Stars of Charon (Legacy of the Thar'esh Book 1) (11 page)

“Yes, I
suppose I shouldn’t keep it.”

“No you
should,” responded Lee. “You killed a Draugari with your bare hands. The
Draugari may seem barbaric, but they live by a code. If you kill a Draugari,
his blade is yours.”

“My
weapon is my honor, in my defeat my honor is yours,” as I spoke the words, a
shadow of a memory passed through the forefront of my mind: I was on a ship,
and an old Draugari passed the blade into my hands. I shook my head. The
Draugari’s memories in my head were difficult to manage and control.

“That was
unsettling,” Ju-lin commented with a low breath.

Lee
didn’t disagree. Honestly, neither did I.

“So, back
to the question at hand.” Lee said. “You said that the Draugari were protecting
something.”

“Yes, I
know they were.” I answered. “But I don’t know what.”

“If they were,
then they’ll be back.”

“Possibly,”
I answered.

“And the
Celestrials,” he continued. “We still don’t know why they were here. If they
intercepted Growd’s coms, there is no telling what piqued their interest. Maybe
it was the message about whatever he thought he found, but maybe it was the
colony itself.  This system may have some strategic importance we don’t
understand. Rare minerals, undiscovered flux points, something we don’t know
about.”

“But then
what about the Draugari?” Ju-lin asked.

“It’s
hard to say,” Lee answered. “Eli says he doesn’t think that they themselves
knew what they were protecting. It could be they were a just a simple patrol
watching the flux point. They picked up the incoming Celestrials on the scan
and got lucky. From my experience, Draugari tactics are straightforward: fight
when you have the advantage, run when you do not. The Draugari had the Carrack
which gave them the upper hand in the fight, so they attacked.”

“Makes
sense,” Ju-lin said. “So the real question is, what were the Celestrials
doing?”

“Whatever
it was, they may be back,” Lee said. “We need to know when and why.
And
we need to be ready to defend ourselves.”

“I wonder
if Growd knows,” Ju-lin asked.

“I wonder
if Growd survived the attack,” Lee said. “There were casualties in New Haven,
the wave he sent said that at least half of their structures were hit. We were
loading up the skiffs to go help them recover when I checked the weather
satellite footage to see if I could find you. I saw where the Carrack had
landed, and figured out that they had taken or killed you two. Then I caught
the damaged Carrack on long-range scans, so I took the shuttle up to go after
it.”

“I’m glad
you did,” she said. “Thanks Dad.”

“Don’t
thank me yet,” he said. “We’re on the wrong side of the world, and unless we
can salvage some coms equipment from the wreck, we may be here for a while.”

“I think
the first thing we need is to see if we can find a med kit,” I said. “That
shoulder looks bad.”

“Bah,” he
grunted gruffly. “I’m fine. Look for coms equipment. If you happen to see a
first aid kit, bring it on over, but don’t go out of your way.”

Ju-lin
pulled herself up and was dusting herself off when she paused and turned,
looking behind us

“A ship,”
she said as she scanned the sky, zeroing in on a silver spec in the distance.
“There, heading toward us.”

We
watched as the ship descended and made a broad loop around our position.

“A
Scotsman,” Lee commented, shielding his eyes from the sun.

“More
Draugari?” I asked. Aside from the knife on my belt, the rest of the weapons
were buried somewhere in the wreckage.

“I don’t
think so,” Ju-lin answered. “Scotsman’s are human ships, tough, but old, not
too many of them flying anymore. But this one’s hull looks clean and intact,
and it’s approaching cautiously. If it were Draugari they would attack us
straight away.”

“The only
thing more cold blooded than a Celestrial, and more desperate than a Draugari,”
Lee commented with distain. “Scavengers come to pick the bones of the dead.”

Stranded,
and wounded, we had no choice but wait for the ship to land.

