by Blaze Ward
“So what are you buying?” she asked bluntly.
“Connections and peace of mind, for now,” he finally smiled at her. “Great big, freaking gun for you, later.”
“Me?” she was almost jarred back a half step by the beaming smile on his face.
He had a pretty smile, when he wanted to use it. It reminded her that they had never actually kissed, as close as they had come over the last several months. Something or someone always intruded at the most embarrassing moment.
“Dave and I talked,” Valentinian said quietly. “Can’t take the ship off-line at a station or planet long enough to have all the work done that Bayjy suggested, but we can buy some tools and a lot of metal sheet and bar stock. Build out a new deck aft, over the cargo bay, and turn it into crew quarters and such, but we’ll do it in deep space, just the five of us.”
“And what about a gun for me?” Kyriaki asked.
“At some point later, we can install a telescoping ball turret on the top hull back there and put something big and lethal in it,” his grin was back. “Lets you shoot back at people while Dave and I are flying.”
“Oh.”
She almost felt like someone had punched her in the stomach. Adding more space aft meant he could have a larger crew than the old days and still haul paying passengers around. But a gun turret meant that he was expecting her to still be part of that crew.
Like maybe they might really turn into a little more permanent than just the next few months. At least as a crew.
This close, his smell still did things to her mind that made her almost as angry as she was aroused. Kyriaki had never gotten her head fully wrapped around that, but neither had Valentinian. This was the moment when he might lean in and kiss her, if they had been in a romantic vid.
She might even allow it. But it would change things. And he didn’t necessarily respond well to changes forced upon him by outsiders. Even her.
No, especially her.
They stared at each other for several seconds, across that impassible crevice that they had dug at some point. Or never filled in, which was almost the same thing.
He was thinking about it.
Kissing her.
She was thinking about it.
Valentinian glanced over her shoulder and started chuckling to himself.
“What?” she demanded in a sarcastic tone.
“This is where somebody walks in and catches us,” he said between laughter. “Was expecting Dave to stick his head in and say something cute right about now. Need to have a talk with the screenwriters, or maybe the director, about their timing.”
Kyriaki couldn’t help herself. She joined him in laughing so hard that her stomach hurt and tears began to stream out of her eyes. Somehow, she found herself leaning against the man’s shoulder.
Not in a romantic way, although each had gotten an arm around the other’s waist, but just holding each other up as they laughed.
“Is this some human joke that would translate well into Mondi?” Glaxu interrupted as he stepped into the armory.
She and Valentinian doubled over now, alternately howling and gasping. Glaxu had a look on his face as if he wanted to mutter: Humans… with a really good eyeroll going, however politely he refrained at the moment that she looked.
Kyriaki reached up a hand and pulled Valentinian’s face down. She didn’t kiss him, but touched foreheads at the shared silliness of the entire thing. It was a human thing, and might not translate to Mondi, either.
Valentinian seemed to be reading her mind, because he started chuckling anew as their noses almost touched.
“You make me crazy,” she murmured as she broke the contact and leaned back.
“Ditto,” Valentinian agreed, taking a friendly step away from her, rather than the embarrassed one they normally fell into.
More chuckles. Maybe someone had released something into the life support system and she was stoned right now. Made as much sense as anything else.
“Glaxu,” Valentinian finally asked as he got himself reasonably under control. “What are your preferences, for reach weapons?”
“Pistols light enough for my short arms and small hands,” the Mondi warrior said. “I lack the upper body mass and strength of your kind. Monopod or crew-served light artillery is good for intermediate engagements, out to a range of…nine hundred human meters, if I do the conversion correctly in my head.“
“Monopod?” Kyriaki leaned into the conversation. “What about a repulsor underneath?”
She found it cute the way his head rolled thirty degrees left, and the same again to the right, as if trying to see her from several angles, to understand her better.
