Salvage

by R J Theodore

  Kirna frowned. “Changes?”

  Talis finished her drink, put down the glass, and picked up the soup bowl from her lap. “Well, she was the planet . . . and Peridot is a mess. Even if she didn’t care to fix up the bits The Five made of it, well, it’s her body, isn’t it? Wouldn’t you try to heal yourself or, at least, remove the marks left by those who overthrew you?”

  Now, Amos wanted to swing past Nexus and siphon off some of it for his alchemy. Gods. His alchemy! Was she really considering taking them all to Nexus?

  Just like Onaya Bone predicted she would.

  She ate her soup and fumed while Kirna bombarded Dug and Sophie with more questions. They still hadn’t eaten half their food when Talis and Tisker’s bowls returned to the tray, empty.

  Tisker quietly listened to the conversation as Sophie and Dug related the showdown between Meran and Onaya Bone. When Sophie described how Meran controlled their will to aid her, Tisker flexed his scarred hands as if to stop himself from doing it all over again and turned to Talis. “Coffee?”

  She treated him to an appreciative smile, and that was all the encouragement he needed. He took their dishes and headed back to the galley.

  “You’re sure you can just siphon off a bit of Nexus and store it? A tiny puddle is one thing.”

  Amos looked up in surprise from his supper. Dug, Sophie, and Kirna lapsed into quiet. Their gazes locked on the swirling broth in a way that looked, to Talis, like everyone was attempting to read their future.

  The alchemist looked thoughtful as he straightened his spectacles. “There was one alternative I have not brought up—if we run into trouble.”

  “That sounds like an idea I am not going to like.”

  “It’s possible, Captain. If we need a vessel to hold the Nexus energy, an ideal one would be a body vacant of such a soul.”

  “A simula? I was right. I don’t like it.”

  Amos blinked, then laughed nervously. “That might be big enough for two souls. But no, Captain, that was not what I meant.”

  What else was vacant of—oh. “Please tell me you are not going to stitch together enough creatures to form a hodgepodge soul cage?”

  “It sounds more gruesome than it is, Captain.”

  “I highly doubt that.”

  Kirna placed her spoon down along the edge of her bowl and balanced it carefully there so she could dab at her mouth self-consciously with her napkin. She spoke from behind it. “Is there any reason to think Meran could help us with the contents of the Yu’Nyun vials?”

  Sophie leaned forward. “Now that’s an idea. Think she could turn the solution into harmless water?”

  Talis snorted. “Maybe just ask her to turn it to liquid gold. I doubt she’ll help. Meran is not much better than Onaya, only concerned with herself. She helped us when it suited her, but when she had her quarry in range, she abandoned Wind Sabre to sink. I’m not about to waste time asking her for favors when there’s things we could be doing right here and now to deal with the stuff.”

  A few moments behind the sound of his footsteps echoing through the ship, Tisker returned with a carafe in one hand and five tin cups, their handles looped over his fingers, just as Dug finished his soup.

  “If anyone else wants cream, it’s coming up. My hands were full.”

  “Allow me.” Dug stood and stretched, then collected the empty bowls, leaving the tray on the desk for the coffee.

  Sophie poured for herself and Talis who took theirs black. Tisker and Kirna made no move for it until Dug returned with the ship’s small enameled creamer and a jar of sugar cubes. Kirna helped herself to twice as much cream as even Tisker used. Talis nearly bristled at the waste of the specialty Vein roast coffee she’d paid double for but consoled herself that at least the cream was also very high quality.

  Tisker poured the rest of the cream into his mug, then kicked off his ankle-high boots and joined Talis on her bench, slouching against the chimney with his shoulders and head angled only high enough to allow him to drink from the cup without pouring it down his front.

  Talis shifted to support her back as she sat cross-legged beside him. She held her hot metal cup, already half empty, against her chest, satisfied.

  She became aware she was getting more comfortable as her guests moved in the opposite direction. “Kirna, this your first time on a ship?”