The
Scotsman, as they explained, was a cheap, but effective Earthborn-designed and
built merchant and fighting ship commonly used by traders, scavengers, and
ill-equipped pirates. When docked side-by-side, the Scotsman is narrower and
more slender than the Carrack. The Carrack’s broad three-seat cockpit with a
top-mounted turret, reminiscent of a cobra’s head, and a stout body with four
exterior-mounted engines make it look imposing and dominant. Meanwhile, the Scotsman
has a rounded, narrow cockpit, and its two main thrusters are tucked tightly
against the rear of the fuselage, creating a much tighter and compact
aesthetic. From that first day I saw the Scotsman land next to the hulk of the
Carrack’s wreck, I liked the look of it. However, that’s not to say that I was
drawn to this, specific Scotsman.

The ship
set down softly on her landing skids about forty meters from the edge of what
was left of the Carrack. As the dust settled and the maneuvering thrusters powered
down, we could clearly see a painting on the bow of the ship like a figurehead:
a large and excessively voluptuous blue-eyed human woman with a slight, clever,
smile and a mess of long, wild orange hair that swirled around her ample body,
providing the barest coverage to the woman’s most intimate areas.

Written
beneath the woman was the ship’s designation:
Tons-o-Fun
.

“You’ve
got
be kidding me,” Ju-lin shook her head in disgust.

Lee
pulled himself to his feet to stand between us.

The hatch
opened and loading plank extended. The pilot looked Earthborn, shorter than me,
but not by much. He was so square at the shoulders and hips that he looked like
he could have been carved from a brick. He a pair of goggles pulled up over his
forehead, and two pistols on his belt.

“What a
pleasure,” he made a grand sweeping motion with his hand. “It seems
congratulations are in order.
That
has to be the worst landing I have
ever witnessed. I mean really, you
do
know that the Carrack has landing
skids and is supposed to land on its
side
, not its ass-end down? Well,
let me back-up, that
was
a Carrack, right?”

“Who the
hell do you think-” Ju-lin’s face burned red.

“Lin,”
Lee put his hand on her shoulder, pulling her back.

“Tsk,
tsk. A shame. The Carrack is such a proud vessel, fearsome even,” he continued.
“Not much left of this one, not much left of
value
anyway.”

“Yet you
saw enough profit in it to land,” Lee responded.

“Well
yes, of course,” the pilot responded, absently running his hand through his
thinning black hair. “I’m a good citizen after all. Well, not an
upstanding
citizen, but you take my meaning I’ll expect. I’m not a big fan of Government
and rules and the like, but then I’d wager you all aren’t either, being out
here in the middle of nowhere on an empty rock. What I am is neighborly. You’re
lucky I happened to catch you on my scanners.”

“This
isn’t an empty rock,” Lee responded gruffly, “and you didn’t just happen by.”

“Well now
Gramps,” the pilot stopped, leaning back on his heels with wide, innocent, grey
eyes. “I do not believe I take your meaning.”

“You
caught a scan on the Celestrial ships a few systems back, and then saw the
Draugari in pursuit.” Lee responded. “You figured there would be a firefight
and decided to follow at a safe distance and pick apart what was left once the
dust settles.”

“Well,
that too,” the pilot smiled easily. “I’m a curious man. If I see a curious
thing, I am inclined to take a look. And I will say, you three walking away
from
that
after being in the middle of a firefight between three high
end Celestrial fighters followed by a shipboard brawl with gang of Draugari is
one hell of a curiosity.”

“Where
did you pick up the signal?” Lee asked.

“Pardon?”
The pilot responded.

“The
Celestrials,” Lee continued. “Where were you when you caught their signal, and
what was their most likely point of origin?”

“Woah
now!” the pilot held up his hand. “We’ve moved from greetings to negotiations
already! Slow down Gramps, we’re just getting warmed up here. I’ll tell you
what I know, but nothing in the verse is free my friends.”

“We ain’t
your friends,” Ju-lin sneered.

