by Blaze Ward
“Eighth deck, south tower,” he murmured to Erin, suddenly feeling tired as well as overheated. “Let A’Alhakoth know.”
Erin typed a quick message while Daniel concentrated on his breathing. After a moment, the strangeness passed and his core temperature fell back down to normal.
“Are you all right?” Iruoma whispered, stepping close to his side.
“If anyone else could do this, I’d let them,” he told her honestly. “If any of you had sons you trusted, I would walk away from this thing in a heartbeat.”
She nodded sympathetically, but there was nothing she could say. Some of the sons had stayed in the past, but the exceptionally strong-willed ones were normally left to find themselves a place in a galaxy where men dominated and they didn’t have to be second-class citizens.
That might change in the future, if Kathra was successful at liberating the Mbaysey. If she built some of her dreams, there might be space for men as well, but the culture needed time to harden into a thing that would not lose its matriarchy quickly. Daniel was helping her buy that time.
After all, look at what the Sept had done, once they’d achieved power. And how hard Yagazie had had to fight to free the Mbaysey from their slavery, before freeing them from men entirely.
Daniel waited until Erin confirmed that the message had been sent and then walked to the base of the south tower. A bank of elevators waited quietly, almost mocking him, but he didn’t let that stop him from proceeding. He pushed a button and one of the doors opened immediately, welcoming him like a giant maw, all set to swallow the five of them.
He entered, and wondered if this was what hell felt like when you arrived.
Thirty-Four
She felt like a princess in a fairy tale, going into the forest after a monster or a witch. A’Alhakoth paused to look at a reflection of herself in a window as she passed a storefront and shook her head at such silliness. Youngest of six children of the Count, with four older brothers and a sister ahead of her, so she wasn’t remotely like a princess.
Her parents had not coddled her, either. She was as schooled and trained as her siblings, perhaps more so because she had always been daddy’s special girl, and he wanted her to succeed on her own merits, rather than being sought as a political alliance of some sort.
She wasn’t sure what marriage value she might bring, if and when she made it home to visit, but being an accepted warrior in a tribe of such women as the comitatus would certainly cause tongues to wag.
It would be even more interesting when Erin and the others would look all of her brothers in the eye, rather than letting the males lurk over them, like she had to.
The humans around her were like that as well, but they couldn’t generally help it. A’Alhakoth simply belonged to a species that was a head shorter, at least for the women. That wasn’t about to stop her, though.
She stalked across the big mall space and exited the nominally-human areas for the sections of the TradeStation where the aliens lived. The other aliens. She could pass as human. Could be mistaken for one if the lighting wasn’t good or she had a hood of some sort she could pull up, like the girl in the fable.
The locals in this lobe of the station would treat her like a human if she encountered one, whatever that meant.
She moved into hallways that were only sparsely inhabited, until she was alone as far as she could see in either direction. At least to the hatches at each end of the walkway.
Good enough. A’Alhakoth pulled out her skyvox and tuned it to listen. No signal from Erin, and the woman’s own skyvox was far enough away that A’Alhakoth couldn’t get a signal to triangulate on.
Her job wasn’t to stay close to the others, but rather to get just to the edge of such range and track them. It was up to her to make sure nobody snuck up on them while they were working, or for her to come in and surprise someone who had surprised them.
A beep let her know she had a message.
South tower, eighth floor.
Erin was probably two hallways ahead of her, already at the base of the tower quad, and Daniel had found something. A’Alhakoth still didn’t understand how any of that worked, other than the gem seemed to be the genesis of it. Humans didn’t have such powers, although she had encountered a few rumors of species that did.
Was Daniel human anymore? He was alien to her, but human and kaniea weren’t all that different physically. All of her brothers and her father were taller and heavier than the cook, but she’d be willing to give the small human male even odds, even without the aid of that gem.
She’d seen the inside of his mind, just as he had seen hers. If one could somehow bottle the distilled stubbornness that seemed to be Daniel’s soul and sell it as a magical potion, A’Alhakoth imagined she might get rich.
She pressed on, keeping the skyvox in one hand but down at her side. Her eyes sought every nook and hallway, as though an assassin might be lurking. Kanus wasn’t so advanced as a culture that people never resorted to simple violence to make a point.
But she was alone.
A’Alhakoth wondered if this section was just overbuilt against future need, or if there weren’t that many truly alien creatures aboard right now that they needed such quarters. She was just fine in the human sections, as long as she watched her back. Similarly, Vida or Se’uh’pal could make do over there without much work.
It would make it much easier, if Daniel didn’t have to wade through the entirety of the alien sections of the haystack to find the needle he wanted.
She found the quad at the base of the tower. The navigational cross was still there, from where she’d visited when she’d first come aboard, before it became obvious how much cheaper it was to live as a poor human, rather than an alien with any sort of special needs.
A’Alhakoth found a spot mostly out of sight of the south tower elevators and studied her skyvox. Erin was just at the edge of her range now, flickering in and out of signal, since it didn’t necessarily have to punch through many decks if she was beneath the stars.
