Death Drop (64 page)

The gold belly faded into the scaly, black top side of the creature as it twisted around his leg. Obsidian talons clawed into his skin as its magnificent head, crowned with two golden horns, perched on his shoulder and breathed a perfect billow of red, orange, and yellow up his neck. Colors and scenery abounded on this walking canvas, and in addition to the creature, Dezmara saw a ship battered in thrashing waves of dark blue with foaming white crests; outstretched branches with delicate blossoms floating on dark undulating sections; and strange structures dotting alien landscapes. She also noticed a figure covering his right leg and a large section of his stomach that looked very much like a Kaniderelle—except it was darker, more muscled,
wilder.
A bird of some kind, with wings outstretched, adorned his chest and looked out from his skin with the same hookish beak and strange eyes that surveyed her now. There was, in fact, so much pictured on the man, Dezmara couldn’t take it all in before it vanished beneath a coat of gray feathers.

“I
am
Rilek,” he said in a softish voice that belied his ferocious abilities, “and if what you say is true, then you must be?” He rolled his head on his neck and waited for the correct response. Dezmara looked up at him with murder still smoldering in her eyes and considered keeping her mouth shut, but the small brown pirate had started something that stayed her execution, and she was curious to see where it was going.

“Only two souls in the universe know me by name—most just call me The Ghost.”

“
You’re
The Ghost?!” the little pirate said with disbelief.

“I’m sorry,” Dezmara wheezed, looking at the whiskered rogue, “didn’t catch your name.”

He didn’t answer straight away; he was busy staring at Rilek with utter confusion. Dezmara could see that Rilek was also taken aback, although not quite as much as his compatriot, by the revelation of her identity. After a long pause filled with amazed stares and raised brows, the slight man spoke.

“I’m Major Otto Von Holt of the Dissension Army, commander of the Aquatics Brigade, First Battalion.” Otto’s shoulders straightened with a touch of pride.

“Dissension, huh? Tell me, Major Von Holt, is the Dissension Army so desperate it’s taking up with pirate scum?” Dezmara shot Rilek a caustic look.

“I’m sorry, my dear,” the admiral said earnestly, “but I’m afraid this has all been a terrible misunderstanding. Believe it or not,
I
have been your biggest advocate from the beginning of our operation.”

“What a load of shit!” Dezmara spat. “You damn near blew up my ship, beat me, torched me, and then tried to eat me, and I’m supposed to believe
you
are on my side?!”

“I’m afraid the admiral’s telling the truth,” Otto said with a guilty look. “He was very adamant about The Ghost—you—flying by the strictest code of honor and the impossibility that you could be a cold-blooded murderer.”

“I’ll tell you,” Dezmara said, “I would’ve said the same thing about him up until yesterday, when he attacked me for no good goddam reason!”

“Not for no good reason!” Otto implored, sinking to one knee beside her in the sand and putting a hand on her shoulder. “The Mewlatai we’re after flies a black Zebulon just like yours, and they are renowned for their battle skills. You have to admit, your flying and fighting is rather impressive.”

“What the hell’s a
Mewlatai
, and what’d he do that was so bad that you justified blasting anyone in a black Zebulon out of the sky? Hell, all you had was the description of a fucking ship!”

A large sailor—who had trundled onto the scene with one arm in a sling and the other wielding his pistol—Rilek, Otto, and all ten of the identical men looked at her with astonishment.

“You don’t know who the Mewlatai are?” Otto asked. “How can that be?”

“I’ve been out of it for a while,” Dezmara offered.

“They’ve been defenders of the universe for hundreds of thousands of years—sworn enemies of the Durax, the only beings naturally immune to their mind powers, and creators of the Serum.”

“Defenders of the universe, eh? Not doin’ a very good job lately, are they? What’s this
Serum
about, then?” Again, it was time for everyone present to consider Dezmara with some peculiarity, but her genuine look was impossible to ignore, so Otto answered.

“The Serum is a potion of sorts, based on the genetic code of the Mewlatai themselves. It gives anyone injected with it immunity to the Durax. It’s the mortar that holds the Dissension together. Without the Serum, we can’t hope to rally others to the cause—hope will be lost. So, you can see, Ghost, if faith in the Serum is undermined by the very creatures that create it, no one will take it—regardless of whether it works or not. They’ll be too scared.”

