by Blaze Ward
The Widow was waiting patiently to one side, with her Librarian at hand. Vidy-Wooders was putting his expertise to use aft, working with local crews on one of the gun stations. It had been built for a M’Rai, so he could answer questions as the smaller humans rebuilt the gunnery stations for the rest of the galaxy to use.
So they were alone in this chamber. Him and the two women, both patiently waiting and watching. He turned to them now, aware that all his prevarications and delays had finally reached that point where the hangman was preparing the noose for his neck.
Her smile was a sufficient window into her soul.
“Iulianus?” she asked pleasantly, surprising him that she would use the personal name in company.
But then, the Librarian wasn’t really a separate entity anymore, was she? Just an extension of the Widow’s need and rage.
As are we all.
“Athanasia,” he replied, watching the third person blink suddenly in barely-covered surprise.
But Stephaneria was Laurentian. Didn’t really understand Dominion culture and social mores in a visceral way, down in the blood. To her, it was just data to be absorbed, stored, and retransmitted as information later.
“You have put me off as long as you could,” the Widow said with a serious, deadly smile. “Tell me about your secret orders. The ones you received from the Solar Party, transmitted directly to you by the Lord of the Dominion Armada himself.”
Yes, she would have known the bureaucratic process well enough to predict the flow of that stream, from the cold, mountain glaciers down to the sea.
Again, the quick glance at Stephaneria. More of a reflex than anything. He had been stealing himself to open as much of his soul as was necessary with this woman.
He just hadn’t expected the Widow to make a burlesque of it.
“She’s mine,” Athanasia said. “Body and soul. Just as you will be soon.”
Images of praying mantises flashed before Iulianus. At least she was an attractive woman, one who worked endlessly at her training, that she could be perhaps a decade and a half older than him and in better shape than most of the women he had ever known, regardless of age.
Iulianus nodded, mostly to himself.
“They wish you to never return to Dominion space,” he said simply. “My orders were to do whatever it took to prevent you crossing that line inward. Whatever chase. Whatever subterfuges.”
“Whatever assassinations?” her eyes mocked him now.
As he knew they would.
“If you took it into your mind that you could return, victorious or not, I was to stop you,” Iulianus said simply.
Both women nodded, in harmony. It was eerie.
“And if I remain in Wildspace, Iulianus?” the Widow asked. “What then?”
“To encourage whatever whims kept you here. Keep you here,” he replied evenly. Carefully. “To serve them, even, if that would help.”
“So you cannot return home either?” her smile turned feral.
“No,” he acknowledged. “Not while you live. And certainly not while your own mission remains unfulfilled.”
“Then you are already mine,” she crooned.
“Who is Dave Hall?” Iulianus countered.
He might serve, but he was not a servant. He could settle for being a junior partner, perhaps, like Stephaneria, suborned to the greater mission, but he would sit at the high table.
“My husband,” Athanasia replied automatically. Her eyes grew serious and shrewd now as she realized the negotiations had only just begun.
“Who was he before this?” Iulianus pressed, noting absently that the librarian had rotated her body inward some, so that now she was more off to one side, rather than merely standing at the Widow’s shoulder. “What makes Dave Hall so important?”
She paused, and Iulianus knew he had struck close to home.
“If I tell you, you can never go home, Iulianus,” she said after a moment. “Even with my head in a bag.”
“You ask me to carry my orders out to the logical extreme, Athanasia,” he replied. “To commit to your conspiracy with my soul. You can do the same, if you wish me to remain as your partner. If I stay, many others will as well, convinced that this is both a grand adventure, as well as something their orders from the Dominion Armada demand of them.”
“I will own you,” she said simply.
“You own me now,” he said sharply. “But let us discard our old masks and have this out in the open. If we are to disregard the Dominion, then their ways must be reviewed, and perhaps disregarded as well. My treason will not come cheap, Athanasia.”
