The shuttle thumped, rocked, and was slammed sideways as the grapples clamped onto it. Not the best docking Talina had ever experienced, but then Ensign Naftali was ten years out of practice.
The ship’s voice said, “You have hard dock. Establishing hard seal.” A pause. “Hard seal. Welcome aboard.”
Tal glanced over at Shig, who sat in the seat beside her. The man looked absolutely nonplussed. But in the seat beyond, the Corporate chemist and design engineer, Fenn Bogarten, had a slightly amused expression on his tanned face. Kalico Aguila was riding in the copilot’s seat.
“Welcome to Ashanti,” Naftali called over his shoulder. “We have hard dock. Grapples engaged. Hatch has a hard seal. You are welcome to deboard.”
Talina unbuckled, almost launched herself as she misjudged the angular acceleration. Shuttle deck didn’t have the same circumference as the crew and cargo decks did; the effect was as if she were in seven tenths of a gravity. As a result, she had to mince her way out of the seat, walk carefully from the command deck to the hatch where a crewman gave her a smile and welcomed her aboard.
Tal followed Kalico through the main cabin and into the small airlock. As she exited it was to see a crisply uniformed Captain Miguel Galluzzi. He was in the process of greeting Kalico. And doing so with obvious relief.
In person, the man was smaller than Talina had expected. Looked emaciated. Nevertheless, he greeted her with a smile and an extended hand, saying, “Welcome aboard, Security Officer. Ashanti and her crew are delighted to have you.”
With her quetzal-enhanced senses, Talina tried not to notice the odor: Ashanti stank. Not the musty-and-clinging scent of rot and death like aboard Freelander. This was more of a packed-humanity smell of long-unwashed socks, stale sweat, and fetid breath.
“My pleasure, Captain.”
She stepped past as Shig shook the captain’s hand, followed by Bogarten.
Dogging Kalico’s heels, Tal was introduced to First Officer Edward Turner, Second Officer Paul Smart, and finally the A.O. Bekka Tuulikki, all in their dress uniforms. Tuulikki was a pale Nordic woman with steely blue eyes.
The Ashanti officers kept looking at Talina as if she were some sort of freak. Or it had been too long since they’d seen a different human face.
As Shig made the round of introductions, he said, “We have a present for you. If you’ll have your people attend to it, we’ve packed the hold with fresh vegetables and fruits from the farms around Port Authority. It should come as a welcome relief in the crew’s mess.”
At which point Shig offered the captain one of his acorn squashes, proudly announcing, “I picked this from my own garden just this morning. I hope you like it.”
“What is it?” Galluzzi asked warily, taking the squash.
Shig, his expression still mild, seemed confused.
Aguila gave the short Indian a crooked smile. “Shig, the captain’s a spacer. Hydroponics are for growing yeasts, leafy vegetables, and tubers. My guess is that he’s never seen a squash before. Am I right, Captain?”
“So this is a squash!” Galluzzi cried in delight. “What a wonderful gift.”
Shig, still his amiable self, said, “I’d be delighted to tell your kitchen staff how to cook it.”
“While you show the Supervisor to the conference room and discuss recipes, how about Bogarten and I take a look at the Deck Three situation?” Talina suggested.
“This way,” Turner told her, taking the lead.
Something about the ship, the way it smelled. The dingy corridors and sense of despair. It all sent quivers up her spine. Like the thing was a trap—a prison that might close down around her in an instant and crush the soul out of her body.
Her demon quetzal squirmed in her gut.
“Yeah, you piece of shit. Welcome to space.”
She figured Demon wasn’t going to settle down until she was back dirtside. At least, it had been that way every time she’d been aboard Freelander.
“Not right.”
Talina grinned to herself. The only thing quetzals hated more than space was deep water.
Turner led her and Bogarten past the hatch and into a curving corridor. The ship’s angular acceleration was even weaker here. To her surprise every other light in the corridor had been removed.
“You saving lighting panels?” she asked.
Turner, a thoughtful look on his face, said, “In the beginning we took them out to cut the draw on the electrical system. Every amp we could save was one we didn’t have to generate. Could put that much more energy from scavenged hydrogen into the reaction engines. We even tried ditching the cargo ring to reduce mass.”
“Why didn’t you?” Bogarten asked.
“Couldn’t figure out how to detach it without structurally damaging the ship. And without being able to balance the counter-rotation, it would have played hell with stability.”
Talina told him, “Well, you may not know it, but that cargo is going to make all of our lives a whole lot better. We’re hoping you’ve got a lot of spare parts and equipment we need. The biggie, however, are the cacao seeds. We’re hoping, desperately, that they’re still viable, and we can grow the trees.”
