A Thread of Time: Firesetter, Book 1 (13 page)

I left him there in a pool of his own
blood, but covered by my extra blanket, while resolving to inform my brother,
Ronan in the morning.  Waking him now would not bring the child back.  No
amount of prayers or atonement would absolve me of this murder.

Certain that my life was also about to
end, I stumbled down the stairs to my kitchen, whereupon I proceeded to empty
as many bottles of wine that I could find. 

“Ay!  Look at you!” the serving woman
cried, a few hours later, after discovering my drunken self upon the couch. 
“What have you done with my little love, Amyr?”

“Killed him,” I muttered, although my
words were probably too slurred to comprehend.

“Good that the child is finally up.  I
knew my soup would make him strong.  Amyr!” she called, from the bottom of the
staircase.  “Amyr, come down.  I will make for you some eggs.”

A moment later, to my great surprise, I
heard footsteps slowly treading upon each stair. 

“Let me help you, dear heart.”  The
serving woman rushed to the landing.

“No.  I’ve got it,” the boy said,
clutching the rail, as he took another step. 

Now, I rubbed my bleary eyes and tried to
focus as best as I could.  Indeed, the child was alive and no worse for wear
with neither a gunshot, nor a scratch on his body. 

Perhaps, it had been a dream.  Maybe, my
addled brain had imagined the whole event.  Clutching my aching head, I ran
upstairs to check the bullets in my gun. 

Indeed, I was down one and the barrel
smelled of lead.  In my office, faint traces of blood had dried upon the
floor. 

Returning to the kitchen where the boy was
seated at my table eating fried eggs, I studied him again and once again found
no trace of a wound.  However, he had been in my office and for what was the
question on my mind.

With spoon in the air, he turn to me and
for the first time, I saw his eyes, a kaleidoscope of color, every shade in the
spectrum of light. 

“I was searching for something,” he said,
responding to the question I had not yet come to ask. 

“What, dear heart?” the serving woman
cried, running a fond hand across his hair. 

“This.”  The boy reached into his pocket
and produced a plain metal dagger with a well-worn hilt wrapped in leather and
in need of oil.  It fit perfectly in his left hand and the way he held it
struck me as one who was accustomed to this weapon. 

“Where did you find it?” I demanded,
having never seen an ancient blade like this. 

“It was in a cupboard,” he replied. 
“Behind the paneling on the back wall.”  Then, he smiled in a patronizing way. 

Briefly, I considered whether or not to
demand he return it to me for all items in this house were certainly mine.

“It belongs to me,” he proclaimed haughtily,
responding to my unasked question, while slipping the dagger back into his
pocket.

“Would you like some more eggs, dear?” the
serving woman asked.

“Yes, Ma’am.”  The boy turned to his
plate, but not before flashing his brilliant eyes at me.

Chapter 15

Lance

I got turned down for a promotion.  After
five years as a full commander and after having completed all requirements for
the rank of captain, including the multi-species, multi-gender sensitivity
training, I applied for command of the S/S Shuttlecock. 

Granted, the Shuttlecock wasn’t exactly a
Class A Battlecruiser like my current stomping ground, the Discovery, but it
was respectable ship with a crew of nearly fifty heads.  As a supply ship, a
cruiser support vessel, it carried a small armory of laser weaponry for
defensive purposes only, with two restaurants, one bar, and a small game deck
for our entertainment. 

“A supply ship is okay,” Wen remarked,
when I was still contemplating throwing my hat in the ring. 

We were in my cabin and Wen was on the floor
with Sandy, who was beating him in a game of chess. 

How Sandy became such a prolific chess
player baffled me, as did most of the things about my daughter.  I could barely
manage a game of checkers, let alone strategically plan to capture the opposing
king fourteen moves before it happened.

“Check,” Sandy said, eating Wen’s
remaining rook with her white queen.  “A supply ship is fine, Daddy.  Would we
be in this sector or another?”

“Phooey!” Wen cried. 

“This one.”  Sitting down at my desk, I
studied the Shuttlecock’s flight plans once again.  I had been stationed in the
sector practically my entire SpaceForce career.  I would have liked to go
somewhere else, to explore another corner of the Milky Way, but this
opportunity was too good to pass up.

