Destiny Abounds (Starlight Saga Book 1) (25 page)

When that time came, she was freed. During her stint on Urebai, 286 hadn’t caused much trouble, not enough to draw major Altairan concern, though she reportedly had a habit of intimidating her fellow prisoners and taking their rations. Once she left, however, it became a different story altogether. Within the year, she was already on Altair’s most wanted list once again for multiple cases of violence, injury, massive property damage, and even killings. She never left that list again.

Over the years, almost a decade’s worth, the Altairan government tried to repeatedly capture 286 and bring her to justice. Sometimes they succeeded, but never for long, especially in the beginning. Eventually they managed to send her back to Urebai, where she would become one of the few to ever escape. Twice. Then they incarcerated her in the Abyss, a jail for the worst of the worst, located at the bottom of a trench in the deepest ocean on the prison world. Incredibly high security, where no one had ever come close to escaping.

She had escaped it twice, too. Sirrah didn’t like to dwell on that side of it, but she had been made acutely aware of the damage and lives lost due to 286’s rampages. The Legion had even formed a Volunteer Kinetic Corps partially for the purpose of having someone willing to attempt to capture her, a job deemed too dangerous to task typical Legion personnel with.

Once, the woman had used her Kinetic ability to warp herself to a location to translocate from one spaceship, where she was restrained and currently in transit back to Urebai, to another passing vessel that she saw
through the window
. One ship was nearly destroyed and the other was heavily damaged. In the end, she had escaped. Now she was Sirrah’s charge, and she didn’t dare take the clever, dangerous felon lightly.

Unfortunately, other than these few facts that were from actual Altairan experience with her, little was known about 286’s past. She was notoriously tight lipped about it, usually telling people that she “didn’t remember,” when she wasn’t telling different evaluators different sets of believable but contradictory information. Sirrah could believe that 286 had no memory of her origins, but she hadn’t decided whether to accept it as the truth or not. Altair, as a rule, didn’t believe in torture or anything that violated basic sentient rights, and they believed that just about anyone was capable of being reformed. Sirrah also knew that Prisoner 286 was one of the very, very few who had stretched those beliefs to their limits.

Medical reports shown to Sirrah indicated signs of various unknown operations and possibly injections, most likely originating from when she was young, but their full cause or effect also remained a mystery. Sirrah could vouch for the fact that the woman seemed to have bouts of random discomfort, such as migraines or trembling that seemed to outstrip those typically suffered by very powerful Kinetics. Psychiatric evaluations catalogued a laundry list of issues that could be triggers for 286’s violent behavior, running the gamut from being authoritarian, demanding, rude, or aggressive toward her to being passive, placating, or overly kind and therefore seeming “weak,” “mocking,” or “deceptive.”

So, with the situation such as it was, Sirrah felt she’d done pretty well so far. But it also meant that when 286 asked her something with one of her “warning tones,” or started pushing her boundaries, Sirrah had to sit up and pay attention.

“Perhaps,” she replied after a moment’s consideration. She kept any of the doubt she felt about it out of her tone. Uncertainty certainly wasn’t something she needed to show here.

“I don’t see you coming up with any ideas. Besides, I’m hungry.” The Kinetic was still leaning intently forward in the chair.

“Well, I suppose that you could do that.” She considered her words and what she could read off of 286 carefully for a brief moment before she spoke them aloud. “But remember: if you end up doing something that gets us kicked off of this ship, we’ll have to find another one. Which means a layover, and a slower ship, and all of this will take even longer and be an even more boring trip.”

A loud yawn sounded from near the door to their quarters. “Yeah, whatever, I’ll keep it in mind.” The closing doors nearly clipped off the end of Prisoner 286’s words, barely leaving them intact as the woman exited the room. Realizing her problematic companion was already gone, Sirrah exhaled a sigh and dropped her shoulders for just a moment, since she was alone and there was no one that would see.

In the glimpses Sirrah had seen into 286’s world, she knew the woman lacked the ability to understand others’ feelings, and the only thing she really seemed to grasp about other people’s worth was whether or not they were useful; anything else seemed to be a nebulous concept to her. Getting in her way was a good way to get hurt.

