Windjammer: The Tradership Saga Book 1

by M J Gauntlet

  Suspended in the air before him, was a face the hue of dark Valerian chocolate, with a rounded chin that curved up to encompass two full lips. Her mouth was shaped into what could only be called a mischievous, beguiling smile. It was the type of smile that tempted a person to learn more about the person behind it. And her hair! Her hair was cut short forming a golden woolen crown that surrounded her face like a halo. It was the color of spun gold metal, rare as it is beautiful. Zax’s hand subconsciously began to touch his own locks. Yet that magnificent crown of hair was not her most striking feature... that was reserved for her eyes.

  Her smoky golden irises were shot through with crystalline shards of green, which seemed to make her eyes glow. The combination of those eyes with that dark skin was nothing less than breathtaking! Around her neck was the very same necklace that was now laying on the table in front of him. Zax realized, that he had been holding his breath while the Tri-D image shimmered in the air before him. Abruptly, the image changed to that of a tall, handsome man who turned to look directly into the imager. It was a face Zax could barely recognize…it was his father’s…Ezekiel Grayson.

  Looking back at him, was not the wreck of a human being that he had once called Dad, but a strong, vibrant, intense figure of a man. It was a face that he had forgotten, as time and drugs changed its contours. A face that Zax could vaguely remember seeing as a child. Zax checked the video’s time stamp, realizing that this recording had been made after one month after his mother’s death. After a few seconds, his father’s holographic image stared intensely into the lens, blinked once, smiled a small, sad smile and then began to speak:

  “Hello son,” spoke a strong steady voice, that took Zax a moment to recognize as his father’s. “If you are seeing this recording, then it is likely that I am dead and you are either within a few months of, or past your nineteenth birthday. There is, of course, no way for me to know how I might have died, but if you are watching this recording then I must assume the worst. If my death had been a gradual one due to natural causes, then I would have had time to update this message and you would not be seeing it as it is now, therefore, it appears that I have died suddenly, either by accident or ‘other’ means.

  I’m sorry that you have lost your mother, my precious wife, before you really got to know her, but be assured she loved you more than life itself, as did I. Zax reached out and paused the vid, so that he could wipe away the tears that were obscuring his vision. Once he had collected himself, he pressed ‘play’.

  I would like to tell you, how me and your mother met. I think this will give you a little understanding of the man I was before I met your mother, and what I became after I met her…” his face suddenly saddened, “and the man I’m afraid I will become now that she is gone.

  “As you probably know by now, I was a scout for the Unity Imperial navy. I had flown several missions before my retirement and had made quite a name for myself, or so they say. That part of my life seems like a blur to me now. Anyway, after a particularly dangerous mission, I decided to retire with full honors. You will find the medals, along with other stuff in the safe deposit box.

  After I left the service, I found myself plagued by intermittent head pain and some memory loss. There were also these strange…I guess you could call them ‘episodes’, where at times, I felt as though I was someone else. The fleet doctors said my condition was common for deep space scouts who were traumatically separated from their ship’s

  A.I. It was expected for me to experience some latent pain and disorientation when the link was severed. Especially, with such a traumatic and long termed severance, such as the one I experienced. They gave me some medications and assured me that the pain and disorientation would fade over time. But it didn’t. If anything, it increased over the years.I had tried almost every medication and therapy there was, but none of it helped.

  I was literally at my wits end, until I heard that there were Nubian ‘healers’ who were supposed to be able to work miracles with ailments of the mind. I felt that finding one of these healers was my last chance. In desperation, I boarded a tramp tradership into the Nubian frontier. The ship was called the Rapture and was under the captainship of a one Murphy Ito, the orneriest, most cantankerous, and most honorable ship captain you will ever meet. It was a long voyage with many stops along the way, and it was an interesting coincidence that Captain Murphy was using transitional routes that I happened to have discovered years past. I remembered all the slip streams and warp cul-de-sacs along the course. Because of this I was able to guide his ship through little known transitional points, so that they ended up discovering faster routes. This opened a series of untapped star systems for the tradership.

