“And then,” Carla said, “we’ll land in a city called Tarell. It’s the largest port available, according to the Lantern’s records, so it seems like a logical place to start our search.”
“And then we’ll see about getting our hands on their landing records?”
“Yeah, that’s the plan,” Carla said, heaving a sigh. “A piece of cake, I imagine.”
“You and your crew don’t have to do this,” Reece said, turning to her. “If you drop me off on Tarell, I can keep going on my own from there. I’m no stranger to getting around using improvised means. The past few months have been quite an education in that department.”
Carla brushed a strand of her hair aside. “I’d like to see this through with you, Reece. When I first found you in that mine, you were on the brink of death. We can’t abandon you after bringing you back to life. And I’ve got to keep an eye on you for my own sake. To make sure you’re okay.”
“It sounds a bit like the thing with nurses falling in love with their patients,” Reece said and then faltered. He gave Carla a sheepish smile. “Sorry. I didn’t mean anything by that.”
“It’s all right,” Carla told him. “I feel... close. We’ve come to know each other fairly well over these past few days.”
“You’ve come to know me,” Reece said. “But there’s still so much I don’t know about you.”
“Like what?” Carla asked.
“Where you come from, your family... that kind of thing.”
Carla planted her hands on the bunk beside her. “Well, I can tell you a bit about that if you want. I’m from Laonist but I’ve spent a bit of time in the Federation and around other Frontier worlds. I keep my own personal ship on Phalamki these days.”
“I thought the Lantern was your ship.”
“Yeah, the Lantern’s my ship too. The one on Phalamki’s the first one I’ve ever owned though. Confiscated it off an outlaw in the Minstrahn Empire. Bit of a long story.”
“I’d like to hear it sometime,” Reece told her. “What about the Lantern then?”
Carla laughed. “That’s a shorter story. I own the Lantern and several other ships like it thanks to a good friend who’s also been a benefactor for me. A Harskan.”
“A Harskan?”
“The good sort,” Carla assured him.
Reece smiled. “Well, a few years ago, I might have wondered if there were any good sorts. A lot of people would have. But since the Elders have opened up their borders a bit, that reputation of renegade Harskans is changing. And now, I’ve actually met a few Harskans too and, so far, I haven’t come across the bad sort at all.”
“You’re lucky,” Carla said. “They’re out there.”
“I guess,” Reece said, glancing down. He changed the topic. “What about your family? Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
Carla smiled. “I’ve got two sisters actually. We’re triplets.”
Reece shook his head. “You don’t meet triplets every day.”
“No,” Carla agreed, still smiling.
“What do they do? Are they all flying around in escort ships like this one too?”
“No,” Carla said. “One’s a diplomat. And she’s married to a diplomat too. He’s from the Minstrahn Empire. And the other’s... well, people used to say she was a bit of a wild child but she’s not really. Not if you really know her. She sometimes acted the part in the past but she doesn’t keep a large network of superficial friends or go partying every night of the week or anything like that. She has a handful of close friends, besides the family, and she genuinely cares about all of us. And at the moment, she works with my Harskan friend. Doing odd jobs here and there.” Carla frowned as a thought struck her. She turned to Reece. “Actually, she and Drackson... He’s the Harskan friend I told you about. Well, she and Drackson are doing your kind of work. They investigate criminal activity. Sometimes, they take contracts and sometimes Drackson instigates his own investigations with his own money and resources.”
“I’d be interested in knowing a bit more about your friend Drackson,” Reece said. “How did you meet him?”
“Well...” Carla started and recounted the story of how she and Drackson had worked together for Big Blue on the Feet First, along with Asten. Reece listened to it all with intense interest and they talked for hours, sitting together on the bunk in that little cabin on the Lantern.
“Asten?”
Asten didn’t know where he was. Everything was dark.
“Asten?”
It was Selina’s voice. For a moment, Asten thought he was lying in bed back at home on Phalamki. Then, as consciousness returned, the ugly reality of the situation came flooding back to him.
He opened his eyes and saw Selina leaning over him. The room was another kind of cell but it was nicer than the interrogation room. He was lying on a foldout bunk and there was another on the wall behind Selina, running perpendicular to the one they were both on. Sunlight drifted in through a high window that didn’t give them much of a view but nonetheless stretched the entire length of the opposite wall. And the dark green paint that had been used on all the walls and the ceiling was soothing when compared to the bare and antiseptic environs of the interrogation cell.
All these observations passed through his mind in an instant. The far more important observation was that he and Selina were together again.
Sitting up, he embraced his wife, clutching her against his chest and running his hands through her hair. She was crying, he saw, but her tears were those of relief. He then realized he was crying too but he felt no embarrassment this time.
“Are you okay?” he asked when he let her out of his arms.
Selina nodded and brushed away some of her tears. “I’m all right.”
“Did they hurt you?”
She shook her head. “You?”
Asten shook his head too. “No. They just juiced me up with something and asked me an insanely long list of questions.”
Selina nodded. “Me too.”
Asten dragged his hands over his forehead and back through his hair, letting out a breath. “It was interminable. This little Yloshi just asking question after question. I felt like I was there all day.”