The lift carried them up a deck, and the radial corridor took them to the transportee ring. Talina was relieved that the ship’s rotation left her feeling more firmly planted. Took a while to get used to the difference between gravity and angular acceleration.
Bogarten asked, “Is this the only route to the shuttle deck? Using the lift? Or is there a companionway? Ladders? Something where we can have better control?”
“Companionway’s around that bend.” Turner pointed. “We can close off the lift. Block the corridor just past the stairs if we have to.”
“That or use armed guards.” Talina hooked thumbs in her utility belt as she studied the hall.
Bogarten gave them both a wary look. “And you don’t think they’d just walk down to the shuttle deck on their own?”
Turner shrugged. “After all this time? Who knows? Maybe. But as for the crew, we’ve got a say in this, too. We’ll feel better if we give them one possible route: a straight shot from Deck Three to the cargo bays and the shuttle. Once they’re locked in the shuttle’s hold, off the ship, and unloaded dirtside, we’re all going to be sleeping a lot better.”
“You make them sound like a disease,” Talina noted.
“Whatever.” Turner didn’t argue. “You didn’t have to live with them. See the things they did to people before they dropped the fragmented bones into the hydroponics chute.”
Turner stopped before what would have originally been the pressure hatch that led into the transportees’ section. Sialon was a ceramic composed of silicon, aluminum, oxygen, and carbon that was molded and superheated in vacuum. To say that the hatch was welded was something of a misnomer. Rather it was glued with a thick bead of bonding material.
The machine that stood before the door was a hypersonic drill. Sialon—being harder than any metal—didn’t cut. But the atomic bonds would separate under intense heat and the right hyper-frequency vibrations. A four-inch hole had been bored into the door, a remote holo com device having been installed.
“So this is it.” Turner told them. “Maybe five temporary bulkheads to install, and we can make an alley that runs all the way to the shuttle. Then it’s just a matter of securing the cockpit and command deck so they can’t commit mayhem once they’re aboard.”
“You’d think you were transporting wild animals,” Bogarten noted as he used his laser scribe to measure the corridor. Then he went to the companionway, checking out the stairs.
Turner softly whispered, “I guess you’d have to define what’s human, and what’s animal.”
In Talina’s ear com, Shig’s voice said, “We’re about ready, Tal. If you could meet us in the captain’s lounge?”
“Be right there,” Talina and Turner said in unison, apparently getting the same message from ship’s com in their implants.
“This way.” Turner, again, took the lead, leaving Bogarten to inspect the route back to the shuttle.
The lift deposited them on the Crew Deck. Turner showed her to the small lounge just down from the AC. Inside, Shig and Kalico were already seated. Galluzzi was in the captain’s chair in the rear. Turner took what was obviously his seat, and Talina settled for the chair near the door.
“Are we ready?” Galluzzi asked hesitantly. Talina noticed that his right hand was trembling as he rubbed it nervously on his pantleg.
“We’re all curious,” Kalico told him, a shadow of smile on her lips.
“Supervisor, please. Just be aware that I have no idea what kind of reception we’re going to get.”
“It’s all right, Captain.” Kalico lifted a scarred hand. “Proceed.”
The image formed up on the holo. A projection of the corridor just behind the sealed pressure hatch on Deck Three. The walls were decorated, painted with skeletons in various poses. It hit Talina that had they been fleshed bodies, the postures would have been erotic.
What really grabbed attention, however, was the naked male seated in an ornately carved chair that blocked most of the hallway. Behind the chair back—two to either side—stood four women.
Talina fixed on the seated man. He slouched, almost insolently. His entire body was painted in blotchy white, as if it had been daubed with clay. It took Talina a moment to realize that what looked like designs covering his skin were intricately patterned scars. Combinations of chevrons, interlocking squares, a Grecian key style, overlapping circles and loops ran down his arms and legs. A series of lines ran down his belly to converge in the man’s pubic hair at the root of the penis, and fantastic spirals—centered on his nipples—covered each breast.
Then there was the jewelry. His fingers were thick with rings. A myriad of necklaces hung at his neck, and a row of bracelets ran from wrist to forearm above each hand.
But it was his paste-white face that mesmerized. The cartilaginous part of his nose was missing, leaving a gaping hole split by the septum. The scars on the man’s cheeks each created a maze that opened at the corners of his mouth. His eyes were blackened with what looked like kohl to make them dark in contrast to his white-pasted face. And in the middle of his forehead someone had carved the image of a single eye, painted blue and surrounded by a white sclera. The black pupil was like a window to darkness.
Whatever Talina had been expecting, it wasn’t this. The guy looked like a character in a VR holo from hell. Even his hair was greased up into a macabre fan that ended in a series of black spikes.
A faint smile bent his black-painted lips. He more whispered than said, “Blood and pain and terror.”