  Eventually, the Rapture finally reached the world of Kujenga on the Nubian Alliance border, carrying a load of rare Tucana spices from the planet Nowhere. While picking up the cargo on the planet Nowhere, I had heard rumors that on Kujenga there was a Nubian healer, a woman of extraordinary ability. Once we made planetfall, I said my goodbyes to the Captain and his crew and disembarked.

  I began asking the locals for the whereabouts of such a Nubian healer and found myself met with hostile glares and muttered curses. I tried the taverns and hostels but got the same response; people would either turn away in disgust or seeing that I was an off-world stranger, some would try to dissuade me from my quest. I was about to give up and return to the ship before it departed, when an old crone of a lady walked up to me.

  “I hear you are looking for that witch woman Nubian, is that right?” she said.

  “Yes, I am,” I replied.

  She stuck out her hand while saying, with what sounded like a cackle, “Well if you put a few coins in my hand, not that useless eunit shit, I will take you there.”

  Since I had nothing to lose and had exchanged some of my eunits for the local boarder planet’s currency, I put a couple of coins in her hand. She looked down and shook her head, so I dropped a few more into her palm until she finally closed her gnarled hand and nodded.

  “Follow me,” she said, “but don’t be expecting me to go in with ‘cha. I’ll lead you to the gate, but I’ll nary go in. There ain’t enough coin on the planet to make me step foot across that threshold.”

  The old crone led me to a house on the outskirts of the little village. It was a neat little cottage with a well- kept lawn. There were jingle reeds in a small pond in the front and neo-rose bushes along the house’s wall. Not at all, the witches abode I feared. The old woman stopped at the wooden gate surrounding the home and pointed.

  “Thar she be, and may God have mercy on ye stranger.” With those parting words, she scurried back towards the village.

  I watched her leave, then turned back to the house to find a woman standing in the doorway, looking at me. She was beautiful. Her skin was an almost dark, creamy brown and ringlets of golden, blond curls cascaded down to her shoulders. She wore a simple one-piece dress of Sularian green that, on her, looked like a regal gown. Around her long, elegant neck she wore a shimmering, silver necklace slung low so that it rested on the swell of her bosom. Then she smiled, and my breath caught in my throat.

  Stepping aside and waving me in, she said, “Well stranger, don’t just stand there. After going through all the trouble that you must have had to find me, you might as well come inside out of the cold.”

  I smiled nervously, opened the gate, and walked past her. This close, I could smell her perfume and I momentarily forgot why I had sought her out. As I stepped inside, she closed the door behind me and touched a wall tab to brighten the room. What a room!

  I had only seen rooms like it in old Tri-D vids. The interior of the main parlor was filled with bric-a-brac. The walls were festooned with dozens of shelves, filled with jars and containers of all sizes. Each vessel was carefully labeled with its contents, which were hard to discern at first glance. Some seemed to contain parts of unidentified animals, while others seemed to contain a smoky vicious liquid that concealed something within its dep
ths. Other jars seemed to contain only colorful swirling gases. I could swear, that one jar held a pair of eyes that followed me around the room.

  A round, wooden table dominated the center of the parlor and on it rested a crystal globe, in which a smoky purple gas swirled and dipped. Looking around the room, I couldn’t help but wonder what I had gotten myself into. Just when I was about to give my apologies and leave, I heard the most beautiful laugh. It came from the strikingly, gorgeous woman standing in front of me, staring me in the face.

  “’I’m sorry,’” she said, laughing that infectious laugh again, “’but I couldn’t help it. The look on your face was just too much!’” She continued to giggle as she spoke. After taking a deep breath to quell her laughter, she looked at me apologetically. “I had forgotten that you are not a local. This…” she stated, waiving her arms around, “…is all for their benefit. I learned, that it is much easier to help those who come to me, if I can encourage them to believe that I have some supernatural powers or influence. It just puts them in the right frame of mind, so to speak, and thus makes it easier for them to believe that I can help them.”