“Okay, okay—so is that what your Mewlatai did, undermined the Serum?” Dezmara pressed for the answer to her original question.

“He murdered one of my best men by injecting him with poison disguised as the Serum,” Otto said gravely.

“That’d do it,” Dezmara said with some sympathy. “Wouldn’t take much for the rumor mill to grind that one out to every free soul in the universe. But you still didn’t answer my question. All you had was a ship—a black Zebulon. Why’d you reckless sonsofbitches open fire on me?!”

“With all due respect, Ghost,” Rilek said, “we didn’t
just
have a ship. You broke course and ran.”

Dezmara looked at him like a caged animal that had been poked with a stick one too many times. “Are you outta your goddam mind?!” she seethed. “I didn’t break course, I headed straight for Chuudagar just like the goddam run instructions told me!”

“Ghost, the run instructions were to take the shipment to Thulabane on Enor,” Rilek said.

“That’s fuckin’ ridiculous! How do I know this isn’t some elaborate bullshit story, huh?!”

“It’s not a story, you see, because
I
set up the run on behalf of the major here so we could draw out the Mewlatai. It was all done anonymously, of course, but I provided the cargo and picked the destination.”

Dezmara was absolutely beside herself with anger. If her guns had still been at her sides, she would’ve been a hair’s breadth away from pulling them and shooting as many of these lying bastards as possible; then reason broke in once again, and this time it had something quite relevant to say.
“The run instructions were early,”
she thought to herself.
“Ringers are never early.”
Dezmara looked up at Rilek. She knew the answer to the question before it crossed her dry, cracked lips, but she asked anyway. “The run instructions…when did Fellini start the run instructions?”

“They were on time, as usual,” Rilek said with a knowing tone. He, too, had figured it out.

“That sonofabitch knew I never dialed into the shared frequency—so much for the safety of anonymity. He just called me up before anyone else and gave me my own set of instructions. It’s so goddam simple—I should’ve seen it comin’!”

“There’s something else,” Rilek said. “Your cargo. How much did you load in Luxon?”

“Eight containers. Forty wileks,” Dezmara said. “Why?”

“The load was one hundred wileks for five ships—twenty wileks apiece. You had twice the weight of anyone else, but we only found four containers aboard your ship—the same four that we supplied for the run. We knew they were full of scrap, so we took them to patch our hull, but the other four were gone when we found the
Ghost
abandoned.”

“So Fellini used me to hijack a shipment and he kidnapped my friends.”

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Otto said, shaking his head.

“No, it makes perfect sense,” Dezmara countered, grimacing as she gingerly lowered her aching torso down to the sand. “When Fellini offered me the run, he said the odds in Trillis favored the
Lodestar
to win.”

“No, they didn’t!” Otto said a little too quickly and then lowered his eyes in embarrassment at revealing his gambling habit to a complete stranger; not to mention Rilek and the rest of the crew.

“Exactly!” Dezmara said. Otto looked up again in confusion. “
I
was favored to win, but Fellini had planned for the
Triton
to take me out, plans only he knew about. Rilek, being a legendary pilot, was a sure bet to come in first with me out of the picture.”

“So Fellini bet it all on Rilek to win!” Otto said. “Well, at least he didn’t make out there!” Otto smiled optimistically.

“No,” Dezmara gave a pained laugh, “but he did get the four million tolocs I bet on myself and whatever cargo I was smuggling from Luxon,
and my friends
.”

“Four million,” Otto said as if the wind had been knocked out of him.

“Well, Major, if you were a runner with two hundred and thirty straight wins, instead of a Dissension soldier, I’m almost positive you’d have a few more tolocs to go around. I suppose that’s all over now too. Everyone in the universe will know The Ghost didn’t make it to port with his cargo. That sonofabitch took everything from me in the blink of an eye.”

“Ghost, why’d he take your friends?” Otto asked.

“I’m trying to figure that one out myself. Whatever was in those four containers must have something to do with it. Maybe it’s tech and he needs Simon to put it together or he thinks Simon’s me. I’m not sure.”

“What will you do now?” Rilek asked.

