Before The Storm
Chapter Two
Sometime in the middle of his rest, she’d had another go at him, and Sketch had vague memories of her bouncing up and down on top of his cock but the moment was quick and it passed even quicker, so when he woke up several hours later to an empty bed, he wasn’t entirely certain if it had happened or if it had just been an incredibly realistic dream.
He was alone in the bed, but there was an indentation on the mattress next to him, so at least he knew for certain that he couldn’t have been dreaming all of it.
“Where’s she at, Helen?” he asked the ship’s computer, as he started to climb out of the bunk.
“She’s in the library, doing some research on what she’s missed while she’s been in cold sleep,” the computer replied to him. “And some research on who and what you are.”
He sighed, shaking his head. “That’s probably going to attract attention we don’t want, but I’ll deal with it in time, I guess.” He paused, tilting his head to one side, hearing a funky little bass line floating through the air from down the hall. “Is... is she listening to my music?”
“She asked me to put on something to listen to, one of your favorites, and this only seemed appropriate.” The track was an old Earth jazz song called Pharaoh’s Dance, and it surprised him a little, because he’d sort of felt like jazz was an acquired taste that nobody had any more. It was by his namesake, and the music had always spoken to him.
Sketch grabbed a pair of pants and a muscle t-shirt. She’d already seen the sleeve tattoos on his arms, so there was no point in hiding them now, and when he was on long runs in uninhabited void, he tended to keep the ship a bit warmer to conserve on energy. An old habit because of The Praeteritus’ historical power problems.
He could feel the low throbbing in the back of his mind, his abilities still keeping their influence strong and trained on Serena, the only recipient within lightyears. He’d been doing his best to tamp them down for a long time but now there was someone else on the ship with him, and they had their hooks in her mind, and weren’t going to let go. If anything, he felt a bit more clear headed than he had in years, as if the process of linking her emotions to his own had relaxed a long clenched mental muscle inside of his brain.
He was desperately wishing he’d taken more risk over the past few years to try and get his hands on a working Ashaka over the last several years, but wishing wasn’t going to gain him a whole lot, so he decided he would just have to make the best of his situation. It was definitely going to have to become a top priority moving forward, though.
Sketch walked out of the bunk room and headed down a few doors to the room that he considered his library, although there weren’t any actual physical books in it. Still, it was where the best media terminal was, and Sketch had built the space so that he could either do research or just watch terrible Starless Dominion propaganda romances.
Serena had stolen one of his shirts, wearing it more like a dressing gown than anything, and was sitting bundled up in it in his usual study chair, reading from a wall of text floating in front of her. “I thought it was love at first sight, but after I did a little bit of talking with Helen, and a bit more reading, and then watched the message I had placed in storage with me, I realized I don’t just know you, I grew up hearing stories about you all the damn time. I was just hearing the stories the wrong way,” she said, looking at him.
He frowned a little bit, leaning against the doorframe. “The odds of you hearing stories about me are... well, it’s almost impossible,” he told her. “I think you have me confused with someone else.”
“No no, you’re you. I know that now,” she said with a little smile. “The problem was that when I was hearing the stories, he would always talk about the Stormwalker, or at least, that’s how I heard it. I didn’t realize he was actually talking about The Storm, Walker. That Storm was a title and Walker was your surname.”
“Serena, I don’t know how that’s possible...” he sighed.
“Here, why don’t you watch the message that was left for me, because it’s just as much for you as it is for me,” she said. “Helen, play it again from the top. He’ll recognize him.”
“If you say so, m’lady,” the computer replied, which took Sketch a little by surprise. The ship had never seemed deferential to anyone before. “Restarting message.”
A window opened up in the air, an image appearing before him and Sketch considered it for a long moment, something vaguely familiar about it and yet somehow totally alien. But once the figure began to speak, things fell into place. It was a man, well into his eighties or nineties, but still looking relatively sharp and fit. His skin was leathery, covered in endless wrinkles, with large bushy white eyebrows over light green eyes that were starting to cloud up a little bit.
“Serena, if you’re seeing this message, then I’ve failed to make a rendezvous, and you’ve been redirected because I’m likely dead. The plan was to keep you juggled around in cold sleep while we tried to find a safe place to secure you. We were going to hold you up somewhere while we figured out what to do about your legacy, and how to protect you from the Starless Dominion, but I’m guessing that either my time ran out or I had a spot of bad luck,” the man said. “That means we’ve fallen onto our backup plan. Hey Walker, sorry we can’t be meeting in person again, but, y’know, likely dead and all. I know, I know, I remember telling you nobody’s dead until you’ve seen the body with your own two eyes, but I think you’re just gonna have to trust me on this one. If I was still living, I’d still be ferrying Serena’s sleeping body around. The fact that I’m not means my time in royal guard duty is up, and yours is just beginning.”
“Jesus Fucking Christ,” Sketch muttered. “Darren, you got so old. Men like us, we’re supposed to die young.”
“You see, Serena, the man you’re sitting next to is the Storm, Miles Walker, although reports are he’s been going under the name Sketch Davis these days, probably in an effort to lay low, although I can tell you, Miles, old buddy, you probably don’t need to worry about it. I mean, don’t go telling anyone you’re a Storm, certainly, but the name Miles Walker isn’t likely to spring up any database red flags identifying you as a Storm. When the Purge happened sixty years ago, the Dominion did everything they could to erase even the memories of the Storms from public consciousness. The Order of The Calm is long since forgotten, and you, my friend, might be one of its only remaining practitioners. But who better to protect the last remaining member of the Royal House of O’Quincy than a ghost nobody knows is alive.”
“Captain, I’m not certain this is a good idea,” Helen said to him.
“Me neither, Helen,” Sketch agreed. “But I’m not sure I’ve got a choice.”
