IceFlight

by Casey Lea

Darsey Ice dangled helplessly, head down and eyes shut, lost to the world. Her mind floated all alone, serene and still with no link to its distant flesh. She was dimly relieved at such unexpected sanctuary, but, despite that, an innate stubbornness forced her to struggle for consciousness. The slow return to her body began with pain. Pain that drove through the darkness like headlights. Darsey moaned and something laughed in response. The laugh sounded achingly human, but Darsey knew it was not. She knew with soul deep certainty that the rest of her crew were dead.

  She shuddered, helping her mind and body rediscover each other. That link strengthened, with an awareness of light and the grasp of impossibly huge hands. Alien hands that were hooked like claws in her armpits. She realized she was moving, the toes of her boots scuffing helplessly as she was dragged face down, along a smooth surface. Still blind and limp, she felt nausea rise, along with her last memory of Will. His face had looked so strange wearing a scream instead of a ready smile. Voices intruded on her private agony. Voices that seemed to speak English before breaking into rough laughter.

  Insane, she thought sadly. Will would have loved it. Aliens using our language, aliens with a sense of humor, oh yeah.

  She blinked hard, struggling against tears, and her eyes started to clear. She made an effort to focus, but failed. It didn’t matter. Darsey was far distant from her surroundings. She was locked in the past, reliving her ship’s last minutes. Her memories returned with gut-wrenching force and she let them take her, until they finally led her back to the vortex and the ship that first appeared as a diamond in the dark.

  Darsey quivered with the realisation that she must be aboard that alien ship. One of her captors shifted a huge hand from the armpit of her suit to her wrist and his companion did the same on the other side, so that they could keep pulling her along in tandem. She was vaguely aware of a dirty lavender blur on either side that was matched by a stained cream floor passing far too close to her face. She realized she was being dragged along a corridor. That knowledge reoriented her, but, just as she had started to build a picture of where she was, her surroundings changed.

  The creatures holding her tensed and their grip tightened, crushing the shoulders of her suit. Darsey winced at the pain, but it brought her closer to her surroundings. She felt the bunching of massive arms and then a surge when her captors leapt forward.

  They dragged her into an open space and the three of them were suddenly falling.

  Darsey cried out when her stomach dipped and knotted. It took all of her remaining courage to stay calm enough not to throw up. She belatedly realized that she wasn’t falling, even though the floor had disappeared. The sensation that twisted her insides was familiar.

  I’m floating, she realized. I’m weightless again.

  The dim lighting of the alien craft was unchanged, but their surroundings were now black. Darsey was being wafted along the middle of a tunnel. It extended into darkness ahead and she could see doors opening on every side, including the curves that should have been the ceiling and floor. One guard raised a solid forearm, with a wrist as large as Darsey’s thigh. That wrist was circled by a flat bracelet of plain gray. The strange jewellery fired a pulse that Darsey felt against her skin, even through her space suit padding, and all three of them accelerated. Her captor’s wristband fired repeatedly and their speed increased with each thrust, until Darsey’s eyes were streaming in the wind of their passage.

  Bright ovals shot past and were lost before she could see where they led. A tiny patch of Darsey’s skin was exposed to the rushing air, where the padding and interfaces for her spacesuit finished, leaving only her eyes free. She was thankful for the suit covering the rest of her body and grateful that her lack of a helmet had caused her no more than discomfort.

  Not like Will, she thought, caught by memory again.

  A pulse stronger than the rest startled Darsey from her past. She looked up to see the largest opening yet, directly ahead. Her escorts halted again and, as they slowed, her heart pounded faster. It seemed that the end of their journey was close. They drifted from the tunnel into an open chamber that dwarfed any bridge she had ever seen. The room they entered was a hollow globe large enough to enclose her entire spaceship. However, much of that startling space was empty, dark and abandoned in comparison to its centre, which was crowded. The middle of the hollow was packed with a dizzying array of seats and consoles. They were randomly slotted in, filling the globe’s hub and floating at all angles, with no common orientation.

  Darsey had to squint against unexpected brightness when the centre of the chamber was suddenly lit by multiple projections. A series of pictures tumbled through the globe, giant images that displayed and exchanged information at bewildering speed. Darsey blinked and narrowed her eyes. The seats that had been vague silhouettes now appeared in surprisingly garish detail, along with their occupants. A silent alien reclined in each gaudy chair. They all looked surprisingly human, but were dwarfed by the holograms around them. Shifting patterns towered over Darsey as she was propelled toward the centre of the room. They blazed from the curved consoles attached to each chair and surrounded every crew member.