“Me too,” Selina murmured. Then she frowned. “Your interrogator was a Yloshi? Mine was a Yloshi too.”
A pensive expression came over Asten. “Yloshis and humans...”
“You think the Imraehi might be one or the other?”
Asten shrugged. “It’s possible.” He looked at his wife again. “Did they know you who are?”
She nodded. “Yeah. You too?”
“Yeah. The Yloshi called me Master Asten as soon as he came in.”
“Well, they ran us through that 3D imaging device before the interrogation,” Selina said. “That room with the light and the tinted glass, remember?”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“Then I guess it didn’t take them long to find a match.”
“No, I suppose not.”
For a few moments, neither of them spoke.
“So,” Selina said, sighing, “what do you suppose they’ll do with us now?”
Asten shrugged. “I honestly don’t know. I think they’re done asking questions.”
“They’d have to be,” Selina said. “After all that, what could possibly be left to ask?”
Asten raised his eyebrows. “Yeah. Good point.”
“And if they were going to kill us, they could have done that already,” Selina pointed out.
“I guess,” Asten murmured. “Maybe they’re just going to give us a warning now and let us go.”
At that moment, the door opened and a human man came in with two meals, accompanied by warm beverages, on a small trolley.
Without saying a word or even looking at Asten and Selina, he left the trolley in front of them and walked out of the room.
Asten turned his head, looking at the door and then turned back to Selina with a shrug. “I guess this is breakfast then.”
<
br /> “I suppose so,” Selina said, taking one of the plates and the accompanying cutlery. “Although maybe it’s an early dinner. I’ve got no idea how long we were out for.”
“That’s morning sunlight,” Asten said, nodding to the window. “I’m sure of it.”
“Anyway, we may as well eat,” Selina said. “Who knows when we’ll get the chance again?”
So they both ate, finding the food generally to their liking. They also found they’d been hungrier than they thought.
A little after they had finished, the man from earlier returned and took the trolley away.
Then about fifteen minutes after that, another man, also human, entered the room.
“Deramar Ardeis wishes to see you,” he said.
Asten and Selina exchanged puzzled glances.
“Deramar Ardeis?” Asten asked the man.
“He’s rather under the impression that you want to see him,” the man replied. “Should I tell him you’d rather remain here?”
Asten climbed to his feet, Selina behind him. “No, I think a little chat with Deramar Ardeis could be very informative.”
The man smiled without any warmth. “He assures me you’ll find it quite enlightening. Shall we?”
Asten and Selina followed their latest guide through a series of interchangeable corridors. Sunlight filtered through the windows and they both got the impression they were in a different building now, not the one where they’d gone through the ordeal of hours of questioning. Then a glance through a floor to ceiling window confirmed it. They were in a tower, probably ten or so storeys above the street - and the tower itself was on elevation, giving them a view of the port stretching out below. Under other circumstances, it would have been quite pleasant.
As they followed their guide however, Asten remembered the tracking beacons that both he and Selina were carrying concealed in the soles of their boots, along with the one on the Lady Hawk. Among the inane number of questions he’d been asked, the subject of tracking beacons hadn’t come up. He and Selina still had an advantage on their side.
Then, a pair of double doors slid open and they were led into a spacious room with a large desk in the middle and a floor to ceiling window on the far side. Standing by the window was a Phalamkian, with long black hair streaked with silver, distinctive blue skin and that rather tell-tale extra pair of arms.
“Selina Erama and Asten Korr,” the human man announced.
“Thank you, Merceil,” the Phalamkian replied without turning around. “You may go now.”
The human bowed his head in a gesture the Phalamkian would not have seen, save for what was reflected in the window, and left Asten and Selina alone with their host.
Only then did the Phalamkian turn around, regarding them with marbled eyes that were indigo as opposed to the black of Selina’s own and her father’s. What first impression he took from the sight of them both, he kept to himself, his impassive features revealing less of his thoughts than any of the locals they had yet met. This was no small feat.
He waved them to two chairs on their side of the table. “Please. Be seated.”
In silence, Asten and Selina complied and watched as the Phalamkian walked over from the window and sat down across from them.
He brushed some dust off the top of the desk with one hand and with his other laid down a pad he’d been reading by the window without their noticing.
“The Jungles of Imraec Tarc,” he said, glancing at it then looking at his prisoners. “Interesting reading. Certainly more lively than your interrogation reports.” He picked up the pad again. “We found this on the Lady Hawk and the book appears to have been the last thing you accessed it on it, Captain Korr.” He smiled. “Or is it Master Asten these days? Master Asten of the Phalamkian Defense Forces.”
Asten forewent replying.
“The Lady Hawk will of course make only a small contribution to the defenses of our own world,” the Phalamkian continued. “But it will be a contribution nonetheless.”
Beside him, Selina placed a firm hand on Asten’s thigh, cautioning him. Asten knew the sense in what his wife was trying to convey to him but he felt himself rising to the bait despite himself. He opened his mouth to reply but then, forcing his feelings down, he closed it again. His slight motions did not go unnoticed.
