Deep, down a bored excavation shaft about a mile beneath the surface of Typhon, rested a broken down, dust-filled bunker. The primitive steel walls peeled with rust, the archaic telecom technology had long since broken down and everywhere wafted the faint dry aroma of a millennia of rot. In the center of this dungeon knelt a man – a man who looked more of this place than he did of the galaxy far, far above him.
His hair was long and wild, as was his beard. A long green sash was tied around his forehead and dangled down his back. His clothes looked to be remnants – crafted by hand from different leathers, silks and fibers from every backwater planet in existence. Even his boots looked like they came off a corpse and his hands were decorated with ancient looking rings – one with a finely crafted serpent with red jewel eyes and another ring with a green triangular gem.
On the floor around him radiated a pool of blood. The dull yellow glow of the excavation lamps made the blood look muddy, almost black. Before Morigin laid the body – rather remains – of the man that had mentored him for over eight years. The body was disemboweled and nearly cut in half. The only thing that told Morigin it was his mentor were the ice blue eyes of Telo Solar.
Not knowing what else to do, Morigin scooped up the bloody corpse and carried it out of the bunker and up through the excavation shaft. He didn’t bother with the shaft skiff – he walked it the entire way up, using his own muscles, his own sweat. It almost took him two hours, but he made it to the surface – a barren, desert terrain of a planet. As he walked out of the shaft he stumbled and fell to his knees, casting the body into the sand.
Morigin looked through the torrents of sand blowing through the wind. Beyond the boundary markers he saw a magnificent ship, his ship, the Jade Tendril. Even in the wind and sand he could make out her outline – smooth talonsteel curves, its shape inspired by the Lodan airshark. A smile cracked his face and he struggled to his feet with Telo’s body, “Don’t worry, girl. I’ll get to you soon enough.” For the next two hours, Morigin dug a grave with his own bare hands, where he put the broken body of Telo Solar. Then he covered up the body and sensor-marked the grave. He stood before his mentor a few more moments in silence. He didn’t need any words.
After, he gazed across the dead horizon one last time – nothing but pale sand as far as his eyes could see. Somewhere deep inside him, he felt a nostalgia for this planet. Underneath its sands, he and Telo had found so much – learned so much. In a time when technology did everything for you, it felt good to get into the dirt and dig, break a real sweat, wash the dust from your face. Morigin felt a sense of worth and pride in doing things the hard way.
He shook his head and walked up the entrance ramp to the Jade Tendril. The inner workings of the Tendril were a cobbling of this century and eons of the past. Morigin made his way to the cabin and hanging above the entryway was a gleaming cutlass. It looked freshly polished and gleamed from the interior lights. He made his way to the captain’s chair and slouched into it.
“Jade,” Morigin said. “What’s the word?”
Out of nowhere a smooth, metallic voice swam into the cabin, “I’ve patched into the excavation cams. The intruders weren’t professional. Whoever hired them, will be very displeased.”
“I’m sure of that,” Morigin said.
“Would you like me to replay the communiqué?”
Morigin rubbed his lips with his forefinger in thought. Was he ready for this? “Play it,” he growled.
Across the cabin viewport began playing a recording of the events Morigin had missed. In the bunker, Telo worked on extracting information from the dead telecom system. Into the picture stepped two Carni. Morigin new them well. Carni were adequate assassins, but sloppy. Made famous working for the Slavos, the Carni were usually ritualistic in their assassinations – removing the internal organs and letting their victims blood. Carni wore ceremonial armor long ago, but these days they’ve upgraded to tornadium – splashed with glyphic tattoos they receive after every kill. The really vicious Carni looked like they didn’t wear armor at all – they had that many tattoos.
Morigin watched as the Carni restrained Telo. They placed a siphon over his skull and began scouring his mind for information – Morigin watched intently, noticing the deep struggle Telo was putting up, resisting the invading technology, trying to save the precious information within him. Morigin bit his lip as he watched his mentor buckle under the physical strain. The siphon whirred to a stop as a green light on the machine began blinking, telling the Carni it had finished its job.
Morigin then reached for a button on the vast ship console – he didn’t want to see what happened next. But before he could press it, he held back. Onscreen the Carni removed the siphon. Weakened, Telo spun around and tried to defend himself. But the Carni were all over him. One of them grabbed his left arm and violently pulled it – breaking it between the shoulder and elbow. Telo screamed in pain.
Morigin gritted his teeth.
Then the Carni who broke Telo’s arm, wrapped his arms around his head and throat, restraining him. The other Carni quickly drew a ceremonial blade – it’s curve long and wicked, serrated on one edge, lightning smooth on the other. As Telo watched in horror, the Carni slashed and slashed at his mid-section.
Morigin watched on the screen as blood sprayed across the room, splattered over the Carni, and pooled on the dirty floor.