  The guards held Darsey tight and began to thread a path through the randomly seated crew. She struggled against a growing sense of detachment as her capture became surreal. The chamber was as silent as a giant tank in some strange aquarium. The aliens around her seemed to be swimming through holograms and she shivered in her suit. What kind of creatures were they? Not a single blank face turned her way.

  Darsey was almost too numb to feel her body shake, as she was towed into an empty space at the heart of the globe. It held a single, huge chair, without holograms or an occupant. She stared blankly at a monstrosity of gold, pink, purple and yellow that floated in majestic solitude. The enormous seat should have been terrifying, but she almost laughed. Designed by Liberace she thought and her lips twitched, but her amusement leached away, because Will would have found it hilarious.

  Another pulse changed their direction again and Darsey was steered in among the last of the crew on the far side of the central chair. She flinched when a piece of braid hanging from the bottom of a seat brushed her face. She swallowed a nervous laugh and looked up to see an alien seated above her, a woman so close they could almost touch. Darsey stared at the stranger as they wafted past and willed the woman to look at her. To acknowledge her at all, but there was no response.

  Didn’t these people have any curiosity? Or were new species so common they were boring? Surely that wasn’t possible. Darsey was so distracted by the thought of a Universe teeming with sentient life that she scarcely noticed the remaining aliens. She was unaware of passing the last seat, until her captors paused and she was jerked to a halt in front of a massive, curving wall.

  The far side of the hollow globe. She floated between her guards like a kitten held by lions. One tapped his gray bracelet and it projected a beam of light at a huge, metal door in the wall above their heads. It seemed they were knocking at the captain’s lair.

  Darsey swallowed and another possibility occurred to her. Perhaps the aliens had ignored her because of their boss. Perhaps if they ever stopped working, even for a second, they’d be punished.

  A blast of white light from the monstrous door overhead made her flinch and a final surge sent her flying into a solid slab of metal. Darsey cried out as she was thrown headfirst at the door above. She closed her eyes just before her face slammed into it and felt... nothing.

  Huh? Could death possibly be that quick? She opened an eye in time to see the apparently solid metal surface sliding past. It fell away as she passed through it, to leave her staring at a room that seemed to be on its side. The floor was at right angles to the door and rose in front of her like a wall.

  Darsey had no idea how to stand on it and pushed back against her captors, who dragged her with them anyway. Gravity abruptly reclaimed them and Darsey’s head spun, followed by her stomach when she stepped down onto the wall. She
staggered, but managed to right herself as her mind adjusted to new directions. She was finally standing on a floor again. The floor of a shiny, tangled alien magpie’s nest admittedly, but at least she had her balance back.

  Darsey’s captors stayed close, while she looked around the circular room in amazement. She gaped helplessly, then checked her surroundings again. A riot of clashing colors and shiny surfaces threw distorted reflections of the room back at her, making her dizzy. A lime green ceiling swathed in banners of gold, purple, brown and pink ended awkwardly against black and white walls. Each zebra stripe was studded with tiny disks that reflected a rainbow array of colors and with larger strips of... tinfoil? Darsey’s vertigo returned and she ducked her head to stare at the floor, which was covered by a scarlet rug that threatened to tangle her boots.

  One of Darsey's guards grunted nervously and she looked up in alarm. It was her first chance to study the pair and they were even less appealing than the room. She was tall, but her two captors dwarfed her in every way. They were built on a different scale, from their bulging noses and jaws, to long, thick arms and stubby legs. One bristled with hair, while the other was bald. The furry individual had a thatch of silver on his head and over much of his body, while his companion’s bare skin was broken only by ridges of cartilage or bone. Both were clothed in layers of tasselled cloth that fell from heavy shoulders to leave their arms bare.

  Darsey’s escorts stared straight ahead and showed no further interest in her. Her open scrutiny was unmatched by any curiosity of their own. The strangeness of the ship and its riotous décor was nothing compared to its crew’s inhuman reaction to a new species. Darsey’s eyes burned with sudden tears, but she managed to hold them back. Her grief was joined by fear and she had to look away from the huge aliens. She studied her boots instead, searching for courage, but could only find a growing determination to do whatever she had to, despite the fear. She raised her head and managed to look from one guard to the other in a deliberately insolent survey. Her heart raced, but her bravado was convincing and this time she got their attention.

