Skulls & Crossbones

by Andi Marquette

  Ida peered at the holographic image. She could see very faint puff s trailing from the cloud.

  "So you're saying it deliberately tried to stop you from going faster than it wanted?"

  "Not tried. Did," Val confirmed. "We did every scan we could think of, and it shows the cloud is producing brain waves, even though we can't locate anything that remotely resembles a brain anywhere in it. Our linguistics officer went through the run of standard and improvised translation and hail protocols and nothing comes back. It either doesn't understand us or is unable to communicate. I don't want to kill an innocent life, but if it doesn't leave our hull soon, I'll have no choice, even though I have no idea how to get it off ."

  Ida was horrified. "Why do you have to try to destroy it? We just need time to figure out how to communicate with it."

  "We're running out of time," Val told her. "We were on the run from a Ralgas military vessel when this cloud creature attached itself to us." She looked at Tyluk. "Turn off the imager and tell me how much time until they catch up."

  "Six point two hours, sir."

  "Ralgas?" They were being chased by the most powerful military in the galaxy. "What did you do?"

  "We freed them of some cargo a Ralgas transport had no right to."

  "You looted them." Ida stared at her, mouth open. Val had raided a Ralgas ship!

  Val shrugged. "I'm a pirate."

  "You've made me an accomplice!" Ida exclaimed, gesturing wildly with her arms. "The bartender recognized you. He saw me leave with you willingly. They'll say I helped you. Well, I won't. What did you steal? Energy cubes, rations, currency? I'll already probably lose my job for having come here but I won't be thrown in a penal colony, too. I won't help thieves." She was about to say more but the grim expression on Val's face stopped her. Suddenly, she was looking at the woman who had earned the name Valkyrie.

  "Thieves? Come with me, and I'll show you what we stole." She grabbed Ida's arm hard above the elbow and dragged her off the bridge and through several corridors until they got to the shuttle lift. Val pushed her in, following close behind, and hit the location on the keypad after the door slid closed. With a low whirring noise, they started moving. Within moments, they came to a stop, and Val motioned for her to get out with a sharp wave of her arm.

  As soon as they were clear of the lift, Val again pulled Ida along. The pirate's fast and angry steps led them to a door guarded by a burly four-armed Wequi. Val gave the golden hermaphrodite a curt nod, and it stepped back a pace. Val stopped at the door, took a deep breath, and exhaled slowly. If Ida had to guess, the pirate was counting to ten. Backward. Perhaps in a foreign language.

  When she turned to Ida, her eyes were stormy, but she had unclenched her jaw. "Listen, you go through this door with me, you keep it together. No loud outbursts. No sudden movements. Do you understand?"

  Insulted, Ida retorted, "I speak Standard so, yes, I understand."

  "You'd better," the pirate warned, setting her hand on the door lock for it to recognize her DNA. "This is what we took from that transport vessel." The door whispered open, and she followed Val inside. The soft lighting in the large room was pleasant. Immediately, they had the attention of eight pairs of impossibly blue eyes. With happy mewing sounds out of their noseless, perfectly oval faces, the three-foot-tall bipedal creatures crowded around Val, touching her.

  With a tender expression, Val bent down and hugged as many as she could in a most un-pirate like fashion.

  "Seraphs," Ida said softly, afraid if she spoke any louder the vision would vanish. She had heard of these genetically engineered creatures but to see one, let alone eight, was inconceivable. If anything, the descriptions of them couldn't do justice to the innocence in their gentle expressions. Double pairs of small grey-feathered wings poked out of their backs. They were all dressed in long beige shifts that their cute little toes peeked out from under. When two of them came over to her with arms outstretched, she had to kneel down, had to let them touch her. She got quite the shock when they unexpectedly surrounded her, and each of them jostled for a chance to touch her braid. When one patted her face, she got a sudden image of a question mark and her hair.