“It would slow me down,” Glaxu said with what she could only classify as an angry huff. “Find me a light rocket gun like not-Dave-Hall carries, lighter and in a smaller caliber, that I can carry over a shoulder, possibly in an undeployed state. Add a folding monopod and a sufficiently-capable lens atop, and he and I might have a competition at shooting down repulsor trucks and low-flying aircraft.”
“Ammunition warhead matter?” Valentinian asked.
“Only in the special effects you would like to see at the far end of the battlefield. Sheathed copper over face-hardened steel would be sufficient at engagement ranges to probably poke holes in Outermost, which would be the measure of usefulness.”
“The trucks don’t have armor,” Valentinian pointed out as Kyriaki listened.
“Humans have an endoskeleton around their brains and hearts,” Glaxu said cheerfully. “Same as Mondi. Dead drivers crash even more effectively than dead trucks.”
“Good to know,” Valentinian said.
He gave her a smile as he turned back to the rest of the onslaught of firepower in here and handed her a slug-throwing chunk of wood and metal nearly as tall as she was.
“We’ll add this to the sale pile,” he said. “Ammunition is impossible to locate, a pain to make, and Dave’s probably the only person here that could control the recoil.”
“Then why do you own it, Captain Tarasicodissa?” Glaxu walked close enough to rejoin the conversation.
“The guy who owned it previously should have brought a pistol,” she heard the laughter in Valentinian’s voice. “Didn’t want to leave it lying around, in case he woke up soon enough to take a pot shot at me before I got out of the camp and off the surface of the planet.”
“I see,” Glaxu didn’t, but had picked up the human phrase from one of them. Probably Bayjy.
“Do they all have similar stories?” Kyriaki asked, gesturing around and relaxing finally from the emotional wringer of the last five minutes.
“Traded for about half of them,” he offered with a shrug and an impish grin. “The stories go largely with what I traded them for originally.”
“But we are in the market for more?” Glaxu’s voice was hopeful with a fine, lethal edge to it.
“Absolutely. Need to protect my crew,” Valentinian agreed, turning to look her right in the eyes, from almost close enough to kiss. “And my friends.”
12
Glaxu
“Because most humans will be incapable of understanding Mondi body language well enough to catch me in a lie or prevarication, Captain,” Glaxu answered with a slight head tilt, as if the human really should have figured out something so basic without help.
“She’s not most humans, Glaxu,” not-Dave-Hall answered from his place on the sofa.
Rather than have the conversation in the dining space, Captain Tarasicodissa had moved everyone into the lounge. Bayjy and Kyriaki were on the left, as Glaxu faced them, and the Tall Human was alone on the right.
He and Leader were pacing past each other as they argued politely.
It was nice to know such nervous habits transcended species.
“That is a thing of which I am highly cognizant, Dave,” Glaxu said. “But I have had some experience misleading humans. Truqtok and his crew of cut-rate killers never attempted to overwhelm me because I had s
uggested that I was merely the leading edge of a larger, more dangerous force.”
Glaxu paused to chuckle with the big man.
“At the time, I was not aware that I was not bluffing them,” Glaxu continued. “But even the need for such misdirection presumes that they classify my species correctly, identify me as having been a member of your team, and then choose not to accept whatever wretched tale of woe I chose to spin.”
“I’m not comfortable,” Leader said, offsetting his stride so that they crossed in the middle of the room in separate lanes. “It puts you at too much risk, Glaxu. She’s far more dangerous than those fools on Kryuome.”
“Noted,” Glaxu paused to study the man in command. “I offer it as a means of perhaps leading them astray. It would be easy enough to send them to someplace like Vorcia Thiri. Even an armed merchantman like Dominion-427 would be at risk of attack, to say nothing of subterfuge. However, at present, we lack actionable intelligence of our foes. I propose to rectify that shortcoming in the cleanest method possible.”
“Dominion-427 is far more dangerous than an armed cargo transport,” Dave pointed out.