“Salvage my ship,” Dezmara said through clenched teeth as she pushed herself into a sitting position. “Get to Trillis, kill Fellini, and rescue my friends.”

“With all due respect,” Rilek said, “you’re not going anywhere in your condition.

“Ensign Nori, please inform Dr. Weiloonyu that she has incoming with severe bruising of the upper torso and several broken ribs. I will be in the galley preparing dinner—after I’m properly attired, of course. Major, Booktu, please help The Ghost inside.”

The men gripped Dezmara carefully and hoisted her to her feet. She grunted as her boots hissed through the sand and stopped unsteadily beneath her. She stood for a moment, catching her breath with one arm craned high on the shoulder of the big sailor, Booktu, and the other slanting down to find support on Otto’s significantly smaller frame. “I suppose,” she said with some effort, “since we’re not gonna kill each other after all, you can call me Dezmara.” Rilek bowed slightly and then Otto and Booktu half dragged, half carried her inside the
Lodestar
with the admiral and the nine men she assumed were all named Nori in tow.

***

Her accommodations were plush and Dezmara slept like the dead. She had refused the admiral’s offer to stay as his guest, but after nodding off and almost falling face first into her dinner, she reconsidered. By morning, the Haleonex bandage wrapped around her midsection had Dezmara feeling as good as new, and she watched Admiral Rilek with fascination as he served a gourmet breakfast of his own creation to herself and the crew. He was dressed with more style than most sailors she was used to seeing in ports and pubs around the universe. His boots had a glossy shine, his pants and shirt were perfectly pressed, and he wore his hat with a slight cocksure tilt over one brow. Rilek had the look of a brazen young sailor, but he spoke in the intelligent, soft-spoken melody of a duster who had seen more sky, space, and sea under the heavens and lived more life than most. His stories were proof enough that it was true.

The messroom was more like a cozy pub than the sterile dining hall one would expect on a ship the size of the
Lodestar
. Chairs and tables of dark wood matched perfectly the richly decorated walls whose canvas gems shone with bursts of brilliant, glossy colors, revealing themselves just so in the dim glow of carefully placed lights overhead. A bar that looked like it was hewn from the remnants of an ancient ship arched from the wall and the soft, burgundy-hide couch Dezmara was sitting on threatened to keep her a hostage of its comforts forever. The air was light and the talk bordered on boisterous as they ate and shared recollections of amazing feats in battles gone by. Once the plates were empty, however, the mood changed.

Rilek fished his pipe from his pocket, stuffed the curving bowl with sweet-smelling leaf, and struck a match, sucking down the flame until the pile of shavings glowed. He exhaled an aromatic puff of gray, looked Dezmara in the eyes, and then his head rolled on his neck and he stared unblinkingly at Otto.

“My apologies are owed to you both,” Rilek said, looking from one to the other. “First, to The Ghost—Dezmara—who I have long considered an honorable competitor. I am sorry for firing on your ship and for the loss of your companions. And as far as that business in the sand, I apologize for my ill treatment of you, Dezmara, and for not listening to you, Major. When I am…
that way
…I’m not completely myself. The animal takes control.” Rilek raised his brow at Dezmara as if to say he knew that she understood the feeling, and then his eyes drifted over his pipe and he puffed in silence.

After breakfast, Rilek led the march down the lush main deck toward the docking bay. Otto strolled beside Dezmara in the large hall and watched her curiously as she examined the artwork that passed by.

“Are you sure you won’t take the admiral up on his offer to fix your ship? I’m sure Kriegel would have it done sooner than you think,” Otto said.

“It’s a very nice gesture,” Dezmara said, smiling down at him, “but every second I stay here is one Simon and Diodojo might not have. I have to find them, Major. They’re the only friends I’ve got.” She looked away as they hung a right into the bay.

“I understand,” Otto said with noticeable disappointment. A pilot and warrior on the side of the Dissension as skilled as Dezmara would be an invaluable asset.

“And you? What will you do next?”

“Well, unfortunately, our hunt for the Mewlatai was a dead end. I really meant it when I said I understand about your friends. Two of my comrades surrendered to the Berzerkers to try and find out about the Serum. Rilek thinks he knows where to find them. I guess we’re going on a rescue mission of our own.”