Death Kingby Danielle L. Parker |
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| Chapter 11 |
Jim Blunt, Captain of the starship Pig’s Eye, earns a living the hard way at the raw edge of human space. Caught between Earth’s long arm and the unwelcome attentions of humanity’s alien rivals, the Asp, the captain sometimes finds himself in more trouble than even an outlaw trader can handle.
The man woke from a fitful sleep with a start. The chilly metal cage he had inhabited for three endless, anxious days no longer vibrated with its passage through FTL space-time.
Blunt banged his fist uselessly against the metal facing him and cursed as he listened intently. The ship was in normal space once more and decelerating sharply.
His mysterious journey was over and so far he was still alive.
Deceleration ceased. A fairly smooth landing following. Light gravity enfolded his limbs. Blunt unstrapped his long body and stood up, rubbing his unshaven chin. There had been soap in the tiny lavatory, but no razors.
After perhaps half an hour, he heard loud clanging, jars and bumps on the outside hull. He listened to the hiss of the cycling airlock. A face, anonymous behind a protective black faceplate, thrust around the corner. A gun was in an armored fist.
“No need for that,” Blunt protested, raising his hands promptly. “I’m not carrying!”
They frisked him thoroughly anyway. Discovery of what he wore on a chain around his neck caused mute but visible consternation. The man whose armored grip pulled forth the claw pendant jumped back as if stung.
Blunt grinned. “Don’t worry,” he said. “My partner just sent his calling card.”
They left the golden claw alone. No one wanted to handle it, even with armored gloves. A tiny bead of venom had dried on the razor tip.
His captors went through his kit bag with the same care. The bottle inside puzzled them. A black glove held the vessel aloft, shook it, and peered suspiciously at the murky liquid within.
“Hey, don’t break that! That’s pure Aspian rzilovath, prime vintage! I brought it for your boss. He won’t be pleased if you bust it!”
Perhaps they could not hear him through the helmets. But the bottle went back into the bag unbroken, at least. The metal-skinned monster holding the bag backed away; a jerk of a gun muzzle gave clear direction. Blunt sidled obediently forth and emerged, blinking, into an unexpectedly vast, brilliantly lit space.
His first thought was that he was aboard a giant space station. But past the huge view port, as he turned his head, Blunt glimpsed ancient gray rocks half-submerged in powdery dust. This great space, lit high above with blinding radiance, was the hollowed heart of some dead moon or small planet.
Everywhere he heard a buzzing hum, a veritable swarm of bee-like activity. Ships small and great stood in endless ranks like trees in a primeval forest. Automated loaders or drivers aboard smaller manual forklifts stuffed gaping maws with crate after crate of packaged pink ampoules, and rushed away for more.
“Walk,” his nearest guard commanded, through a crackling speaker in the chest of his battle armor.
Blunt walked.
He walked for miles through the kingdom of death. Beyond the spaceport he and his three companions traversed a high catwalk. Over its rail, in the plunging depths, Blunt glimpsed enormous vats, gleaming sterile steel tubing, and the softly flickering lights of tall biochemical controllers standing among incomprehensible machinery like meditating priests. He heard hissing, and bubbling, and the rhythmic pulse of pumps. He drank air haunted with unfamiliar scents that made his head swim.
On they walked, he and his two dark companions, whose black faceplates confronted him, when he looked, with the reflection of his own wearied, wary visage.
Then an elevator; more strange machinery rushed by as the glass cage sank swiftly through many levels. The brilliant light fell behind, and blue duskiness invaded their small space. The cage ground to a halt. The door opened with a pneumatic hiss.
A gun muzzle motioned him forth. They tossed his small kit bag hastily after. Then the cage sped upward immediately, with his guards inside, and Blunt was alone.
He was in a garden with over-arching trees, and there was the smell of snake nearby.
As Blunt bent to pick up his kit, a large beetle crawled across the toe of his boot, carrying a dying moth in its jaws. As he straightened, Blunt crushed both insects under his heel.
“What do you think of my arboretum?”
Blunt turned swiftly. The man was tall and elegant in a wine smoking jacket and fine wool trousers. His sleek silver hair fell over a high noble brow. The man’s expression was affable. If there were sometimes red sparks in the back of his deep-set eyes, under the shadow of his winged brows, perhaps it was only the reflection of the discreet lighting, or Blunt’s imagination.
“I don’t like the bugs.”
“Captain.” His host shook his head. “You are a highly educated man, and an intelligent one. This uncouth ruffian act grows tiresome. May we not converse as civilized men, just this once?”
“Civilized?” the captain said. “I’m from Tennessee. And you’re from... where?”
The Death King shrugged. “I don’t look back. Take the same advice, Captain.” For a moment the dark eyes wandered Blunt’s face. “I told you not to come alone, did I not?”
Blunt touched the gleaming claw around his neck. “My patron sends his compliments. I’m authorized to do the deal by this badge. That’s all you need to know.”