  Val smiled knowingly at Ida's astonishment. "They communicate telepathically through imagery." She watched them vying with each other to touch Ida's hair. "I don't think they've ever seen hair braided before."

  "If I think my answer, will it understand?"

  Before Val answered, the one in front of Ida patted her face more empathically. She took that to mean yes. Ida brought to mind her greatgrandmother plaiting her hair as a child. The genderless being mewled happily at her and instantly turned to its nearest sibling to imitate the motion it had seen in Ida's mind with their own long, pale violet hair. All eight Seraphs looked identical. "Why were they on the other ship?"

  Val kept her voice intentionally soft but from the look on her face, Ida

  could see the effort it took. "They were going to be sold for their clairvoyant powers. Anyone, especially politicians and militaries, would be very happy to have a Seraph. What wouldn't a person pay to know the future?"

  "Isn't trafficking in genetically created beings illegal?" It was all Ida could think to say from where she knelt among the angelic creatures.

  Val stood up. "If you have the clout and the money, then acquiring the rare and illegal merely becomes expensive."

  "It's slavery."

  "It's ownership of scientific property. I know the laws, Ida Willar, if only to be sure of which ones I'm breaking."

  Ida shook her head at the thought of it all. "What will you do with them?"

  "I know a place where they can all live together, well cared for and safe by people who will never use their abilities." She didn't say more, and Ida couldn't blame her. They were strangers to each other, and how could she trust Ida to hold her tongue if authorities questioned her?

  And the people who would use them were coming to get Val and their "cargo" back. "I'll help you."

  Val's face reflected an understanding beyond the words. "I hoped you might."

  Ida stood. A tug on her coat made her look down at a beautiful face and a hand only a shade less white than her lab coat.

  A small hand grasped hers, and she saw in her mind an image of her greatgrandmother teaching her various Traditionalist practices as a child, then a second image emerged, of a room Ida had never seen filled with ancientlooking chests. She blinked, and the images were gone. The Seraph squeezed her hand again and then went back with the others. "I don't understand." She looked to Val for an answer.

  "Did they show you something you've never seen before?" Val motioned for her to follow her out.

  They left the room and walked towards the lift. At Ida's nod, Val nodded back knowingly. "They took a liking to you. They must have shown you something in your future." At Ida's frown, Val held up a hand while she let Ida onto the shuttle lift first. "Don't tell anyone what you were shown. It could change your future."

  If her future was to figure out the mystery of the cloud in order to save those precious lives, she didn't dare risk telling Val, but couldn't see how either image could have anything to do with the task. Perplexed, Ida sat down in a seat on the lift. She was careful not to give any details. "But what I saw didn't make sense."

  "It will." Before Ida could ask, Val explained. "When I was tearing out my hair trying to figure out what to do about the cloud, they all came up, touched me, and showed me an image of the space station, the one you worked on,

  and a white lab coat." She pointedly eyed Ida's attire.

  "Did they show you an image of me?"

  "Nope."

  She frowned. "Then how do you know you picked the right person?"

  Val grinned, and again Ida was startled by how much it transformed her. "I'm an excellent judge of character."

  A smile tugged at Ida's lips. "Well, you're not much of a pirate, are you? More like a hero, saving those delicate creatures."

  Val raised an eyebrow
at her meaningfully. "I did also loot the ship, you know."

  Ida cast Val a sideways glance, letting her own humor show. "Sure, sure. If you're not a hero, why do you have all those medals on your jacket?" Val's smirk grew. "I never said the medals were mine."

  Five hours later, Ida was ready to tear her own hair out. They allowed her the run of the bridge, giving her whatever console she wanted to use in her myriad measurements, trying to think of any conceivable way to understand and therefore be able to either communicate with the entity or at least figure out a method to remove it from the ship without harm. Ida had also gone over the original scans of the areas they had passed through when the ship had gained their stowaway. Nothing.

  She looked over at Zsoldos, the linguistics expert, and also one of the many Terrans Ida had seen on the ship. It was nothing like back at the station. Everyone here cared about what they did. They were efficient, organized, and friendly.