  Her smile faded as she took a real hard look at me for the first time. After a moment of staring at me, she acknowledged, “But I can tell, that all this won’t be needed for you. You really do need my help and all the trappings in the world will not alleviate your pain.” She walked over to me and took my rough hands into her soft ones. “Come with me into the back, away from these distractions, and sit a moment.” With that, she parted the beaded curtain behind her and took me into a cozy backroom salon, with a warm wood burning fire in the hearth.

  “Here, sit,” she instructed, motioning to a comfortable, overstuffed, high-backed chair, next to a small wooden table. She sat down across from me, in a similar chair.

  “I want to…” I began, but she stopped me from speaking, by leaning across the table and putting a cool finger to my lips.

  “Please, don’t talk or try to let me know why you are here. Let me see if I can divine that for myself. It is better this way.” With that, she placed both her hands on my temples and closed her eyes and hummed a soft tune. Suddenly, she stopped in mid croon and her eyes shot open. With wide-eyed astonishment, she quickly lowered her hands and tilted her head to the side, looking at me oddly.

  “You are a very strange man Ezekiel Grayson.” I was startled! I didn’t remember ever telling her my name.

  “Yes, a strange man indeed,” she intoned, in a half- whispered voice, “I see that there are three minds inside that head of yours: One is mechanical but has gone far away, another one lies atop yet another and is trying to protect the one beneath it. But, the one beneath is struggling to make its way to the surface. You must be suffering dreadfully. I feel sorry for you. You are in terrible pain.”

  I swallowed hard but was able to speak at last. “Can you help me, Da’Nielle?” I paused and frowned. Now, how in Vishar’s seven hells did I know that was her name? She motioned for me to hold out my hands and then she gently grasped them in hers. She turned them palm up and without a word, she reached into her hair, pulled out an ornate pin and before I could react, she swiftly stabbed my left index finger with it. I winced in surprise as I saw her take the tip of the pin and insert it into a small device embedded in the edge of the table. After a few seconds, she read a series of words and symbols that flashed across a holo screen, which was polarized so that only she could read it. She read the data for a few moments, her eyes got even wider and then she looked at me with a bemused look.

  “Yes, yes I will,” she said, standing to her feet.

  Hoping upon hope she could cure me, I asked, “Yes?

  You will help me then?”

  “Yes, I will MARRY you… silly man!” she exclaimed jubilantly, as she leaned over and gave me a smoldering kiss, that almost stopped my heart then and there. “Now you just sit there. I must pack a few things before we go. We’d best hurry or we will miss the tradership’s departure.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Zax pressed the pause button, freezing the holo and collapsed back into the chair. He found himself staring at the frozen image of a man, he realized, he never knew. He never once even imagined, the things he had just seen about his mother and father. Zax wanted to dismiss what he was hearing as the delusions of a Blitzo addict, but the words were not those of a wreck of a human being. This was coming from the mouth of a strong, clear-eyed man from the distant past. Sitting back up in the chair, Zax pressed the ‘play’ button and the hologram sprang back to life.

  “We had to travel deeper into Nubian space. Murph, Captain Ito of the Rapture pitched seven kinds of fits, and staunchly refused to go deeper into the Nubian Federation. But Da’Nielle conned him into it, by appealing to the one weakness of every tradership captain and crew…greed! She offered them the chance to obtain trading goods that were only available in Nubian space. Da’Nielle was somehow able to get us past the heavily patrolled Federation borderlands and on to the Nubian capital planet of Zanzibar. It seemed that, before we could be wed, I had to meet with the clan leaders and go through a minor ceremony that would make me Kwamba hawakuwako huko, which literally means: ‘one who has never lived here at all’, basically a non-Nubian stranger. While this ceremony would not make me a true Nubian, it would, technically give me the rights of a low status member of the clan. It would allow me to marry you mother.

  After I completed the ceremony, we departed Nubian space and headed back to Imperial star systems. The Rapture’s holds were jammed full of rare, Nubian spices, artwork and other items that would demand quite a high price in Imperium ports.