“I’ve been trying to piece together what could’ve happened to you since I got sent your picture by a smuggling buddy of mine named Roscoe who caught a glimpse of one of your tattoos and was trying to understand what they were from,” Darren’s digital ghost continued. “He thought you might have been Blue Axe Gang or something Triad related, maybe, but I knew those tattoos from back in my youth. The picture he sent me also included a shot of your ship, so here’s what I’m guessing happened. The last dispatch anyone had from you back in the day was that you were being dispatched to go and help the Tropage and the Mizzols solve a labor dispute. After that, you just vanished off the face of the Earth, and when I asked, the Calm said you had been killed in an accident on assignment. I never had any cause to doubt that... until I saw that picture of you, looking as young as I’d remembered. That shouldn’t even be possible, so I’m sure there’s quite a story to tell there.”
“Computer, hold playback,” Serena said, turning to look at him. “So, you’re, what, a hundred?”
Sketch paused doing the math in his head for a second. “A hundred and ten, give or take. I think. The change from the Old Earth Empire calendar to the Starless Dominion calendar makes its a little fuzzy, but there abouts.”
“So what the hell happened? And how is this even possible? Cold sleep for anything more than ten years or so is supposed to basically be fatal.” The young woman didn’t seem angry, just more perplexed by the entire situation.
Sketch moved over to sit down in a different chair, perhaps the first time in decades anyone had sat in the chair. He’d always just used the one chair before. No need for the other chairs to get any use in. “Our mutual friend is right. I was dispatched by The Calm to settle a problem between the Tropage and the Mizzol.”
“I don’t even know who those people are.”
“It’s... it’s not entirely important. Both races are nearly extinct at this point. I think there’s a few hundred Tropage left across all the galaxies, and the Mizzol are maybe half that, if they’re lucky. At that point in time, though—”
“What point in time is that?”
“About seventy three years ago, by my reckoning. At that point in time, the Tropage and the Mizzol populations were in the low millions. The two races would fight about anything at the slightest provocation, but getting this mining space they were working on together up and running was vitally important to both species, so they agreed to have a member of The Calm come in and mediate the discussions. That was me.”
“And members of The Calm were called Storms?”
“Adepts were. Adepts were the middle range of The Calm,” Sketch told her, feeling a sort of joy in being able to talk about all of this again for the first time in ages. “The senior members were Counselors, and they were called Furies. The youngest members were Initiates, and they were referred to as Sparks.”
“So you started out as Spark Walker then became Storm Walker but never made it up to Fury Walker?”
He chuckled a little. “Yes, my surname was of great amusement to most people in the order as well, but our histories are too important to be left in the dust of our wake. The Order did not want me to forget where I’d come from, so the surname stayed.”
“And what do The Calm do?”
“We’re... well, we’re empaths, of a sort. We use our abilities to clear the heads of anger and prejudice and all the other problems that impede a fair and logical discussion about a situation in conflict.”
“That’s clearly not all you can do,” Serena told him, licking her lips. “Considering it’s taking every bit of my self-control not to rush over there and fuck your brains out again right now, I’d say your abilities have more to them than that.”
Sketch felt himself blushing a little. “Well, members of The Calm are supposed to have a tool with them at all times called an Ashaka, but mine was destroyed, and I haven’t been able to procure a replacement, so my control over my abilities is in poor disrepair. The Calm have four paths they can put a person down—The Calm, which the Order is named after, which is a tranquil, serene state; The Rage, which is generally reserved for defensive maneuvers, as it puts the target in a state of blind anger; The Fear, which is also generally a defensive stance, designed to cause people to lose confidence and back down from conflicts with members of The Calm; and, what you’re stuck feeling, The Warmth, which is meant to induce trust and affection within a person, often used when counseling couples to reignite the spark of lost love.”
“And in our case, it’s just got me completely in love with you, and wanting to fuck you until neither of us can stand up.”
Sketch’s hand rubbed the back of his head, a pained look on his face. “Without my Ashaka, anyone who comes in close contact with me is going to get put on one of those paths, and I don’t have any actual control over which one, nor can I control the intensity or duration of those effects. It’s part of the reason I wanted you to get back into your stasis pod, so you wouldn’t be affected by my present impaired condition.”
“It’s a bit late for that,” Serena said with a little giggle. “Not that I really mind. I did a bit of reading on The Calm when I woke up...”
“Yeah, Helen told me,” Sketch responded. “That may come back and bite us in the ass, but hopefully not.”
“One of the things I spent a little bit of time on was Calm philosophy, about how a person being influenced by The Calm might recognize that influence, but it wouldn’t change whatever feelings they were having enhanced, so who’s to say it wasn’t real in the first place?”
“Mmm,” Sketch said. “That’s certainly more renegade Calm philosophy, and it doesn’t surprise me that’s what would show up first. The Starless Dominion decided that since they couldn’t control The Calm, they would paint them as monsters who went around implanting thoughts in people’s heads, and used that as justification for wiping them out, even though we can’t do that, not even the Furies.”
“Can’t do what?”
“Implant thoughts,” Sketch said. “We can influence emotions, certainly, but I can’t make someone think something they don’t want to think. I can’t make anyone do something they don’t want to do and I certainly can’t introduce an idea into someone’s brain. We affect emotions, not induce concepts. Sending a devout pacifist down the Path of Rage won’t cause them to begin violently striking out at everything around them, but it will make them more argumentative and less rational.”
“So what you’re saying is that I wanted to fuck you before your mind started broadcasting Warmth at me,” she said, a wry grin on her impish lips.
“Well, what I’m saying is that while I’m certain my misfiring brain gave yours a good push, you had to have at least some willingness to entertain the notion, otherwise you would’ve just been treating me like an old comrade you were seeing again for the first time, with kindness and joy, but certainly not sexual interest.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “Once it all sort of clicked in my head that you were this guy my old protector would tell bar stories about at the drop of a hat, I knew I was in good hands. When is the feeling of constantly wanting to fuck go away, though?”
