Ardulum Read online

That she was interested in the falling patterns of broken wall told Neek a lot about her current mental state. How long had this delivery run taken? One month? Two? If they couldn’t manage to get a decent payout soon, the tramp ship she piloted, Mercy’s Pledge, was going to disintegrate around them from lack of basic maintenance. At this point, the only things holding the crumbling infrastructure together were the integrated cellulose microfibrils and the captain’s pigheaded stubbornness.

  Neek checked the interface near her desk. Five minutes to exit. They had run out of fuel halfway through the Callis Wormhole and had been coasting to the exit for ages. How or why they had run out of fuel she hadn’t asked—the Pledge was falling apart in so many places that a leaky fuel valve would be the most mundane explanation. The endless wait had driven her to her quarters. Her other option was listening to the Pledge’s Journey youth, Nicholas, extol the virtues of metallic cellulose integration. Again. He’d only joined them on the Pledge a few months ago, and Neek already wanted to strangle the gangly hopefulness from him.

  Their last Journey youth had lasted six months. Nicholas would be lucky if he lasted four, especially if he kept harping on the ridiculousness of her people all sharing the same name as their home planet. It was awkward. She knew that. She’d had to grow up with it. You got used to using modifiers after a while, and considering she was the only Neek currently off-planet, it shouldn’t have been that big of a deal, regardless. Terrans were just a little too individualistic, and it didn’t help anything that her people’s name resembled Nicholas’s so closely.

  Exhaling, Neek wiggled her toes inside her boots and sat back against the desk chair. This haul was, mercifully, about to reach its conclusion, but she couldn’t put off her monthly obligations any longer. If she ever wanted to be repatriated, she had to follow the guidelines her uncle had negotiated. One call per month. One lesson from a Neek holy book. One discussion afterwards. A recording of each call, sent to the president of her homeworld to review her progress. Once a year, the president met with her uncle, where the possibility of her return was discussed. Thus far, her status had moved from “never” to “making progress,” which probably meant she was getting better at faking interest in the old texts. Clearly, she needed to be even better, however, if she wanted to return before her hair fell out.

  Neek let the gentle, steady movement of the ship work on her muscles, slowly releasing the knots of tension that had built during the past hour. When she was sufficiently calm, she leaned forward against the desk and placed her hand on a pocked, round panel on the upper right corner. A thin light scanned her palm, and another row of lights turned on slowly from beneath the surface of her desk—shining clearly despite the opaque biometal.

  The panel emitted a soft chime, and Neek pulled her hand away. The lights from beneath the desk merged together to form a wide, white beam that went from desk to ceiling. “Eldest paternal uncle, capital city of N’lln, Planet Neek,” she said clearly. A soft click of recognition sounded from the panel, and the white beam turned gray, indicating the call was processing.

  The speed of the response, at least, was uplifting. She’d spent a month’s pay on upgrading the communications panel in her quarters. The cellulose reinforcements made for a crisper transmission. She suspected the company responsible, Cell-Tal, was already working on new technology to replace it. Still, this unit was light years faster than her old one, and given how often she actually placed calls, having the newest in cellulosic technology was a bonus.

  The beam turned white again and then began to separate into distinct colors. In the center of the beam, a full body image of Neek’s uncle appeared. She took in his tall, wide frame—similar to hers. Their hair was also the same reddish blonde, their skin the same bronze, but their eyes differed: his were a pale olive and hers a brilliant green. Much unlike her, he wore a welcoming smile.

  There was a fluttering in Neek’s stomach. Today, with his gold robes and long hair pulled back into triple braids, he looked identical to her father. Melancholy rose in Neek, but she squashed it quickly.

  “Niece!” the older man greeted in their native language. “I’ve been expecting your call! We haven’t spoken in over a month. How are you? Is everything all right?” He grinned and tapped a thick bark-bound book against his other hand. “Ready to tackle the next chapter in The Book of the Uplifting?”

  Neek paused to reorient her brain. The wet, popping sounds of her native language seemed foreign after such long disuse. When she did respond, her words were slow and awkward, her tongue thick in her mouth.