So Sirrah hoped to whatever spirits might be listening that she’d just done the right thing by unleashing the notorious Prisoner 286 upon the hallways and common areas of the
Destiny Abounds
.

10.1
- Prisoner 286

“More mayo. No, no, that’s too much. Little bit less. Scrape some back off. Eh, it’s like you’re not even trying, you know?” To be honest, 286 was barely paying attention to the freaked out slip of a girl making her a sandwich. Hel, she didn’t even know her name or what she did here. Probably the engineer or something.

“More meat…. there we go. That’ll do.” 286 looked back over and saw a tasty enough looking sandwich, bursting with meaty goodness, and promptly snatched it out of the girl’s hands. She flinched away a bit, and 286 supposed she was scared, or something. Whatever. It was pretty funny, anyways. She flopped down in one of the chairs gathered around the long dining table, seating herself at the head, and kicked her combat boots up onto its clean, covered surface.

She chomped down into what was some delicious, simple food. Even if it wasn’t the same quality of fare she’d enjoyed during a few weeks of following a Kala around, it was still tons better than the crap rations on Urebai, or all the stupid fungus-related stuff commonly had on Urzra. Sighing fondly at the sandwich as she devoured it, she completely forgot about the girl sharing the kitchen with her, and only remembered again when she saw the slender teen slip out of the door and bolt off down the hall.

286 shrugged. She didn’t mind if the girl got away, she wasn’t really that interested in her. What she
was
interested in was finding something to do here to alleviate her boredom. She needed a change in pace. She’d hoped she could get into something fun on this ship, in the week or so they’d be on it, since it was such a stand-out vessel. A captain from Fade, for instance. Who had ever heard of that? Who had even heard of someone from Fade in space at all? How the Hel could she captain a ship if the highest form of technology on her homeworld were houses, barrels and horses?

Not to mention the pilot. Sirrah had gone for this ship, called the
Destiny Abounds
or some such poetic nonsense, because the consumer records she’d accessed had listed it as having made a trip from Pireida to The Bazaar in under
six days
. Six days! That was barely even possible. Some of it had to be the ship, of course, which meant it was one of the fastest ships she’d heard of, which included military, pirate, and racing vessels. Interesting by itself.

Even more interestingly, two and a half standard days was the minimum
possible
time to travel from a world in the habitable zone to one of the system’s apex points, where the conflux of gravitational and magnetic forces aligned so as to allow a slipjump. Which left about a half day, just a handful of hours, for the pilot to reign in whatever random vector the gods of chaos decided to stick the ship with when it exited the slipstream. 286’s first thought was that they got lucky; that the ship had been randomly bestowed with that one-in-a-million straight, fast shot aimed directly at their destination of choice.

So she’d waited until Sirrah was asleep and checked the consumer records and recommendations herself, out of curiosity. What she’d found was that it wasn’t a fluke. A good day, maybe, but not a fluke. The records were littered with more than a few compliments and timestamps, giving them a history full of week-long trips or fifteen day round trips, and sometimes even less.

Naturally, 286 was somewhat interested to learn more, at least from lack of anything better to do. She’d intended to harass the Captain or that cute pilot and see what she could find out, or maybe just menace them for a bit. But since she hadn’t seen either of them around as of yet, she just sat and considered for the moment as she ate.

Those considerations fled a moment later, suddenly unnecessary, when one of the targets of her interest wandered into the kitchen area. It was the pilot; a short girl with a compact frame, below jaw-length, silver-blue feathery hair, and eyes of an almost metallic steely color. 286 noted with no small degree of satisfaction that she was still wearing that delicious, skin tight black and blue bodysuit. With an idle grin to herself, she wondered how one would get into—or out of—something that tight.

