by Blaze Ward
“Greetings, Tall Human,” Glaxu said ritually, except it was more of a game they had fallen into. He did have a smile in his voice.
Glaxu called him not-Dave-Hall in private as a play on words, but could not do that on an open deck where there might be unwelcome ears. Even Dave Hall was dangerous to the wrong person.
“Good morning,” Dave replied, keying the rear locks to unseat and allow the door to open. “Good nap?”
Valentinian took his personal security to a level of paranoia that even Dave marveled at, but it had kept them all alive, so who was he to argue?
“Most refreshing,” Glaxu nodded to the camera as the door back there beeped politely. “Lunch is called for, but as you are on watch, I thought it would be helpful to keep you company as we ate.”
Mondi did things as a nest, rather than individuals. Glaxu was the odd bird out, because he had adapted to the solitary lifestyle that had been thrust upon him by angry fates, but the bird had also accepted the rest of the crew as his new nest.
Dave checked his baton and pistol as he switched everything over to his card-reader and headed aft. Vee insisted on everyone being armed while on a station, regardless of being buttoned up. Something about burglars attacking the man previously.
Dave had his own enemies, so he would live the rest of his life expecting assassins to jump out from a closet. It was not a pleasant mental place to be, but not much had changed from his days as the Dominator, so he was at least used to it.
He met Glaxu aft, secured the rear hatch, and they headed up to the kitchen. Mondi were predatory land birds, in the same way that humans had evolved from arboreal tree shrews, but Glaxu could process almost all of the food that Valentinian kept stocked. And the captain had wisely refused to install a herpetarium to provide Glaxu live snakes to eat.
Dave settled for a sandwich while Glaxu had dried, jerked beef that did a passable impression of snake.
“Not-Dave, I am concerned that we may need to confront your former mate,” Glaxu said around bites. “Our Leader is the type who would avoid confrontation, until it is pressed upon him, at which time he would unleash a frightening level of violence. Can we frighten Athanasia off? Or do we plan to destroy her eventually?”
Yup. Warrior. Mondi nests were armed fighter squadrons, frequently acting as pirates, or would be if there was any recognized authority out here to challenge them. Outermost, Glaxu’s ship, was heavily armed, but not armored enough to take on Dominion-427 in direct combat. Probably, both ships would be destroyed in such a battle.
“Vee had talked about adding a turret for Kyriaki,” Dave said as he continued to eat. “However, I think that we can only stay on this station for a few days before heading elsewhere on a longer circuit that eventually takes us back to Kryuome.”
“Why is that, not-Dave?” Glaxu stabbed another bite with his beak.
“If she stayed around to look for us on the desert planet, that’s about four days,” Dave said. “We arrived here another day or two faster than she could, if she came direct. That should give us five days on station before we might find her off our bow blasting away and damning the consequences.”
“So we shall flee?” Glaxu’s voice had an edge to it he could not disguise.
Mondi didn’t do evasion well. If they saw a problem, they attacked.
“What would Glaxu the Mondi, on foot, do against a Devincenzia?” Dave asked simply.
He had heard tales of the giant, flightless birds of Glaxu’s homeworld. All beak and killing claws. Taller than Dave, and heavier.
Almost as mean.
“I would run madly from the beast until I could lure it into an ambush,” Glaxu said, brightening suddenly like morning dawning. “Oh. Leader is baiting a trap?”
“To have found us at Kryuome, they had to have talked to one of only a handful of people on Bohrne Station, back in Laurentia,” Dave nodded. “Once we left the desert planet, they could have perhaps guessed that we would end up here as Chatosig is the closest major industrial port. I have been studying the various planets in this sector of space, and this is the only significant system, from an industrial standpoint.”
“And what will Athanasia do when she comes to this planet?” Glaxu asked.
“I don’t know,” Dave replied. “She should have quit before now, if she was going to, so she might never. If you weren’t known as one of our associates, we could leave you here as a spy to watch, but that’s too great a risk. We don’t know if any of Truqtok’s people survived long enough to talk to her about the dangerous, Mondi warrior who had killed so many humans.”
They shared a grin. Vee and Kyriaki were dangerous in their own ways, but he and the Dire Ground Cuckoo had each killed many more than the others.
“Should I become a double agent?” Glaxu asked after another bite. “Remain behind and watch, but be prepared to share a story similar to Bayjy’s, if approached by your humans?”
“That is a most dangerous game, my friend,” Dave muttered carefully.
“And I am a most dangerous bird, Tall Human,” Glaxu’s eyes and headcrest grinned. “Perhaps Truqtok’s minions could tell your ex-mate that, and you and yours decided I was too something to remain with you. Too alien. Too bloodthirsty. Ha, perhaps I just wasn’t dangerous enough to remain in Leader’s employ? You humans are insane.”
Mondi’s laughter sounded like a big cat chuffing in the grass. Dave joined him and flashed back to the ambush in the front quad of Truqtok’s compound.
The one fool in the bed of their truck, aiming the twin pulsar at them, expecting them to be frozen with fear or to surrender. Except that Kyriaki had disabled it already, shot the man in the face, and Dave and his friends had unleashed a shitstorm of beam fire and detonators on the building.