Thanatos smiled. “He is the Prince of Serpents. I honor that. But I am the King, and even he will understand that, one day. Come. Let us walk. There is a glade where we may sit and talk, farther on.”
He took Blunt’s unresisting arm in a confiding manner as they strolled down the gravel pathway.
“You humans are pitifully corruptible. You have a long history of recreational drug use. Not so the aliens you serve, Captain! But I have created the most addictive substance in existence. Your Prince scorns my art. He should not. There are other possibilities, once our common foe crawls at our feet. No mind, human or other, can resist my dust!”
“I’m counting on it,” said Blunt.
They came to a pleasant setting of table and chairs beneath an arching willow. Thanatos gestured Blunt to a seat and took the one opposite to him. He crossed his long legs, and steepled his fingers under his chin.
“Sit. Let us speak of particulars then. The border has been an unfortunate barrier. It would be useful to send ships safely through Aspian space, out of the reach of Earth patrols. I need agreed-upon routes. I need secure drop points, and protection from thieves of all kinds. Let us concentrate on our common goal: the ruin of humanity!”
“We’ve got routes worked out for you.”
“I will send for star maps so you may show me. Would you care for refreshment while we wait? Wine or bourbon is your drink, is it not?”
“I wouldn’t mind,” Blunt replied, leaning back relaxed in the chair. The trees over his head sighed gently in an artificial wind. “Brought some tipple myself, courtesy of my patron. Prime rzilovath. I’ve started to like the stuff, even if it tastes like horse piss.”
“I am aware of the Aspian custom of ceremonial drinks.” The Death King murmured into a tiny device strapped at his wrist. “The maps will be here soon. Now, to your patron’s cut. Five percent, perhaps, of any shipments through Aspian space?”
“You’re kidding me.” Blunt opened his bag and pulled out the bottle of rzilovath. He set two squat glasses beside it. “He wants twenty percent, and the right to board and verify the value of the cargo on demand.”
“Twenty! All the work, all the risk, all the costs are mine. I had not thought to find your patron such a robber!”
“It’s a reasonable deal,” Blunt said, pouring from the bottle. “You’ve already had three ships destroyed by Earth military patrols. One by Aspian, too. The pressure could get worse, you know. What’s the value of a full cargo if you lose it?”
“Eight, then! Not a half-percentage more!”
“Eleven, and it’s a deal.”
“Ten!”
“Deal,” said Blunt. “I’ll drink to that if you will.”
The Death King picked up a glass. “Deal.”
“Bottoms up!” Blunt picked up the remaining glass and tossed off its contents.
The Death King, following his example, suddenly clutched the edge of the table. His glass dropped from lax fingers. Blunt grinned.
“Poison,” the Death King gasped. “Poison! They were to check for poison. Fools!”
“It’s not poison.” Blunt’s face flushed, and his big hand clutched the edge of the table. He was breathing hard. His big frame shuddered. “It’s your own brew. I put enough dust in that rzilovath to stun a bull. Do you like it, Thanatos? Do you like it?”
But the Death King did not answer. Or perhaps Blunt could not hear: for the alien ecstasy was on them both now. Blunt bowed over the table. The three-inch thick wood he gripped splintered in his fist. His body shook and trembled. He groaned. He flung back his head, panting. The table juddered to the violence of his quaking.
Behind his squeezed lids, he reached the ten thousand piercing climaxes of an ecstasy a man should never know, and burst like an exploding star in its aftermath.
He opened his eyes. How gray the world became in a mere instant! He had never guessed how hollow would be this victory, or how it would move restlessly in his mind, already and always craving that terrible heaven that would destroy him.
The half-empty bottle sat between them. Blunt lifted his eyes with effort. The almost-man (for the Death King seemed strangely soft now, as if the will that maintained its human aspect slipped) gazed, too, upon that half-emptied bottle.
“Take it,” Blunt gasped, and his lips stretched in a hideous rictus that might have been a grin. The table shook in his grip. “Take it!”
The thing that had been a man (for less and less did it resemble one) stretched forth its arms and in the newly suckered grip of its paddle-shaped hands, took up the bottle, and drank. It oozed, when it had drunk all there was left to drink, beneath the table, where it heaved like a puddle of restless gelatin.
Blunt rose to his feet. A fast twitch throbbed at the edge of his eye, and still that terrible stretch of lips, which might have been a grin. He looked down. All the shapeless mess at his feet had left was a mouth, and this cried to him, with a hunger that could never be satisfied.
“Goodbye, Thanatos.”
He bent and fished the Death King’s communicator out of the ooze.
“This is Thanatos,” he said into the instrument’s tiny ear. “Cancel that order for star maps. I want my ship made ready. My guest is leaving on it. Now, do you hear me? On the double!”
He looked down, and shuddered. “I’d have drunk that bottle too, Thanatos,” he whispered. “I’d have killed for it. Except for that little girl.”
Copyright © 2010 by Danielle L. Parker
