When Fighting Monsters, page 6
part #5 of The Maauro Chronicles Series
Dusko proved the best student of us all when he was there. Having mastered his lessons quickly gave him some additional time. Apparently assured of his imminent demise, he spent this windfall on debauchery in the offport.
As for me, I was careful to keep my time with Olivia professional and usually in the company of others. Her demeanor matched mine and she never made any reference to either Seddon or Cimer. The resurrection of her career seemed to have gone the way she wanted and her connection with Maauro and I had made her an invaluable asset to MI. This mission was not only her dream assignment, but clearly the fact that we would again accept her as part of “Maauro’s network” could only make her more valuable in the future.
Work progressed on Stardust around the clock. Now that MI had assembled the team, they were desperate to start. Maauro’s desire to start seemed little less. “This is something Shasti wishes me to do. We will be helping our friend.”
A message came after we learned the ship would soon be ready. Maximillian’s parents would not return in time, but the boy, having learned we were here, insisted on a break in his semi-reclusive life and asked for us to visit him.
Maauro and I flew down in Shasti’s company to visit Maximillian in his little house by the sea. I found him to be a young, solemn-eyed man, a younger version of his grandfather. In a way, we were meeting him for the first time, after we recovered him from the grip of the Destroyer; he’d been semi-comatose on the voyage back. Maauro had nursed him, singing him to sleep at night.
“I remember your voice,” he said, looking at Maauro as we sat on the house’s small seaside veranda. “I am glad I remember so little else.” A haunted look came into his eyes and his grandmother covered his big hand with hers. They sat silent as the wind ruffled the large umbrella that kept the setting sun from our faces.
“My lack of memory will not prevent me from thanking you both from getting me out of the hell I was confined to,” he said finally, shaking off the mood.
“But thanks having been tendered,” Maauro said. “Let us leave the past to the past. I am more interested in your artwork. This piece for example, it is quite beautiful.” She turned to point at a small seascape hanging on the wall just beyond the open door to the house. “This reminds me of… my original world.”
“It’s a beauty,” I agreed. I’d noticed her standing before it earlier. “I’ve always loved sunset paintings.”
“Then,” he said. “Please accept it as an inadequate token of my appreciation.” He rose, went inside and took off the wall. He disappeared inside to return with the painting now properly wrapped for transit. “It will be a great comfort to me to think of it voyaging through the stars with you both.”
Maauro looked at her new prize like a child on Christmas morning, and I loved her all the more for it.
“Well,” Shasti said. “I have to get these folks back to the capitol and their ship. They have another mission to undertake. Their ship is coming out of the dockyard tomorrow.”
“I hope that we will meet again,” Maximillian said, to Maauro, I noticed wryly.
“I do plan to return here,” she said.
I kept surprise off my face and in truth wasn’t overly so. There was clearly something between Maauro and Shasti, and I simply had to wait for them to tell me what it was. I sighed mentally.
After bidding Maximillian good night, we flew back to the capitol in Shasti’s private, unmarked flitter, I could not see our escorts, but knew they were there. We circled down at the officer’s quarters at the OSDF base next to the dockyard. The three of us got out of the flitter, leaving the driver inside. Overhead, the stars burned in a clear sky, limning the few high cirrus clouds. Olympia was one of the few ringed, Earth-type worlds, and the arch of rock and ice crystals glimmered overhead on the moonless night.
Shasti looked up at the arch of sky. “The nights before a voyage are always special, the preparations, the anticipation. I am envious of you, setting out on an adventure. Well, I suppose I shouldn’t be. I have had my time out among the stars.”
“Would you come with us if you could?” Maauro asked, looking up at Shasti.
Surprise flitted over Shasti’s face and she laughed. “Oh, don’t tempt me so, Little One. I am a responsible grownup now.”
“Who evaded my question,” Maauro said, with an impish air.
Shasti turned to me and put both hands on my shoulders, and I too had to look up at her. “You be good to this young lady,” she said, with a mock sternness that none-the-less held an actual note of warning. “You will never be this lucky again.”
“Yes, Captain,” I replied.
She smiled, then bent forward and kissed me on the lips. I couldn’t control a furious blush,
Shasti then turned to Maauro and bent further, wrapping her in her arms. “You be careful out there. The Confederacy will always have its own interests beyond what you do in Piola. Be wary.”
“Always,” Maauro said.
“Come back and visit me,” Shasti said, then kissed Maauro goodbye and headed for her car. In moments, the vehicle rolled forward then, with a blast of turbofan, lifted off.
“She’s everything I’ve always thought she would be,” I managed.
“And perhaps a bit more,” Maauro agreed. “Come Wrik, you must be tired, and I think tomorrow will start us on this new venture.”
I yawned. “Yep, good food and good company and now…good night.”
In the morning, we moved back into the Stardust. The vessel was loaded with supplies of every sort. Cargo containers were even stacked, strapped and secured in the hallways.
“There will be supply sleds prepositioned in some of the systems we are going to visit,” Olivia said at the briefing she gave after we trouped aboard. “But there is no way to be sure where we are going, or for how long.”
