"So what do we do now?" Dira Urtigo wondered aloud as she waited with Aldur Bokren in the queue along with other newly arrived passengers to Comorro Station. They were about fifty people back, just twenty minutes off their shuttle from Hekayt Prime, waiting for the customs agents employed by the station to finally clear them for entry.
The old Hekayti shrugged, watching the line slowly inching forward. "We're a long way from home and all the safer for it," Aldur replied. "First chance I get, though, I need to find a Toveil upload creche. We're not likely to find one on Comorro. A Hekayti warship, certainly, although I doubt an attempt to board would end pleasantly for us."
The female crossed her arms, brows knitting. "What exactly do you know, Aldur? What is in your mind that has the Grand Moot so bent on killing you - and now me?"
Aldur sighed. He gave a helpless shrug. "I think it's about my son."
Dira thought of the scarred Hekayti pirate shoving his face out of the shadows in her vision before Starko tried to kill her and steal the artifact. "The Medlidikke?" she asked. "Vard Bokren?"
"Yes," the old Hekayti answered. A grim smile. "No surprise that you would have heard of him, of course. Who hasn't? What many people do not know, however, is that his origins are based on a lie that I helped to perpetrate."
She frowned. "What lie?"
"I perjured myself during Vard's trial before the Grand Moot," Aldur said. "I claimed that Vard killed our Lyiri prisoners against my orders. That got him convicted, banished from the Ledelkrig, and drove him to join the Medlidikke." His eyebrows lifted, but he kept his gaze locked on the back of a Llivori's head further up in line. "The truth, Dira, is that I gave specific orders that Vard kill those prisoners. He did as he was told. I betrayed my own son. I have lived with that secret for many years now." He put the palm of his right hand to his throat. "I must admit, it feels good to speak the words aloud at last."
Dira narrowed her eyes. "I don't understand. I mean, yes, I get what you're saying: You lied in official testimony, got Vard kicked out of the Ledelkrig, and set him on the path of becoming the stuff of wicked bedtime stories. But you're also saying this has been a secret. Why would the Grand Moot want to kill you for something they didn't even know about? And would they really care about a bureaucrat's lie? What does it matter, in the end? Vard chose to become a pirate. You didn't do that to him. It makes no sense. They went to a lot of trouble to try to kill us both on Hekayt Prime. I don't think it was about Vard at all."
"What do you think it was?" Aldur wondered. It hadn't occurred to him to imagine that he might know anything more damaging than the truth about the origins of the dread pirate Vard Bokren. Off the top of his head, however, he couldn't think of what it might be.
"I don't know," she replied. "But now I'm just as eager as you to find that Toveil upload creche so that we can try to find out."
Aldur nodded briefly at Dira, then allowed his attention to drift back to the Arie-class freighter that had delivered them from Hekayt Prime to Comorro. The snub-nosed vessel with the gray and blue hull plates had the cockpit turret slung under the belly. It was currently berthed between a bat-like Wyn-class transport and a spherical Lyiri-built Umi-class research pod. Three Tupai worked around the Hekayti freighter, identified as the Glasne Sunray. One of them hooked a fuel hose coupling to a receptacle nozzle on the hull. Aldur hoped they didn't go hunting for the owner to get payment too soon.
"What's wrong?" Dira asked, brow furrowed at the intensity of Aldur's focus. "You think Otar got word of the bounty and wants to come after us? Come on, stop worrying so much. He seemed nice enough to me."
He pulled his gaze away from the Sunray, giving Dira a curt nod. "Of course." Yes, Otar Gremal had seemed a friendly enough sort in the Glasne spaceport when he had accepted the first half of the payment from Aldur for transit to Comorro Station.
"If you don't mind my saying so," the stubble-scalped Hekayti had said while sitting in his rented kiosk, "it seems that the two of you are in a bigger hurry than most to get offworld." A wicked smile crept across his lips. He pointed from Dira to Aldur. "There some kind of freakiness going on here?" His eyes narrowed shrewdly at Dira. "You into older guys? That's great, if you are. Why? He rich?" He tilted his head, turning his gaze back toward Aldur. "You rich? Is that the deal? That'd certainly make some women overlook the whole, you know, fossilized thing."
