by Blaze Ward
All of it was background noise as he listened.
He turned his face to the station hanging nearby as WinterStar followed along in a trailing orbit of the planet. Those voices he knew. Human for the most part, just because they were at home and relaxed.
Aliens far from home tended to be uncomfortable here and kept their minds closed. A’Alhakoth had not been able to keep him at bay, but that was because he was focused on her and just across the table from her.
Were he trying to watch her from here, she would be invisible. Just another note in the cacophony.
He had to listen harder, just to try to pry out individual notes.
Or not.
Something caught his attention.
Or rather, nothing.
There was a hole in the voice of the station.
There.
In his mind, it was like someone had raised a hand to block the afternoon sun. He could still see around it and it left him almost blind, but there was a spot in the middle where nothing came through.
They had a shield that protected them from him.
Or something.
He didn’t dare poke at it. They might have something that would notice his attempt. He didn’t need to, anyway.
It was there.
He could see it, at least by the photo negative effect of something not being there.
He was too far away to isolate it. But he could fix that, next time he was on station. Erin and a few others should be with him. Possibly A’Alhakoth, since she was truly an alien around the humans. It would take the young woman a time yet to challenge them in the Spectres, but she was as good a warrior as they were, on the ground.
Part Two
Hunter
Twenty-Two
Comitatus dinner. Kathra looked around and confirmed that the hatch to the dining hall was closed.
All of her women were present. That included A’Alhakoth, the newest. She didn’t fly a Spectre yet, but both Erin and Daniel had spoken in favor of her. And they’d seen the insides of her mind to judge. The outside was doing well also, for all her youth.
The kaniea, the woman had confirmed, aged slower than humans did. At twenty-two, she was perhaps the human equivalent of sixteen or seventeen, so a younger sister to Ndidi. About as mature as that woman, and Ndidi made a good role model, as she was accepted into the comitatus in spite of the fact that she would never fly.
A’Alhakoth just hadn’t mastered the tools yet. Give her a year.
Kathra’s newest warrior, now known as Spectre Twenty-Three, sat directly across from her, with Daniel and Ndidi on one side and Erin on the other. The kitchen was shut down and all the leftovers put away. Hot chocolate or fruit juice was all anyone was drinking tonight.
She fixed her eyes on A’Alhakoth and stared deep into the young woman’s soul.
“Being in the comitatus is more than just being sworn into my service,” she explained as those dark blue eyes locked on hers. “It means being privy to secrets that can never be told outside this room. Most of the crew know the general bits, but each of them have been tested and the disloyal removed.”
“Or killed,” the young woman said quietly.
“Or killed, yes,” Kathra agreed. “Ugonna betrayed me and the entire Mbaysey over something petty. But small people plot small revenges. You have taken the oath, A’Alhakoth ver’Shingi.”
“I have,” Spectre Twenty-Three agreed.
“There is an inner secret you need to be aware of now,” Kathra said, watching.
The young woman was still a stranger to most of the comitatus, even though she had spent a few weeks learning their ways. Daniel and Erin had walked her memories. Kam, Iruoma, and Stina had all taken her measure that first night and approved. The others had worked to incorporate her. None had found a reason to doubt her, other than youth, which they all had managed to make it through in their own time.
A’Alhakoth nodded carefully, probably afraid that the other shoe was going to drop now. It was, but not in a way that the woman could ever predict.
“A year ago, the Mbaysey were attacked by an alien,” Kathra explained. “A powerful, ancient monster who had lived twelve thousand years and destroyed countless cultures in a broad path of destruction across the galaxy.”
Those blue eyes narrowed. Perhaps she had heard legends of such a thing. Urid-Varg had not crossed anywhere near Kanus, but the K'bari had once been relative neighbors.
“He would have taken us all,” Kathra continued. “Destroyed the Mbaysey and perhaps gone on to destroy all humans as well. We cannot know, although humans are a more warlike species than many he had encountered. Whether that would have saved them can never be known. We destroyed the beast.”
Kathra turned to Daniel and smiled at him.
“Or rather, my cook did,” she laughed.
A’Alhakoth’s head snapped around to the Rabic male next to her. He smiled in a friendly, disarming way, still the softest, weakest person in the room without that gem to aid him.
“How?” the woman asked in genuine surprise.
“The Conqueror was looking for a new harem of women,” Daniel replied quietly. “When he dominated all of the crew of WinterStar and the other vessels, he did not account for a male on this ship, so he missed me. That turned out to be a fatal mistake on his part.”
“How?” she repeated absently, brow furrowed.
A’Alhakoth had only known Daniel as a cook and an intellect, not a warrior. Kathra knew the truth, though.
“I distracted him with a fire extinguisher,” Daniel’s smile grew a little lopsided as Kathra watched. “And then beat the salaud to death with it. But that wasn’t the end of him.”
“It wasn’t?”
Yes, child. This is the other shoe. Take a deep breath and prepare for wonders and nightmares beyond any you have ever imagined.
“He had mental powers, and a backup plan,” Daniel said. “A literal deadman switch, as it were. I was infected, and would have eventually fallen victim, but for the Commander.”