“Ah, now
Twiggy, that’s just because you haven’t gotten to know me,” the pilot waved
Ju-lin off as he surveyed the three of us. “See now, we haven’t even had proper
introductions. I’m generally called Loid Burns. You are, let’s see, Gramps,
Twiggy, and—oh my—half-covered in purple Draugari blood with a new blade on
your belt—I’ll just call you
sir
I think.”

“Twiggy?!”
Ju-lin seethed. “Dad, we don’t have to put up with this, we can just take his
damn ship and—”

Loid drew
his gun and had it primed steadily at Ju-lin’s face before she finished the
sentence.

“Now
that’s not a neighborly way to talk,” Loid’s smile was gone.

“Enough,”
Lee tensed. “Lin, back off. You, Loid, put that thing away.”

Loid
considered for a second, and slipped the pistol back into its holster.

“See,
much more neighborly.” Loid smiled once again.

“I’m Lee
McCullough, that’s my daughter Ju-lin, and the other is Elicio.” Lee said. “I’m
the Governor of the Downs.”

“McCullough?”
Loid interrupted. “Like the whiskey?”

Lee
paused a second, “My grandfather owned a distillery back out on Pentos. It
burnt down back when I was just a kid and he never rebuilt.”

“A shame
he didn’t,” Loid laughed softly to himself. “Sorry, go on.”

“The
Downs is one of the colonies on the far side of this world. I’m sure that you,
being the good neighbor that you are, saw the Celestrials bombing one of our
colonies last night. Eli and Ju-lin were off visiting the other colony when the
attack hit, and the Draugari captured them in the Carrack. So we overtook it
and killed them.” Lee finished.

“And a
marvel you’ve done with it,” Loid nodded back at the wreck. “Remind me never to
let you three do any of my valet parking.”

“Pompous
bastard,” Ju-lin blurted. “He watches innocent people die and then he mocks
us—”

“Look,”
Loid stopped her, his tone turned from jesting to earnest. “There was nothing I
could do about the colony. Lee here was right, I was doing some surveying and
picked up the Celestrials the next system over, and then saw the Draugari
coming in behind. I kept my distance. I was halfway across the system when the
bombing started. Even if I was closer in, my odds alone against three
Celestrial fighters would have been slim, and against the Draugari with that
Carrack even worse.”

Lee
considered him a moment. “That’s true enough.”

“And
about the Carrack,” he continued with a flash of his smile returning. “Well you
can’t argue that it has seen better days. But I will say, I hadn’t expected to
see anyone crawling out of that wreck. The inverted burn was a nice touch. I’ll
have to remember that one.”

“Thank
you,” Ju-lin said haughtily.

“You’re
the pilot then? So you’re the anxious young woman eager to prove herself to the
verse.” He raised his eyebrow. “You, Gramps-er-Lee, is the Governor of a tribe
of outcasts on this little spinning marble, gruff, ex-military, running from
civilization. All that fits, and then you, Elicio? Odd name. The evidence
suggests that you killed one of those Draugari with your bare hands, that’s
quite the thing now isn’t it. What’s your story?”

I wiped
my hand against my pants absently as I fumbled with something to say.

“He’s the
muscle,” Lee responded for me.

Loid
looked over my thin frame with a half-raised eyebrow, “Indeed.”

“The
Carrack is yours,” Lee said. “With conditions.”

“Well
there isn’t much left of her,” Loid shook his head slowly. “What are your
conditions?”

“You
allow me to use your coms to contact the colony and get a skiff out here to
pick me up,” Lee responded. “And some food and water would be good.”

“Easy
enough so far. I’ll even throw in some bandages for that shoulder and let you
use the shower rigged over on
Tons’
port side for you all to clean up,
you all need it.” He added looking at me, “Especially you, you reek of
Draugari.”

Lee
nodded.

“You said
a skiff to pick
you
up,” Ju-lin broke in. “What about
us
?”

“And safe
passage for these two,” Lee kept his focus on Loid. “You will help them
backtrack that attack group to Celestrial space and find some answers.”

“You want
us to go with
him
?” Ju-lin was incredulous.

Lee
ignored her, keeping his focus on Loid.