“Nor should it, Iulianus,” she smiled. “If it did, then I would never trust it.”
He nodded, acknowledging this truth. The Dominion was a land of masks, even in private. Only the Dominion Armada did without them, separated from the other forces in that particular way. The Dominator’s Caelon Assault Cavalry. The Solar Guard. The other land and space troops.
Everyone wore a mask. An officer of the Dominion Armada just didn’t make his with plastic and steel.
“So what will it be, Athanasia?” he asked bitterly. “Which treason will you choose?”
Part of his mind registered that Stephaneria seemed to be breathing heavily, as if sexually aroused. He didn’t want to dwell on the implications of that. Not today.
No good would come of it.
Athanasia surprised him utterly by reaching down and pulling her tight, gray tunic up and over her head, casting it with great accuracy into the chair where the ship’s captain would sit when the vessel was in commission.
Underneath, she wore a semi-armored bustier in a light gray. He could see plates and lines in the fabric, indicating where armor protected her breasts and stomach, almost like a loose corset.
Hooks kept it together. Twelve of them as she undid each, starting at the top, before tossing it onto her top. Athanasia stood topless before him, medium-sized breasts still firm in spite of her age.
Iulianus remained frozen, an alabaster statue. Perhaps Medusa’s latest victim.
“I will have the greatest treason out of you, Iulianus Palaiologos,” the Widow smiled as she stepped close.
Her left hand grasped his right and placed it on her breast. He could feel her excitement, her hammering heartbeat through her skin. Feel it in her nipple, protruding like a cut diamond.
“Dave Hall had another life once,” she whispered, close enough now that he could lean down a little and kiss her, if he dared. “Another face.”
“Before he assassinated the Dominator?” Iulianus pressed.
She looked up at him with a predatory triumph in her eyes. She would have him, right here on this deck, it seemed. Possibly with a witness. Perhaps an assistant, he wasn’t sure. But he had asked for treason from them both, so perhaps that was appropriate.
“Dave Hall didn’t assassinate the Dominator,” her other hand came up and touched his jaw lightly, as if measuring it for a kiss or a blow. “Dave Hall was the Dominator.”
24
Glaxu
He decided that maybe Leader was right, although Glaxu would never have believed it if he hadn’t witnessed it firstfoot. By the time he had returned to Outermost and taken a nap, at least three semi-serious job offers had arrived in his message box, from people unrelated to Dominion-427, looking to hire a slayership for some task.
Were all these people telepathic? He hadn’t talked to anyone. Nobody had been close enough to even look at him while he sat at the bar. Only after the conversation with the Widow.
Glaxu paused mid-rant and wondered if she had told the fixers and fences that she was considering hiring the bird. Had perhaps set her own foot trap and waited for him to wander into it without looking.
Crap. Truly, a devious, masterful maneuver, if she had. Now he would need to spend precious observation time dealing with yahoos and hooligans probably not normally worth his time, just to maintain his cover.
Ambushing the woman and her assistants i
n a hallway kept sounding more and more rewarding, but that was just the pique talking and he knew it. Hell, she might have done it as an insurance policy, just to see how long she could string him along.
Grumble.
Okay, first one in. Are you kidding me?
Actually, looking at the signature block, they probably weren’t. An offer to enter into the lists for a fighting tournament, put on by a human supremacist organization, with the promise of a major purse for the winner. Presumably only humans were allowed to seriously compete.
There were any number of ways to damage a competitor in such a thing without leaving claw prints in the dirt afterwards.
Just to be a shit, he replied, seeking more information. And made a note to wear the shock bracers every time he left the ship after this. Handy to take most humans down, and he had tuned his a little high, just in case a M’Rai came along and needed killing.
He’d deal with those morons if they had the tail feathers to actually engage him in anything more than simian poop-flinging exercises.
Next…
Glaxu read it again. And a third time. Still didn’t make a lick of sense, but he couldn’t find a flaw in the logic.