Sketch shrugged, throwing his hands up in the air. “I’ve spent the six years since I reemerged in the world trying to avoid people, specifically so I didn’t cause more harm than good. It’s been a bit lonely, although I’ve had Helen to help keep me sane.”
“Awww,” the ship’s computer said to him. “Thanks.”
“But there’s no handbook for this, no set of rules or guidelines I can turn to. The Ashaka was an essential part of the Order of The Calm, and every member from Spark to Fury was expected to have their Ashaka with them at all times, and a spare nearby and at the ready, in case of disaster. I could keep you on this wavelength for as long as we’re together, or you could suddenly shift onto a different path without my even trying to influence it. And if another person showed up? Shit, Serena, it’s all uncharted undiscovered country.”
“Well, I guess we’ll discover it together then,” she said, “because I’m certainly not getting off this ship any time soon.”
“I don’t think that’s wise,” he told her. “I think you’d be safer far, far away from me.”
“And I don’t think you get a say in the matter. Not yet anyway. So, carry on with your story, because there’s clearly a lot more to tell. Seventy plus years ago, you went to go help two nearly extinct species with a problem. What the hell happened at this labor dispute?”
“Sabotage of some kind, by one side or the other, I doubt I’ll ever know which,” he sighed. “Not that it particularly matters at this point. They were attempting to mine out minerals from the inside of a comet, and had built an internal chamber at the center of it so they could hollow it out and be protected while they did. When I showed up, I began mediating the dispute, right on this very ship. It had a different name back then, but these days I call it The Praeteritus, which is Latin for ‘the past.’ During the middle of discussions, someone set off a bomb along the entrance to the comet’s inner chamber, causing it to collapse, trapping all the ships and miners inside. But beyond that, it also set off a radiation blast. The Captain from the Tropage delegation immediately threw me into a cold sleep pod before I could do anything and I remember thinking how loud it was when I entered stasis compared to the deathly silence when I emerged from it a long, long time later.”
“You really should be dead,” Serena said. “Shouldn’t you?”
“You don’t know the half of it,” he agreed. “Helen, do you want to tell the part of the story while I was out?”
“Are you sure, Captain?” the ship’s voice asked cautiously.
“It’ll be fine, Helen.”
“Alright.” Helen’s voice was both sultry and soothing at the same time, apparently modeled off some old Earth actress he’d never heard of. “After Captain Walker was thrown into the pod, my original captain, Dezzik, tried to get the ship out from inside of the comet, but to no avail. The radiation from the explosion was lethal to both Tropage and Mizzol alike, and while Dezzik was able to make a little bit of headway in trying to free us from the comet’s prison, it was not enough. He and the rest of the crew died within a matter of hours, much like everyone else within the comet’s belly. Except, of course, for Sketch, as the cold sleep pods are reinforced against radiation.”
“Gods above,” Serena muttered.
“As the ship’s AI, my job was to protect the crew first and myself second. I had failed in that first regard, but I decided I did not wish to die, so I did what I could to preserve my condition. I opened all the airlocks and flushed all of my former crew’s corpses out to the void of space, then went into power conservation mode, because I had realized, I still had crew remaining. A crew of exactly one. Sketch. Tropage ships are powered by a combination of solar panels and fuel rods, so I knew that power was going to be a concern. The radiation was preventing communications, and the explosion had wobbled the comet’s path enough that it would no longer be where anyone would think to look for it. We were alone, without any chance of rescue or support. My initial efforts to widen the hole and use it for escape proved utterly futile and it started to seem like I was risking my own integrity if I continued, so instead I chose to wait. It would prove... rather a long wait indeed.”
“How l—?”
“Sixty-seven years,” Sketch said. “I was in the ice for sixty-seven years.”
“How is that even possible?”
“As it turns out, the cold sleep pods on this ship were designed for Tropage anatomy, and because they’d never been tested on humans before, Helen was just sort of winging it in terms of keeping my vitals manageable, not letting me go into freezer burn or pick up any thaw warp. And she did a remarkable job. When I eventually woke up, I didn’t have any muscular or nervous system damage beyond what you’d expect for a very long cold sleep. I mean, it was weeks before I was completely up to full strength—I was blind for the first few days, and I couldn’t walk for nearly a week—but in the end, I came out in the exact shape I went in, none the worse for wear.”
“How did you come out, anyway? It sounds like the ship was trapped pretty good.”
“Meteor strike hit the comet and bashed open more of the hole from the outside, made it large enough that Helen could get herself out of the comet and into open space. Then she very slowly made her way on minimal thruster power over towards the nearest star she could get close to, and bathed in starlight for about six months before she woke me up.”
“During that time,” Helen said, “I did my best to prepare a data package for Captain Sketch to inform him of all the changes that had happened during our imprisonment. Much had happened in sixty-seven years, including the near extinction of the Tropage, and the conquering of humanity by the Starless Dominion. Because of this, I decided that Sketch would be my new Captain. I had carried him this far, so I would carry him the rest of the way on his journey, however short or long that might be.”
“I imagine it was quite the culture shock, realizing everyone you’d ever known was probably dead, and that everything you knew about the world had changed significantly,” Serena said.
“The destruction of The Calm hit me pretty hard, especially since both my main and backup Ashakas had been destroyed in the accident, which meant I wasn’t safe to go around people,” Sketch said, scowling bitterly. “Not that it was even much of an option. You’ve grown up under the Starless Dominion, but to me, they’re still a relatively new threat, even if they did conquer humanity with almost no effort. Darren said you’re the last remaining member of the House of O’Quincy?”