This would be a good place to watch. And wait.
Anyone approaching from the human sections wouldn’t necessarily see her, and if they did, she was blue, rather than pink or brown, so they wouldn’t immediately associate her with the Mbaysey. In that, Commander Omezi had chosen well.
Thirty-Five
The lift doors opened silently. Daniel stared out into an enormous space, feeling like a child. The doors themselves were five meters wide, across the whole facing of the lift. The ceiling in here was four meters, but out there it was closer to seven.
Seriously, he was six years old again and walking into one of those tremendous cathedrals that the colonists seemed to build third on every planet they hit, right after the first bar and the first restaurant.
Everywhere, the scale was intimidating.
Or was it? He turned to the four warriors with him and each of them had that same look of awe on her face.
Damn it, you salauds. I’m running out of patience with your mind games.
He grabbed Erin by the hand and pulled her to face him.
“This is all an illusion,” he said in a taut growl.
She blinked, and then growled back at him as the light came on in her eyes.
Daniel nodded and looked, but the others had broken the grip of whatever it was when he spoke. They had set it up to make you feel tiny and vulnerable when you stepped out onto this deck. The scale of construction was purposeful, but that was the mechanics of dealing with alien needs.
Someone was reinforcing the feeling of inferiority. They had chosen the wrong cast of women to use it on. Kam started to draw her pistol, but Erin barked at her and it went back into the holster.
For now.
Daniel stepped out onto the deck of the eighth floor and moved forward some for the others to clear the lift. Steel floors and walls. Lights an impossible distance away overhead, at least to someone used to the much-smaller decks of a human starship.
Three hall
ways led from here, down the two sides and right into the middle of the tower building itself. He pivoted in place, letting the music in his mind draw him. This tower was round, rather than square, so the two side hallways eventually connected on the far edge, he supposed, and the one in the middle was a spoke to a central hub he could see some distance down the way. It let him divide things slowly into halves.
There. Maybe. That light was brighter on the left as he faced the center of the tower.
Daniel started walking slowly down the spoke, keeping his mind as compact as he could against what felt like a mental wind blowing in his face. None of the women seemed to be feeling anything like it, so perhaps it was just him.
Just him and whoever they were.
He felt Kam standing on his right, back a meter where she could draw and fire if she needed to. Similarly, Nkechi was on his left, and closer, so she could rush up and grapple a foe that stepped out.
Hopefully, it wouldn’t come to that, because Daniel didn’t think that the women would be able to resist. He considered sending them home right now, but couldn’t be sure if those were his thoughts, concerned for their safety, or someone else worried that these women were more dangerous than the strangers could handle.
In for a pfennig, in for a drachma. All of them were volunteers, and warriors.
The whole point of Kathra’s comitatus was a set of women willing to die for her. And one Algerian chef who would die with them if it came to that.
Thirty-Six
Erin took up a spot at the rear of their little convoy, so that she could keep an eye on the others. She figured that those three were so keyed up right now that stopping them from doing extravagant violence was more likely than spurring them.
She walked quietly. People never really gave her credit for how carefully she could set her metal foot down on the deck when she wanted to. Today, she had almost gone peg leg under her pants. Just the rubberized heel for gripping, but not the toe section that made it look like a normal foot.
If she had to kick someone, they were getting raw metal without any padding. Erin figured that they’d be deserving it at that point.
She had her skyvox down at one side, on but not transmitting anything more than a location signal for the station. And A’Alhakoth.
Erin had programmed an emergency button on it and had her thumb close enough to hit it if something went wrong, so both A’Alhakoth and Kathra would be alerted.
What they might do in that situation was iffy, but Erin had gotten that stupid macho crap pounded out of her a long time ago. She had twenty sisters she could call on if she needed them.
And a pair of warships.
Daniel led them like a bloodhound on a short leash, his head turning back and forth like he was sniffing a trail. In a way, he was.
Kam and Nkechi stayed close, which was why she’d picked them. Others might be better pilots, or smarter warriors, but those two were the best at their chosen form of violence, which said a lot in the comitatus.
Iruoma was here because Daniel had asked. And Erin didn’t mind. That scowl she habitually wore was intense enough to maybe curdle milk today, if they ran into any.
She had no idea what they would find here. Not even theories, because any guess she planned on would likely be wrong and color all her decisions and mistakes that much more.
Urid-Varg had been on the move for nearly a thousand years at the point he died, according to stories Daniel had shared. Not in a direct line for human space, but more like a random zig-zag across space. It was as if he would stay in one place for a while, and then move on when his current host body got old. Sometimes he would take another of the same kind, but more frequently he must had heard tales of a more interesting species nearby.
Twelve thousand years was a short time, as far as planets and species went, but the galaxy had also come alive with new travelers, as one species might encounter a few neighbors and provide them with space travel, either by conquering them as a pocket empire, or via trade.
