by R J Theodore
Talis felt her stomach drop, but said, “Yes, please. Name your cost. As I said, we can pay fairly.”
But the professor shook his head. “I have patrons and grants enough to fund my laboratory and my research, but you have something that I cannot find elsewhere: understanding of the aliens, their technology, and their effects on Nexus and the gods.”
“Don’t forget Meran,” Sophie volunteered, appearing behind them at that moment, Tisker in tow.
“Meran?” Amos looked back to Talis. “The being that has inspired the new religion?”
Talis ran a hand through her hair, her fingers intertwining along the length of her ’locks. A habit she might not ever break. “Yeah, there’s more to the tale than the aliens versus the gods.”
Amos inclined his head, indicating a path through the equipment toward the glass-paned door beyond. Kirna, approaching with the tray of refreshed tea accouterment, pivoted on her heel and led them into the subterranean greenhouse.
Beyond rows of leafy greens, spindly herbs, and colorful blooms hid a seating area that looked like it belonged in a vacation resort. Except there was no open sky overhead, no breeze through the palm fronds that framed the brick-tiled patio. Potted plants edged the floor around several small couches, and an arching trellis held back a tangle of vines. Large purple fruits hung from the supports, an open threat that the ripest of them might drop onto their heads at any moment.
“We have tea. We have comfortable seating, and we have a few hours before your friend will wake again.” Amos gestured for Talis, Tisker, and Sophie to sit. “I expect the full story in exchange for the man’s care.”
Talis hesitated. Her cheeks and the back of her neck still burned to think of the mess they’d gotten into, but admitting to it all was a small price to pay for Dug’s promised recovery.
So she told Amos and Kirna everything. Tisker and Sophie interrupted occasionally, adding in details they feared Talis would miss. Amos interrupted more frequently to ask clarifying questions, latching onto details Talis thought too small to expound on. From salvaging Lindent Vein’s pearl signet ring, Hankirk and his Veritor allies, and the Yu’Nyun contract, to destroying the alien ship after Onaya Bone’s revelation that Silus Cutter was long dead. Of the alien-made simula that activated, transformed into Meran, demanded that Talis take her to Nexus, and wielded a power over Nexus the gods could not match. How the damage to their ship had stranded Talis and her crew on Heddard Bay, of their salvage on the alien ships and grisly discovery at Ytima. There were occasional pauses to allow Kirna to refresh their tea, but finally the tale was told to Amos’s satisfaction.
The alchemist uncrossed his ankles and sipped the last from his teacup. The silence felt full to the brim, the weight of the story transferred from Talis to the air in the room.
The clink of his teacup against its saucer broke the spell. “How do Meran’s powers work?”
“I’m a smuggler, Professor. Not a scholar, nor a monk. Far as understanding goes, I’m a feather caught in a whirlwind. I might have gotten swept up in it, but I can’t say why it’s doing what it does.”
Amos sighed in a resigned way when Sophie and Tisker nodded in agreement and clacked his fingertips together. As his thoughts distracted him, Kirna whispered in Sophie’s ear. Talis was reminded of all the care packages Kirna had sent their way. The boots Tisker was wearing. Her own sweater, which Amos had not mentioned again. They owed a great debt to the young Rakkar woman. And twice as much over to the professor.
Sophie nodded to Kirna, then sat up straight and said, “Captain, we brought back a crate of the solution.”
Not knowing Dug would have better chances under Amos and Kirna’s care, the alien liquid was the reason they sent Sophie to Kirna for help.
Amos stirred at the mention of their cargo, his eyes sparkling again. Talis wanted answers, more than she’d ever get from Onaya or Meran. Reassembled animals in their dirty tanks notwithstanding, Talis felt Amos was essentially a decent person.
“Sophie figures you can help us figure out what it does.”
“To determine what sort of trouble it might bring,” Amos concluded for her.