Serena giggled again, holding her hand to her mouth. “You know, it’s been so long since I wasn’t recognized that I thought you were just teasing me last night, but you really didn’t know who I was at first, did you?”
“I still don’t entirely know who you are now,” Sketch said with a wry smirk.
“How much about the transition under the Starless Dominion have you read about?”
“Well, the problem being is that it’s mostly written from the Dominion’s point-of-view, so a bit, but I’m betting over half of it is lies.”
“God, I feel like I’m giving an ancient history lesson to someone who should’ve been around when it all happened,” Serena said, shifting in her seat some. “So, when you went into cold sleep, humanity had five royal houses, who sort of provided the governing factions for all of the people. You probably remember it that way, but it doesn’t hurt to give you a reminder. When the Dominion took over, the first thing they did was collapse the five houses down into one singular house, the House of Sanada. The Dominion felt it would be best to have a single delegate that would represent humanity within the Dominion, and the House of Sanada was appointed to that position. The other houses continued to exist, naturally, but as subsections of the House of Sanada, with the expectation that the houses would interbreed and provide a human dynasty, a figurehead who would report into the Dominion, and who would also manage the smaller day-to-day shit for them.”
“Why do I have a feeling that didn’t work out too well?” Sketch said, leaning back in his chair.
“It didn’t,” she replied. “It became a viper’s nest, with all of the royals gunning for position to eventually assume control of House Sanada, by marriage or succession, whichever came easier. The House of O’Quincy was never one for aspirations, and so we were content to just stay at the bottom of the totem pole, in an effort to continue enjoying our existence without getting caught up in the backstabbing and the skulduggery.”
“Never quite works out the way you hope it will, does it?” Sketch replied with a smile. “So, what happened?”
“What happened was the Dominion decided that House Sanada was more trouble than it was worth, and that getting rid of all the royals in one fell sweep would be best for all involved, mostly themselves.”
“That seems to be the Dominion’s response to anything that makes them nervous,” he agreed. “Destroy anything problematic rather than try to adjust it. It’s kind of a pattern for them.”
“They had a massacre about seven years ago, killing off everyone in an event called The Monarch Purge. But they missed me, because I was away from the palace at the time, taken on a last minute excursion back to Earth by my protector, Lord Darren Arbard.”
“LORD Arbard?” Sketch laughed. “Pretty good for a troublesome kid I caught trying to steal fruit from my skiff back in the days before I was a Storm.”
“You knew Lord Arbard when he was young?”
“Mmm... He didn’t start out in nobility. He was a homeless urchin on the streets of Tachem when I first met him. Good kid, but he’d had a lot of bad breaks, and had resorted to less than ideal behavior to survive. No family to speak of.”
“And you weren’t a Storm then?”
Sketch shook his head. “I hadn’t gone seeking enlightenment yet, no. I was still a bad man doing bad things for good money, mostly. To me, he’s still just Darren from Tachem, although we were on-again off-again friends for over a decade. He thought I was crazy when I signed up to be a Spark, but I made my way up to Storm faster than anyone they’d ever seen before. Probably would’ve been a full Fury within a few more years.”
“Then I’m sorry you didn’t achieve your dreams, but I’m glad I have you on my side. You should see the rest of Lord … I mean, Darren’s message.” She gestured towards the hologram and it started speaking once more.
“Regardless of how you got here looking about the same as I remember last seeing you, you’ve clearly been laying low for years, I assume because you think as a Storm you’re going to be killed by the Dominion if they find out. That’s probably true, but they consider The Calm to be extinct at this point, so their guard is down and you shouldn’t have too much trouble slipping by unnoticed as long as you aren’t advertising what you are or were. I don’t know if you can still be a Storm without the Order there, but I’m sure you’ll know better than I would. What I want is for you to take care of Serena for me. I don’t care about the Royal Houses, I don’t care about palace intrigue. What I do care about is making sure this girl who I helped raise, practically my own daughter, gets to live a full life, by ensuring her safety moving forward. That image I was sent of you, that’s six months old at the time I’m recording this, so whatever you’re doing, it’s working. Take Serena into your crew. Guard her life like you did mine. ‘Comrades until our last dying breath,’ you used to say. I’m willing that vow from me onto her now. We’re long past the chances when revolution against the Dominion were possible, so all that matters now is survival, living out our lives and enjoying them while we have them.”
“Fuck sake, Darren,” Sketch grumbled beneath his breath. “And you thought I was a fatalist.”
“I wanted to reach out, but, shit, I was afraid if I did, it might attract attention to you, and that was the last thing I wanted, but I’m out of people I trust here, Miles, and I’m about out of moves. I hate to call in a favor, but you swore you owed me one for that thing back on Loviwex, and I’m asking you, friend to friend, keep the closest thing I have to family safe, will you?” Darren looked so very much older than Sketch had ever thought possible, and weary, as if the last portion of his life had been lived under incredible amounts of stress and pressure. “In Serena’s stasis pod, there’s a small piece of metal with interstellar coordinates on it, and a combination to the safe you’ll find buried there. If you can get her there, you’ll have money enough to keep the two of you going for a long, long time. It pains me to ask this, but like I said, if you’re seeing this, it means I didn’t make a check-in point, and I’ve had Serena’s pod rerouted to your ship. I’ll have arranged delivery of her pod to some remote, distant location, a good long way from the nearest gate, so you’ll get to that point, find nothing there, then head back the way you came when she wakes up. That’s for her safety and for yours, to ensure the two of you have some time together before you have to make your decision, because I know I’m asking a lot of you. Fuck, I’m asking a hell of lot, but if there’s anyone capable of this burden, it’s you. It’s just got to be you. You’re the best of us, Miles. Always have been, always will be. So do me this last solid, will you? Anyway, I gotta go. I’m tucking this message into Serena’s pod with her, and we’re going to keep her in shuffle for a few years before we wake her up again. My hope is that given some time out of the public eye, people will forget about her, and I’ll have less trouble keeping her safe. But, seeing as you’re watching this, clearly that’s your job now. Thanks amigo. Wish we could’ve shared one last cold beer, but as you always told me, when your number’s up, that’s it. Looks like mine was.”