  I wanted to settle on one of the core worlds, but Da’Nielle said it would safer if we remained on the frontier. ‘Safer’, that was the word she used. I didn’t question her, because not only did she keep the pain and visions away, but I loved her with all my heart and would have lived on a sun if she asked me to. So, we chose Bright as the best place to settle, due to its proximity to both the Empire home worlds and the Nubian Federation. She said that it was important to be able to visit her home world from time to time and see her tribe again.” A note sadness entered his father’s narrative. “Too bad, we never did get a chance to meet her kin together.

  The only time I saw them, was when they came on world to pick up her body. The Nubians told me that because of their adherence to the concept of Ubuntu, they would give me a choice: They would take you with them, you and ONLY you, or, you were to stay here on Bright with me. They said that if they DID take you, then you would be treated well, but would remain an outcast in Nubian society. I told them that as your father, you were my kuwajibika, a word your mother often used when taking about me. It means responsibility. They seemed impressed with my answer and after giving me their condolences, within two weeks, they were gone with her body. I don’t even have a grave site to visit. This was the one and only time that they spoke to me. All I had left of Da’Nielle, were the images on this data cube and her necklace. These were my most precious possessions and all I had left of her to give to you.

  As I had feared, now with Da’Nielle gone, the old pains and memory episodes have begun to resurface. I knew it would be a matter of time, before I either went out of my head or I would become one of those Blitzo heads you see wandering the Last Town streets at night. That’s why I set up this safety deposit box for you and had the lawyer… oh and by the way, watch out for her I think she’s got some serious problems… set up the trust fund to where only you could get to it. I don’t trust my future self to handle the eunits that I will derive from my Imperial pension. The account number is on one of the scraps of plasticine that is in the box.”

  Zax lightly smacked his head with his palm. He had forgotten that Alicia Wilkerson had mentioned the trust fund to him. When he was finished, he made up his mind to ask Lauria if there were any eunits being held at this bank under his name. He wasn’t even sure if there was even an account held at his branch, but it wouldn’t hurt to
ask.

  “…is very important.” The voice had continued speaking and he had missed part thinking about the trust fund. He pressed the replay and tried to concentrate.

  “In the deposit box you will find the necklace that belonged to your mother. Please keep it in memory of her, it was very precious to her. Also, you will find some papers with scribbles and notes on them. Sometimes, I will sorta pass out and when I awaken, I will find that I have written strange symbols or notes on scrapes of plasticine. I don’t know what they mean, but I think that they are somehow important. Now, this last thing is very important. In the box you will find something called a Rubik Cube. I have kept this keepsake with me on all my missions aboard the scout ship. I get the feeling that it is much more than some gewgaw I wanted to keep with me. I just can’t remember WHY! Whatever you do...DON’T LET IT OUT OF YOUR SIGHT. I feel strongly that it is very important and somehow… dangerous. By the way, if you ever get in a jam out on the frontier worlds, just get this message cube into Captain Murphy’s hands, I have a special communication for him that involves his ‘life debt’.

  “Anyway son, I’m sorry that this is the only legacy that I have to leave you with. If your mother were alive, I’m sure that our lives would have been much brighter and happier. God be with you and never forget I have ALWAYS loved you…”

  Zax again found his vision clouding up again and hastily wiped his face with the napkins, from the dispenser in front of him. Looks like they think of everything here at the bank, he thought idly as he threw the soaked napkins into the trash receptacle. There was a momentary flash of light and the container was empty again. Looking down at the jumble of articles spilled out over the desk, Zax hesitated for a moment, he picked up the tube-like object with the short spinning chamber and looked it over. He just couldn’t figure the thing out. The short cylinder was about midway down a longer tube and when Zax pulled on the activator beneath it, there would be an audible ‘click’ and the smaller cylinder would ratchet one part of a rotation. Finally, he swept everything back into the container, except for the necklace, which he put in the pocket of his pants suit. He decided that he would take the rest of the stuff with him on another day. It was best to leave them where they were, until he was sure of where he would be.