She nodded. “We have some of the aliens’ notes about it, too, but it didn’t use a lot of words we could understand even after we translated it all. But little doubt it’s dangerous, and the Veritors’ salvage crews might have already handed over crates of the stuff to their alien keepers.”
By the glint in the professor’s eye, there was no question he was ready to start as soon as they could get the crates out of their hold for him, but she couldn’t stand the thought of sitting still in Heddard Bay—again—while whatever the Veritors planned could be well in motion before she could do anything about it. They needed to get back out in the skies again. Now.
“Professor, I know what I’m about to ask may be a lot, in many ways, but I’d like you to come with us.”
Amos visibly paled, the soft leathery flesh around his mouth and nostrils near white. “In open skies?”
“We have lower interior cabins without portholes if it would make you feel more comfortable—though it may increase the sensation of skysickness.”
Kirna stood and moved off. Talis could hear her rummaging through the equipment.
Amos didn’t seem to notice that his assistant was already packing. “I would have better success if I had the full resources of my laboratory.”
“I’m sure, but we may not make it back anytime soon, and as soon as you know what it does, we need to act accordingly. From wherever we are at the time.”
Amos stared silently into his empty teacup for a few moments. He visibly shuddered a few times. “I will need to bring quite a lot of equipment, you understand.”
Talis nodded. “Whatever you need.”
“Kirna,” he began, then noticed she was no longer seated beside him.
Her voice rang back from the room outside. “On it, Professor!”
Talis heard the telltale click of very large luggage clasps as they snapped shut.
Amos and Kirna had crammed half the contents of their lab into four enormous steamer trunks, which Catkin wheeled out to the docks for them.
“And you’ll feed the star sharks every other day? Too often and they’ll get gill rot.” Kirna had already asked them three times. Catkin promised again, patient as always.
Nisa was filing Talis’s paperwork, making it look like an entirely different ship had just spent the night in port. She looked at Amos, standing stiffly beside Talis in the doorway, trying to look anywhere but beyond the docks. “You do know there’s open skies out there, right? In two days, when you’re sick of the swirling stars around you, this captain won’t be turning around to bring you back.”
His spine straightened with a wellspring of dignity. “Madam, this is for the good of the planet. And for science.”
And they wouldn’t be talked out of it, though Talis and Dug had to insist they did not bring quite as much of the lab as they attempted. Not that they lacked the space. Amos argued for, and won, a large section of private berths that the crew of four would never miss. As for the trouble a pair of alchemists could bring outside the insulation of Heddard Bay’s dense stone, Kirna and Amos drew a complicated map of sigils on the walls of their new berth and hammered soft copper plates in the center of each.
“These anodes will degrade as we generate alchemical fields, absorbing any evidence of our practice so it is not detectable from outside the ship.”
“And if I do this?” Talis rubbed a finger across one chalk line, breaking the mark and smearing blue across the painted wood.
Kirna hissed in annoyance, then wiped the entire sigil off with a wet cloth, dried it, and redrew it. “Just don’t do that, okay? Please?”
To misdirect anyone else observing them, Tisker carved them a pair of new nameplates for Im Ufite Rantor, which became Moth Catcher, a Cutter ship of Bo
ne make. Talis learned the renaming trick on other ships, who had easily swappable mounting systems for their sterns. By changing names between ports, they were able to disguise their ships against casual inspection or evade pursuit.
Well, Talis and her crew could use a little of that, right now. The flags in the overhead were more easily swapped to reflect the new name, and Nisa had stamped the paperwork that would show Talis bought the ship from a family estate that was getting out of the shipping business.
Before they returned to the tunnels, Talis managed another word with Catkin. They exchanged forearm clasps in farewell.
“Thank you for everything, Catkin. We owe you more than we can ever repay.”
“You owe nothing.” Catkin gave her a smile that almost seemed sad. “Life’s first duty is to lessen the pain of others.”
Talis frowned. “I think I’ve heard that before.”
“Fiyal Tazrian. He was a philosopher, politician, and healer among the Bone, long ago. We need more in the world like him.”