Eventually, from a safe-enough distance, Kyriaki had managed to knock down the walls of the place with pulsar fire. And kill everything that had moved.
Yeah, maybe the Mondi was hell on stilts in close combat, and probably as a flier as well, but the rest of the team had internalized the need to take someone to the wall at the drop of a hat.
Slaughter everyone in the room and just assume that they needed killing.
Place like Truqtok’s palace, you were likely to be more right than wrong. And the locals, the ones Dave would have called the aliens, except they were native and the humans were not, had approved of the outcome, once they were sure it had been contained.
A little touch and go there for a bit, but should be safe enough now. And the Widow had to deal with those folks after they had left. Or spend a lot of time at the south pole digging around, along with all the other losers.
“Perhaps, my wee, killer friend,” Dave finally said as the laughter died down. “But the galaxy is an unsafe place, even after I spent twenty-five years trying to conquer it.”
“Why were you unable to succeed, not-Dave-Hall?” Glaxu asked.
It hadn’t been a topic of general conversation up until now. They had been busy trying to find buried treasure, and then to escape.
“It is extremely difficult to actually conquer an inhabited planet, Glaxu,” Dave said. “I could drop tens of thousands of troops, but many of the places might have hundreds of millions of inhabitants. Better to just own the high orbital ground and install a favorable government. Fewer outright rebellions that way, and just a lot of friction to deal with. Still, I took eighteen, and successfully held on to nearly six hundred for my stretch.”
Dave liked the way the headcrest popped all the way up and then poofed out sideways. He had learned that was the rough equivalent of a human’s eyes bugging out and their jaw dropping to the floor.
Mondi were people. You just had to learn how to understand the non-verbal communications.
“That is an impressive feat, Big Guy,” Glaxu finally choked out, using Bayjy’s nickname for him. “And yet you retired to a life of an outlaw on the lam from justice?”
“Ended up there,” Dave allowed. “I still have hope that we’ll e
scape my wife at some point, and then things can settle down and we’ll figure out what to do with the nest.”
“So staying intact as a unit remains an option?”
“For the time being, it is the only option, Glaxu,” Dave retorted. “Us against the galaxy. It might be years before alternatives become viable. My leaving does not protect the rest of you from retribution.”
“No, it does not, most-lethal-human,” Glaxu’s eyes smiled. “Plus, I look forward to what this nest might accomplish, both in the realm of brigandry, as well as vengeance. Truqtok and his ilk will certainly not be missed. Perhaps something similar would be an effective use of your talents?”
“That would be Kyriaki,” Dave said. “She had a law enforcement background. I’m just a killer.”
“Indeed you are,” Glaxu agreed. “But is that not what many situations call for?”
10
Iulianus
He had begun his fifth decade on this mad quest, accompanying the insane woman whose departure from the Dominion would salvage a bad situation and let the next regime take power without that many unnecessary executions to set the tone of things wrong.
Iulianus Palaiologos had understood from the beginning that his purpose was to keep her away from Cronus Prime forever, or at least until she fulfilled the one mission that would make them welcome her back, at least for a time.
Delivering Dave Hall’s head on a platter.
The others would be a welcome addition, but none of them were valued highly enough to justify crossing the frontiers inward again.
Unless Iulianus was bringing the Widow’s head, pickled in another jar as well.
Those had been his other orders, the ones delivered in secret by the Lord of the Dominion Armada itself: Keep her away, by hook or by crook, for as long as possible. Allow the old regime to fade without notice. Or end her, when that is no longer a viable option.
He had begun to wonder, from the way the woman acted, if she knew that. Or had perhaps guessed it. Much of her recent behavior made more sense that way.
Athanasia had become rage incarnate, distilled down to a fine cognac and bottled in crystalized malignancy. Iulianus wondered occasionally what the woman had been like before, when she still wore the half-mask that all elders of the Solar Party or Household maintained at all times. When things were measured with micrometers of social privilege and shades of cloth.
More than once, it had been his effort that allowed her to push the boundaries of the chase. Anything to get her farther away than yesterday. Eventually, they would enter a place where the Dominion itself was a legend, a tale told to recalcitrant children as a threat to behave. Be good, or the Dominator will come and get you.
They might be there now, heading through warp to a sector so distant that even his old Dominion charts, the finest available, had been marked with the equivalent of Here there be dragons.
Iulianus sat on his bridge and considered his next steps. It was night watch, and most of the crew was off-duty, doing the things that kept the ship in tune and the crew ready. Training, resting, studying.
He was alone up here, save for one helmsman, currently reading a novel on her main screen until the system needed human intervention; and a security trooper on the corner. Not one of the Caelons, the Dominator’s feared elite Assault Cavalry, and not one of Dominion Security’s White Hats, although he had a team of those below, serving the Widow and guarding her.
It gave him time to think.
Iulianus’s orders had carried him right up to the edge of what could have possibly been envisioned by his elders. Shortly, the Widow would reach a place where she would be able to separate herself from the rest of the mission, and in doing so would offer his crew the opportunity to mutiny in a most polite way.
