ring of spear points as if they weren’t there. It was a simple request laid bare before all. Mriy’s instinctive reaction was to scold him, to tell Kubu he was being foolish. But what business did the canid have among the human navy officers and spacers? He wasn’t a creature for space travel. He was even less a creature for Carl’s sort of mind games and financial trickery. At best, he would take on a role such as Mriy’s—a hunter protecting the flock.

  “I have no objection.” She spoke Jiara, noting that Tanny still wore her translator earring. Mriy would have felt awkward voicing so solemn a pronouncement in her shabby English.

  Tanny blinked her surprise. “What? You’d just leave him here with me?”

  “It’s what he wants.” Sometimes letting a thing happen was easier than constantly fighting it. The tides, the sunrise, the change of seasons—the willful desire of a child for his mother.

  “Maybe it’d be better to have this mutt on our side than constantly helping them track us down,” one of the marines suggested. Mriy wished she could better tell them apart, but they were all so similar. This one smelled a bit more of citrus than his comrades, which would have to do for now.

  “We can’t just bring him back to camp. If he decides to run off, he can lead them straight to us.” This marine woman had long, braided hair.

  “Leave it for Devraa to decide,” yet another marine suggested. This one was a male who reeked of lax cleansing between latrine visits.

  When Tanny spoke, she held in her voice an air of authority. “We bring them both. We all either come to an understanding… or we don’t.”

  It was nice, simple logic, and if she hadn’t understood the deeper meaning, Mriy would have felt much better as she and Kubu were herded off into the ever-deeper jungle at spear point.

  # # #

  Esper blew gently across the page, encouraging the ink to dry. It was the final page in her pre-bound book with the last words fit neatly onto it. She’d calculated its length precisely. Nothing she’d done had worked out so tidily in as long as she could remember. Was this part and parcel of becoming a wizard? With a lingering dread, she wondered if this was another of Carl’s “too good to be true” traps.

  The faintly glistening red of the bloody letters darkened as it dried. When Esper was satisfied it wouldn’t smear, she shut the cover and ran a hand along the blank, leather face. It was the sort of volume that ought to have had its title embossed in gold leaf, but Esper had no intention of labeling this work. The scant few she intended to share its identity with would know it well enough without, and anyone else was best off not knowing.

  It felt good getting it out of her mind. The knowledge itself was all still there, profane and perfect, embodied in an identical tome in Esperville, sitting on a bookshelf between Stella McGuire mysteries and The House of Seven Gables. She was free of the gnawing need to bring it back into the world of flesh and blood. In time, with careful machination and delving into the even darker arts of politics, she might find a way to free Mort of it as well.

  Sparing a glance at the two Schultz children collapsed in slumber on her bed, Esper quietly opened her footlocker and buried the book at the bottom. For the time being, there was nothing to do but wait until she was back somewhere civilized before implementing the next phase of her plan.

  Mort had been exiled from the Convocation for long enough. It was time for the Tome of Bleeding Thoughts to make its way home.

  # # #

  Roddy’s EV helm had an annoying feature. Among its many indicators and displays, it had an oxygen supply warning. With the promise of help on the way, the last thing Roddy wanted right then was a constant reminder that in a few short minutes, he’d begin to suffocate. That knowledge—and the accompanying spike in adrenaline—was only making that number shrink faster. He had already stopped talking, stopped moving, and at least tried to stop thinking. This was how to wait for a rescue.

  He had scrounged a few meters of power cable and lashed himself to a bulkhead, content to wait out the carnival teacup ride for as long as he had to. Amy had wedged herself into a corner using her mag boots. With those long, gangly human limbs, it looked anything but comfortable.

  Their wait passed in silence, once Roddy stopped bantering with the captain of the Rampage Across Great Plains. Even Amy had gone into hibernation mode, going back to ignoring him. At least this time it wasn’t out of spite.

  Beep. Oxygen levels critical.