  “I can’t wait to meet the master of this menagerie,” Darsey drawled, and stared calmly at the hairy guard.

  He frowned in confusion and looked uncertainly at his companion.

  “Where’s your boss?” she elaborated, and ignored their hulking presence to step confidently forward.

  “Wait!” they bellowed together, but Darsey took another stride.

  “Hello!” she called ringingly.

  She tried to move further into the room, but an oversized foot hooked around her calf. The crazy room spun again as she staggered and fell. She toppled forward and the tangled surface of the rug rushed at her face, then hit her hard. The rigid space suit protected her body, but the padding around her head was less effective and only partially cushioned her cheek. She sprawled across crimson tufts, furious and dazed.

  She had to struggle to bring the scarlet haze surrounding her back into focus. It slowly resolved itself into a forest of scratchy strands. They seemed impossibly large so close and Darsey flinched when they flattened in front of her nose. A pair of dark boots stepped into her field of vision. She blinked in surprise at footwear that was noticeably smaller than that of her escorts. Darsey looked up as the boots’ owner crouched before her, and weightlessness caught the pit of her stomach again. She cursed the disorienting effect of the gaudy room and concentrated on the newcomer instead.

  His striped trousers and slashed, silver jerkin managed to seem muted compared to the clothing of her guards. They also seemed too subdued to belong to the owner of this impossibly garish room. Darsey frowned, shifting her attention to his head and stopped. She had to make an effort not to shake as she studied the most alien features she had yet encountered. The stranger’s face was a pale gold. His skin seemed to shimmer, most noticeably over angled cheekbones and the narrow bridge of his nose. Like the prow of a Viking longship she thought vaguely. Flared golden nostrils sat close to that central arch and were narrower than their human equivalent. The differences were subtle, but combined to make the newcomer’s features disconcertingly strange.

  Her captor’s eyes were just as alien and the same fierce gold as a bird of prey’s. He stared at Darsey without blinking, but at least he seemed curious. She was relieved to realize that someone in this distorted world was actually interested in her. One of his strange eyes was shadowed by a wave of dark hair that fell forward over his forehead. The rest was held back from his face by a gleaming crest. It looked like a stylised sculpture of the alien ship and trailed silver strands that were woven through his hair.

  In contrast, the rest of the stranger’s body was surprisingly normal, apart from the golden gleam of his skin and the fact that his neck was framed by the most exotic of all his odd features. Two feathery strands, apparently attached behind each ear, stirred against his collar. Darsey focused on one as it uncoiled from his shoulder. Soft golden bristles stirred along its length when it darted forward. She flinched and the strange frond twitched in response. More of the strands lining it swivelled to face Darsey and it seemed to stare at her. Simultaneously, she shuddered as something cold touched her mind. That intrusive chill scared her more than anything else since her capture.

  Darsey had always been a loner, but abruptly realized that she had never been truly alone before. Even on solo shift, far from the sun’s warmth, she had always known that she could and would return to her own species. That home was simply a flight away. She looked into this alien’s hawk-like eyes and understood that this time there was no easy return. Perhaps no return at all.

  She swallowed again, but hid her fear behind the most ferocious glare she could muster. The newcomer looked startled, and then frowned in response. The exchange became a test of wills and neither looked away, despite the noisy approach of another pair of boots. They were large and silver and their owner stamped around Darsey twice. This tour of inspection was accompanied by a tuneless humming that she was vaguely aware of as a nasal background to her glaring competition. The silver boots finally stopped circling Darsey, to settle beside her opponent.

  “Well, Nightwing, is it a particular sex?”

  That harsh question intruded on their mutual examination and both Darsey and the alien started. He rose smoothly to stand straight and stiff beside the questioner. Darsey cursed her inability to do the same and started to struggle upright in her space suit.

  “Leader,” her examiner acknowledged crisply and with obvious deference.

  He watched Darsey’s efforts to rise, but offered no help and she had to lever herself upright from a knee. Her stomach churned, as much with fury as fear and, although she made it to her feet, she refused to look up at her captors, simply because she sensed it was what they expected. It was a small defiance, but it helped her hold fast to her courage.