When finished, the killing Carni sheathed his blade and the Carni holding Telo released his hold – letting the stumps of Telo’s body slump to the floor. Before they left, the Carni extracted the palm-sized memory card from the siphon, then they knelt on the floor facing each other and seemed to pray. They knelt in prayer for minutes before finally walking off-screen.
“I took the liberty – “ Jade began before getting cut-off.
“Not now, Jade,”
Morigin lurched out of his chair and stormed out of the cabin – but as he stepped out he reached up and removed the ancient cutlass from its resting place and ran down the entrance ramp to the ship. He leapt out into the sand thrashing and thrusting the cutlass – sand whirling about in his quick footsteps. His moves were deft and agile, as if he had been born to hold that sword. Surely if the Carni were still there, they wouldn’t have stood much of a chance. He spun around and leapt into the air and landed, thrusting the blade into the sand between his feet.
When he stormed back into the ship and placed the cutlass back in its place, he could hear Jade say, “Like I was trying to say before, I sense trace elements of funerol and polycarbons – exhaust similar to a Triad Class cruiser. From the richness of the exhaust, I think their wormdrive may be in need of repair.”
As Morigin stomped into his cabin and sloughed into his chair, he said, “I was just going to say that.”
“The course, Captain,” said Jade. “The comnav is plotted and ready for departure.”
Morigin strapped into his chair, leaned forward and pulled downward on the thrust. “Tally, ho,” he said.
On the desert floor, the dust billowed from beneath the Jade Tendril as the halo boosters fired and the great ship rose slowly. Once high enough, the nose veered upwards and the ship shot through the atmosphere.
* * *
And just as Jade had said, just as she has done every year under the service of Morigin, they were able to follow the damaged Carni cruiser to a repair depot on the outskirts of the Kcid system. The depot was a huge satellite built to service bulk cruisers and freighters along the nearby trade routes. As they approached, Morigin took in the rusty beauty of Kcid looming below the massive satellite station. The depot was disc-shaped – almost 10 miles wide – and running through the heart of the disc were spires of buildings forming a central axis. Around this axis the entire station rotated in orbit around the stormy planet below.
“The planets in the Kcid system are rich in ores and metals,” Jade’s smooth voice echoed in the cabin.
Morigin sat back in his captain’s chair and said, “That much starship repair requires a lot of resources.”
“Vessel JT-10928374,” a mechanical voice chimed through the cabin. “Prepare a landing course for dock 51-AA.”
“Jade, I need you to interface with the station –,”
“The Carni have docked at 03-TA, captain,” broke in Jade.
Morigin stood up from his chair as the ship idled closer to the station. He shook his head at the banter between himself and Jade and walked out of the cabin. Some days, it felt like she knew him better than he did. He still remembered the day he found her – floating in the rings of wreakage around Spectre. A scrapper on a salvage freighter, Morigin spent every off hour for five years repairing her himself. She was as custom as they come and Morigin thought of her as closely as one does a wife or sister. He trusted her more than anything with a heartbeat or blood running through its veins.
Standing at the entrance ramp, Morigin reached up for his cutlass and slung it around his shoulder. He held on to a nearby handhold as Jade fired the retros to ease the ship into the dock. There was a lurch and then a mad rush of air as the dock was sealed. Above the door a red light switched to green and Jade opened the entrance ramp. Morigin secured his cutlass and walked out into the dock.
As he strode to the docking bay door, Morigin reached up and ran a finger down the edge of his ear. As his finger swiped down the curve of his ear, a thin line of tiny green lights lit up around the curve of his ear.
“Jade?” Morigin questioned to the empty docking bay.
“I’m reading you, Captain,” said Jade in Morigin’s ear.
Morigin strode to the door and threw the switch to open the bay doors, then he said, “I’ll give you a visual in second.” As the massive bay doors opened, Morigin pressed his index finger to the outside corner of his eye – producing a pale green sheen filmed over the retinas of his eyes.
Back inside the Tendril, the navscreen lit up to show exactly what Morigin was seeing as he walked through the station. Onscreen, Morigin asked, “As soon as you locate them, let me know.”
“I’m working on it,” Jade said. “I’ve isolated the level. Go up to floor 23. Get there and I can get you a room number.”
In the station, Morigin stepped into an elevator with a few people. A bystander bumped into his cutlass and said, “What is that thing?”
Morigin tapped the pommel of the cutlass with a knuckle and said, “Good luck charm, you know.”
The elevator stopped, the doors opened up and Morigin stepped out. The rest of the strangers shook their head as he sauntered off. “Come on, Jade,” said Morigin to the thin air in front of him. “What’s with you today? You seem slower than usual – off your game.”
