Second Contact (Okal Rel Saga #1)

Chapter 16.1 - Liege Monitum in Killing Reach

Di Mon encountered pirates halfway across Killing Reach. They swarmed out of a battlewheel positioned near the only passage through a debris field two hundred years old, leaving Di Mon the choice of retreating or taking them on.

The attacking hand of ships arrayed themselves in a flower formation, waiting for a signal from their leader.

Di Mon dropped speed to give them more time to consider. He was not escorting freight and hoped they might disperse when they realized he was alone. But they didn't.

Fine, Di Mon thought, and sprang for the hand leader, sending a flanking ship reeling.

Instinct brought him into wake-lock, their ships merging envelopes as pilots vied for dominance. The pirate was a woman, and Vrellish enough to respond with greed at the prospect of capturing a highborn male. Fear of his prowess came second. She was space drunk and hunting for thrills.

The foulness of her soul-touch made Di Mon exalt as her grip weakened, but his fierce joy was followed by black fear as their fading connection threatened to reveal more than he wished anyone to know about him.

He reached for Darren's soul to give him courage, one of the Watching Dead his mind did not believe in but his heart could not reject in its need, and the pirate was no longer with him.

The leaderless formation broke and Di Mon sprang ahead, hoping the beaten path he knew had not become fouled by mindless pirates.

As he sped on, risking death, he felt the echo of Darren's soul mocking him. Darren believed such things proved the soul's existence, while Di Mon argued in vain about the hints in Lorel math of spatial overlap or weird, temporal echoes. Now it felt as if Darren was with him, laughing off questions as he had years ago in the library, on Monitum, when Di Mon asked how he dared to believe in Watching Dead when he was boy-sla.

"I am sure death is a broadening experience," Darren had scoffed. "What have they to complain of where it matters? I have given them three highborn children. Host a soul, and quell a critic."

I have got to slow down, Di Mon realized.

He had settled to averaging two skim'facs when a flock of ships burst, blue, onto his forward display, doing nearly four.

Di Mon touched six skim'facs avoiding them, dunking one despite neutral intentions and sending another ship reeling into its neighbor. Both shattered, their wakes interfering with each other.

Di Mon arched clear as a cloud of slower ships diverted around the crack-up. There were too many to be fighter hands. He counted twenty, moving in a loose formation at under two skim'facs.

Refugees, Di Mon decided.

Curiosity prompted him to look for their station of origin.

As a youth, he had played the game of skimming outward from space stations to observe their transmission histories farther and farther into the past. In Killing Reach, intelligible Gelack signals dissolved into a Reetion buzz beyond a two hundred year radius, but the signals themselves could still pinpoint a station if it had been around long enough. Gelack battlewheels were another matter, because they could move.

After a little unsuccessful signal hunting, Di Mon decided to extrapolate from the direction of the refugee's exodus and soon spotted a trio of wards ships twinkling red and blue as they whizzed around the invisible challenge sphere of a station.

It was normal for at least one ward ship to be out on patrol, but three seemed a little extravagant for locals who were short of trustworthy pilots to do the job, and the warding dance had a suspiciously disciplined air to it without being dangerously repetitive: the difficulty was avoiding ruts and wake traps.

Nersallians, Di Mon labelled the behavior he was witnessing, not sure if he was pleased or alarmed. Nersallians expanded by swallowing up others who offended against Okal Rel and could be overzealous about it when new habitat was the reward.

As Di Mon hovered, a ward ship broke off and sped to greet him.

"House of Nersal," it danced with assertion, writing the skim-signature of the Dragon House in jagged shapes and sharp transitions of color on the inner lining of Di Mon's hull. Shimmer dancing like this was done by means of jerky movements in established patterns. There was no other means to communicate in what pilots called, euphemistically, the rel-medium.

"Liege of Monitum," Di Mon answered, in kind.

They were close enough for shivers of soul-touch to leak through their shimmer dances. The stranger's will was frank and clean.

Di Mon danced the pattern meaning something like: You go your way and I'll go mine.

He was answered with a request to dock, which Di Mon declined, indicating his business was urgent. The Nersallian made a kin-offer of assistance on the strength of their mutual Vrellish ties, warning of hazards ahead caused by shake-ups.

"Ack Rel," Di Mon accepted, and moved off again towards the Reach of Paradise Jump, wondering how he would get rid of the Nersallian once they arrived. He didn't want to risk the Nersallian wake-riding through the jump. And he was uneasy about the prospect of Nersallians having access to Reetions with the info-blit as yet unexplained and so offensive.

As it turned out, though, accepting the help of his Nersallian escort proved a wise move. Twice his guide shimmered a warning of what spacers called bad weather and diverted them around the treacherous resonance of recent shake-ups with their spreading clouds of hullsteel slivers.

Di Mon's guide left of his own accord once he'd seen him through.

Once he was confident the Nersallian was out of range, it took Di Mon only a few more minutes to locate Trinket Ring Station where D'Ander had told him to expect to find Ayrium D'Ander D'Aur.