Those blue eyes came back and around and studied her with new awe in them.
As they should. All women should live a little in awe of the Commander of the Mbaysey. Kathra smiled to reassure her and nodded for Daniel to continue.
“She was able to defeat and destroy him,” Daniel grimaced now, but that was the memory of what it had taken out of him. What it took out of him daily. “I was able to steal some of his powers, and have put them to use for the Commander.”
Sitting, he pulled his outer shirt off over his head, leaving only his pants and revealing the lime-green bodysuit with white stripes connecting to his extremities. That gem the size of her palm rested at the base of his throat, although it was connected directly now, rather than resting in that chrome and platinum setting.
It still pulsed with some inner fire as Kathra watched.
A’Alhakoth gasped.
“It can do many things,” Daniel said in a voice trailing pain as Kathra listened, but she already knew that. “But there is one I need to show you now. May I take your hand?”
Kathra noted how the closest hand twitched, ever so slightly, but didn’t withdraw.
A’Alhakoth turned to her for confirmation, and Kathra nodded.
“It’s okay,” Erin spoke up. “All of us have been there before you. And we will protect you.”
That seemed to be the thing the traveler needed. Erin as a big sister.
She extended her hand and Daniel took it in his.
“Take a deep breath,” he ordered her. “This will not hurt.”
Twenty-Three
Whatever A’Alhakoth had been expecting when she took Daniel’s hand, this was not it.
What had she been expecting?
“I work very hard to avoid evil and temptation,” Daniel said.
They sat together in a room. A strange salon, with a large picture window and comfortable furniture. The sky out the window was the wrong color, almost the blue of her skin.
/> Daniel sat on the couch, with her in a chair at an angle to him. Everything seemed to be made of hand-crafted wood, lovely and well-made.
“Where are we?” she asked.
“Inside my mind,” he replied. “I have learned to start here, and let people grow accustomed. Very little time is passing in the outside world while we talk.”
“Why am I here?” A’Alhakoth demanded in a sharper voice.
She was a warrior, even before she had met Kathra Omezi and her comitatus. Before she had taken the third set of vows. She did not rise, but did prepare her muscles for combat.
“The gem gave me mental powers that no other human has,” he said quietly. “Very few species have, in fact. The Commander and the others have been here, and seen what you are about to see, but they are human. I wanted a moment for you to adjust before we take the next step.”
“Where are we going?” she asked, voice still sharp, but relaxing.
Daniel Lémieux was taking visible pains to not present as a threat. He might yet be a wolf in sheep’s clothing, but she could take care of herself.
“In order to understand, you have to become me,” he explained. “Erin had me do something similar when she first met you, using my powers to study your mind, even as you were unaware of the violation. I must apologize for that. I was working under her orders. Right now, you and I are still seated at the table across from the Commander. No time has passed. Are you ready for the next step?”
“I am,” A’Alhakoth decided, whatever it was.
She fell into a pit. There was no other way to describe the feeling of falling a great distance, as tall buildings surrounded her.
Eventually, she hovered in the air. Buildings stretched to the horizon in all directions as she turned.
The air had a smell. Rich and nutty, like a forest just after a fall rain, as the mushroom crop is ready to be harvested and the ground itself was damp and squishy under her boots.
She studied the building closest to her and reached out a hand. Suddenly, she was standing before a bookcase like one her father kept, lined to the top with a variety of tomes.
A’Alhakoth pulled a book down and opened it.
Genarde.
It was a planet deep in the distant Sept Empire, on the far side of the Free Worlds. Daniel had come from there.
She found herself standing in the kitchen of Pain du Soir, a bistro Daniel had owned. The air tasted of freshly baked bread, with a hint of quiet despair underneath.
Across the busy room, humans worked with heads down and occasional barks at each other as they assembled meals and delivered them to the front for paying customers. Her hands were preparing a ratatouille, although she wasn’t sure how she knew that.
Or even knew what a ratatouille was.
Daniel’s hands were stirring the simmering sauce slowly, except that they were her hands, Rabic brown instead of a more natural periwinkle. The sauce was perfect as they tasted it with a carved wooden spoon like her mother might have used, back on Kanus.
She watched herself add the vegetables and broth to a broad baking dish made of glass, and then add a layer of already cooked ground meat over the top before sprinkling shredded cheese and sliding the entire mess into a nearby stove to turn into magic.
A taste of home.
But not her home. His.
These were his memories. That was his Golden Diamond on the wall, marking the first stage of utter, gustatory excellence, one of only four such restaurants in that entire sector of space so honored.
She was Daniel Lémieux right now. Those books were his memories. She was surrounded entirely by his life.
“What would you like to know?” his disembodied voice asked.
“Why this memory?” she looked up at the ceiling and asked.
“That was perhaps the last time I was happy,” he said. “Tomorrow, Angel ruins everything, but tonight, the ratatouille variant came out so perfect that I still come here to savor it.”