She nodded, recalling the rest of the quote now. “We do what we can. And in hard times, we try to do more.”
Catkin smiled more broadly, their lips pulling back to show the gums around their tusks. “I like you, Captain Talis.”
“The feeling is very mutual.”
Im Ufite Rantor was a bit too much vessel for the four of them, and even with Sophie rigging up extra lines and pulleys across half the ship so they could manage it easier, it didn’t feel like home. But it was sky worthy and would get them back to Subrosa. She’d get Jones to install Sophie’s best capstan upgrades, and when their new commission was finally done, it would earn a fair price as a resale.
Talis would not be sorry to put Heddard Bay behind them. For real this time.
All the warmth in the departure came from Nisa who waved Talis down from the door of the office as she passed by on her way back to the docks. In her lap were several bundles wrapped in gingham cloths, which she pressed into Talis’s arms. The warm scent of sourdough reached her nose.
“I made some things for your trip.” Nisa reached up to pat Talis on the shoulder. Of course Talis had filed their departure with the harbormaster’s office almost as soon as they made the decision to leave. “You were a good worker. I know you had a hard time, and I know you probably have no plans to come back, but if you do, you make sure you visit me.”
Talis patted her hand, refusing to give in to the burning behind her eyes. “You’re not wrong about that, but if I do, you have my word.”
Amos was already firmly settled in the pair of cabins they’d claimed, but Kirna followed the railing of the ship, leaning out to stare into the dizzying drop below. She was bundled up in a padded canvas jacket with fur-lined hood, but she wasn’t cowering within it to hide from the cold. Tendrils of hair had escaped her collection of hair clips and fluttered with the fur framing her face as she looked windward. If she were anything like Talis, there was no going back, not just to Heddard Bay, but to any one rock for longer than it took to grab a bite and resupply.
Sophie and Tisker waited for them on the docks, standing beside the empty loader they’d signed out. Tisker fidgeted with the straps on his jacket cuffs while Sophie paced. Beside her, Dug’s shoulders were tense. They felt the same eagerness she did.
Back to the sky. Back to Cutter territory. Back to Subrosa. Where everyone knew everyone else’s secret—and someone would surely be willing to sell them a few.
They were going to be back in the thick of it, finally, with the chance to clean up her mess and do right by her crew. With a chance to do something about alien solutions and new Veritor plans.
Talis and Dug joined the younger crew ship side, and Sophie took Talis by the hand. Squeezed. They all traded smiles that refused to be controlled and turned to board Moth Catcher.
Time to go home.
Dug and Sophie tossed a weighted leather ball back and forth between their seats near the hearth in the Moth Catcher’s deckhouse. They’d already been chased from Amos’s cabin, where Dug’s physical therapy was meant to take place under his supervision. The professor seemed to be even shorter of temper with the movement of the hull causing him near unending discomfort, and even Kirna stayed out of the makeshift lab spaces when she wasn’t needed.
Sophie handed over the heavy ball when Talis joined them and grabbed up her sketchbook. Her ship plans were all but complete, but Sophie continued sketching in her off hours, inventing ten ingenious ways to accomplish even the simplest shipworks. She was revolutionizing ship design, and from what Talis could see, it would be worth the fortune it was sure to cost. She had a good relationship with Jones, the shipbuilder in Subrosa, but no way she would she be able to haggle a discount on a ground-up build with this many new features.
Talis turned to pass the ball back to Dug, but he rose to his feet. He walked almost without a limp after only a few minutes of cautious stretching. Talis could feel her own strength return as Dug’s lips curled in a satisfied smile.
She opened her mouth to say something about his progress, but a crash from below decks took them all by surprise. Through the heat ducts that ran through the ship, they could hear a scrambling clatter, followed by a vicious growl, and feel the vibration of furniture legs scraping against the wooden deck.