Some would leap at the opportunity, he knew that. An Assault Courier such as Dominion-427 was almost the worst possible dead-end assignment for an aggressive sailor in the Dominion Armada. All one did was haul around senior leaders in luxurious comfort, rather than participating in proper assault drops on hostile worlds and pirates. Some would seek the excitement missing from their lives, embracing the outlaw lifestyle as an escape.
For Iulianus, a proper officer would stay aboard his vessel, marking the mutineers off the rolls and returning to Cronus Prime, or even Dominion Prime itself, with the sad news of his failure.
However, his orders really did not allow that. Those orders that he could never discuss with anyone on this vessel, under any circumstances but the most extreme.
He would need to find a way to convince the Widow that he had undergone the same crisis of conscience, the same change of heart that would allow some of his crew to depart with the woman. Worse, the very act of doing so himself would cause too many others, the ones that would normally only waver, to fall into line behind him, convinced that it must be the right thing to do, if Captain Palaiologos was doing so.
A few sailors would turn to a flood. Except…
He wondered if it might indeed be a good thing.
What would he do when that moment arrived? If there were too many volunteers, Dominion-427 might lack sufficient crew to return home with the few loyal ones.
His own preferences were not allowed to have any value here. The Widow would likely pass out of Dominion control at that moment and become a threat to the rest of the galaxy. That much was acceptable. But she might also decide to return home at some point and try to carve out her own place, which was not to be allowed.
Iulianus sat and watched stars streak by on the main screen. He would need to become perhaps the greatest double agent of all time. Allow himself to be seduced by the woman, to continue to remain close enough to her to kill her later if necessary?
He had seen the change in her eyes at the possibility that the mission might diverge now. The M’Rai, Vidy-Wooders, was a big, violent man. Probably the kind that could sate her with brutality, if that was the thing missing from her current needs. But he was also a junior varsity sailor, the kind who would have never even risen to the rank of an officer in the Dominion Armada.
The giant man had knowledge of Wildspace, but absolutely no business commanding a warship. Less, given his history with mistreating his previous crew.
Athanasia’s next crew would have too many of Iulianus’s current sailors for Iulianus to find that palatable. And she was not an unattractive woman, at least on the surface. Her core was an ugly, inhospitable place, but the relationship would only be physical, so far as he could manage it.
So he had begun the process of allowing her to see a person that she might find seducible enough to warrant the effort. Their relationship would not change much, as the Widow would still need to rely on a trained sailor to run things, even as she moved to the position of Owner, leaving him as commander.
Black widow or not, his orders, his core mission, allowed him no alternatives. Join the woman in her bed and her quest, regardless of the personal cost or the detriment of good conduct among his crew, especially as they began to be infected with piracy.
But keep her on the far side of Wildspace for as long as possible. Whatever methods, debaucheries, and lies were required. Whatever the personal cost to him and his crew.
At least until he had to kill her.
11
Kyriaki
“You’re selling him guns?” Kyriaki repeated, louder this time because he had apparently not heard her the first time.
Or Valentinian was ignoring her. She poked the back of his shoulder as she followed him through the armory.
The place was probably frightening to a civilian. Her fifty-member Internal Security Bureau detachment, back on Dominion Prime, might not have as many weapons available as Valentinian had stored in racks, floor to ceiling and everywhere else, in what had once been the ship’s hydroponics greenhouse.
That green smell was long since gone, replaced with gun oil and ozone that had probably worked their way in the fabric of the walls by now.
Anuradhan technology h
ad not been as efficient as the Dominion’s was, at least in the realm of life support systems or weapons. Engines and overdrives were a whole other proposition. Upgrading Longshot Hypothesis to Dominion standard had allowed the previous owner to retire his hydroponics facility and turn it into some sort of storage.
Valentinian had put a lock on the door and filled it with every kind of firearm Kyriaki had ever even heard of, and many she had not.
“Some,” Valentinian finally replied cryptically, stopping to look back over his shoulder while pulling a pulse carbine off the shelf. And a second.
That only left eight more on that rack. Plus the full rack below it.
“Any particular reason?” she asked, trying to force her way in past the shell he was carrying around today.
Something had happened since Longshot had docked at Chatosig-Six. She wasn’t sure what, and the man was an exceptional card player, so he wasn’t giving her any clues. But the conversation with Ozzo the shopkeeper had altered his trajectory somehow.
She saw a layer of pain in his eyes, when he finally met hers.
“Making changes,” was all he said, brushing past her with the two rifles in hand and walking to a sled resting in the corridor.
For a man that didn’t make changes unless forced, she wasn’t sure that this was a good thing. Still, the prices Valentinian had been negotiating with Ozzo had been good ones.
Must be a market in mayhem and revolution around here.
Kyriaki came to parade rest: feet apart, shoulders back, hands crossed behind her; and waited for him to return.
He touched one of the five plasma rifles, shook his head, and continued deeper. She followed.
“Second law of thermodynamics,” she quoted quietly as she ghosted up behind him. “There is no such thing as good news.”
“Intimately familiar with that one, lady,” Valentinian almost growled. “But there are necessary adaptations to circumstances, and mistakes. Hoping this falls more into the former.”
