Deadshepherd (Tales of the Final Fall of Man Anthology Book 1) Read online

  “Opening full communication protocol,” the communications officer, a Molran by the name of Stana Harocom – damn it, or was he Stana Pae Segunda, Drago kept getting them mixed up, not because they looked alike but because they were both comms officers named Stana – tapped at his console and gave the XO a nod. “It’s a non-standard channel, but not an uncommon one for non-Corps vessels.”

  “Put us through, Mister Segunda,” W’Tan said. Barducci hid his grimace by looking back down at his console.

  Let’s see if the Captain of the Black Honey Wings is as ugly as his ship, he thought.

  He very nearly laughed aloud as the bridge of the Black Honey Wings appeared across his console’s monitors.

  II

  The Captain of the Black Honey Wings was a Noro Metak. He – you could tell it was a male from the sweep of the horns, and the huge mounds of muscle across the tops of the shoulders – was probably slightly shorter than a Molran, although it was hard to tell given the lack of visual cues for comparison around the figure. Seven feet, give or take. But the brutish-looking Captain was easily the match of a Bonshoon in terms of sheer mass. Muscle and fat were layered over a heavy bone structure, all of it wrapped in a thick hide and covered with short, stiff hair in wide patches of brown and grey. His blocky blend of uniform and armour did nothing to help with his overall enormity.

  Barducci had often heard his more dimensionally-challenged human shipmates complaining about whatever had been in the water back on Earth that had so stunted the human race, when most of the advanced species they ran into out here stood head and shoulders taller than them. Drago wasn’t all that upset by the phenomenon, but then he had the luxury of being a little on the large side himself. He was certainly taller than this big boy, although the Noro probably had a hundred pounds over him in weight.

  He’d also never fallen into the trap of assuming a creature was stupid just because it was big. He liked to think he was living proof of that.

  Still, the Noro was a giant, broad-faced, long-horned monster of a fellow. Hilariously appropriate, indeed, for a ship as ugly as the Black Honey Wings.

  “I am Captain Nak Dool of Black Honey Wings,” the Noro said in a voice as huge as his great heavy head. “You are AstroCorps modular, without official registry. You are Molran.”

  These were simple declarative statements, almost accusations. Drago still didn’t take Dool for a brute. The Noro Metak had a different communication culture to the Six Species standard, but at least the few who mingled with the ‘aliens’ went to the trouble of learning a common language or two. Allowances had to be made and at least the comms guys wouldn’t need to run translation. Besides, Dool’s opening phrases had the ring of formula to them.

  “I am Commander Choya Alapitarius W’Tan, Executive Officer of AstroCorps Transpersion Modular Payload 400,” W’Tan said calmly. She would be the only figure the Noro Metak could currently see on his feed, just as he was the only figure they could see. “We offer you greetings.”

  “Why am I talking to you? I am Captain,” Nak Dool’s voice rose slightly.

  “No insult intended,” W’Tan said calmly. “The Captain is currently indisposed, but I am qualified and authorised to conduct–”

  “If I wanted to talk to grodl, I’d talk to my science man,” Dool said, pointing a thick thumb over his shoulder. He turned and looked that way himself, then swung his massive head back with a bark of amusement. “I pissed science man off,” he went on. “Why are you trying to piss me off, Executive Officer Choya?”

  “Perhaps if you didn’t want to talk to a grodl, you shouldn’t have parked next to us and activated your suppressor,” W’Tan said. “I am unaware of any rendezvous arrangements between our vessels. What can we help you with?”

  “Why am I still talking to you?” Dool roared.

  “I believe there is a button on your console that will end communications,” the Commander said. “Or perhaps you can ask your science man. He sounds intelligent, considering.”

  “Considering what?”

  “I was under the impression that the Noro Metak goodwill ambassador program proscribed you from taking command positions on crewed starships of a capacity greater than–”

  “We have gone off-script!” the Noro thundered. “Do you have a problem with that?”

  “Not one I consider worth escalating to AstroCorps high command,” W’Tan said. “Although I will thank you not to interrupt me or raise your voice.”

  “Will you, by fuck?”