  “It’s always good to hear your voice, Uncle. Nothing new, per usual. Trying to finish a delivery, and we’re stuck in a wormhole without fuel. Unrelenting peace is good for business, at least, and since I have nothing else going on, we might as well get to it.” She paused and then leaned in. Her voice softened. “Before that, though, how is father?”

  Her uncle’s face fell. “He’s well, Niece. As well as can be expected, certainly. You know he misses you. We all do. He’d call himself, but, as you know, he’ll not challenge the president’s ruling on your exile.”

  Neek closed her eyes and rubbed them. Her fingers came back wet, but not from stuk. It’d been ten years since she’d last seen her family. Her mother had been sick when she’d left, but Neek knew better than to ask about her or her gatoi talther—her third parent. Neither worked for the president, and questions regarding them could be misconstrued as personal. If her mother were dead, her uncle would tell her. Otherwise, that type of question could get even this small communication access rescinded. It was best to stick to safe topics. Have the discussions. Keep her dissenting mouth shut long enough to gain entrance to her homeworld so she could see her family again.

  A knocking sound came from her uncle’s side, and when she opened her eyes again, it was to the serene smile her uncle used when running a service. They were usually left alone for their discussions, but now she could see another set of feet—and the hemline of a gold and green Heaven Guard robe—in the upper corner of the transmission. Neek felt instantly sick. She sorted through mental images of her cohort from her time at the academy. Her roommate probably wouldn’t have made the robes this early—she was terrible at piloting in space. Her cousin had scored the same top marks as Neek, but the skin tone of the feet was too pale to be from her genetic line. It was an older student then, someone she had maybe known but not socialized with. Someone who flew an agile Neek settee ship around her homeworld instead of a dilapidated tramp in the middle of the Charted Systems.

  “It is, of course, always good to hear your voice, regardless of the reason. Every time you call, I thank Ardulum you’re safe. Your distance from home distresses your family, as always. To be our planet’s only exile, it is a hard road to walk. Our prayers are with you.” Her uncle’s left hand closed around a glossy, wooden pendant at his neck. Carved, Neek knew, by master crafters to resemble the planet Ardulum of Neek myth. The planet was fabled to move on its own from system to system, and in reverence to that freedom, devout Neek often wore a planet somewhere on their person. Neek had ground hers into a fine dust with the heel of her boot the day she’d been forced from her homeworld.

  “Remember to light your prayer candle tonight and thank the Ardulans for their help, Exile. Their benevolence keeps you safe. Now then, let’s begin on page two hundred and seventy-three. ‘For two years, the orange planet glistened…’”

  Neek let her uncle’s voice drone on while she half listened. She ran long fingers through her hair, snagging on a tangle near the end. The stuk moistness on her fingertips, thin now from irritation, helped her work the mat loose as he continued to speak.

  “‘On the blue arcs rode the Ardulans.’” Her uncle looked up from the book. “In this particular passage, we view through our ancestors’ eyes what the Ardulan technology must have looked like. Impressive. Mind-shattering. Imagine, Exile, that you were one of those Neek to first see Ardulum. How would you feel?”

  Neek s
napped an honest answer before she could catch herself. “You know how I feel about those stupid myths. I’ve seen the whole of the Charted Systems. Unsurprisingly, there are no mystical, traveling planets out here.”

  “Consider your words,” her uncle responded sharply. “You should know better than most the consequences they can have.”

  Neek snarled and was just about to let loose a string of curses that would better explain how she felt about the president and Ardulum as a whole, when the Mercy’s Pledge jostled violently. Neek spilled halfway out of her chair and had to right herself.

  “Fuck. I think we just hit something.” She forced a smile. “We can pick this up later. It was nice chatting with you, Uncle. My love to Mom, Tal, Dad, and Brother. I’ll call again soon, I promise.”

  Before he had a chance to respond, Neek closed the connection and bolted towards the cockpit.

  * * *

  “Get those skiffs off our tail!” Captain Yorden Kuebrich yelled as Neek rounded the corner.