“I don’t know, Captain,” she said. “I’m working on it.” Across the screen in the Tendril’s cabin, a list of numbers scrolled quickly down to one lone number – 2313. On the screen, Morigin was already standing in front of room 2313.
“How did you know what room they were in?” asked Jade.
“These fellas stink. Really,” said Morigin. “It’s like a cross between a Joppa cave rat and swamp flitta. The dig site just reeked when I found Telo.”
“Oh,” said Jade.”
“You sound disappointed.”
“You know that isn’t possible, Captain.” Her wispy metallic voice chimed in his ear. He could sense her defensiveness and smiled secretly.
“You don’t have to enjoy it, Morigin,” Jade said.
She hadn’t called him that in years. When he first rebuilt her, he demanded that she regard him by his name, but she insisted on calling him ‘Captain.’ He shifted his weight to the other foot and said, “Relax. I still need you to decrypt the lock and open the door.”
The lock clicked loudly, almost defiantly. Morigin smiled again as the door slid open. Inside the air was warm and tropical. An ancient music played. And it stunk real bad. Morigin turned his head against the reek and silently stepped into the room. Thrown across the floor were the red plates of the ritualistic Carni armor. In the corner, hanging upside down from a bar in the ceiling, was one of the Carni devouring a meal of bloodgrubs.
After finishing its meal the Carni groomed his face and hands with its long tongue. The light from the dim kitchenette glinted off its head-scales as its tongue roved all across its face. When it was finished, it bent down and swung off the bar, but before it released its feet from the bar, Morigin strode in, unsheathed his cutlass and ran the blade through the Carni’s gullet.
As the Carni screamed, Morigin pulled up on the blade to keep it from freeing itself.
It seemed to be uttering something in Carnish. “Jade,” asked Morigin. “A little help?”
“Already on it,” Jade said.
And like that the Carnish went from indecipherable to standard as the creature said over and over again, “Nothing. I know nothing.”
“Where is the scan?” Morigin asked.
“Nothing. I know nothing,” the Carni said. “Other gone. He took the brain to Param Eon. Wrong one you have.”
“He speaks the truth, Captain,” Jade said into his ear. “The network logs show a Carni departing over 13 hours ago.”
“You have to be kidding me?!”
Morigin removed the blade from the Carni and before it could turn, he swung it into the thick scales and ligaments of its neck. The Carni wheezed and Morigin pulled the cutlass out, letting its body crumple to the floor.
“Tell me, we have another course?” Morigin said as he ran out the door
“Do you really have to ask,” responded Jade.
* * *
As the Jade Tendril rocketed into the atmosphere of Param, Morigin looked into the viewport at the blue giant sun in the distance. Across the planet he could see the yellow patches of lights were metroplexes burned in the night. He had a thought about it, but he couldn’t put words to it.
“Majestic, isn’t it,” said Jade.
Morigin shook his head and said, “Yeah, I was going to say something like that except with a little more eloquence.”
“You know, Telo’s son is here,” said Jade.
The Tendril began slowing as it veered into the city limits of Param Eon. Morigin looked at the ceiling and said, “I had thought of that.”
“Are you going to try and reach him, tell him about his father?” Jade asked.
Morigin folded his arms across his chest and said, “Let him come to me. For the last ten years he’s wanted nothing to do with his father.”
“Sometimes,” Jade said. “But a death has a way of changing people.” An alarm blared in the cabin, followed by a flashing red light. “I’ve traced the ID of the ship that blasted out of the Kcid depot. It’s a wingpod. I’ll throw it up on the viewport.” Soon the screen flashed a map of the city with a target reticle resting atop a tall building.
“There he is,” said Morigin. “The Skylar Vane. Tallest building in Param Eon. Strange place to make a delivery.”
“But very good for us,” said Jade.
In the cabin a different voice spoke as Jade picked up on the conversation on the roof. “The Shrapnel Club. Korban district.”
On top of the Skylar Vane, the second Carni was just handing the foil package to Palo Solar, when the Jade Tendril roared over the roof of the building. Palo grabbed the package and made for the side of the roof, when the Tendril veered sharply and lowered in on the roof. The blast from the retros, almost blew him over the edge. The Carni had fallen over in the blast. The last thing Palo saw was Morigin leaping from the hatch of the Tendril, his cutlass blazing into the Carni’s shoulder, before he leapt off the edge of the Vane.
As the Carni slumped dead at Morigin’s feet, he watched as Palo leapt off the building with the package. Morigin ran to the edge and said, “This can’t be happening. What do I have to do to get this damn thing?” He watched Palo plummet over a hundred stories before he began glowing white and veered off into the distance. Morigin shook his head and was about to say something, when Jade chimed in and said, “Pretty resourceful kid, huh?”
“Yeah,” said Morigin. “Pretty wily.”