  Roddy gritted his teeth and fought the urge to tear off his helm and rip out the speakers by the roots. Yes, he knew. He fucking knew. He didn’t need to be told every two minutes. Fine, he had two minutes less oxygen than the last time it yelled at him, and four minutes less than the time before that. Sooner or later, one of these times…

  Roddy drifted into unconsciousness.

  Some time later, he blinked and opened his eyes. He was still inside the Sokol, in the same corridor where he’d accessed the comm system. Except this time, his EV helm was nowhere to be found. Instinctively, Roddy attempted to hold his breath, but he was short of air already. A large plastic tube pressed over his face, covering his nostrils and most of his mouth. There was a comforting hiss of forced gas, and he breathed deeply and coughed.

  “You will be fine, little friend,” a bass voice comforted him.

  Twisting his head, he saw a stuunji kneeling beside him, feeding Roddy oxygen from a line coming from his own massive EV suit. The stuunji wasn’t wearing a helmet of any sort, so Roddy could only assume they’d gotten life support running somehow. It looked as if the gray, rhinoceros-like biped was wearing a small star-faring vessel as a suit. Unlike the form-fitting human varieties that the Mobius crew favored, the stuunji’s was blocky and mechanically articulated, adding bulk to an already massive species. In fact, it was amazing that it even fit in the corridor of a human-sized vessel.

  With that realization, Roddy took better stock of his surroundings. Re-oxygenating his blood was bringing crispness to his thoughts. They weren’t in the same corridor where Roddy had passed out; they were in half of it. A section of the hull had been split like a pea pod to allow access for the stuunji rescue party. And no one had done diddly squat to repair the Sokol’s life support. The whole damn ship was sitting in the hold of a much larger vessel.

  “Where’s the human woman?” Roddy asked. He sat up and waved away further help from the oxygen line. The stuunji complied, tugging until the hose retracted to a fitting by his neck. That was when Roddy realized that the opening was too small to fit over a stuunji’s nose but suspiciously the right size to jam up a nostril.

  “Your companion is unconscious. Our medic is tending to her. Come. We can go see her, and we should get out of the smelting crew’s way.” A group of stuunji in work coveralls approached with some severe-looking cutting tools.

  The stuunji offered a hand to help him up, and he accepted. Laaku—if they can stand under their own power at all—rarely need any assistance getting to their feet. Even a middle-aged, alcoholic laaku mechanic is as flexible as a human gymnast, and built to balance. But Roddy had taken Cultural Sensitivity in secondary school and knew that certain rituals of helping were common in more cumbersome species. He could picture a stuunji appreciating
the hell out of someone offering to help pry them up to a standing position.

  As he and his rescuer clambered free of the wreck, Roddy got a better look at their surroundings. Stuunji with aggressive cutting tools and grav sleds moved in and began hacking the wreck to scrap metal. Hull metal was hauled to the far end of the bay where it was fed into a smelter. He hoped they paid attention to the bits and pieces they cut away, since there was still an off chance that a couple million terras worth of biological material might be on board somewhere. But as he noticed someone hauling off an intact plasma cannon—slung across one massive shoulder—he took some reassurance.

  “You’re not Captain Tu Nau, by any chance, are you?” Roddy asked.

  The stuunji chuckled, feeling the rumble in the deck plates. “Apologies, little friend. I failed to introduce myself. I am Sergeant Pahn Ro, and I am honored to assist you.”

  Honored. That was a first. Well, technically Roddy had been honored before, when his school headmaster had presided over his graduating class and addressed them as a whole. But if Dean Fethnar had realized that he was including an aspiring blues guitarist and latent alcoholic, he might have included an exception in his remarks.

  Pahn Ro led Roddy through the Rampage Across Great Plains, giving an impromptu tour on the way. The ship was oversized to stuunji proportions with ceilings at least three meters everywhere and doorways two meters wide. Roddy couldn’t identify commonalities with any type of ship with which he was familiar.

  “This ship homegrown?”

  Pahn Ro hummed. “Indeed. So many cramped ships out there. We in exile decided to construct our own. Forty of us serve aboard the Rampage Across Great Plains, keeping trade and travel safe for our people and cleaning up the messes left by others.”