Local xenoanthropologist post-doc attempting to assemble a catalog of all the known sentient species in this multi-sector chunk of space, to update the previous catalog that had lain dormant for sixty years.
Huh.
Well, true, Mondi hadn’t been here then. Too busy helping put down the Griishu, and after that working for the Bahgh to conquer Verkossin.
Still, Glaxu approached that one with a long toe stuck out. Perhaps it was just the paranoia speaking, but how better to get inside your opponent’s head and find his weaknesses than to throw an academic at them, in the name of science?
Maybe he was just too devious, but one could never be too paranoid, especially without a nest watching his pinions.
Finally, the third message looked legitimate. As much as anything on this station had. Standard caravan guard kind of job, from the description. Fly escort for a freighter captain hauling expensive luxury goods around a reasonably fixed ring of systems, rather than bulk cargo or random passengers.
Maybe AND random passengers, but they wouldn’t be valuable, unless you knew something ahead of time and then it was a political kidnapping, not a raid.
One should always know the finer details of one’s expertise.
All of the planets listed were the harder, sharper type in this part of Wildspace. Much closer in style to Kryuome than Chatosig, which tended to be almost as civilized as the Mondi sectors. Boring, if you will, which was why so many nests decided to head elsewhere and work as mercenaries.
Ozzo the merchant might know more. Glaxu left his cold weather gear on, sighed and put on the shock bracers, and headed inward to make his way to the bazaar.
Leader had suggested the additional security methods that Glaxu confirmed as he left the ship and activated them. A secondary alarm that could only be disabled from his card-reader, rather than locally.
Plus, it was a Mondi slayership. Glaxu hadn’t met any other species in this sector that would be comfortable with narrow, meter-plus-tall hallways, so he doubted anyone would break in.
The docking configuration pulled all three beams in and hid them behind armored panels. Glaxu went ahead and locked those as well. There was no legitimate reason for someone to need to open them, from the inside or out, so that was just one more place where someone trying to do to him what Bayjy and Kyriaki had done to the M’Rai would get his attention.
Outside, the corridor was clear. Rather than run in elegant curves, this station was a series of straight lines connected by shallow angles. Twenty-four faces, seen from above, if he remembered. Outermost ring was dedicated to docks and shipping warehouses.
Inward, the next ring was concentrated on business. Made sense, if you could back your store up against your warehouse, so the outer edge of ring two was for the larger shops, the more successful ones that could afford the prime real estate.
Ozzo’s shop was on the inner edge. The less reputable side of the ten-meter-wide hallways. Glaxu approached it from a long ways off, watching for watchers, either paying attention to him or to Ozzo.
There wasn’t much he could do about being the only Mondi currently on station, other than to make sure he meandered a bit when he visited the station, stopping into random shops and poking around.
Never know when you’ll find buried treasure, as Bayjy apparently had with Ozzo. Never know when you wanted to confuse spotters.
He even went well past Ozzo’s shop today, just so he could stick his beak into a shop that sold gems and polished stones. He didn’t have anyone to impress for spring mating, and purchasing something for one of the human women in his nest could be misinterpreted, but he was keeping track of the traffic behind him, more than anything.
So far, so good.
He stepped into Ozzo’s shop, making sure to duck below the light beam that sounded a chime. No point in letting someone know where he was, if they had lost sight, was there?
The shopkeeper was tiny for a human, not more than a third taller than Glaxu. The Mondi didn’t know the exact subspecies, but he presumed the man was one of the genetically-engineered variants so common in Wildspace.
“Good morning, dangerous hunting bird,” Ozzo grinned as he watched Glaxu emerge from the tall shelving. “How may I be of assistance?”
Good, no comment about ducking under the light, which he had to have known about. Perhaps he understood that the situation was more than it appeared yesterday.
“Gossip, more than anything,” Glaxu said, moving to the far edge of the counter separating them, so he had a reasonable view of shadows entering the shop. To lubricate things, he added a coin to the pile of papers between the two of them.
