Chapter 26
- Nora -
While we walk out of the Nest, Krix’vorr grabs hold of probably a half dozen random servants and commands them to find fabrics for me.
They all scurry off, and I’m sure at least some of them will come through.
Of course I don’t expect anyone here to make actual clothes, although I’ve seen some of them wearing rags of various types.
But I’d be fine with a wrap that’s easier to deal with than this silly tape.
Back inside the Beast, Krix’vorr barks orders to the crew and they scramble to get the ship ready for departure. The Beast herself seems fine with it, and the pulsation everywhere picks up in strength and speed.
“She’s excited,” Krix’vorr tells me as we enter his chamber. “She likes space and the prospects of battle. Lying still in a stall was never her favorite.”
The membrane closes and I turn to embrace him. “Thank you for protecting me and Earth. I know you took a big risk.”
“Simply being alive is a big risk,” he rumbles, making me shake. “And I find risks make me feel more alive. Or maybe it’s you. But of course you are a risk, too. A major risk.”
“That thing about the new queen,” I start carefully. “And the new Royal Mate. Was that about you?”
“Partly, I think. The new Queen will need a Royal Mate right away. He has to be a good one. This was the queen telling us that she hasn’t found one yet.”
“And you are one option.”
“I am an obvious option,” he admits. “But it’s important that the new Royal Mate actually wants the position.”
“Is it an option that excites you?” I ask. “I can see that a Royal Mate could be powerful.”
“Power is useful,” he says. “But not at any cost.” He kisses my hair and disentangles himself. “Now I have to prepare for the Inquisitor. His tools need a room full of metal pipes, for some reason. Wait here and I’ll send any new clothing this way. And some food.” He leaves the chamber.
I sit down on his high, alien bed, more worried than before the audience.
I may have been too tough on that Inquisitor.
I’m not in a position of strength here, and we all know it.
But I’m a soldier, not a diplomat or a spy.
It’s not like I told him anything important, and even a dying world can have scouts.
The membrane opens and Lucius comes whirring. “Ah. Back again, Captain. Good news from the audience?”
“Oh, the best. They didn’t buy my Earth-is-dying thing, Krix’vorr committed to finding the Gzet homeworld or they’ll kill us both, and the Queen is retiring and she wants someone to be the next Royal Mate, with Krix’vorr as a leading candidate.”
The drone hovers in mid-air. “And you consider this ‘the best’ news? On which scale can this possibly– oh, I see. You were being sarcastic. Sorry, I’ve been spending time inside the mind of this space-going animal and it’s made me literal-minded. It all sounds like terrible news.”
“It’s terrible,” I sigh, “and that’s not all. We’re going to be babysat by an Inquisitor while we search for the Gzet. And I kind of told him I’ll kill him if he looks at me wrong. I’m not sure that made things better.”
“Sometimes it’s better to seem strong than weak,” the drone tries to console me. “Especially if you look weak, as you do.”
I sigh again. “Thanks. That’s a real pick-me-up. Did you make any progress in that coral forest of memories?”
“Oh yes. Progress was made. The structure is actually quite fascinating, not unlike a non-eulerian Fourier transform, but backwards. I can now make sense of it, but it takes time and there’s a lot to go through. Well, you saw how much there is.”
“Can you do it? Go through all of it?”
The drone lowers an inch. “If I have a year, maybe. If not, then no. There’s too much, and nearly all of it is irrelevant. But I’ll try, especially now that it seems your life depends on it. And the fate of Earth, it seems.”
“So no pressure,” I try to joke, but it comes out flat because there’s nothing funny about this.
“Oh, I don’t respond to pressure, one way or the other,” Lucius says. “I will work as fast as I can- oh.”
The membrane opens a bit and an eye on a stalk carefully pokes through. “Captain Ellis? We have… something for you.”
“Come in,” I tell them as I stand up, pleasantly surprised about hearing my name from an alien. It's Krix'vorr's doing, I'm sure.
A servant creature with three thin arms cautiously comes inside, its one eye looking quickly around.
“There is fabric for the Chief Harrower, but he bid me bring it here. May I? Thank you. Thank you.” The alien being drops a thick wad of paper-like material on the bed, then hurries out, profusely thanking me all the while.
I grab a corner of the roll and rub the dark red material. “Not quite paper, but not much better. What do you think?”
Lucius zooms over and points his sensor cluster at the fabric.
“The closest I can think of is wax paper, but this is not quite as stiff. It should be somewhat pliant. If you use it as a wrap, you can fasten it with small pieces of tape. It’s my opinion that this is the best semblance of clothing you have had since the minefield. ”
“That’s something, at least. Can you help?”
It takes a few minutes, but by the end I’m wearing a wrap that’s actually not that stiff and ungainly. It isn’t even transparent, which is an improvement in itself. The crimson color is also quite fetching after the green tape.
“Not bad,” I finally state. “At least I’m mostly covered.”
“Very pretty,” the drone agrees. “Would you like me to make some insignia on it?”
I arch my eyebrows. “Can you?”
The drone extends his small manipulator arm and gets busy by my shoulder. “Captain’s bars, squadron symbol, Space Force badge, pilot wings. All just drawn on, but this material holds a line well. Just for the morale, Captain.”
I look down on my shoulder. The symbols are just scraped into the fabric, but they’re accurate and unmistakable. “Thanks.”
“I will be on my way,” the drone announces and flies over to the membrane. “I won’t emerge again until I have an answer for you or it becomes clear to me that no answer can be found.”
I take a deep breath. “Lucius. Can you do it? What’s the probability?”
“I can’t even make an estimate,” the drone admits. “Because it's going to take time, and the outcome is not certain. Make any decision you need to, Captain.” The membrane opens and he flies out.