Aldur grumbled. "I do mind. No questions asked." He didn't like Otar from the start, no matter how nice he may have appeared to Dira. The freighter captain gave off a creepy vibe that Aldur just couldn't shake. He didn't trust him one bit.
Dira beamed, resting a hand on the old Hekayti's arm. "We value our privacy."
"Hey, no, that's fine," Otar replied. "I get it. You're paying prime rate for that privacy. Two for an express shot to Comorro Station. Good place to go if you want to get away from judgmental eyes." He gave Aldur a palm smack to the shoulder. "I'll have the Sunray prepped for launch in fifteen minutes."
Hours later, while Dira slept in a spare crew bunk, Aldur found that although he was exhausted, he simply could not calm the maelstrom within his mind enough to settle down for sleep. He roamed the well-worn corridors of the Sunray as the ship rode down the knife-edge of time and space, his hooves scraping on the metal deckplates. Aldur stopped outside the open hatch of Otar's untidy quarters.
Otar might still be alive if he'd heard Aldur coming. Unfortunately for him, special earphones allowed him to listen to the audio of an incoming broadcast without blaring it for everyone else to hear. And, even more unfortunate, the old Hekayti could see quite clearly that Otar was staring at holographic images of Aldur Bokren, Dira Urtigo, and a hovercar slamming into a Toveil technopriest outside a bank in Glasne. A text crawl below the images explained: THESE SUSPECTS ARE ARMED AND MUST BE CONSIDERED EXTREMELY DANGEROUS. A hefty reward would be provided for their capture, dead or alive. Even a freighter captain with more scruples than this one would be sorely tempted by the government's offer. The Grand Moot must be pulling out all the stops, Aldur thought, sending out a general broadcast to all ships in range. The Sunray was well into the voyage to Comorro Station, but it would be easy enough for Otar to neutralize his passengers and take them back to Hekayt Prime once the ship dropped out of OtherSpace if the price was satisfactory.
The captain was just plucking the earphones out when he realized too late that Aldur was right behind him. The old Hekayti had closed the hatch, locking the door so they wouldn't be disturbed. Otar threw up his arms and said, "I don't want trouble!"
Aldur pointed at the holographic images. "I told you no questions asked. Those pictures imply questions." With answers that the old Konterbeid would just as soon remain unknown. He would have preferred to have completed this voyage without any harm coming to the captain. Under the circumstances, however, Aldur just couldn't risk letting Otar turn them over to the Grand Moot - dead or alive.
"You don't seem like murderers," Otar said, sounding desperately hopeful. "I'm sure it's all some kind of terrible mistake."
Tilting his head to the left, Aldur shook his head, replying: "She's a good person." He offered a grim smile, stepped forward, and braced his hands on either side of the captain's head. "I'm a monster, though. My son comes by it honest enough."
A tear trickled down Otar's cheek. "Please. Not like this. Please! Who will fly the Sunray for you?"
Aldur gave a quick, brutal twist, snapping the captain's neck. "I think I can manage." He dragged the body to a nearby equipment locker that laid on the deck. Aldur popped open the lid, then hefted Otar under the shoulders, pulling him up and over into the box. Then he repeated this with the legs and returned the lid to its rightful position.
He stepped out into the corridor, closed the hatch the captain's quarters, and then made his way toward the cockpit. Aldur settled into the navigator's chair, orienting himself to the controls, and finding to his great pleasure that the arrangement of gauges, dials and knobs hadn't changed significantly since the last time he helmed a starship.
When the Sunray reached Comorro Station's vicinity, the freighter dropped from the swirling blue chaos of OtherSpace and treated Aldur to a remarkable view of an organic sentient starship known as a Yaralu. The station was about six miles long, mottled in hues of brown and green. She drifted against a backdrop of the plum-colored Plosa Nebula and a scattering of stars on the edge of the Void.
He marveled at the fact that he wouldn't be seeing this grand wonder of the cosmos if he had followed through on that plan to die in the ruins of the old estate on Hekayt Prime. For all the ill that Gridan's betrayal might have brought upon Aldur, it had shaken him from the prison of despair and self-loathing. It had shown him the desire to live, to fight, and to make right where he had done wrong in the past. When he returned to Hekayt Prime for his inevitable vengeance, Aldur decided, he would not prolong the agony for Gridan. He appreciated this vista that much.
"Thank you, old friend," Aldur whispered.