The message ended, and the space between Sketch and Serena couldn’t have been more than a handful of feet, but felt like it could have been lightyears. Neither seemed to have a clue what to say to the other.
“I love you, Sketch,” Serena said, the first to speak after an agonizingly long silence. “I know you think that’s just due to your crazy empath tricks, but once I realized who you were, that you were Stormwalker, the guy Lord Arbard told me so many stories about growing up, I realized maybe I’ve always been comparing every man I ever met to those stories.”
“I’m not some knight-errant of old, Serena,” Sketch sighed. “I’m just a man trying to get by.”
“And that’s what I’m telling you, Sketch. I want to get by with you. He told me about your time on the frontlines of Rizos. He told me about how you busted him out of that jail on Tiernan after he got locked up for stopping that guy from beating his girlfriend. Shit, he even told me about how you two smuggled Prince Kobo, my grandfather, off of Rinmar back in the day. That’s how he became Lord Arbard, you know? The Prince made him a member of the House of O’Quincy’s royal guard a decade or so later, when Darren was struggling to make ends meet. My entire life, he was telling me stories about Stormwalker, about you. You were the ideal man I had set up in my head.”
“I’m a long fucking way from an ideal, kid,” Sketch told her, shaking his head. “I’ve done things, rough things, horrible things, things I bet Darren never told you about, because if he had, you’d know that staying with me is basically inviting trouble.”
“Sketch, look. The message Darren recorded was five years ago. I’ve been in cold sleep that entire time, so what happened between here and there, to him, to me, I don’t know. I don’t know how I ended up here, or who he trusted enough to ferry me around for a while but not enough to keep me safe. All I know is that, for me, two days ago he was putting me into cold sleep pod, and yesterday I woke up, only to find I’d missed five years.”
He’d thought of her as a girl before, but there was definitely an aged wisdom to her, a sort of worldliness and experience that lay behind those bright green eyes of hers. “How old are you, Serena? Not counting the five years in stasis. How many actual years have you lived through?”
“I’m twenty-three,” she replied.
“Alright then,” he sighed. “That means you’re old enough to make your own decisions. I can’t tell you what to do with your life, and I’ve warned you about being on this ship with me, that you’re probably going to go through some of the most dramatic and uncomfortable shifts in emotion without warning, and that right now, I can’t do a damn thing to stop or control it. If you’re willing to accept all of that, then you can stay on The Praeteritus as part of her crew, but it’s going to be a pretty lonely existence, considering how we both have very good reasons to stay out of the spotlight. That means it’s going to be just you, me and Helen, and we’re going to spend as much of our time in transit in deep space as we can, so as to not attract attention to ourselves. I can amp up my efforts to find an Ashaka, but until I do, the wild mood swings are just part of daily life. I’m sorry about that, but there’s nothing I can do there without an Ashaka. Knowing all that, you still want to hang your hat here?”
“The Stormwalker I heard tales about growing up would walk through a swarm of Ghost Clickers just to do the right thing,” she said to him, standing up. “Even if you’re only half the man I’ve been listening to tall tales about growing up, that still makes you twice the man I’ve ever met before now. I’m in, and don’t try and talk me out of it again.”
She moved to slide her ass into his lap, one of her hands dancing against the back of his neck before she leaned in and kissed him, shifting and squirming a bit, making sure he could feel her putting pressure on his cock.
“And while you may be able to stoke affection and lust inside of a person, you can’t make them do anything they don’t want to, right? And you were the best fuck I’ve ever had. That’s a fact. Your powers don’t change facts, do they?” she said, kissing at his neck.
“It’s hard to call an opinion a fact,” he tried to argue, as he felt her drawing one of her legs back, folding it at the knee so she could turn and swivel, unfolding her leg again, straddling him now.
“You’re a very good looking man, Sketch,” she said to him, kissing his collarbone. “Maybe a little older than I might have normally gone for...”
“Well, I am over a hundred,” he laughed.
“How old are you actually?” she teased back.
“Forty-four. Thirty-eight years before the freeze, and six years since coming out of it.”
“Good,” she purred. “Experience is sexy, and from Lord Arbard’s stories, you fucked a whole lotta women when he knew you.” Her fingertips reached down beneath the waistband to grab his cock, finding it already swelling from her very presence. “I suppose I should ask. Were members of The Calm asked to take a vow of chastity or something?”
Sketch laughed a little bit, shaking his head. “The Calm wanted to make sure all its members experienced every aspect of life, so nothing was forbidden.”
“Mmmmm,” she hummed. “That’s a little disappointing. There’s something a bit exciting about the idea of defrocking a cleric.” She reached down and pulled his shirt she’d stolen up and over her head, exposing her lithe body to his eyes and touch. “So, I’ll just have to settle for riding a Storm.”
He rolled his eyes with a grin. “You’re not the first to make that joke, you know.” His hand moved to give the little piercing through her nipple a little swing with his fingertip. “And I hate to tell you, but this charm has got to go. You can keep the piercing if you like, but this has got a royal symbol on it, and metal like this will get picked up by scanners. If someone comes on the boat, they’ll know who you are as soon as they scan us.”
“I have it tattooed here, though, as well,” she said, touching her shoulder. “Isn’t that going to be a problem?”
Sketch shook his head. “Tattoos don’t show up on scanners, which is why I can get away with nobody noticing these,” he said, gesturing to one of his sleeve tattoos that ran the length of his arm. “As long as I’m wearing long sleeve shirts, anyway. It’s actually why I’m a little thankful I hadn’t reached Fury by the time of my accident. I’d have had to wear gloves the whole time.”