  “The scan shows female,” the alien called Nightwing continued dispassionately, “but, as you can judge, sah, the prize has little worth. She’s slow, weak and ugly. She won’t even repay feeding. I recommend full release along with its ship.”

  Silver Boots snorted angrily, but there was no disagreement. He was equally unimpressed by Darsey and she had to bite back an indignant response. Only the possibility of being released kept her quiet. She still refused to look up and restricted her glower to the aliens’ boots. One of the silver pair tapped in annoyance.

  “Telepath? Empath?”

  The dark-booted alien shook an amber finger in Darsey’s line of sight, in a gesture that obviously meant ‘no’.

  “Does it speak, Bridge?”

  “Yes, Leader.”

  “Look at me, alien.” The order was clearly directed at Darsey, but she ignored it. The silver boots fidgeted impatiently. “Are you sure it has full thought, Nightwing?”

  “Ye, sah. She was talking to the mutt before and spoke full well. She has some strange phrases, but she speaks and thinks more clear than most mutt.”

  “Why don’t you look u
p, female?”

  “You didn’t say please,” Darsey answered clearly.

  There was a gasp from the owner of the black boots. Beside Darsey, one of the enormous guards quivered and the other moaned softly. The silver pair of boots was completely still for the first time and the only movement was the faint trembling of her massive escorts. Their terror was contagious and Darsey had to search for her courage again. She found enough to keep herself from shaking and stared stubbornly at the ground. Her ordeal was terminated by an unexpected laugh.

  A nasal guffaw of astonishment escaped Silver Boots as a snort, and then he laughed with unrestrained glee. The raucous release bounced crazily from the textured walls and was quickly joined by laughter from the gold-skinned alien. There was a marked pause before rumbling chuckles from the guards added to the merriment. The tension gripping the room eased and Darsey swallowed a sigh of relief.

  “Please,” the leader gasped. “Please indeed! It’s ages since I was docked for bad manners. I’m proud of my courtesy and I’m sure I’ve shown all that a primitive’s due. Yet, she strangely wants more. So... would you look at me, please?”

  Darsey immediately looked up and tried to smile pleasantly. Her friendly expression became vacant and fixed as soon as she focused on the male before her. He was smaller than her guards, but still a huge man and clearly related to them. His short hair was silver-blond and his eyes gleamed with the same cold reflection as his boots. His skin was very fair, with a hint of violet across his cheeks, but, despite that, he appeared more human than any alien she had met so far.

  Unfortunately, that made him even more terrifying. Darsey could read his features easily enough and they showed such delight in her predicament that she blanched. He unexpectedly bowed, bending low with surprising ease for such a large man, and Darsey wondered what to think of the courtesy, but when he straightened his expression was mocking.

  “Welcome aboard the Bandit, my lady,” he sneered. “I am Leader Greon and I trust you find us satisfactory. Truly, I can’t say such for you. Your primitive technology and bulky body are a waste of passage. I find you disappointing and that will have a bad result... for you.”

  Greon paused to watch her reaction to his threat, but Darsey managed not to flinch. Looking scared was usually a good way to encourage bullies. At Ieast her face was still hidden by the spacesuit lining and she suddenly understood his comment about her bulky body. The aliens attacking her ship had moved freely through space, without obvious protection, and Greon must have assumed her rigid spacesuit was normal clothing. He probably thought she was just as round as her protective bubble wrap.

  Darsey had to set her teeth against an indignant response and held Greon’s gaze instead, until his lips puckered in sudden amazement. He bent forward and a hand flashed for her face. She tried to avoid his grip, but he was fast and the suit slowed her. Greon grasped her chin firmly and tilted her head to a painful angle as he stared into her eyes. He raised his left arm and a band of gold around his wrist flashed to momentarily blind her. She was aware of a chill that swept across her iris and then penetrated the pupil, making her gasp. The pain passed and she blinked furiously in an effort to re-focus the bright but blurred colors swimming around her. She glared at the still hazy alien, but he ignored her to study a stream of data projected from the golden bracelet.

  “Ye-es,” he said consideringly. “The DNA reads true. They are genuinely blue. Strange-as. Actually blue, with no cosmetic mods. You have beautiful eyes, my dear, of a most unique color. Do many of your species have such?”

  Darsey trembled and looked dazed as he studied her closely. “It’s – it’s a mutation. They teased me about i-”

  “Drak.” Greon released her with a rough push and she staggered awkwardly, tripping again as the rug snagged her boots.