  The girl squeaked as she sat up straight and lowered her cup daintily to her lap. “Technically, no.” She looked over Talis’s head as though reviewing her memories on the deckhead panels. “I boarded a Bone ship to pick up a special order for Amos once—something small and illegal—so I had to go aboard and slip it into my pocket and walk off again as though I’d left with nothing.”

  “So you’re a smuggler in the making. Never been out on a flight, though?”

  Kirna’s black eyes went wide, shining like faceted glass buttons. “Never! This has been so amazing, Captain. And,” she lowered her voice, “more than a little frightening.”

  The look on the Kirna’s face broadcast her conflict. She wanted this, despite the fears her Rakkar upbringing might have reinforced about being out of the tunnels. Talis toyed with the idea of pushing her at it. If anyone could make it in the bigger world, she had a feeling it would be Kirna.

  Tisker shifted, waking up. He blinked at the emptied deckhouse, against the firelight across his face. He craned his head to look over the side of Talis’s leg, which he’d fallen asleep on, pinning his captain to her spot on the bench.

  “Sorry, Cap. Dozed off.” Then he narrowed his eyes. “You all right?”

  Talis delayed with a sip of her coffee, now cold, then gave him a quick smile. “Just thinking too much.”

  “The solution?”

  She nodded slowly, running her tongue over her teeth and working her jaw. “That’s among the swirl of thoughts I’ve got going, yeah.”

  “At least we found it in time. Before Hankirk or whoever else used it.”

  “I know,” she admitted. “And we can’t fly backward. But we need a real fix for it, not relying on Hankirk’s promises or hoping no one else has found it yet.”

  He sat up, freeing her, and slouched against the tabletop. He worked at a muscle in his shoulder, kneading the muscle with his fingertips while rolling his arm in the joint. “Like go to Nexus?”

  She shrugged and moved her freed leg to wake it. “Like do we go to Nexus? Like what’s happening there? Like what Peridot will look like on the other side of this?”

  Tisker gave her a look, then eyed the cup that sat beside her on the table. He stretched, took it up, then stood. “Rum makes you think too hard, Cap. Go sleep it off.”

  She chewed the inside of her lip a moment, then smiled at him to make him feel better. Nodded to let him off the hook for her mood. She finished her coffee in one gulp, and he took their cups, bidding her good night.

  She stumbled to the great cabin and turned down the lamps to avoid looking at the ramshackle patch job from earlier that day. The room shrank to just the space around her bunk. Nexuslight, partially obstructed by the contours of distant islands, filtered through the bank of small windows at stern and contoured the room’s features in watery green.

  She shed her trousers and shirt, arranged the pillows and blanket to support her head, and shut her eyes.

  The coffee and spiced rum had provided a hazy comfort, which let her put aside the over-winched thoughts and succumb to her fatigue.

  But the idea was still with Talis in the morning, when the crew was awake long before their passengers. Tisker and Sophie bustled about the galley and made breakfast while she and Dug sipped their coffee, but she felt as though she existed apart from it all. Her focus narrowed around her coffee, eggs, and sausage. By the time it occurred to her to pick up her fork and eat it, the food was cold. She ate it anyway, and let the coffee reheat it as it followed the bites down
.

  She pulled herself to the present. The galley was bright, filled with the smell of the last sausage bits charred in the skillet. Sophie and Tisker teased Dug about something in quiet voices. They must think she was suffering a hangover.

  Far from it. Her head was clear. That was the problem.

  “All right.” Her voice was like a knife through lift canvas. Everyone stopped talking or paused frozen in mid-bite to look at her. She was using that tone.

  “Nexus.”

  “I thought you told Onaya . . .” Sophie looked to Dug as if accusing him and their captain of changing the plans without telling the rest.

  “She’s not crew, and she’s not privy to our plans,” Talis said. “Even if they’re aligned with what she wants.”

  She leaned on one elbow and drank her coffee. She felt better having let the thought loose from her head. It was no longer crashing against her skull like a caged animal. “We fly by and let Amos and Kirna fill a few crystals. Nice and quiet, without drawing attention. Come up with a counteragent and make as much of it as we can. Bring it back to Hankirk, ruin his batch of the solution and anyone else’s we come across.”