I get what he means by that last part: he has nothing that will help, and he doesn’t think he’ll ever get it, so he’s telling me to be ready for the worst option.
“Shit,” I mutter. “This is looking better and better.”
Some food is delivered, and I force myself to eat most of it. I may need energy and a clear head sooner than I think.
Another servant creature comes and gets the dirty dishes. Just as it is about to leave, it squeaks “The Chief Harrower asks you to come to the entryway.”
So I make my way through the corridors to the organic airlock. Krix’vorr is already there.
“The Inquisitor is expected,” he says. “And I think he should see us together.”
I get it - Brax’tok should see that we’re a unit and not easily broken apart. It’s a show of strength on Krix’vorr’s part, and it’s also a strong sign of his regard for me. He’s basically saying that this is his ship, and he sets me highly enough to receive important passengers with me beside him.
“Thanks,” I say softly. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“And everyone knows it,” he says with a tight smile. “That’s also a reason.”
The Inquisitor is smart enough to not make us wait. He strides aboard and greets Krix’vorr like a fellow high-ranking official. “Permission to come aboard, Chief Harrower?”
“Permission granted, Inquisitor. We’re honored to have you aboard.”
It’s my first close-up look at the Inquisitor. He looks young, not much older than Krix’vorr, and he has the same powerful build. His eyes are searching and cold, but I don’t detect any particular menace in him. That’s probably one of the things that makes him dangerous.
“My assistant, Deeg,” he says and gestures behind him just as some kind of alien octopus enters. I spot tentacles and spikes and many round eyes among thick scales on a shapeless, black and orange body.
I involuntarily take a step back and grab Krix’vorr’s hand. Okay, there’s the menace. Absolutely all the menace any inquisitor will need.
Krix’vorr doesn’t budge. “Ah. Greetings, Assistant Deeg.”
“Deeg doesn’t speak,” the Inquisitor says while the monster oozes its way aboard the Beast, long spikes stroking the walls and making them pull away. “And you won’t interact with him. Well, hopefully you won’t.”
I get that, too - this is Brax’tok’s bodyguard, the enforcer that will keep Krix’vorr from simply killing him. And it should work just fine.
“Your stateroom is ready, Inquisitor,” Krix’vorr says. “And we have a room for Deeg, as well. Now I understand what the metal pipes are for.”
We walk through the Beast, with Deeg following us quietly. He mostly travels on the ceiling, using his strong tentacles to stay up there.
“Deeg’s quarters,” Krix’vorr announces and opens a round membrane. “The pipes are a steel-magnesium alloy.”
I look inside the room. It’s filled with gleaming metal pipes in every shape possible, like a giant jungle gym.
Deeg immediately swings himself through the opening and begins climbing on the pipes like a happy monkey, moving with astonishing speed and agility.
“He’ll be happy there,” Brax’tok says. “Which is a rare state for him. I feel quite welcome, Chief Harrower. Thank you.”
We show him to his more normal stateroom, and then Krix’vorr and I stay in the command chamber while the Beast detaches from the Nest and makes her way into space.
The Nest falls away behind us, its vast bulk shrinking into the dark until it's just another shape among the stars. Krix'vorr stands at the viewport with one hand resting low on my back, and for the first time since we knelt in that chamber, neither of us says anything at all.
I lean into him. He's warm in the way he always is, a heat that seems to come from somewhere deeper than skin. "We're really doing this," I say eventually. "Hunting a planet that might not exist, so an Inquisitor with a nightmare for a pet doesn't feed us to your ship."
"When you say it like that, it sounds unwise." His hand tightens slightly against me. "It was the only offer I had. Everything else ended with your Earth Harvested."
"I know." I turn and press my face against his chest, just for a moment, just to feel something solid that isn't a throne room or a threat. "Thank you for choosing worse for yourself instead."
He doesn't answer that directly. Instead his other hand comes up to cradle the back of my head, careful in the way he always is with me, like I might break if he isn't. "I would choose it again," he finally says. "I find that troubles me less than it should."
For a while we just stand like that, watching the Nest shrink to a point of light and vanish, the Beast humming contentedly beneath our feet as she accelerates hard into open space.
“We’ll set a course for the center of the galaxy,” Krix’vorr says. “The Gzet are more likely to be there than further out.”
“What do we do when the Inquisitor realizes that we don’t know which way we should go?”
Krix’vorr reaches up and strokes one of the tendons that hang down from the organic ceiling. “There’s no reason he will know. He won’t be allowed in here.” The Beast’s tendon shudders in delight.
I’ve been trying to think of ways to get out of this somehow. One option is to have Krix’vorr take me to Earth. I don’t think he would plunder my homeworld, but this ship has a crew and I can’t imagine they’ll all keep quiet about the location. Just one of them spilling the beans is enough.
And it would mean losing Krix’vorr, something that I’m less and less willing to consider.
I’ve never been as alive as I am with him, never felt so cared for or appreciated or just loved.
He’s lied to his queen for me, and he has basically staked his life on finding a planet other than Earth, when he knows or must strongly suspect that Earth is a really ripe target.
But even if I thought that would work, I couldn’t do it. Because Sophia is out there somewhere, captured by the Gzet.
She isn't dead. I don't know why that thought hits me so hard right now. Maybe it's the insignia, drawn on my shoulder, only visible if you know they’re there. Maybe it's the fact that Lucius called me Captain. Maybe it's the way Krix'vorr keeps risking everything for me.
But Sophia isn't dead. I don't have any proof. I don't even have a good reason.
I just know.
And somewhere out there, beyond all this madness and politics and queens and harvests, my friend is all alone among slave-trading aliens. She doesn’t even know I’m looking for her.
A coldness goes through me at the thought. She must feel so abandoned!
But I’ll find her. Whatever it takes.