Talis and Sophie ran below, Dug only trailing a few steps behind, to enter the alchemists’ cabin in time to see Kirna brandishing a broom above her head like a weapon. She disappeared behind one of their enormous trunks, in pursuit of something that scrabbled on tiny claws. The tip of the upturned broom floated above like the dorsal fin of some great storm beast cutting through a cloud.
There was a thud. The girl cried out a satisfied “Ha!” and stabbed the broom down, handle end like a fishing spear. The hissing and spitting ceased with a wet thud, and a weak patter replaced the scuffle.
“The hell was that?” Sophie exclaimed, straining her neck to try and see around the steam trunks.
There was a reedy scrape against the decking; then Kirna reappeared, carrying something balanced on the broom head back to Amos’s side, where she slid the battered body of a furry rodent onto the work bench. Claw marks and a bent wire cage indicated the start of the excitement.
“Explains a few things, doesn’t it,” she said and dug out a pair of long reinforced leather gloves for both of them from a locker in the nearby bulkhead.
“Very interesting,” Amos said. He accepted the gloves from Kirna, and the two of them bent over the rodent with a tray of tools, prodding, probing, and scanning. They exchanged looks, worry lines creasing the soft leather around their eyes.
“Explains what? What happened?” Talis looked to them for answers, but they were caught up in the moment of their discovery and busy exchanging significant glances and making notes on a ledger.
“Another,” Amos said tersely. Kirna disappeared to the back wall where they kept the animal test subjects they’d brought along. He nodded to Talis. “You will need to see this to believe it.”
Though her inclination was to insist that she did not, in fact, need to watch him torture another helpless creature, she pulled a stool against the wall where she’d have a view of the workbench. A view from what seemed like a safe distance. Sophie and Dug came up beside her. Talis dropped one leg to the floor and moved aside so Dug could share the stool with her.
Kirna returned with a new cage that hosted a small, timid-looking creature, about half the size of a house cat. Compared to the autopsied animal, it seemed quite healthy, and not only because it still had use of its head. Its fur coat was full and shining, its eyes were bright, and the muscles were toned instead of knotted in thick cords against the skin.
“Hold it better this time,” Amos said.
Kirna shot him a look, then caught Talis’s gaze and rolled her eyes. While the professor prepared a second vial of the alien sample, Kirna slid her arms
into the long durable gloves. She then held the pitiful creature, one hand on its hindquarters and the other gripping the nape of its neck.
“Ready,” she said and wiggled her feet to plant them hip-width apart, as if the animal were large enough to knock her over. Amos pinched the skin of its shoulder and injected a dose of the solution into the fold of flesh. He rubbed the skin in circles for the count of ten.
Kirna placed it back into the cage and shut the door. She clipped the latch with one quick motion, as though the shivering creature were going to turn around and bite her. Both alchemists seemed to hold their breath.
The creature scurried to the far side of the cage to get away from Kirna and her dangerous gloves. It twitched, shook its head, and then scratched at the injection site with a back leg.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, in the next instant, the creature’s breathing became labored, and its eyes dilated. Its shiver turned to convulsions, and from its throat came a low rattling growl. In a flurry of molting fur, it launched itself at the young woman it had shied away from only moments before. Kirna yelped and flinched as the creature hit the bars. It scrabbled at the join where the door hinged, scraping the surface of Kirna’s leather gloves where she pushed back against the bouncing latch.
Fur and dry skin flaked in patches from its body, and its bones shifted unnaturally, moving under the exposed patches of flesh. Its skeleton extended, shifted, joints rolling in ways they were never meant to. Its back claws, curling reflexively around its feet, scraped against the paper that lined the cage’s metal tray, unable to find purchase.
It was getting bigger.
Talis drew back but couldn’t look away.
Its tendons and muscles flexed, rigid, expanding beneath its skin. The bones moved to make room or were pulled out of place by the strength of the new muscle tissue. The thing’s brow ridge changed as the muscle cords thickened around its jaws. It lunged again, biting through the thick metal wires, and the latching plate dropped to the surface of the workbench.