“Oh?” Serena said.
“From here to here,” Sketch said, starting at his shoulder and going down to his elbow, “is the traditional tattoo markings of a Spark. From here to here,” he said, gesturing from his elbow to his wrist, “are the markings of a Storm. When a Storm becomes a Fury, they tattoo all of the hands, and then the collarbone, front and back, connecting the two shoulder tattoos.”
“Was there a rank above Fury?” she asked, tracing her fingertip along some of the intricate linework on his arms. “Are they the exact same tattoos for each member of the Calm?”
“Fury was as high as the ranks went, as far as I know, anyway. And the tattoos are mostly unique, as they tell the story of that member’s life before joining The Calm, their achievements as a Spark, their achievements as a Storm, and what great feats were involved in them becoming a Fury.”
“You said you were a bad man who did bad things,” she purred, wriggling her ass against the tops of his thighs. “You don’t have to tell me everything, but maybe a little context would be nice.”
“I was warrior for hire, a mercenary. I took whatever jobs people would offer me, as long as the money was right and it kept me moving.”
“Family?”
He shook his head. “Never knew Dad. Mom died when I was 14, so I enlisted in the Earth Defense Forces, once I was old enough, although I lied about my age to get in early.”
“What happened?”
“One day, somebody gave an order I didn’t agree with, and I chose to disobey, and that was that. Got the boot right quick, and then turned private sector. That lasted until I was closer to forty than thirty. Darren ran with us for a while, although he quit that life same day I did.”
“More bad orders?”
Sketch shrugged. “Something like that. For a long time I’d been telling myself they paid enough money so that I didn’t ask questions, but on one particular gig, there were just too many questions to be ignored. So we completed the contract, and then I severed my contact with the fixers and went to become a Spark, way older than pretty much anyone they’d ever had.”
“Did they usually start training young?”
“I think the oldest Spark they’d ever taken in was a hair’s breadth shy of twenty. I was over a decade and a half past that, but a Storm I’d run into years and years earlier said I had a very strong natural gift, and that if I ever wanted to join The Order, there would be a place for me.”
“Why don’t they like them old?”
“Because older men and women ask too many questions, and most of them don’t end up liking the answers. It takes a certain level of flexible morality to join The Calm, simply because some people think it’s unethical to influence others’ emotions.”
“But you didn’t think of it that way?”
“I saw it all as a tool like any other. Sword, gun, missile, pen, hammer, ring gate—these are all just tools, and, sure, some tools are easier to abuse than others, they all have their place in the universe. I’d seen a Storm talk two warring factions down and agree upon a deal that probably saved millions of lives, just by reducing their level of anger to one another,” Sketch told her. “Some people, like the Starless Dominion for example, think that’s ‘tampering’ or ‘brainwashing,’ but like I told you early on, I can’t make anyone do anything they aren’t willing to do on their own, no matter how far down any Path I put them on.”
“You could scare someone so badly their heart stopped,” Serena said, still stroking his cock slowly, just making sure she still had his attention, although the closeness of their bodies basically ensured that.
“No, I could scare someone very badly, but at some point, their fight-or-flight reflex will kick in, and they’re either going to run away, or they’re going to lash out at anyone and anything they can get their hands on,” he told her, taking his hand down to let his thumb casually flick against the small golden tag pinned through her nipple, making it swing back and forth. “Which of those options they’re going to go down, I can’t control. I can influence people, but there are a thousand and one ways to do that in other ways not using empathy, so to me, while it’s a powerful tool and needs to be used with a higher degree of care than most, it’s certainly not unethical.”
“Even when it’s turning a normally rational woman into a raging nymphomaniac on your lap, so direly in need of your cock that she’s doing everything she can to hold a conversation instead of giving in to those lusts?”
He laughed a little bit. “See? You’re still resisting. I can’t mmpph!” She pressed her lips hard against his and started to run her fingertips a bit more intentionally along his cock now, the amount of pressure she was applying turned up slightly.
This, of course, was the perfect time for Helen to interrupt.
“Captain, we’re being hailed,” the computer’s calm voice said to him, although Sketch almost felt like he could hear an undercurrent of pleasure to the machine’s vocalization, as if she had wanted to interrupt what had been about to go down.
“Who the hell’s out here in the ass end of nowhere, Helen?”
“It’s a Y’bari ship,” the computer replied. “Single fighter, long range class. Shall I answer?”
“Not yet. Better yet, you answer and tell her you’re waking the Captain and he’ll be on comms in a couple of minutes,” he said, sliding Serena off his lap, tucking his cock away. “What are the odds someone watched your pod being deposited?”
“Very low, I’d assume, knowing Lord Arbard. Why, you think that ship’s here because of me?”
“I think I haven’t got a damn clue why it’s here,” he said. “Put some clothes on and do what you can to disguise your appearance a bit.”
They pulled on their clothes, stopping back by Sketch’s quarters to grab a long-sleeved shirt, making sure to get it in place as the two of them headed towards the bridge. Once there, Sketch glanced over, stepped to one of the terminals, ran his fingertips along the underside of it to gather a bit of dust and grease, then smeared it on Serena’s cheeks. “You look too damn regal, even in my ratty clothes. Mess up your hair a bit. We need to look like boring long-haulers.”
“The pilot’s growing quite impatient, boss,” Helen told him while Serena did her best to make her hair look as disheveled as possible. “Are you ready?”
“Put them through.”
On top of the communication dais, a single image of a Y’Bari warrior in battle gear glared at him. Well, Sketch assumed they were glaring—with the insectoid helmet on, he couldn’t see any facial expressions at all. “Ship, confirm identification,” the modulated voice said to him. He couldn’t even tell if it was a male or female through the sonic distortion.