When Maauro and I settled into our cabin, I turned to her. “So how much crap did they try to plant on us?”
“One feels that the effort was perfunctory,” Maauro said, amusement playing on her face. “There were the usual bugs, sensors and spyware. I have already scrubbed and recycled everything, including that which was secreted in our supplies on the theory that we would not go through the discomfort of unpacking everything. As if I would use such crude methods. Really! I am quite insulted. In any event, we are secure.”
“I wonder if Olivia knew,” I muttered.
“I doubt it,” Maauro replied. “It would compromise her for no purpose. The information they seek would not be for her use. Like us, she probably expected it, but knowing me better than most, she also would not expect it to work.”
“Olivia to Wrik and Maauro,” sounded over the system.
“Speak of the devil,” I said.
Maauro raised an eyebrow. “That comment better not come with an image of her in a clingy red suit with a pitchfork and tail.”
“I never think of Olivia with a pitchfork,” I replied with a grin. “She’s too likely to use it.”
She gave me a dubious look. “I suppose we had better answer.
“We hear you,” Maauro said, internally opening the channel.
“We’ve received clearance to lift off 0530 tomorrow.”
“What is it with the military mind,” I groaned, “that has everything happen in the early morning hours?”
“Best part of the day,” Olivia said. “So suck it up, Buttercup, and hit the rack at a reasonable hour.”
We took Olivia’s advice and turned in early, to rise at 0200 and begin preflight. Even this was something of a formality. Neither Maauro, nor Stardust’s AI, ever slept and every system had been under continuous review since we accepted the ship back from the dockyard. Maauro, after waving a cup of strong coffee under my nose, slipped outside and climbed all over the ship, having changed her color to match the ship’s hull. In the predawn darkness, she would be hard to spot, checking the outer hull. She reentered forty-five minutes later having satisfied herself.
“No one will be able to approach the ship now without my detecting it,” she said with a touch of smugness.
Dusko and Delt stumbled in shortly thereafter. Dusko apparently hadn’t slept, as he wore what I saw him in last. Delt wore a fresh shirt and pants; we didn’t have a uniform, per se, on Stardust. Olivia came in last, wearing Marine combat fatigues.
“How are we looking, Captain?” she said to me, but her eyes were on Maauro, who wore her usual red and gray jump suit.
“We will lift on schedule,” I said. “We could go now, but the orbital window to the accelerator doesn’t open till 0530.”
Olivia nodded, pleased. She joined us for a quiet and light breakfast. Only Delt, who had an iron stomach, dared more. We cleaned up and headed for launch stations. The tower began relaying the myriad of tasks that came with launch, until they cleared us for liftoff, and I reached for the throttle.
Stardust began to rumble and shake as the impellers fought gravity and we rose, meter by meter, until we could see the sun peeking over the horizon. Steadily and with more assurance, the ship accelerated until we reached the high blue and then the black of space.
A few quick orbits built up our speed, and we lined up at the giant orbital accelerator that would boost us up to higher speed for the transit to the jump point. We remained in our acceleration couches for this part. The accelerator would bump us up against the limits of the AG field. While the great accelerator, which looked like an endless rack of ribs, was huge, we approached it at such speed that it required careful attention and skill to maximize the boost.
Behind us, an automated sled loaded with fuel and provisions was fired into the accelerator. The unmanned sled easily accelerated to match speed with us. Like most unmanned vessels, it was painted a dull orange and white. This one was almost as large as Stardust.
We were on our way.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Days pass as we adjust to spaceborne routine. Olivia settles back into the ship in her old cabin. Dusko retreats to his hydroponic garden. Delt divides his time between Engineering and teasing Olivia, who greets his attention with a mixture of exasperation and appreciation I find fascinating and amusing.
The voyage out has given me time to think about the gaps in my knowledge of Wrik and his past. He has always been guarded about that, even with me. Now, I have Delt here and time to talk. So I decide to spring my trap as we head out to the jumppoint. With Wrik asleep, Olivia in the part of the hold we have made a gym and Dusko tending his flowers and plants in the hydro, Delt is all mine.
I find him in the galley, seated in front of a plate of pasta and an iced tea. He has been working out, losing the pounds of early middle age that he allowed to accumulate when he was running an aviation repair shop. Wrik had told me how Delt boxed in college. While I think that boxing is too much of a sport and not much of a combat skill, I have watched him workout before and must admit that he hits the heavy bag with power and speed. Delt was always strong-looking, but now he more resembles the lean fighter pilot of his youth. He wears a gym suit and a thin layer of perspiration. I do wonder if Olivia’s addition to the crew is providing him with even more incentive to get in shape.
“Hi, Maauro. How is it going?”
“Hello, Delt. All is well. We are on course and all systems are nominal.”
“Good.”
I dial up a cup of hot tea and sit on the metal bench opposite him. “We’ve never really had much chance to talk have we?”
Delt eyes me around the mouthful of pasta he’s twirled onto his fork. “Huh? What do you mean? We see each other every day.”
“That is not the same as having the time and place for a meaningful conversation.”
He chuckles. “God, you really are female, all the way down to your toes.”