“Not compared to some of the pirates and brigands that call Vorcia Thiri home, Dave,” Glaxu replied. “Even my original nest ascertained that it was a wiser choice to depart the system with weapon systems armed, than to stay and press our luck. Perhaps the human variants and splinter kingdoms will choose to band together at some point and break the place, but for now it is something of an Urlan stronghold.”
“Oh,” Dave replied.
“Even Butler didn’t go there,” Bayjy opined. “And hardly nothing ever intimidated that fool. I like sending her there.”
“Why has she continued to chase us?” Kyriaki spoke up, a mug of human tea, hot water strained through flavoring leaves, in one hand. “I feel like we haven’t answered that question. It costs money to run any ship. And they aren’t hauling cargo. She has to run out of cash eventually, unless she turns to piracy. Plus her crew can’t be thrilled to be chasing us forever. Dave, how far would they go?”
“They should have stopped after Laurentia,” Dave said. “Unless the Solar Party wanted her gone forever, which they might have. Dowager Widows don’t really have a place in the power structure of the Household, since there is almost never a blood relationship to the new Dominator.”
“Give her a ship and order it to follow her wishes?” Valentinian asked. “How long?”
Until they have achieved their goal, but Glaxu didn’t say that out loud. He was Farther, and his ship was Outermost. Even his own kind didn’t tend to see things with the same sort of obsessions that he occasionally brought to the nest.
Okay, more than occasionally. Habitually was probably a more accurate assessment.
Whatever.
“Until we’re dead, or her crew mutinies,” Valentinian said. “Let’s just assume that we need to avoid the former long enough to create the latter.”
“That’s an interesting word,” Bayjy pointed out. “Mutiny. Your Dominion folks had to have planned for something like that. Does a mutiny mean they keep coming after us, even after ordered home by whoever was supposed to be in command?”
“I’ve spent too much time around the woman after Dave left,” Kyriaki said. “She won’t stop. Not until at least three of us are dead. Maybe all five, just to make sure there are no loose ends. What if 427’s captain mutinies and dumps her on a station somewhere?”
“To give her that ship, and orders that got them to Kryuome, they don’t want her back,” Dave said. “Mutiny is maybe the wrong word, but I can’t help but wonder if they might give her enough money, dangle it out there, that she could hire a replacement ship, staff it, and turn pirate while she continues hunting us. That lets 427 go home eventually, without her, but giving her enough rope that she’ll keep going without them.”
“All the more reason I should become a spy,” Glaxu stopped his pacing in the middle of the room and faced them all. “WE DO NOT KNOW. And can thus not plan the correct ambush to eliminate her as a threat. Chatosig is an eminently excellent waypoint to make such a decision. She could buy a ship here, or be misled to head to Vorcia Thiri in pursuit of Longshot Hypothesis. Or perhaps her crew does mutiny, and leaves her here alone while they return home. At that point, she is a lame bilgebeast on an open plain and I might be able to eliminate her myself.”
Glaxu fixed his gaze on Leader Valentinian. The man would ask the other three, and get their approval, but it was his decision, in the end. Sure enough, Captain Tarasicodissa looked at each of their cohorts and waited for them to nod before he proceeded. Each nest must have a leader, but that leader must maintain the support and respect of his followers.
Leader did that, and did it better than many of the nests Glaxu had known or served with in his time.
“Okay,” Valentinian nodded to Glaxu. “We’ll finish our trade with Ozzo and load up on metal stock and varied consumables over the next two days. Since nobody here knows us, we don’t need a major argument on the deck to sell the story. Longshot Hypothesis will depart and aim in the direction of Vorcia Thiri, like we’re looking for more trouble or a rougher place to hide. You’ll have four sets of coordinates where we’ll wait while we work. Questions?”
“Dave Hall, do you wish the threat neutralized, or eliminated?” Glaxu turned to Tall Human with his attention.