“Phooey,” Wen cried again, as Sandy stood
up and came to peer over my shoulder at the screen.  That old Imperial coin
swung forward and hit me in the back, reminding me how fortunate I had been.

After Sandy had seen the coin and claimed
it belonged to her, I took it to a guy in the machining department on board the
ship.  He put a ring around it so I could mount it from a chain, which she had
worn around her neck ever since.

I didn’t know why it meant so much to her,
why every time I looked at her, that ancient Emperor’s profile was hanging over
her heart.  She touched it constantly too, like a talisman or good luck charm. 
I figured if it made my teenager happy, who was I to argue?  The old Emperor
was dead, so what did I care if she loved him more than me?

Frankly, I thought the coin was my good
luck charm too, for it had led me from a pretty lousy life back in
The
Armpit
on Earth.  Now, here I was exploring the galaxy and soon to be
commanding a ship of my own.  Not to mention, I had my best friends and my amazingly
lovely young daughter by my side.  I was pretty sure my old man hadn’t any clue
that I’d reap all these benefits from his gift.  Or, maybe, he did.  Maybe, the
old guy loved me a little bit after all.

“Go for it, Daddy.”  Sandy patted my
shoulder as if she was the parent and I was the kid.  “If you want to be a
captain, you’re going to have to apply for all these postings.  Do you want to
play again, Wen?  I’ll let you be white.”

“Nope.”  Wen pulled himself to his feet
and stretched his back, rising to his full five foot four inches.  “You need to
go beat Noodnick now.  My ego is so deflated, I’m not sure I can even go to my
duty station.”

“Oh, Wen,” Sandy said with a sigh.  “Next
time, I’ll play without my queen.  Will you change ships too if Daddy gets his
own command?”

“I guess so,” Wen shrugged and headed to
the cabin door, “if I want to have any friends.  Nobody on this ship likes me
except for you two.”

“And, Nood,” I added.  “Although, who
could tell.”

In all these years of knowing Noodnick, I
had yet to hear a word escape his lips.

“His eyes are very expressive though,”
Sandy always said.  “You can look straight into his soul and see what a kind
person he is.”

Kind or not, Nood was a good crewman and
given my druthers, I’d trust him in my engineering bay over anyone else.  There
were a few others on board I would have liked to steal, but they’d need a
powerful incentive to move from a battlecruiser to a supply ship. 

As it turned out, I didn’t get the
Shuttlecock.  Politics interfered and I was passed over in favor of a
Centipedean, who would become the first SpaceForce captain with eighteen legs.

“Command believes those additional
appendages will make him more efficient at handling stock,” my commanding
officer said.  “But, keep trying, Lance.   There’s a ship out there somewhere
with your name on it.”

Right.  More likely, the eighteen-legged
dude was a better fit for the SpaceForce’s equal opportunity quotas.  At any
rate, I did try again a few more times only to be rejected over and over for some
obscure reason. 

Finally, after nearly a year of applying
for every job, I was offered the command a hospital ship on the outskirts of
the galaxy.  Sandy, like all children, was prohibited from living aboard with
me.

“Germs,” my commanding officer said.  “We
can’t risk exposing children to unknown space diseases.”

“But, it’s okay from me to contract the
Andromedean eyeball flu or the Black Eye Galaxy’s version of the sleeping
virus?” I had asked.

“Children are innocent.  You signed up for
this job, Lance.  It’s your choice, the ship or your daughter.”

“Do you want to go live with your mother
for a while?” I asked Sandy, trying to keep the emotion out of my voice. 
“She’s in command of a nice Class A battlecruiser with lots of safety shields.”

“Are you trying to get rid of me,
Father?”  Sandy was sitting cross legged on her bunk, her earbuds destroying
whatever remained of her natural hearing. 

At the age of fifteen, my daughter was
going through her Goth stage, which involved dyeing her beautiful red hair
black, except for a few purple streaks.  This made a perfect complement to her
entirely black wardrobe, her black lipstick, black eyeshadow, and thick black
brows.  The only color on her entire body, besides her brilliant green eyes and
scattering of freckles, was the ancient gold coin which she occasionally wore
around her neck.  Most of the time, it sat on her bedside table top.  Once or
twice, I caught her fingering it before swearing at it, or tossing it
haphazardly upon the floor.