  A glass of the same kind of beverage she had at the bar appeared in front of her. She looked up at Val. "Seems you could use this. Give yourself a breather for a minute."

  "Thanks." Ida took the drink. She gestured at the many screens she had up in front of her. "I'm no closer to an answer than I was when I started. I'm sorry."

  A reassuring hand briefly gripped her shoulder. "Everyone here appreciates all the effort you've gone through, but if it can't be done, it can't be done."

  Her chest ached with failure and concern. "What will you do?"

  Val looked wistfully at her crew working at their stations. "Get the crew and the Seraphs on escape pods with a good head start before the Ralgas reach us. Those pods don't go fast. I'll stay and buy everyone as much time as I can."

  "No chance, Captain." Zsoldos stood her full six feet, the picture of offended pride. "If you stay, then we're staying with you. We'll fight to our last breath against those bastards. Do you think I've forgotten what they did to my family? I'd never run away from the chance to put them in their place."

  "There's not a member of this crew that doesn't owe you their lives, Captain. We won't abandon you now," Tyluk added.

  Val took a deep breath, visibly moved by the loyalty and devotion clearly echoed by the rest of the crew on the main deck. "I appreciate it, I do. But I need you all to take care of the Seraphs. Who will help them if not you?" The stricken faces told Ida volumes. The torn loyalty and reality of their situation was painful to see. If only she could find a solution.

  "Listen," Val told them, "our time's not up yet. We may be able to get through this. Goodness knows we've gotten through some tight spots before, haven't we?" The crew murmured reluctant agreement. "Get back to your duties until we absolutely have to go to emergency mode."

  They did. Ida respected them and envied the close bonds they shared. She hadn't felt that security and warmth in her life since her own family. "So," Val grabbed the chair next to Ida, "is it true that you only use a pipette once per sample and then dispose of it for recycling? Your colleagues mentioned it."

  "What?" How could Val bring up something so inane at a time like this? Val smiled that easy smile of hers. "Hey, sometimes it helps to get your mind off the problem for a bit in order to think more clearly on it."

  "Subconscious abstraction," Ida said.

  She was a given a bemused look for her precise choice of words. "Sure." Ida shrugged. "It's true."

  "Even though the phase pipettes teleport the sample? You can use one forever. There would be no traces of anything," Zsoldos commented, scooting over from the other side of Ida, where she had overheard them.

  Ida shook her head. "Think about it. When you teleport people or objects, there's residue left on the phase pad, isn't there? It's why they have to be cleaned regularly."

  "But it's microscopic," Zsoldos argued.

  "Exactly. Even if there is the most infinitesimal bit of residue in the pipette that's used to gather samples, it has the potential to affect future readings. I always get in trouble for using up the lab's supply."

  Val snorted. "You find me a solution, and I'll get you all the pipettes you could ever want."

  "That's a lot of pipettes," Ida warned, not that she thought they'd live to see any far-fetched promises kept.

  "Who taught you to be so meticulous?" Zsoldos asked, scanning the data screens for the millionth time.

  Ida did the same, not that it was giving her any answers. "My great-grand

  mother. She was a Traditionalist and taught me all about the ancient ways of my culture and that to everything, there's a method to be respected." The memory the Seraph had evoked in her mind came back to her. Her greatgrandmother had taught her everything, from braiding hair to smudging practices, to—

  She looked over the screens again. Her hands flew over the console, closing most of them and calling up only a couple, enlarging them. "I can't believe it."

  Everyone was on their feet. Val came to stand nearly on top of her, looking over her shoulder. "What did you find?"

  "Smoke signals," Ida said in wonder.

  "What?"