  W’Tan glanced, all but imperceptibly, at Barducci. This was not, as the uninitiated might have assumed, a sign of weakness or faltering. That glance was Choya Alapitarius W’Tan’s equivalent of a hearty shared guffaw. It was as close as she ever came to bonding with the crew.

  “We’ve severed comms, Commander,” Segunda reported from the comms station. “The Black Honey Wings is hailing us again.”

  “Are they, by fuck,” W’Tan replied.

  “What’s a grodl?” Barducci asked.

  “I believe it is a derogatory Noro term for somebody who bathes more than once a month,” W’Tan said calmly.

  Drago chuckled. “It looks like they want to talk the talk,” he said. “Suggest I take on comms and see if we can make any progress. These buccaneers are romantic types, and this one seems to have a bug under his tail.”

  The Commander nodded curtly. “I’d relinquish the seat to you, Chief Tactical, but my admittedly minimal experiences with the Noro Metak tell me that would be seen as a calculated insult – replacing the person at this station with anyone of a lower rank could only be an intentional misinterpretation of Nak Dool’s wishes.”

  Drago nodded. He hadn’t had that many encounters with the Noro Metak either, although he – and about half of their ship’s current crew, for that matter – had been members of the initial contact group a few years back, on board the Lonesome Rider. Drago had long suspected that a lot of their current crew had made the cut because of their previous work together.

  Since that initial contact, the Noros had withdrawn into their own system to continue existing as peacefully as possible in an apparently highly dangerous galaxy, sending out only the small ‘goodwill ambassador’ teams to interact with the Six Species. The Noro Metak buccaneers were usually pretty wild. It seemed to take a special kind of Noro to want to travel the stars.

  Of course, buccaneer in the context of the Noro Metak goodwill ambassadorial exchange did not necessarily mean pirate, although they did have a bit of a reputation for interstellar roughhousing. And in this specific case, the inestimable Captain Dool had gone self-confessedly off-script. Generally speaking, however, the Noros fell somewhere under the ‘Blaran’ cultural umbrella, especially as regarded the holding of officer positions and interaction with AstroCorps. It was just another example of semi-insulting Molran attitudes towards ‘lesser aliens’ and ‘criminal subclasses’ affecting Six Species policy …

  “They’ll get insulted if they’re going to get insulted anyway, Commander,” Drago said to W’Tan. “It doesn’t matter if I’m sitting there or here at my peon panel,” he almost grinned at the way the Commander’s nostril-slits pinched up at that expression, “or in the big chair. Anyway, if I sit in the Captain’s seat I’m going to adjust the seat-back, and he said he’d court-martial me if I did that again,” he nodded to Segunda. “Put us back on, centre it on me.”

  “I shall reiterate my urgent recommendation that the Captain deign to make a personal appearance on board his own ship in the meantime,” W’Tan said.

  “Good idea,” Drago said, then smiled broadly at the huge, glaring face of Captain Dool. “Hello,” he said.

  “You are still not Captain!”

  So, do you know who the Captain is, Barducci mused, or do you just know the uniform? Either way, interesting. “I’m Chief Tactical Officer Drago Barducci,” he said. “You’ll be talking with me until further notice. Now tell me why you’ve parked alongside us and laid a suppressor field over our sh
ip.”

  “We didn’t want you to run,” Dool roared. “Are you feeble-minded?”

  “Probably,” Drago said. “For example, why would we run away from you?”

  “Your vessel is unregistered and running on manufacturer’s tags,” the Noro said, his voice descending to a mere heated rumble. “We are private contractors in pursuit of stolen AstroCorps modular. Out of Aquilar. Our suspects also wanted for questioning about jailbreak of highly-classified prisoner of throne.”

  Drago nodded to himself as Dool’s eloquence emerged. As he’d suspected – formulaic intimidation. “AstroCorps doesn’t contract out this sort of pursuit,” he said, “which means you have no authority to detain a starship on official AstroCorps assignment. You also don’t have throne autonomy, because if you did, you wouldn’t be hiding behind this ‘highly-classified’ bonsh. You have no idea who got busted out of jail, which means you’re just fishing for a citizen’s arrest and some sort of private bounty. Which – again – is illegal when you do it to an AstroCorps ship, whether you’re a private contractor or the Halfmoon’s own flagship. And,” he coughed, “you’re not the Halfmoon’s flagship.”