“Why, yes I am,” I reply. “I think when I rolled off the assembly line and opened my eyes, I saw through a feminine lens.”
He sips his tea and looked at me over the rim of it. “You remember the date of your… birth?”
“Yes, as I remember every detail of my existence that I myself have not deleted from my memory banks. There were some memories of my… combats that I discarded. They disturbed me. I no longer do that, a promise I made to Wrik.”
“What was that like?” he asks. “Becoming active, I mean.”
“One moment I was not, then I was. When my eyes opened, the first thing I beheld was the stars shining down through a great window in the facility ceiling where I was made, an armaments factory on one of the oldest of the Creator colonies. I do not know where it lies. That information was removed from me lest I be captured. Even my memory of that night sky is scrambled, so it could not be examined for clues on where I came from.
“But it was a pretty world of pink clouds and colorful sunsets. Ah, but the stars were wonderful, even though I knew from the first instant of my awareness that they were immense balls of flaming gas, I somehow felt they were more. Almost like friends.”
He puts the glass down. “Over fifty thousand years ago. Maauro, I just can’t grasp it. I sit here with you and you’re just a pretty girl to me, albeit with the biggest eyes and tiniest waist I’ve ever seen. I just can’t believe you aren’t human. Well, except when you are lifting a motorcycle with me on it over your head.”
“It was just to chest level,” I say, indicating with my hand.
“Oh, was that all?”
I nod. For some reason this makes him chuckle.
“What was it that you wanted to talk about?”
I lean on my elbows, chin in hand. “Tell me about the Wrik you knew. The one you grew up with? The one I do not know.”
Delt has some more pasta and tea, clearly considering his answer, “It’s funny. I have to work at it to think of him as Piet, the kid I played with. It’s a little like Piet is gone forever, and we have Wrik now.”
“I have felt the same, and it worries me. The trip to Retief cleaned out many old wounds, but it seems that he wishes to remain Wrik and leave Piet behind, even though his reconciliation was so successful with his mother and sister.”
He wags a finger at me. “Don’t overthink it. Remember it’s as Wrik that he found you, and trust me in this, nothing is more important to him than finding you.”
I enjoy the warm glow this brings to me.
“Anyway,” Delt says. “We met when he was out hunting with his father, toting a rifle damn near as big as he was. I was immediately jealous and went to my Dad to say, “Look, the Van Zyle boy is out hunting.” Dad reluctantly gave me a rifle. Not a monster gun like Wrik had, though. So we started hunting together. Poor Wrik, I remember how his shoulder would get black and blue from firing that damn thing.
“Wrik was always a serious kid. I used to joke with him that he didn’t know how to laugh. Seemed he was always worried about something. Then I met his Dad, and, well, you know about his father—”
“He is never forgotten, or forgiven by me.” My voice comes out in a growl that surprises us both. I give an embarrassed wave of the hand. “Owen Van Zyle is a sore point with me. He does not know how close he stood to death after I learned he’d erected a headstone for his son, saved only, and ironically, by the fact he is Wrik’s biological parent.”
“So,” Delt continues, “his life wasn’t easy. Thank God he had a good mother, though she wasn’t able to do much about Owen. I guess I remember the good times between he and his sister better than he does, but I saw that turn bad too, and that was hard to watch. I eventually broke off with his sister. Rena has a mean streak in her that can’t be trusted.”
I consider that Wrik has placed his sister and her children in my hierarchy as ranked only below himself. Delt’s memories of Rena are not as fresh as ours, and I judge that she is more mature now, but I do not contest his assessment.
“Wrik was a good student, always trying to exceed, so the old bastard would finally be proud of him. He was cautious, never one to dive head first into anything. He didn’t like to fight, but never once failed to back me up in one of mine.”
“Did he have other friends besides you?”
Delt again considers. “I guess not so much. He always hung with my friends, but they were my crowd. Girls liked him, and he had a lot of female friends for somebody who was kinda shy. I think they saw that he was born old—“
“We females refer to it as mature,” I say.
“Do you now? I am pleased to say that none of you have ever said it about me.” He grins. “Nor likely to anytime soon. Even now, when I’ve lived five years or better in the universe, while you both were in that wrinkle of time, doesn’t he seem the older? The more serious?”
“Yes, but that could be just arrested development on your part,” I muse.
Delt chokes a little on his tea. “Oh, been talking to Olivia perhaps?”
“I decline to answer; I must preserve the sanctity of the female network.”
“Anyway, I was his closest male friend. After the slaughter….” His face tightens. I reach a hand across and place it atop his. I feel the blast of heat that comes on him with the anguish of recollection.
“We left this on Retief,” I say. “Reverend Janna told you it was time to put that burden down.”
“You yourself,” he manages, “are now too much like us to think that is entirely possible.”
I pat his hand. “Logical being that I am, regret has bitten me as well. I suppose it is part of the burden of awareness.”
He sighs. “I said stuff to him. Things I would give anything to unsay. I was too close to it to understand, too foul with my own guilt to be a friend. I threw him to the wolves.” The sturdy face is closed in grief.