 “Are you dumping me back on her the same
way she dumped me on you?”

“No!  No!” I insisted, although the
thought did cross my mind. 

This might be the perfect excuse to send
the girl to her mom.  Perhaps, female companionship and guidance was what was
missing from the child’s life, since no matter what I said or did, I was met
with disdain. 

If I said up, she said down, if I said
left, she said right, and if I dared to suggest anything contrary to her
opinion on any subject, it was met with a biting comment on my stupidity, or my
inability understand.

“It’s a stage,” Wen informed me, as if he
was an authority on teenage girls.

Noodnick nodded, which is about all the
dude ever did.

“I’m staying with you,” Sandy declared,
turning her back to me and cranking the tunes up another notch. 

I had no choice but to refuse the hospital
ship posting.  Sandy dictated my life.

“Uh huh,” Wen agreed while Noodnick nodded
his head.

“Teenagers.”  I sighed, waving my hand for
another bottle of beer. 

We were sitting in a vinyl booth in a bar
on spacebase 13-C, and I was lamenting my lack of professional advancement,
whereas both Wen and Noodnick were apparently unbothered by the lack of
theirs.  In fact, the only interest Wen had, at that moment, was the peanut
shells scattered across the floor and the snake-like thing that was crawling
through them.

“I just want my own ship,” I moaned, the
beer and my circumstances making me morose.  “I want to be called Captain.  I
want to have the final word.”

“Then, you had better quit SpaceForce,”
Wen replied.  “Buy your own ship.  Oh, look.  It turned around and now, it’s
heading back this way.”

Noodnick, without saying a word, climbed
upon the vinyl bench, one beer in his hand, the other in his mouth. 

“That’s a thought,” I thought, having
never thought of that before.  I could own a merchant trader, or a freightplane
for hire.  It wouldn’t be as honorable as defending the galaxy in a SpaceForce
uniform, but I would probably make more money and I could be my own man. 

“Now, there’s two of them,” Wen remarked,
joining Noodnick on the bench.  “Nope.  I’m wrong.  I see three, maybe, four.”

“My own plane,” I murmured.  I had a
little money saved away for Sandy’s college tuition.  Probably, there was
enough to get a decent ship, something used, a couple decades old.  I could use
the college money to buy my ship and when the time came, if I still needed to,
I could get a loan to pay for the school.  I might even get lucky and Sandy
would get accepted into the tuition-free SpaceForce Academy.  “I’d want
something that could handle at least a hundred thousand dead weight.”

“Unless we get out of here, we’re all
going to be dead weight,” Wen squeaked as something brushed against my leg,
whereupon I joined my friends on the table.

I found an advert on the galaxy wide web,
specifically on a site that catered to used spaceplanes. 

“What do you think about this one, Sandy?”
I asked, holding up my tablet with a series of freightplane pics.  It was the
right size and the right age, with cabins and bunks for half a dozen crew, and
carried enough fuel to travel half a quadrant at lower light speeds.  “It’s got
a large galley and you could have your own cabin with a private head.  There’s
a large common area on the second deck where we can hang a huge vid.  We’ve even
got room for a small tender.  That’d be cool, right Sandy?  It’d be great to
have our own ship.  I’ll name it after you.”

“Can I drive it?” Sandy grunted, narrowing
her eyes as if my presence was infringing upon her personal space, even though
I was standing in the doorway across from her bed. 

“The plane or the tender?  I think I could
probably teach you to fly the tender.  I bet that will look good on your
SpaceForce Academy application if you already have a junior pilot’s license.”

Sandy grunted again, which might have
meant that she had no intention of applying to the Academy, but because she
wanted to fly the tender, she would humor me and pretend that she might.

At any rate, I pursued the freightplane
advert, arranging to meet the ship’s owner at spacebase 41-B in two weeks,
which conveniently coincided with my SpaceForce contract’s expiration.