“Sketch Davis, captain and owner of The Praeteritus, making my way back to Relling Gate after delivering the mail out to Colby’s Hole. Picked up a passenger along the way, Berry Gillespie, and am ferrying her to Defernus, eventually.”
“Eventually?” the voice said. “That’s six or seven ring gates under the best of paths. Long way to go for hauler.”
Sketch shrugged. “Her family wanted to send her back to live with her cousins, away from Colby’s Hole. They thought she might have thrived terraforming, but really, it just drove the poor girl crazy, so I agreed to take her back that way at a little less than my normal rate as long as they weren’t picky about how fast it was. So, I’ll grab some gigs hauling stuff that way, and she’ll get there eventually.”
“The fact that she’s easy on the eyes probably didn’t hurt,” the voice said. “He abusing you, miss? We’ve heard reports of haulers getting handsy with passengers now and again.”
Serena shook her head, doing her best to keep as much of her hair over her face as she could. “No, sir. Captain Davis has been nothing but good to me.”
“Hmph. Well, as good as that is to hear, I’m going to take a look for myself.”
“Excuse me?” Sketch said, turning his head.
“Word came from Mephor Gate to Relling Gate that a ship called The Praeteritus was carrying a man with Lingham spores in his lungs, and since you didn’t stop on your way out, I was dispatched to give the anti-fungal to you on your way back. Prepare for docking. Aliara out.”
The transmission cut off and Sketch immediately began swearing beneath his breath. “Could we outrun them, Helen?”
“They have a weapons lock on us, Captain, so while we might be able to escape, we would likely sustain heavy damage if we did.”
“It’s just one tiny Y’bari fighter, and you’ve got a smaller corvette-sized ship here,” Serena said. “How the hell is that possible?”
“The Praeteritus isn’t a warship, Princess,” Sketch grumbled. “She’s mostly a transport ship, and while, yes, we do have some military capabilities—torpedoes, some turrets, a handful of other things—we aren’t a battle-class ship under any circumstances. That little Y’bari dart’s probably got more firepower in one cannon than everything I’ve got put together. Are they using one of the tubelocks, Helen?”
“Negative, Captain. It looks like they’re planning on putting down inside our shuttle hanger, and they gave it a quick scan to make sure we had room for it.”
“Fuck,” he said. “Okay, Princess, you know how to use a blaster?”
“Sure, why?”
“I’m going to lure them away from their ship far enough for you to get a good shot at them, and then once they’re downed, we can figure out what to do with them next.”
Serena looked at him oddly. “Why not just let them give you the anti-fungal for Lingham?”
“Two reasons, Princess,” he said, as they started to walk down towards the elevator that would take them down to the shuttle bay. “The first is the most obvious—they’re going to scan me for Lingham spores first, and I don’t have any Lingham spores in my system.” The elevator door opened as they stepped in, the door closing behind them, as the elevator started to smoothly slide down the floors towards the shuttle bay.
“Then why do they think that—”
“That’s a cover story I’ve been using to keep people off the ship, because of the second reason, which is that as soon as I get that close to our Y’bari friend, my haywire abilities are going to go to town on them. From what I’ve been able to read, Y’bari are especially sensitive to Calm manipulations, meaning whichever Path my untethered brain decides to send them down, they’re going to go from full stop to hard burn faster and further than any ring gate you’ve ever hopped through. I had to read between the lines, but the Starless Dominion had to use mercenaries and stealth operatives to wipe out The Calm, mostly, because they didn’t trust their Y’bari to do it for them, like they normally would.”
“Well, that and the planet cracker they used on the world where the main Calm temple was,” Serena said. “I’ve heard some of the stories.”
“Regardless, Y’bari brains respond very strongly towards Calm empathy, so whoever this Y’bari is, we’re going to have to figure out a way to dispose of them, the body and their ship without it pointing back at us,” he sighed as the doors opened and they walked down the hallway towards the shuttle bay.
“I thought members of The Calm treated violence as a last resort!” she said to him.
“If you’ve got another option, I’d love to hear it! Shit, Helen, have they landed yet?”
“The Y’Bari dart, which is apparently called The Barrow, has touched down and I have closed the hangar bay and am pressurizing the area now,” Helen said to them. “Just a few moments more.”
Hanging on the wall just next to the hangar bay door was a long-range blaster rifle, meant for precision work at good distances, single shots not wide spreads. Sketch felt like if he ever needed to fire the blaster more than once in a confrontation, he’d gone about it all wrong. He picked up the rifle and handed it over to her.
“You keep a sniper rifle just hanging next to the door of your hangar bay?” Serena asked him.
“Let’s just say this isn’t the first time somebody’s tried to board my boat when I didn’t want them to,” he sighed. “And you’re sure you know how to use it?”
“Your friend Darren took me hunting twice a month, Sketch,” she said to him. “I won’t miss.”
“See that you don’t, otherwise this Y’bari’s going to be taking a long look at you next, and I bet that’s an encounter you’re not likely to enjoy,” he said. He drew in a heavy breath, trying to center himself, putting on his best poker face, that of the neutral, exhausted long hauler, who was annoyed at having somebody unwanted on his ship.
Serena moved to one side of the door before Sketch opened it and stepped into the hangar, leaving the door open behind him. The Y’bari dart was a vicious looking ship, sleek, black and angular, long and pointy with a vicious gleam to it, clearly the result of too much time being polished. The owner of this war dart hadn’t seen action in some time, and Sketch’s first impression was that the lack of combat might have been getting to them.
The top canopy of the dart swung up and open before the side of the dart’s cockpit folded down, unraveling into a series of stairs, as the Y’bari exited their craft and started to make their way down the steps, letting Sketch get a good look at them.