  She looked out the viewscreen just in time to see the Pledge—her engines dead—exit the Callis Wormhole into the middle of a much-unexpected dogfight. A wedge-shaped Risalian skiff zipped past the Pledge, catching the edge of the ship on its wing, and started her into a slow spin. A pod, deep purple and about half the size of the skiff, chased the skiff and grazed their starboard flank. Neek braced herself against the console and heard Yorden tumble into the wall behind her, his substantial girth denting the aluminum.

  Mentally cursing the ship’s poor artificial gravity, Neek launched herself into the pilot’s chair, grabbed the yoke, and scoured the latest damage report. “Aft stabilizer is shot,” she called out after checking the computer. Other skiffs near them suddenly swooped back into a larger group, and the Pledge was, for the moment, left alone. Neek released the yoke and let her fingers move deftly over the interface. “Those new spray-on cellulose binders for the hull are holding, but only just. What’s left of the Minoran armor plating is now officially cracked beyond repair.”

  She swiveled to see the captain buckling himself into a much larger version of her own chair. His brown hair puffed about his head, per usual, but his body language spoke of surprise and tension. That concerned Neek because Yorden was old enough to have lived through actual conflicts. If anyone knew how to react in a situation like this, it was him.

  “Were we just attacked?” she asked incredulously. Neek took a closer look out the viewscreen. The rectangular cutter that sparkled with pinpricks of light and the wedge-shaped, agile skiffs were Risalian. The pods—both the smaller purple ones and the frigate-sized, maroon ones—were unfamiliar. Their formations were just as strange, stacked in columns like stones on a riverbank instead of in pyramidal and spherical formations like Systems ships would. “Are those all Charted Systems ships?”

  Yorden threw up his hands in disgust. “They’re not just Charted Systems ships—they’re Risalian ships. The cutter and skiffs are, anyway. No clue on the pods. What those blue-skinned bastards are doing out here with fully weaponized ships, I can only guess. However, they’re firing lasers. If we lose our armor and take a hit from any of those, we are space dust.”

  “Comforting,” Neek mumbled. She hadn’t noticed the laser ports on any of the ships, but now that she looked closer, all of the vessels were covered with armor plating and had at least two laser turrets each.

  Neek continued to watch as the pods begin to cluster around a Risalian cutter. A pod ship zipped beneath the cutter, firing wildly at its underside, before making a quick right turn and heading back to a larger pod. Five others followed suit. The cutter’s shielding began to splinter, but the ship remained where it was.

  Neek leaned towards the viewscreen, still unsure what she was seeing. “The Risalian ships aren’t chasing, they’re just defending. What is going on? If they’re going to appoint themselves sheriffs of the Charted Systems, they could at least fight back.”

  Yorden smacked his hand against the wall, loosing a shower of dust. “Something on that Risalian ship is holding their attention. Get us out of here, before either of them gets any closer.” He pointed to a cluster of ships to Neek’s right, and her eyes followed. Little flashes of bright light sparked and then died intermittently as ships were destroyed, their flotsam creating an ever-expanding ring. A large piece of metal plating floated past the Pledge’s port window. The edge caught and left a thin scratch in the fiberglass as it slid off.

  “What are they protecting that is so damn important?” Neek wondered out loud and then snorted. “Something worth more than our hold full of diamond rounds and cellulose-laced textiles?” she added cheekily.

  Scowling, Yorden pushed Neek’s hand away from the computer and began his own scan of the Pledge’s systems. “Communications are still up, but I don’t think either party is listening right now.” Frustrated, he kicked the underside of the console. “Try one of them. Better than being crushed.”

  “Captain, come on. We are dead in space. If another one comes at us, why don’t we just fire at it? It’s better than being rammed.” She pointed upwards at a circular hole in the ceiling. “What’s the benefit of flying a ship so ancient it falls apart if you’re not taking advantage of the grandfathered weapons system?”

  Yorden’s terse response was cut off when a short burst impacted the ship. Another group of skiffs flew past, depositing laser fire as they did so. The Pledge banked to port, carrying momentum from the impact. From the direction they had come lay a trail of shattered ship plating.