“Is unnecessary,” the human glanced at the coin and made no effort to reach for it. “Friends of pretty lady Bayjy, regardless of silly stories fools tell each other in shadows.”
Glaxu cocked his head each way briefly, trying to read the human’s body language. From Bayjy’s tales, he was the oldest human she had ever met, tiny and wizened, but still sharp as a dewclaw.
“Hard Bargain is in station,” Glaxu offered as a thread that they might tug on.
“Is,” the merchant agreed. “Another silly fool, but big bastard, so nobody call him that to his face except Bayjy and pretty blond woman. For sale, if you want a mid-range salvage vulture in not-bad-shape. Best that he sell now, since it only break down tomorrow at this rate. Unknown First Mate’s estranged mate on station now as well. With gunship and crew. Buying bigger gunship and hiring killers. Mondi need bigger guns?”
“Perhaps, but that’s not why I’m here,” Glaxu shrugged.
How to explain to a non-Mondi what variable geometry meant. It wasn’t just engines and wings. The cannons also changed shape, adjusting beams for range or damage as the pilot’s needs changed.
The human’s brown eyes were fixed on him.
“Bad juju,” the human said flatly. “Ugly combination rage hunt your friends across Wildspace. You fix?”
Another shrug. He didn’t have a nest here he could trust if violence was the only solution. And the death urges had long since burned themselves out.
“Not without finding my old nest and a few others,” Glaxu said. “That new ship would be the sort of challenge they would look forward to, but I don’t have the money to hire that many of my own killers to make a hunt out of it.”
“Looking for other job now?” Ozzo asked. “Your name appears on winds of rumor this morning. Killer for hire, with own tiny gunship.”
“Who started those rumors?” Glaxu let his voice get hard.
“Ah,” the human nodded absently. “That make sense. You think Ex-wife? Play game?”
Bayjy and Leader had a high opinion of the merchant. Old connections that had served Miss Lavender in earlier visits.
“Do you know?” Glaxu asked bluntly.
Neither of them had made any motion towards the coin. Ozzo reached out now and grasped it in one, grizzled wingtip. He held it up, studying it for a moment as if it would speak to him.
“We put this to use and find out,” he said quietly, sliding it into a pocket. “Have contact. Now, little killer, interest you in hand-held blades? Or whatever correct term is?”
Glaxu scoffed, but only internally. Mondi and human were both erect and bipedal, but that was about where the comparisons ended. Opposable thumb, but he couldn’t make a true fist, like the tree shrews could, since his feathers got in the way. Holding a pistol involved pushing his middle finger or ring finger, to use the human terms, into the trigger guard. Those didn’t have feathers like the pointer and pinky.
Trying to fight with a handheld blade was silly. Especially with his short arms. He would use his much-longer legs and his dewclaw to fight. Had. They worked fine to kill humans and related creatures.
Still, Ozzo was being a friend today, so Glaxu could smile innocently and let the merchant work his spiel.
The device was one he was unfamiliar with, but it looked like something made for a Mondi hand. Thumb hole and finger hole that he could grasp, and keep as tight a grip as a human’s paw could. Ten centimeters of blade, sharpened for about eight of them down both sides, with a tip that was a barely sharpened chisel coming to a point quickly from a heavy spine down the center.
“You hold,” Ozzo handed it to him pommel first.
Glaxu did. The grip felt natural, which was unnatural this far from home. Perhaps it had been designed for a Mondi hand.
“Now, snap like whip,” the merchant grinned.
Glaxu gave the human a sarcastic eyeroll, but stepped back from the counter to make some space, just because he had no idea what to expect.
He drew his wrist back and then flicked it forward, like a beak strike. He nearly dropped the weapon when it telescoped outward in a manner similar to Dave’s baton, except that it retained the edges and returned to his fist quickly again, like a beak strike.