Empires never really lasted long in space. Travel times between stars meant communication was slow. Humans were ascendant right now only because the Sept Empire was vigorously enforcing a specism of human supremacy, but even then, you had to face the tightly-bound rules and laws of caste that put Persian men at the top of the pyramid and slowly worked down to African women. Only the aliens were more despised.
The Sept would fail. The Mbaysey were just the first step in all the pieces that would spall off and leave for a better life elsewhere. Eventually, enough renegade humans would join up with enough pissy aliens, and the Sept would be squashed.
Daniel’s Turtle might even help, although Erin had her doubts that something like that would happen in her lifetime. And nobody had any idea how long Daniel might live.
Daniel reached the center of the tower. He walked into the middle of a kind of greathall, maybe fifteen meters across and round, while Erin stayed clear out on the edge. They had ignored two more hallway rings leading to apartments getting here, and found themselves in a lounge, Erin supposed.
A space where you might entertain someone close to your suite, if maybe it wasn’t safe for them to enter? Gravity too high? Maybe a weird atmosphere that most folks couldn’t breathe?
She had no idea. Until the tribe had permanently left Sept space, their encounters with aliens were extremely rare, and mostly Vida or Se’uh’pal, the explorers and merchants of space, respectively. At least according to their own legends. Even Vida were rare.
Se’uh’pal were almost like fleas on the back of a dog, the little rabbit-like bipeds unafraid to go anywhere and trade for anything.
But they didn’t need special environments, either of them. Who the hell would hide here?
Unless they wanted you to think they were completely alien.
Erin grinned at a sudden, mischievous thought. Take rooms in the alien section, and tell people you were a mesomorph, a literal shapechanger, and watch their eyes get big.
It was an evil idea. She made a note to talk to Kathra about pulling such a prank on some TradeStation, sometime in the future. Presumably one they were only visiting once in passing and never coming back.
She watched Daniel rotate in place once more, like a searchlight or a lighthouse maybe. He paused at a certain spot then continued, coming back to that spot.
“There,” he muttered. “Second ring, if I have triangulated them correctly. Certainement, we shall discover the truth soon enough.”
Erin nodded to the women and moved past the entryway where she had waited as Daniel picked the closest of the six hallways and moved.
All of these corridors were oversized. Moving heavy equipment, Erin supposed. Or bizarre mobile life support systems if you were alien enough to need them, but still capable of communicating with humans and the like.
Daniel paused at the first intersection and looked all directions, like a feral dog wanting to cross a busy street. Or a bloodhound on the scent.
He turned left and moved into the ring. Erin let some space open up, but not enough that she lost sight of the others. She noted a doorway and thought about sending A’Alhakoth a message, but feared that the aliens might hear it somehow and know that they were being pursued.
The walls were still rough metal painted gray, with nothing in the way of decorations. The air tickled her nose. Just enough ammonia to detect, but not enough to make her sneeze.
Her chef found the hatch he wanted. She watched him stop and pivot to his right, staring so intently she wondered if he could somehow see through the steel.
He turned to her and she could see a cold fire in those eyes.
Daniel nodded to her but didn’t speak, as though he was afraid to rouse the ghosts. The three women turned to her for instructions and she nodded back, gesturing for them to spread out.
As before, Nkechi was close and Kam back a little. Erin took a spot to one side and back, with Iruoma mirroring her. Daniel stood at the hatch itself, and seemed to be only partly p
resent.
Gone away inside his mind, perhaps.
He glanced back both directions to confirm his helpers, and pressed the door lock.
Erin wondered if that would sound a bell and bring the aliens to the door, like a pizza delivery, but the hatch opened.
A smell escaped the room, but she couldn’t place it. Not toxic. Organic and slightly musky. Not entirely unpleasant, but weird.
Daniel entered. Nkechi and Kam went next. Erin nodded Iruoma in and waited at the door.
Inside, another waiting room, completely bare of furniture, but with generic watercolor prints framed and hanging on three walls, with doors leading off on all sides.
They were committed now. Erin stepped into the room and let the hatch close behind her. It was a standard door, so her pistol could do enough damage that she could pry it open, before she had to reload. Plus she had the other three women.
Daniel moved to the door on the inner wall. It wasn’t even as heavy as the one to the suite. Painted steel, but the kind that rested on a roller track with a magnetic slider mechanism to move it.
The smell was stronger in here. Erin decided that must be what the aliens smelled like when they hadn’t had a bath in a while. She followed Daniel to the door and watched him open it.
The room beyond was dim enough that she could make out shapes when she followed the others in, but not much detail.
Couches, maybe. Bookcases on a few walls. Carpeting on the floor that was just thick enough to provide her foot a little better traction than the steel, but not much more.
Anything more she wanted to think or do ceased as a hand came down and grabbed hold of her mind, squeezing painfully and severing all contact with her hands, feet, or mouth.
The lights came up suddenly and Erin saw movement.
Thirty-Seven
He held his breath as he opened the outer hatch, but nothing jumped out at them. Daniel had been sure that it was all a trap, but simply could not determine if the best choice was to flee or to confront it.