  A panicked voice called down from the laser turret. Neek bristled, steeling herself against the inevitable irritation that came whenever their Journey youth spoke. “That skiff just fired at us. How does it even have weapons? I thought we were the only ones in the Systems with a ship older than dirt.”

  Neek wrapped her right hand back around the steering yoke. Each of her eight fingers fit perfectly into the well-worn grooves, and the brown leather darkened a shade as her naturally secreted stuk smeared from her fingertips. She smiled to herself. Flying a geriatric tramp was still better than flying nothing at all.

  “Look, Captain,” she said, keeping her eyes on the battle. “I can steer this thing if we get pushed, but that is it. We don’t have any other options. They have guns. We have guns. Well, we have a gun. Why don’t we use it?”

  Yorden stared at the approaching ships and then took a step back. “I am willing to ignore the illegality of what you are suggesting because I don’t want to spend my retirement as incinerated flotsam. Attracting more attention to ourselves is a terrible idea, but we won’t have a choice if a ship comes at us again.” Neek raised an eyebrow, and Yorden snorted. “Better incarcerated than dead, I suppose.”

  A large plume of yellow smoke burst from the far wall panel as Yorden spoke, almost as if the Pledge were agreeing. Two more shots impacted the tramp and sent the small transport into a tight spin. Neek gripped the yoke with both hands and pulled hard, trying to steady the ship. Yorden’s hip smacked the main console, and the thin metal scaffold dented.

  “Do it!” he bellowed, rubbing his hip. “We can worry about Risalian consequences for owning weapons if we live past the next ten minutes.” The captain got onto his knees to inspect the new cloud of smoke that was billowing from underneath the console. Neek fanned the computer interface and coughed, attempting to assess the damage. The smell of burning wood wafted towards her, and she suspected some of the new Cell-Tal bindings were on fire.

  “I don’t hear any firing, Nicholas,” the captain called, his voice hoarse.

  “I don’t know how to work any of this stuff,” Nicholas yelled back as the sound of frantic button pushing could be heard over the panic in his voice. “I’m just supposed to be observing!”

  “Just press buttons until something happens,” Neek called up to him. Her head rolled back slightly as she relaxed the Pledge from a tailspin to a gentle rotation by opening the gas vents. As the internal gravity system began its whirring to adjust to
their decreased movement, laser bursts—sporadic and utterly uncoordinated—began to ring from the Pledge’s turret. The bright streaks of yellow light shot in the general direction of the fray.

  “Try to aim, Nicholas!” Yorden bellowed over his shoulder. “Did they teach you nothing useful in school? We’re not trying to piss off both fleets, just keep them away from us.” He bent down and opened an access panel beneath the yoke, searching again for the source of the smoke that was now seeping through the upper console.

  “Half of these switches don’t do anything!” Nicholas yelled back, his voice muffled by laser fire.

  “Why not try hitting the ones that do do something?” Yorden retorted.

  “Ha!” Neek exclaimed. She entered the final series of commands with her left hand, and the star field outside the viewscreen stabilized. “Did a little back-alley reroute, so I think this waste of space might just stay upright for a little bit. We’re far enough below the battle that maybe we’ll be left alone for a while.”

  As Neek finished her sentence, she watched a Risalian skiff break formation and align perfectly with the Pledge. Neek’s breath caught in her throat.

  “Uh, Captain?” she said, not wanting to turn around.

  “Figure it out, Neek,” came Yorden’s terse response. “If I don’t fix the air quality breaker, we’re going to suffocate to death.”

  The skiff edged closer, staying in their direct line of sight. Neek assumed they were being scanned, but with the archaic technology on the Pledge, she had no way to confirm it. She wondered briefly if the pilot on the skiff was staring as intently out the viewscreen as she was. She tried to imagine the mindset it took to fire on an unarmed ship that was dead in space and, as she contemplated, rubbed the back of her head. Of course, the Pledge was not unarmed, but the likelihood of the Risalians having pulled the ship’s registration since their emergence from the wormhole was low. Neek ground her fingertips into her temples. A funny tickle was starting there—one she couldn’t quite place but hoped wasn’t the start of a headache. Likely, it was just residual tension from speaking to her uncle.