He had heard pieces of the tale, however far-fetched they were. Hopefully, Mondi weren’t subject to the sorts of middle-aged depression that gave rise to something as immense and amazing as Dave Hall had done. Glaxu had never listened to his parents or elders well enough to determine if such things were fanciful allegories, or perhaps his future fears.
Dave Hall’s face went through several emotional states in as many seconds. Glaxu did not know the species’ communication morphologies well enough to follow the path, but eventually, Dave came to rest. Perhaps peace, but that was not quite the thing displayed.
“In the end, I expect that elimination is the only way that protects us,” Dave replied darkly. “I had hoped she would give up and get on with her life, but I suppose it took me nearly two years to go through what she’s probably facing now. If she appears at Chatosig, then she might never stop chasing us, so if you have a good chance to escape afterwards, killing her might be for the best for the widest number of people.”
Glaxu quickly scanned the faces of the other humans, catching their emotional state.
He was still confused at the way that humans seemed frequently reluctant to simply open a foe’s arteries with a quick dewclaw. Instead of nests, they had packs, and perhaps packsense was a stronger bond than Mondi maintained. They had to be brought hesitantly to the sort of calculated violence that secured their flanks.
Premeditated self-defense, one of Glaxu’s instructors back home had called it. Your Excellency, he needed killing.
Glaxu nodded. This plan would protect his nest, and his friends. And quite possibly make the galaxy a safer place.
So damn it, when had he turned into one of the good guys?
13
Athanasia
Chatosig-Six.
Athanasia looked at the image, displayed on the bridge’s main screen. There were a number of other stations in orbit, but the rest of them paled by comparison. Leaving off the industrial factories, this one station was larger than all the rest combined, running several kilometers of space across several decks.
Chatosig-Five, trailing in orbit, was where she would probably have to travel to actually take possession of a new ship if she commissioned one, but Six would be where she bought it.
Stephaneria sat with her to her left, enraptured with the view and possibly trying to spot the distinct hull of Longshot Hypothesis docked. Athanasia felt eyes watching her, the sense that the paranoia of the Dominion Household developed.
She turned and saw Captain Palaiologos studying her from under hooded brows. Shortly, the man’s world would change, but she could not truly determine wh
ich way the captain would jump. Perhaps he didn’t know, either, and she would have to bring him to the crux in order to force a decision out of him.
“We have arrived,” he said in a definitive, if obvious tone.
They had.
Fate and destiny would intrude now. Or wash her out to sea like a riptide.
“Make your arrangements to dock, Captain,” Athanasia replied. “Expect that we’ll be here for at least a tenday, unless something unforeseen arises, so your crew should have time for station leave, as long as they are careful. Presume Hard Bargain is some distance behind us, and let him make his own docking arrangements, if he bothers to actually join us for the next stage.”
She rose from her seat, off to the side of the bridge, and felt Stephaneria do the same. At times, the woman was almost an extension of Athanasia’s will rather than her own being, but even from here, the need for revenge on Valentinian Tarasicodissa was almost a scent the younger woman gave off. Much like Athanasia’s desire to end the one who called himself Dave Hall.
She would not use his true name. Dave Hall had given up the right to it when he had betrayed her and himself. He was just a fugitive now, a man with a significant bounty on his head and the enemy of all Dominion citizens. Laurentia would probably mint new currency with his face on it as a hero, but that was their decision.
She would settle for ending him.
“You will join me in my quarters when the ship has safely docked, Captain,” Athanasia fixed him with a cold eye, warning the man that decisions were now imminent.
Captain Palaiologos nodded exactly correctly in response to a woman of her station and she departed, Stephaneria a stride behind her and to the left as they made their way through corridors to her suite. Crewmembers they encountered hastened to step into side corridors or flatten themselves against walls as she passed, as if her very touch was toxic.
That it probably was toxic was beside the point.
Stephaneria came to rest at her side, once they were in the main salon.