  She fell to the scarlet floor, but the aliens ignored her. Greon stamped angrily away and his subordinates gave him plenty of room. “There’s no way to recover the cost of this drakking detour now. And no use to snatch more of her kind. The best we can hope is to sell those one-time eyes for some credit. They’re the only genetically produced blue eyes in space and should be worth something. I’ll bet my Luck on it. Remove them, Nightwing, and dispose of the rest.”

  “Ye, sah,” the wearer of the black boots answered instantly and bent to help Darsey to her feet.

  She had to quell a moment of absolute panic and let him pull her upright as she regained control. She wanted to leap at Greon and release all of her fear and anger in attack, but she knew that the suit and his guards made that impossible. She needed to wait for a better chance. She lowered her eyes again and turned obediently after her captor, trying to look submissive while adrenalin shook her.

  Nightwing steered Darsey carefully around Greon, toward the opposite side of the cabin, but then stopped her, just short of a small door in the far wall. His fingers tightened in her arm and she almost lashed out anyway. Tension screamed through her temples and she just wanted to do something. Anything.

  Nightwing ignored her to bow to Greon. “Leader, I’ve given thought to your earlier advice.”

  “Indeed?”

  “It’s good advice and I’ve decided to take it.”

  “Certain-sure. When we dock, you may find a suitable slave.”

  “I’d rather not wait, sah. We’ll have to be out for an age now, just to recover credit from this tour. I wish to buy this alien and gain a slave full quick.”

  Darsey and Greon both gaped at the suggestion, before Greon’s mouth tightened to a single gash.

  “She’s our only loot from this ex and I want some return. A mermaridian lady or gentik geneticist will pay well for those blue eyes, but she’ll be a poor slave without them. I’m not wasting tek to fix her, Senior. She’s not worth the credit and I’m out of profit as-is.”

  “You needn’t be, sah.”

  Greon was suddenly still again and his silver eyes glinted when he glanced at Darsey. She held her breath while the two males faced each other. She wasn’t sure what her dark-haired captor was offering, but she prayed that it would save her life. Her heart began to hammer for lack of air and she took a small, gasping breath. It went unnoticed by the two aliens.

  Greon tapped his pursed lips and then reluctantly shook his head.

  “You’re a good Senior, Nightwing. Truly, the best I’ve had and I’d like to indulge you, but blue eyes are unique. They could be worth multi-credit.”

  “You’re right, Leader, and I appreciate that. I’m willing to cover all loss. I’ll trade my full ship’s share from this flight.”

  “Hmmmm. Not enough.”

  “All right. This trip and the next.”

  “Make it three full trips signed to me, not the ship, and we deal.”

  Darsey felt the alien standing close to her, stiffen with anger. “I’d still have to make full repayment to the ship for its loss.”

  “Truly, truly,” Greon agreed airily. “I estimate that will take your total share from another two outs. That’s five profitless tours. Are you sure you want such?”

  Darsey heard her captor’s teeth grind. He glanced at her and she appealed to him with her eyes. She could only hope the plea was as clear as if it was spoken. He turned back to Greon and answered curtly, “Deal.”

  “Deal,” the captain agreed.

  They both raised their left arms and Darsey saw that Nightwing wore a bracelet similar to Greon’s. They were wider than those on the guards’ wrists and gold, rather than gray. The intricate patterns engraved on the strange bands started to glow, then flashed simultaneously and a line of light briefly linked them. Darsey realized that the gesture was an exchange of information, presumably the details of her sale and resolved to try to to steal one of the useful bands. She was distracted from her thoughts by a tap on her shoulder.

  Darsey looked up at her new owner, who was slightly taller than her six-foot height. She smiled at him, but he ignored her expression to jerk his head curtly at the door. She
felt a surge of anger in response, but didn’t hesitate. The small, curved door was close and Darsey headed awkwardly toward it, her boots dragging in the thick crimson pile.

  A shimmering screen filled the doorway, but dimmed when she approached it, to reveal a long tunnel exactly like the one she’d been floated along earlier. It could have been the same passage, but there was nothing for Darsey to positively identify.

  She reached the oval opening and shuffled through it with undisguised enthusiasm. Her owner followed immediately and she guessed that he was equally relieved to escape from Greon. They tumbled back into weightlessness and, by the time Darsey stabilised herself, the door behind them looked firmly shut.

  3

  Alien Welcome