  “Are you forgetting Hankirk’s primary aim?” Dug’s expression was guarded, tense. “Once he is done with the aliens, he will turn back to his dream of killing everyone who isn’t Cutter folk.”

  Talis picked up her cup to sip more coffee but, halfway to her lips, realized it was empty. She placed it down again with a disappointed thud. “I most certainly have not. You know what I think? I think he’s got what he wants: he’s got followers, and he’s got a victim to rescue. He’ll feel real good about himself while he’s doing it and, after he’s done and the alien threat is removed, he’ll have positioned himself to—”

  “Collect the other rings.”

  Talis nodded and speared the last bit of sausage on her plate. She waggled it in the air. “Only we’ll do it first. And we have Onaya to tell us where they are. Hankirk’s got one ring already, and he wants to get to a simula if he can. Make himself a Meran he can finally control.”

  “And if we’re lucky, she would overpower him just like the first one. She would kill him.”

  Talis shrugged. “So, we focus on getting his ring away from him, and then we go find the others.”

  “To give them to Meran?” Dug’s eyes were storm clouds, the deep purple practically vibrating with the force of the thoughts behind them.

  Talis laughed. “Hardly. I’m going to lock them all up across nine Rakkar bank vaults. Or Kirna and Amos can help us melt them down into a hundred pieces of slag. No one’s using them. No one’s killing any more gods or controlling any more pieces of an angry planet’s soul.”

  The others shifted, their seats creaking under their weight.

  Tisker said, “Aren’t the others safer where they are now?”

  “Not if anyone else knows where they are and what to do with them.” Sophie answered him before Talis could. “Onaya Bone won’t stop trying to get them, but she may give up trying to get us to do it for her.”

  Talis nodded, bolstered by Sophie’s support. She brought it back around to her point before someone else took up the antagonizing arguments. “So. Figure out the solution, then go for Hankirk and his Tempest. Strike out against the Yu’Nyun.”

  “You said the tech run to Haelli.”

  She shot Tisker a withering look. “Yes. Haelli, first. I have an errand I’d like to run while we’re in the neighborhood.”

  “And when the Tempest eliminates our common enemy,” Dug asked, undistracted by the change of subject. “Do Hankirk and his army remain our allies?”

  Talis stood, gathering up her plate. “That’s up to him. If he still hasn’t learned his lesson, then he’ll trust me enough to get close and do what needs to be done.”

  Dug only raised an eyebrow. She decided to ignore it. She couldn’t blame him for doubting her resolve; she’d made a career of not killing Hankirk when it would be appropriate and convenient to do so.

  But if it worked out—if he saved people—wasn’t that worth it? Wasn’t that a good enough reason not to knock him off her deck any one of a dozen times? He certainly gave her enough chances. All she’d done was ruin his arm.

  Hankirk didn’t have the sense to regret his actions—only that the Veritors had betrayed his trust. Whatever lives he’d cost, whatever he thought he’d won for them, he seemed unable to grasp the enormity of his mistakes. If they helped him, it might lead to more mistakes. He had ambition and ignorance in the perfect ratio to create catastrophe.

  But he had the people, dammit. If she was going to sort out the mess Peridot had become in their slipstream—she needed the army he’d raised while she was busy planning an aborted jewel heist in Lippen.

  Talis took the ring out of her pocket and turned it around, watching the cabin light play over its surfaces. Ugly as ever—broken, chipped, pitted, and scratched—it offered no advice. She dropped the ring to the bottom of her empty coffee cup with a sharp tink and left the galley.

  She’d been a soldier before. A mercenary, if she was being fair. She’d fought for money but earned the skill along with it. Now, if she fought for what might appease the coiling serpents writhing in her gut? If she applied the drive, along with her skill, to do something right?

  Added to Hankirk’s resources, maybe this could work. Without getting everyone she cared about killed.