He’d never seen a Y’bari in person before, but there were plenty of holovids of them in the archives. They typically ranged from seven to nine feet tall, built much like scaled up humans, although they were always more slender, a result of them having hollow bones, like the birds back on Earth. The Y’bari were commonly referred to as elves by humans, at least when the Y’bari weren’t around. They had faces much like humans, but had long, pointed ears, and that combined with their slender stature had let humanity pigeonhole the Y’bari into existing fairytale myth.
Learning about Y’bari culture had been damn near impossible, as it seemed like the Starless Dominion liked to keep as many details as they could close to the vest, to keep the Y’bari an unknown, terrifying fighting force. The Y’bari didn’t eat with non-Y’bari. They didn’t drink with non-Y’bari. The only time most people would see a Y’bari was when they were in violation of a law. The Y’bari were the scary, faceless army of the Starless Dominion, and the Dominion seemed to enjoy it that way.
The Y’bari in question was female, he could see, as while her battle suit was mostly dark blue and black pieces of insectoid styled armor, there were definite swells around her chest, large breasts beneath the suit. He knew he needed to get her out of that helmet so that Serena could have a clear shot, because as good as his blaster rifle was, he was fairly certain it wouldn’t be able to pierce Y’bari battle armor on its best days.
“Captain Davis,” the Y’bari said. “I’m Centurion Aliara, here on behalf of the Starless Dominion.” She reached the end of the steps and stood on the deck of the hangar, and it was clear that while Aliara was short for a Y’bari, probably only a few inches over seven foot tall, it was still more than enough height to let her loom large in his field of vision, even at the distance they were at. Though the voice was still modulated, Sketch could detect a complacency to the tone, as if Aliara thought this sort of thing was beneath her. “I’m here to inject you and the rest of your crew with the Hapzix anti-fungal, to ensure none of you are spreading Lingham spores anywhere else in the galaxy. This service is being provided to you and your crew free of charge on behalf of our mighty overlords, the Starless Dominion, may light never shine upon their chambers.”
He’d heard that slogan before—‘may light never shine upon their chambers’—but he hadn’t been able to find anything to explain where it came from or where it meant. If the Y’bari were hard to get details on, the Starless Dominion themselves were even worse. The Dominion were never seen directly, never spoken to directly, but ruled the galaxies with an iron fist enough that nobody ever wanted to get in their way.
“It’s hard as hell understanding you through that thing,” Sketch said, gesturing at the Y’bari helmet. “Any chance you could take it off so we can hold a conversation like civilized beings?” He felt like this was a stretch, but knowing that the Y’bari was already starting to feel the impact of being pushed down one of the four Paths, it felt like it might not be a stretch too far. He only had a few more minutes before the Y’bari, Aliara, would be nearly consumed with whichever emotion his abilities were bubbling up inside of her.
“Fine,” Aliara said, setting down the small case she’d been carrying before reaching up and unlatching one side of her helmet, then the other, pulling it up and over her head before setting it atop the case. “Better?”
With the helmet off, Sketch got his first in-person look at a Y’bari, and had Aliara been a human woman, she would’ve been considered gorgeous, with high cheekbones, a button nose and a face generally unlike any warrior he’d ever seen before. Her ears were indeed long and pointed, at least three inches longer than they would’ve been as scale human ears. Her eyes were more like cat’s eyes, a deep shade of amber with tall ovals of black in the center of them. Her hair was done up into a bun, to keep it tucked in her helmet, he expected, and it was shades of blue and green, evoking memories of oceans long since departed. Her skin was a pale white, not so light as to be unnatural, but of a complexion that reminded Sketch of an Irishman soldier he’d known once. Other than the ears and eyes, however, she looked almost identical to a human woman, just in larger scale.
“Much better,” Sketch said, waiting for Serena to take the shot, which never came. He tensed up a little, and then wondered if maybe Serena had expected him to bring her out into the hallway, where she would have a much easier time hitting the target, so he started to turn away from Aliara, gesturing for her to follow him. “C’mon, we’ll go get Berry and you can inject us both and be on your way.”
“I don’t know that I’ve ever seen one of these Tropage ships intact before,” Aliara said, following behind him at several paces. Despite the fact that her longer legs were letting her catch up, Sketch was doing his best to walk quickly, to stay as far from her as he could, hoping the distance might keep his abilities from pressing too hard on the inside of her skull. “Solid craftsmanship. Plus it’s nice, having these reasonably sized hallways and doorways, so I don’t have to slouch, like I normally would in walking through a human vessel.”
He stepped back into the hallway, glancing left and right with his eyes quickly, seeing Serena on his left, pointing to his right, so he turned and started walking right down the hallway. A moment or so later, Aliara stepped into the hall and what felt like an eternity later, he heard the blaster go off. As he heard the body fall to the ground, he didn’t hear an accompanying wet splat, so he turned back to look, and the Y’bari’s body was in a crumpled ball on the hall floor, her head decidedly nonexploded.
“What the hell, Serena?” Sketch said to her, seeing the girl hang the rifle back on the wall. “You were supposed to kill her, not knock her out.”
“I was going to, but then I realized... she was checking out your ass while you walked.”
“She was check—?” he said, stopping in utter shock. “Serena, have you lost your fucking mind? This is a Y’bari Centurion! We should be dumping her body into deep space right now and praying that nobody comes looking for us!”
“She’ll have sent a transmission back to her station upon contact,” Serena told him, “so the only way they’re going to think we’re nobody is if she sends them a message telling them we’re nobody.”
“And how the hell do you propose we get her to do that?”
“Oh, based on how she was looking at you, I think we can work something out,” the princess grinned, something Sketch felt couldn’t possibly bode well for him. “Let’s get her stripped and take her to the brig.”
How uncomplicated his life of just a single day ago seemed to him now.