“Excuse me?” Kalico asked, leaning forward.
“The holy trinity of birth, but then you wouldn’t remember.” A pause. “Who are you?”
“I am Corporate Supervisor Kalico Aguila, in charge of all Corporate property and holdings on Donovan. What you’d know as Capella III. To whom am I speaking?”
“The ending and the beginning, the purification, the living repository of the dead and the initiator of life. I am the holy vessel.”
“That doesn’t answer my question,” Kalico barked back.
Talina couldn’t take her eyes off the man, kept trying to understand what kind of pain he must have endured to have his body mutilated like that.
“It tells you everything,” the man replied.
“So, cut the crap,” Kalico snapped. “Whoever you are, you’re under contract. That means you answer to me. Now, do you want to . . .”
Shig held up a hand, gently urging Kalico to desist. “If I could rephrase the Supervisor’s question, who were you prior to your illumination?”
“The past is a meaningless term. There is only being and becoming.”
“Perhaps,” Shig said. “It would help us to understand who and what you are if we could know what person you came from. I assume you were once Batuhan.”
“That was another existence.” He lifted the hand that had been lying on the exotic chair’s arm, and part of the arm detached like a scepter. The thing was a couple of feet long, slightly curved, and remarkably carved in relief, the spiraling designs incredibly intricate. It reminded Talina of the ancient ivory carvings done on tusks in East Asia; the delicate relief was too tiny to make out in the holo.
“All right,” Kalico continued, clearly annoyed, “So you’re Batuhan. I understand that you and your people have had a most difficult passage from Solar System. But you’re here. Given that you are under contract, I have the right to—”
“Neither you, nor The Corporation have rights. The Corporation is pollution, and you are its agent. Not that you could know, drowning in ignorance as you are, but you are suffocating, wallowing in self-delusion. Until you are freed from the black and engulfing prison of your lies and unquestioned deceit, you cannot grasp the simplest or faintest sliver of illumination. Let alone understanding.”
Talina shot Kalico a sidelong glance. Saw the roiling anger mixing with confusion.
Again, Shig raised his hand to still Kalico’s incipient outburst. “Illumination and enlightenment aside, we need to deal with some more pragmatic and immediate concerns. I have read many of your tracts and revelations. You think your current confinement is the universal womb. That you will be born the moment you set foot on Donovan.”
“Nothing you can do will stop that,” Batuhan said softly.
“Stopping you is not our wish. We are finalizing plans to shuttle you down to the planet. To a place called Tyson Station. There you will find housing, a garden, water, and everything your people will need to survive.”
“We know.” Batuhan made a shaking gesture with his scepter, baton, or whatever it was.
“You know?” Shig asked amiably.
“Of course. We serve the universe. In order to consume darkness and corruption, the universe will first free us from the confinement of the womb. As it eventually will free us from this planet when we mature from childhood. Only then can we begin the task of purifying the universe itself.” He smiled, exposing dark and vicious-looking teeth. “We are the chosen. Through us will come redemption.”
“Heard that before,” Kalico snorted.
“Of course you have. We are the culmination of the Kali Yuga, the turning of the katuns, the End of Days, Ragnarok, the monsters who devour the universe. We are the terror. And we are the rapture. Chosen, harrowed, tested, and purified within the womb to redeem the universe.”
Kalico asked, “Just how do you plan to redeem us all?”
Batuhan shifted his dark gaze, fixed his intense eyes on hers. “You must be consumed. The three holy Prophets have said so.”
“Who are the three holy Prophets?” Shig asked.
“They are here, with us. Irdan, Callista, and Guan Shi. They hear the voice of the universe and shall go with us, lead us through childhood, and their teachings shall be universal.”
Shig’s face lined with curiosity. “So you are not the Prophet?”
“I am only the beginning and the end. I am the receptacle of souls. The interpreter of Prophecy. The first and last of the eternal graves of the martyrs.”
Kalico said, “I don’t understand this first and last, this whole graves thing.”
Batuhan gave her a pitying look. “It’s simple semantics. By consuming the dead, my people and I become the end. The last receptacle for the dead person’s physical body and a pathway for his or her soul. Each piece of jewelry is the physical manifestation of a human being who lives within us. The proof of their existence.”
He pointed to the mazes on his cheeks. “Thus, we become their living graves, their breathing tombs. They live through us since we are but repositories for their essences. And when my semen impregnates one of my wives, I am the vehicle through which a renewed and pure life is once again born. I plant that purified life to grow in a field fertilized by the essences of the dead who reside within that woman.”
Kalico looked stunned.
Talina’s stomach turned.
Where he sat, looking enchanted, Shig whispered, “Absolutely fascinating!”
“You see,” Batuhan insisted softly, “we are blessed by the universe as the vehicles of immortality.”