She saw Angel. Saw the night Daniel had had enough and sold his restaurant for whatever cash his Sous Chef had in his wallet. Saw Daniel walk away and never look back, not even with a hint of regret.
“Show me the monster,” she commanded.
There was a moment of vertigo, and A’Alhakoth found herself on the main repair deck of WinterStar. All of the crew was lined up, eyes unseeing with an inner glow as a strange, alien creature ordered them to strip, that he might pleasure himself on their unresisting bodies.
She felt rage deep inside herself, but the wave of anger from Daniel was like a mountain falling down, destroying everything in its path.
Commander Omezi had already been reduced to a victim. The others were following.
She covered Urid-Varg’s face with foam and watched him cough and gag, before she bashed him again and again, splattering blood and brains everywhere in her wrath.
His fury.
That was Daniel she was feeling. Daniel’s fury at what that violeur planned. His response to someone taking instead of asking.
He would always ask. And take no for an answer with no hard feelings. She did not have to fear for herself with the only man on the ship.
A’Alhakoth grabbed other memories at random. Cooking on WinterStar. Cooking on Genarde, in all of the kitchens he had known. Flying through space.
The Star Turtle.
Holy shit.
“Yes,” Daniel said. “That is the most terrible secret. The one we must keep from everyone. The Mbaysey know. The Sept is aware, but has not come to understand my secrets, or Kathra’s. It is power, A’Alhakoth.”
She turned, looking around the endless stacks of books, but could not find the man she wanted to confront.
Suddenly, they were both back in that room, seated like someone would be delivering tea shortly.
“You did that to me,” she accused. “Ransacked my memories without permission.”
He nodded.
They were gone again, back to that day she met Erin. A’Alhakoth was staring at herself across a small gap, with Erin between them, facing her, even as she watched another A’Alhakoth across from her.
She was Daniel. He had done these things.
She climbed into her own mind with him and looked around. Returned a moment later when Erin ordered it, and watched that woman go much deeper into who she was and why she was here, trying to solve the mystery of who the blue girl was studying them across the food court.
Even from here she could smell her own desperation to escape the onset of poverty, in a place where men might make terrible demands. A woman might as well, but it wouldn’t be as bad, she had hoped.
But the quest had carried her as far as it could. She couldn’t have even made it home easily at that point.
And then Erin found her. Daniel was just a passive observer as she looked around both of them, him and his memories of being Erin in that moment.
All of the women had been Daniel. Had been inside his mind, just as she was inside his now. He had brought her here so that she would understand.
A man’s word were just that. Words. Promises could be kept or broken. Honored or ignored. Lies you could not discern until it was too late.
Except she had seen to the core of Daniel Lémieux. Read his soul, his heart, his mind.
A’Alhakoth could not envision what kind of man would be granted that sort of power, and then not use it. Not conquer with it.
So he showed her.
He called it the Left Hand Of Evil.
With that sort of power you could just shut a woman’s mind down while you ravaged her body. Or leave her awake as a passive witness, screaming in her mind but trapped in her flesh and unable to fight back. When that got boring, that level of power made it possible to make her participate with an appearance of willingness.
And if you were really a rapist, perhaps make her enjoy it.
Finally, you could make her dependent on it.
Evil itself.
That was the fear she tasted at the co
re of the man. That he would cross some line, even accidentally, and end up there, changing someone into someone else, when there was nothing they could do to stop him.
She saw nightmares where he turned the Star Turtle into the face of a nearby sun and leapt to his death, taking the gem and all that power with him, rather than allowing someone else to grasp it.
In some of the dreams, he was an old man. In others, no older than the one who had sat next to her at dinner.
“You understand?” he asked finally.
“I do,” A’Alhakoth replied gravely.
His fear wasn’t for himself, but for the ones around him, and what he might do to them in a fit of pique. Or the lengths to which he might go, if he felt it was necessary to protect Kathra Omezi and her comitatus.
Including the newest member.
A’Alhakoth suddenly found herself back in her own body, seated in the dining hall with Daniel on one side and Erin on the other. Kathra Omezi sat across from her with a compassionate face.
They had all been through this particular fire. Only Kathra had killed with that power.
A’Alhakoth remembered to breathe.
“Now,” Kathra nodded. “Now you are mine.”
Twenty-Four
The fools had chosen to fight.
Naupati Pasdar laughed, but only in his mind. Outwardly, he maintained a stern scowl as he watched the base implode and the few junkyard Starfighters still surviving turn and flee in different directions on their pitiful valence drives.
They would be no threat to anyone if they did manage to escape, wherever they landed.
He had broken them.
A Septagon was the most perfect weapon ever devised for destroying pirate bases on small moons. The target could not flee.
One merely had to align the bow of the ship with the target and annihilate it.
Even planets protected by atmospheres could not shelter a city from the Axial Megacannon.
The moon in front of him was in the process of disintegrating, ending the pirate base, and any threat from the people there.
Pasdar didn’t care who they were. This system was marked uninhabited on even the most recent gazetteer, so they were squatters in a system where he needed to build his next base. Pasdar didn’t even need the moon, which was why he could destroy it. Just solitude to build a base.