  “And if you have official AstroCorps business in your unregistered starship,” Dool’s voice once again began to rise, “you can give us evidence of official business!”

  “Of course we can,” Drago said, matching the Noro’s rage with his own soothing composure. It wasn’t an approach guaranteed to have a calming effect – on the contrary, in fact. “We’re aware of our low-profile designation and our lack of proper tagging. And we’re well aware that this mode of operation puts us squarely in the suspicion zone for missing and stolen starships. This isn’t our first rodeo, although it is the first time we’ve met anyone looking for a ship all the way from the Big A – and with an escaped convict, to boot. How exciting.”

  “What is rodeo?”

  Drago took a moment to relish the sight of the furious, broad-snouted bovinid with his impressive sweep of horns. “Maybe that can wait,” he said, then went on briskly. “Of course, as soon as we provide our AstroCorps authorisation and mission tags, this will cease to be a simple misunderstanding and your activation of a relative field suppressor around our modular will become an act of war against AstroCorps. Are you prepared for that, Captain Dool?”

  “Of course I am prepared! And when you prove ship is not stolen, suppressor is switched off!”

  Barducci glanced across as the main door to the bridge opened, and suppressed a sigh of relief. Come to think of it, he wasn’t entirely sure whether it was a sigh of relief or a sigh of exasperation. He couldn’t remember, in fact, the last time he’d been sure of that.

  “Captain on the bridge,” he announced.

  III

  Çrom Skelliglyph strolled onto the bridge as they once again ended communication with the furious – or pretending-very-convincingly-to-be-furious – Captain Dool. The Captain of the informally-nicknamed A-Mod 400 was crisp-uniformed and bright-eyed, and at least wasn’t holding a cocktail in his hand like he had been last time they’d had a ship-to-ship contact situation.

  “Captain,” W’Tan said, rising to her feet and looking down on the smiling, youthful human. “I trust that if we are about to take part in a diplomatic incident, all the relevant information will be forthcoming before I have to write my report.”

  “If we’re all sitting around and writing reports once this is all over, it won’t have been much of a diplomatic incident,” the Captain said, “will it?” he dropped into the command chair and glanced up at the towering Molran.

  “Official protocol requires the Captain to come to the bridge immediately at the onset of potentially hostile situations,” W’Tan said, “and since we were not informed of an anticipated rendezvous here, this seemed to meet those criteria.”

  “You were doing fine,” Skell told his tight-nostrilled XO. “Besides, you joined this crew on the understanding that you’d be getting more hands-on command experience to add to your recent dossier of Corps credentials.”

  “In this specific case, a mere Commander addressing a Captain was sufficient to cause at the very least a fabricated pretext for offense,” W’Tan said, “which might have been avoided had we known there was a Noro Metak buccaneer on board.”

  “Heck, if I’d known there was a Noro on board I would have taken a shuttle over there,” Skell replied. “They always have the most fantastically-stocked kitchens.”

  “The Black Honey Wings is hailing us again,” Segunda announced.

  “And their Godfire guns are touching black,” Barducci added, watching his external close-ups as a row of four ports along the starship’s spindly arm opened to admit the rounded snouts of her mini-whorl cannons.

  “Fine, put him back on,” Skell sighed, tapping at his console distractedly. He looked up as the Noro’s great grey-brown mottled face reappeared. “Howi,” he greeted his fellow Captain.

  Oh boy, Drago thought, readying his usual assortment of battle command shortcuts. Here we go.

  “You are Captain?” Dool demanded.

  “That’s right.”

  “You see this, Captain?” the huge Noro snarled, lifting a necklace out of his armour between a pair of thick, gnarled fingers. He rattled the little white squares strung along it. “This is made of human teeth.”

  Skell leaned forward for a closer look at his monitor. “Really? If they’re human teeth, you must be about four feet tall and sitting really close to the video transmitter,” he settled back again. “No, from the size and shape of them, I’d say some huckster sold you a necklace of Foggle tiles at a second-rate Chrysanthemum bazaar.”