  "Look." She pointed at the cloud's small emissions. "They're cloud signals. It's a way my great-grandmother had taught me to communicate. It was used by our culture in ancient Earth times where fires were made and specific patterns of smoke signals created to communicate with other members of the tribe from far away. "Look," she insisted, and everyone's eyes followed her hand. "We kept thinking it was simply losing parts of itself since they were irregular. But if you look at the temperature of the emissions, they're all in varying degrees, and some repeat. Even the chemical content varies subtly. And here—" She pointed at the second console. "The cloud nebula it came from is moving closer when there should be only a fractional change because space continually spreads outward, never inward. We wondered why we couldn't communicate with the cloud, and meanwhile, all this time, it's been communicating with the nebula."

  "Like its own version of Morse code, but using temperature and composition." Zsoldos looked at Val regretfully. "We don't have time to try to figure out its language, assuming we even could."

  "It wants to go back home," Val surmised, quickly moving to another console. With a few buttons she brought up a dimensional map between them and the nebula. "To get the thing off , we have to go back."

  Crew member Ipo cursed in his native Ghousa. "It leads us right back to the Ralgas vessel."

  Val held his three-eyed gaze with determination. "Are you the navigational officer or not? Plot me a route toward the nebula that bypasses their ship. If possible, we can slip in, send our stowaway home, and get out before they notice us."

  Ipo snorted but immediately went to work, punching in trajectories and speed. "How are we supposed to do that at impulse?"

  "If it's as smart as I think it might be," Val ventured, "as long as we're heading the way it wants, it won't drain our engine cores. We sneak in, hope to hell this works, and get gone while the going's good."

  "Heaven help us," Ida said softly.

  "Hey." Val grinned as she took the captain's chair. "Did you forget we have angels on board? Heaven's on our side."

  "I've got the course laid in, sir," Ipo said. "It's the best we've got, but we've got to be quieter than flitter mites."

  Val gave Ida an out. "This would be a good time for you to disembark and go back to your station."

  "I see things through, but thank you." She wished she felt as brave as her words. Val winked at her, then commanded, "All hands go."

  It took nearly forty-five minutes, and Ida feared she only had half a nerve left. They ran with only essentials on, keeping their energy signature to a minimum. "They would hardly think we'd go towards them," Val said. "They're looking in front, not to the far side or behind them."

  Val had also correctly predicted the entity's behavior. It didn't stop them from going to light speed, though apparently, it did still have problems with warp. Ida supposed there was an issue of it maintaining cohesion at those speeds. The cloud had also stopped its emission
s, demonstrating that it was conscious of what was happening. Ida would never look at beer clouds the same way again.

  Ipo spoke. "We're approaching the molecular mass, Captain."

  "Get close. Enough to allow our cloud to touch the larger mass, but don't let our vessel come in contact with the nebula in any way."

  "Aye aye."

  Ida looked at the holographic view screen before her in wonder. The edge of the mass was clear, but its size was astonishing. She had never seen one this close before. The scanners confirmed it measured about four times the size of Earth's solar system.

  She held her breath as they closed in. On screen, she watched the Valhalla edge closer. As soon as the smaller cloud brushed against the larger molecular nebula, Ida swore she heard a collective exhale of relief, her included, as they saw the small cloud detach itself and disappear and blend into the larger whole. "All right!" Val stood. "Get us out of here, Ipo."

  "With pleasure, Captain."

  A tremor rocked the floor under Ida's feet, and alarms suddenly went off everywhere.

  "We've been hit!" Tyluk moved to another console. "It's the Ralgas military. Our shields are down twenty percent. They're closing in. We can't fight them."

  "Like hell we can't," Val growled.

  She punched a comm. "Drasen, do we still have those space mines we cleaned up from the last time we tangled with the big fish?"

  "You betcha," said a rough voice over the squelching comm.

  "When I give the order, deploy them. All of them. You hear me?"

  "All of them?" The low voice suddenly rose at least two octaves.

  "Every last one. Put them in position now. We have zero time, and the neighbors are not friendly. Tyluk, get the shift sails ready. Ipo, plot in a trajectory right over the Ralgas ship."