  Chapter 37

  Talis brought Fortune’s Storm into the docks at Haelli herself. Over the course of the three-day trip, she shared time at the wheel evenly with Tisker. It felt good to fly again. Felt good to put her palm on the quadrant and feel the wind force its way up from the keel, through the tiller ropes, fighting her for control. Feel the lift balloon as it yanked on the hull and brace against it. The wood creaked as though the ship was flexing muscles, the signals traveling up Talis’s legs, swirling in the tension around her kneecaps, then ascending. Her lungs expanded in sympathetic rhythm as the wind filled their sails.

  But as they tied off at dock and the propulsion stilled beneath her, her legs trembled with fatigue. It had been too long, and she had muscles to retrain.

  By the time they reached their destination, Dug had regained his former strength, and he was also trying to work her muscles to exhaustion, insisting on daily sparring on deck with each of the crew. He even tried to teach Kirna a few grip escape techniques that had her giggling with awkward confusion.

  Everyone’s spirits were high, except perhaps for Amos who was still adjusting to the life aboard an airship.

  Haelli was a gleaming Vein city of marble and glass, tinted green by manicured parks with delicate trees and butterfly gardens. Sophie took Kirna and Amos to explore the universities and museums. Later, when they returned so Sophie could relieve Tisker of his watch, Kirna went out again to explore with him, though Tisker’s tour involved shops, bars, and gambling pits. The young man could find a gambling pit as if it gave off a scent.

  On her visit with their Rakkar alchemists to Halcyon Advent University, Sophie had found Talis the name of a career researcher who worked with the Vein’s proprietary wireless communication signals. She couldn’t shake the idea she’d had in the belly of the Yu’Nyun ship with Sophie. If it worked, if a simula radio could put her in touch with Meran, thwarting the various efforts of Onaya, the Veritors, and Hankirk might get a lot easier.

  When she told the man at the reception desk that she was there to visit Ilum Neen, and that she had brought alien tech for examination, she was welcomed like she was the University president and ushered through to a larger waiting lounge, apparently reserved for honored guests.

  Honored guests such as the High Holy Priestess of the Temple of the Feathered Stone.

  “Illiya?”

  “Heavens throttle me, Talis?” Illiya rose from a cushioned chair, her dark skin and darker cloak contr
asting against the cream and jade furnishings of the room. Talis noted the cloak was quite a bit rumpled.

  If she hadn’t been so surprised, Talis might have had time to back out and get her chunk of simula the hell away from the right hand of Onaya Bone. Instead her surprise pinned her there like a wake moth on a cork board as an attendant wheeled her hand truck in behind her. It caught Illiya’s attention instantly, and Talis cringed as she saw the deep purple eyes scan the hand truck and spare another glance for the satchel on her back.

  “Is that?”

  “Not for Onaya.” Talis stepped in front of the cart, blocking a straight path to it. “What are you doing here?”

  Illiya smiled one of her particular brand of deadly smiles and adjusted the position of a dozen bangles on her wrist. “I am here today outside the purview of Onaya’s command.”

  “She’s on our ship. Don’t let her hear you say that.”

  Illiya paused a moment, and expressions passed in waves over her face as though she was sifting through myriad emotions. Finally, she settled into a dispassionate smirk and shrugged. “She’s a bit impotent lately, isn’t she? I’m looking for answers. I’m looking for a way to communicate with this new goddess, Meran.”

  As she spoke, she stepped closer. “I came here looking for a way to reach out to her, but they tell me they haven’t found her particular ‘frequency.’ But when I saw you in that doorway . . . Even before I realized what was in that bundle on the cart . . .” Now Illiya was practically nose-to-nose with Talis, and she reached out to lift Talis’s chin with one beringed knuckle. “I knew you have the answer I’d been waiting for. You always do.”

  Talis pulled her chin free. “Yeah, I’m always right in the thick of it, aren’t I?”

  Caught, evidence at her feet, with a simula. She’d let Onaya Bone believe she would bring it straight to her. Captain Sekkai believed her when she promised to deliver it to the temple ship Ketzali het Parantu and her crew. She had no intention of helping any of them deliver a body into Onaya’s hands even if the disgruntled goddess had no ring from which to seize some semblance of her power back.