  Dool rumbled heavily. “That did not happen,” he declared.

  “Don’t feel bad,” Skelliglyph said. “I bought a pendant at a bazaar once. Would you believe, the guy who sold it to me swore it was a Bharriom crystal? It was meant to be the real deal, you know – talks to you comfortingly on your dying day, glows white in the presence of Gods, all of it,” he chuckled. “Damn thing scared the piss out of me when it talked. Did it every other day, piece of junk,” he was now addressing one of the tactical stations as he related the anecdote, ignoring Captain Dool to maximum offensiveness. “Turned out it had a computer system inside, which was meant to kick in and talk in certain situations, and even turn white occasionally, but this one was faulty. I ended up having to throw it away.”

  “Are you trying to make me angry?” Dool demanded.

  “No … oh, okay,” Çrom admitted with a twinkle, “I didn’t really throw it away. I gave it to my friend Domino as a present.”

  Dool glared down at the necklace with his tiny red eyes, then dropped it back into the wide neck of his uniform and shifted back to an angry bellow. “Your crew lack diplomacy!”

  “Aw,” Skell said with wide-eyed sincerity. “You gonna cry?”

  “I – what did you say?”

  “Don’t shit in my lap and tell me it’s a napkin,” Skell snapped. “I was listening to our recent conversations and if you’re even remotely offended by any of it, then you ought to put a bag on your nose.”

  Put a bag…? Drago marvelled as Captain Dool spluttered impotently. Barducci glanced across at W’Tan. The Commander had taken her usual station, and she returned his look with one of distinct not-a-God-damn-clue-ness. Where does he even get these insults from? Drago wondered, turning back to study the screen where Dool was visibly swelling. And how do they always work?

  “I was not offended!” Dool roared. “It would take more than a grodl and an odlakka to offend me! But I demand respect!”

  Odlakka, at least, was a Noro word Barducci was familiar with. It had been one of the first words they had learned, actually, from what had appeared to be the most widely-spoken Noro language. It meant long monkey. The Noros had been as amused to learn humans were descended from apes as the humans had been to discover the Noro Metak had evolved from some type of extra-terrestrial bovidae.

  “And you thought flashi
ng your scary necklace of Foggle tiles was the best way to get that respect?” Skell said, looking sympathetic again.

  “Stop saying they are Foggle tiles!”

  “Respect is earned, Captain Dool,” Skell said. “I gather you are unwilling to release your suppressor-lock on us before we establish our AstroCorps mandate. Even if that means risking all sorts of unpleasantness.”

  “There will be no unpleasantness unless you start it,” Dool growled in some semblance of a conciliatory tone, and ignoring the arguable counterpoint that beaching them in a suppressor field was plenty unpleasant. “If your info checks out, we part with respect and we shall each continue our missions.”

  Çrom, meanwhile, had idly tapped out a message and swept it discreetly across to Barducci’s station, all under the guise of being insultingly inattentive to the Noro Metak Captain.

  - - - How hard can they hit us with those guns before we take them down? - - -

  Barducci blinked at the message before tapping a reply. - - - Are you serious? Our mini-whorls aren’t even pointing at them. They could take us apart before we got ourselves turned around. - - -

  “How about you release us from your illegal suppressor,” Çrom was saying, “and then we’ll transmit our identity and mission profile?”

  “You will run.”

  “You think we can activate our relative drive – this close to your ship – before you can reactivate your suppressor? Captain, I appreciate the compliment, but we’re not that slick.”

  - - - What about with the light ordnance? - - - Çrom’s next message flashed.

  Drago shook his head. - - - All that would achieve would be that it’d get that big bastard over there legitimately pissed at us. - - -

  “Nothing is guaranteed, between the stars,” Dool replied. “You may have tricks.”

  “Oh, we most assuredly have tricks, Captain Dool. But what if I give you my word that we will not run – that we will give you the information you require freely, when we are no longer being coerced? AstroCorps Captains don’t respond well to intimidation. It is a matter of policy.”