At first, the young woman pulled up short, looking into the room and hesitating momentarily at the sight of Prisoner 286. 286 just dropped her eyes to her food, aggressively finishing off the bulk of the minor meal and luring the subject of her curiosity into the room and past her initial misgivings. 286 grinned to herself, watching her from behind while the pilot went over and laid the ground work for a sandwich of her own. At one point, she straightened and made to turn, as if sensing the eyes on her, or perhaps just nervous of 28, but the Prisoner just quickly diverted her attention down to brushing off crumbs and licking mayonnaise off of her fingers. Once the silver-haired woman turned her attention back to continuing food preparation, the Prisoner resumed her scrutiny.

“So, whatcha making?” 286 had stepped up close to her, and was looming over her from behind. To her credit, the other woman didn’t jump, though she tensed. 286 grinned.

“A, um, sandwich. Bacon.” She shifted, lathering the bread with mayonnaise, then settling it together, sidewardly eying 286 meanwhile.

“Good choice.” She made sure to do her looming uncomfortably close to the small woman, just to see what she did. “So what’s your name?”

“Merlo.” Merlo sidestepped her, edging away from 286’s personal space and seeming to think better of sitting at the table.

286 followed her. “Merlo, huh. Weird name. Neat, though.” Her grin started to edge up one side of her face. She couldn’t help it.

Merlo eyed her for a minute, what 286 privately referred to as a “moment of truth,” when people’s reactions showed what they were made of. “Glad you like it?” She didn’t back down, at least, but she did turn to leave.

Then she did jump slightly as 286’s arm slammed into the wall in front of her, blocking her path. “So where you headed, Merlo?” She drawled out the name in her full, low-pitched tones, making it sound more like a deep, rumbling “Merr-low.”

“Well, I’m the pilot… So, um, I think I’ll head to the bridge. You know, for pilot… stuff.” She didn’t run, but she did continue to tilt away from 286, putting her back to the wall as the much taller woman leaned over her. 286 kept her intense hazel gaze locked onto the silvery eyes in front of her, grinning wildly as she did so. She saw Merlo look her over and wet her lips unconsciously, as if nervous or whatever.

286 held that position for a long moment, as Merlo eyed her then ducked and shifted easily under her arm, taking her plate and vacating the dining area. After another moment, 286 stepped to the open door, leaning against the frame. She watched Merlo go, exiting but not fleeing, pausing to look back over her shoulder once at 286 before disappearing into the bridge and closing the door behind her.

Prisoner 286 snorted with an amusement that kept the smile on her face. She’d wanted something to do, something to distract her for the voyage, and that cute young pilot had certainly caught her attention. 286 raised a bacon sandwich to her face and bit into it, munching on it as she stared absently down the hall, grinning around the food.

The game was on.

10.2
- Merlo

Merlo looked down again at the Altairan transmission glowing from the darkened background of her datapad. Sixty thousand credits. That’s what the Altairans had put into her account for the destruction of the
Defiance
, with forty thousand more to be held in trust and paid out incrementally over the next two years.

Altogether, that was just shy of eight times the payment for their Panacea
delivery, which had been no small amount itself, able to pay for starship fuel, a full round of maintenance, and a month’s salary for the whole crew with some left over. Her payoff from Altair wasn’t a fortune, by any means, but more than substantial enough for someone to live rather well for several years without having to worry overmuch.

Or so Mr. Leonard said. He understood the value of credits and what one could do with them far better than either herself or the Captain, though everyone on board understood it better than Merlo did. Mostly because she didn’t much care. Similarly, she couldn’t bring herself to care much about this money, either. It didn’t do anything for her, except remind her of what it was for and why she had it in the first place.

She’d shown Branwen, of course, and the Captain had seemed pretty impressed. “Enough to perhaps buy a small house or a starship, methinks,” she’d said. Merlo, however, didn’t need, or even want, any of those things, even if the Captain’s assessment was right. Merlo wanted to help her people, which she couldn’t anymore, and barring that, she wanted to stay here and fly. She didn’t need money for that, or at least not very much of it. She had even tried to give the money to Branwen, but the Captain had refused, though Merlo had gotten her to accept that she would donate to keep the
Destiny
flying if it was ever needed.