“You were about to protest that we have no right to confiscate your ship, Master Asten, were you not?” the Phalamkian asked. “That would have been a mistake. Imraec Tarc is not subject to the laws and regulations of the United Frontier. We shall govern ourselves as we please, not kowtowing to the whims of other nations. You and your wife are here as agents of a foreign power who we have, at best, a strained relationship with that could very easily deteriorate into one of open hostilities. A convincing argument could be made for you to be taken somewhere out of sight and shot.”
“Then you would have a war on your hands,” Asten said.
The Phalamkian shrugged. “As I understand it, we will have a war on our hands sooner or later anyway. Something could be said for having some say, through our actions, in when it begins.” He opened his hands in an expansive gesture. “But we are not barbarians.”
Asten shrugged. “Maybe not. But you’re not exactly the nicest group of people we’ve ever come across either.”
At this, the Phalamkian smiled again. “And which people would that be, Master Asten?”
“You and your friends,” Asten said. “The Yloshi you’ve got analyzing our responses to questions. The humans who follow your orders like mindless drones. The lot of you. But by which people, I take it you were leading up to something.”
“A story, Master Asten,” the Phalamkian replied. “Would you and your wife like to hear it?”
Asten forced a smile. “We’d love to.”
“Five hundred and sixty-seven years ago, two hundred and seventy-six years prior the Corsidan Standard calendar and before the Corsidans’ language had displaced their own, the Phalamkians embarked on their last real attempts at forming colonies. Ignoring those other jewel-like worlds they have in their very own system but... even great people can be fools on occasion.
“Imraec Tarc may well be the only colony from those days that survives to the present. For centuries, we kept to ourselves. We stopped thinking of ourselves as Phalamkians and became the Imraehi. And this is how I see myself, while you no doubt see me as Phalamkian as my dear old friend Lord Erama.”
“Not anymore,” Selina said, her voice soft but firm.
The Imraehi, as he now revealed himself to be, still smiled. “Very good, Lady Erama. Now, if I may return to my narrative, in 233 we expanded our territory to take Katara. Then, around thirty years later, just after the Levarc had received their belated just desserts, my father took me aside and told me that he wanted me to return to the womb from which our great world was born, to live on Phalamki for a time, to learn the ways of the people there and to blend in. He said Phalamki had changed over the centuries, and not for the better. That this once great power had become almost apologetic for its bold visions of the past, visions of numerous systems forming a vast Phalamkian nation, and that it was now squandering its resources on assisting neighboring Frontier worlds instead of building its own potential strength.
“And he told me that this new Phalamki would not recognize Imraec Tarc. That its people would not be proud of our accomplishments here or embrace us with open arms. That they would distance themselves from us, oppose us and attempt to eradicate us for the shame they perceived we brought them. And so he sent me there to study them, to learn what I could of them, so that I could protect our people from them.
“And so I did. I lived among the people of Phalamki for a time. I learned what I could from them and set in motion my plans to defend our world should the Phalamkians or any other Frontier nation move against us. And when my father died, I returned here once more to the land of my birth, under the simple pretence of gathering information for Phalamki. The Phalamkians tried to send others o
ut here - I know full well they didn’t trust me - but it was no difficulty for me to turn them back without them learning anything of value. And now they’ve sent you.
“However, the point I wish to make is that I was not lost, captured or killed. Nor am I a traitor who has deserted my people by orchestrating my own disappearance. My name, Master Asten and Lady Erama, is Deramar Ardeis. And after many long years, I have returned home.”
12. The Jungle
“I guess there’s not much chance of persuading you to return to Phalamki with us then,” Asten said.
“I’m glad to see you’ve regained your spirit, Master Asten,” Ardeis replied.
“So what are you? An Imraehi spy? Some governor’s son?”
Ardeis shook his head. “No, Master Asten. My father was the leader of the Imraehi people. When he died, that title was passed to me.” He smiled. “So you can understand the need I had to return here.”
“So you’re now responsible for the continued occupation of Katara?” Selina asked. “Or does the responsibility fall to a governing majority that you have no control over?”
“I have considerable sway over the policies of my government,” Ardeis said. “However, even if I didn’t, it would make little difference in this matter. When it comes to the question of Katara, the majority of the government and I are in complete agreement.”
“What about the people of Katara?” Asten asked.
Ardeis regarded him for a moment. “What about them?”
“Do they have a say in the matter?”
“Should they? Did the native peoples of Halea, Narvashae or... what was the name of that other little world? Corsida, was it? Did they have any say in the matter when their worlds were taken?”
“You can’t seriously be justifying the actions of your people today by comparing them to the actions of people who died nearly a thousand years ago,” Asten said.
Ardeis sighed. “It is a shame that nobody really seems to know anything about history any more. Oh, it makes sense, of course. There are too many worlds, too many events, and you need to focus on those events that concern the most people. But it means that hundreds and thousands of years of the histories of individual worlds are slipping through the cracks of time and disappearing into obscurity.” He was silent for a moment, his gaze drifting down. Then he looked at Asten once more. “It was not as long ago as most people think, Master Asten. The people who colonized Corsida were quite likely contemporaries of my forebears. And their descendants haven’t relinquished what they took, have they?”
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