Spin the Sky (31 page)

—Trevor Vaquero

Dear Mr. Trevor Vaquero,

Please excuse the informality of the following communication. I am not sure what the correct format would be for sending messages to the son of one of your dearest heroes and greatest adversaries. I will proceed as best I can.

I may unreservedly say that meeting your father changed my life… saved my life. Which is ironic because from the time his ship appeared as a blip on my radar until the time his ion trail disappeared across the horizon, I was sure he would die spectacularly at any minute. In fact, I can honestly say that I followed the man around for no other reason than to watch him die. I long hated him for besting me in the Spacer War and he behaved so much like a man thirsting for death that it seemed impossible he would not slake his thirst and, in doing so, Death would give me a show better than the highest-budget Ether blockbuster.

Death owes me that and much more, but he’s a stingy bastard. And Cesar Vaquero is a man Death flees, I think, but only because Cesar leaves a river of blood everywhere he goes. I will not shield even his son from the truth—that Cesar Vaquero bought himself a thousand gifts from Death by giving the grave millions of lives.

By the grace of God, I have also committed many souls to the hereafter so I cannot judge your father. Judging men is God’s job in any case. I confine myself to doing the work the heavens have given me, no matter how much the good Lord requires me to consort with assholes and idiots.

I have always wondered why the astronomers assumed that we in the orbitals parked in the largest stable points around Earth, the L4 and L5 Lagrange Points, would be hostile to one another. They named L4 “The Greek Camp” and L5 “The Trojan Camp.”

Why?

I can only assume it was because astronomers are the most incredible nerds. Excuse me, Mr. Vaquero, if you have an inclination towards that branch of science, but many troubles would have been averted if the L4 and L5 orbitals did not have a predisposed distrust of each other brought on by stargazing Earthers’ fanciful names.

Yes, I am an Earther. But God decided that the spheres would be my home and I am not sorry.

Certainly, your L4 Greek Camp fared better than our L5 Trojan Camp during the Spacer War and I flatter myself to think this was primarily because my fleet focused our efforts on the Trojan Camp. I destroyed every orbital I was ordered to attack in the Trojan Camp.

Let me begin the tale properly.

On star date 30060.04471080678, I led the Ex-World Fleet to the end of the Trojan Camp closest to the entry point, the point where a visiting fleet of tinker ships from the Greek Camp would most likely enter our region of the spheres. My intelligence officers had heard quite a number of rumors on the Ether about an armada of tinkers, heavily laden with all the civilized amenities we in the Trojan Camp lacked—coffee, silk, chocolates, etc.

The Trojan Camp hadn’t had any trade vessels from outside our Lagrange point in two or three years. The dangers in our area of the spheres are not exaggerated. The Trojan Camp did not hold on so well to civilization after the Spacer War as those in L4 Greek Camp. The war cost the orbitals there too much. We of the Ex-World Fleet sold our protection and experience to all who needed it at the most reasonable price we could, but few trusted us enough to hire us. None offered us the permanent settlement we craved. Such was the lot the good Lord had given us.

No fleet from the Greek Camp would have crossed to the other side of the sky if they knew the horrors awaiting them. The orbitals of Scylla and Charybdis hung at the gates of the Trojan Camp like sentinels at the gates of Hell. So the Ex-World Fleet flew out to rescue this Greek flotilla from its own folly.

“Admiral Aeneas? There is an incoming fleet of small merchant-class vessels, sir. We count twenty-three ships in all,” the petty officer on duty reported. “They are approaching the gateway, but have not yet come within range of either Scylla or Charybdis.”

“Signal them at once!” I ordered. “Explain the danger they are about to encounter and offer our services at the usual rates.”

I was confident this Greek fleet would hire us to guide them through. Our fees were cheaper than the energy and time they would lose going around Scylla and Charybdis.

Charybdis was what remained of a Chinese military orbital. I’m not really sure what went on in there. Both their airlock and Ether uplink were one way trips, as far as I could tell. I’m not even certain there were any live souls aboard. I only know they had a powerful tractor beam that they loved using at every opportunity. Even we were not immune. The Ex-World Fleet simply stayed out of Charybdis’ range.

Scylla, on the other hand, I knew too well. Its furry mutant inhabitants loved talking on the Ether. They never said whether their radiation shields were too thin or their genetically engineered filter bacteria went haywire, but something caused all of Scylla’s inhabitants to suffer from severe hypertrichosis i.e. excessive hair.

Personally, I think God was punishing them for their wickedness, but if divine justice were the cause he surely would have blighted them with something that kept them from producing so many insane Ether clips about the glories of becoming a furry psychopathic post-human who preyed upon anyone passing by with their harpoons. Their orbital was originally built as a docking station for some kind of space gun that launched cargo from Earth, so Scylla was able to move their orbital around quickly and fire their harpoons to snag any cargo the gun fired up. Unfortunately, they never really got the gun on Earth working, but Scylla was designed perfectly for attacking small ships that ventured too close.

Before the Scylla and Charybdis went feral, there were other orbitals close to the gateway, but they moved rather than deal with such vicious neighbors. After a few skirmishes, Scylla knew better than to try their tricks on the Ex-World Fleet, though.

“Sir, the L4 tinker fleet declines our services,” the petty officer reported a few minutes later.

I frowned. “Did you explain the dangers?”

“Yes sir. In some detail. Also there is the wreckage in this area from their previous victims.”

Sipping my customary 09:00 cup of caffeine water, I pondered the implications. “Do you suppose they did not believe you?”

“No, sir,” the petty officer replied. “They said they knew about our S&C issue beforehand.”

“I see. Then they will try to go around,” I muttered, mildly irritated to lose a potential contract and seriously concerned that these fool tinkers had traveled halfway across the spheres to get themselves destroyed because they were too cheap to hire us. “Well, since we are out here, let’s go through a few training exercises and keep an eye on them.”

I wasn’t going to push them. The Ex-World Fleet never descends to thuggery, no matter what they say about us. I wanted to argue though. Those rickety, pieced-together ships were already too close to Scylla for my tastes. People underestimate how fast that monster can move when she wants. I figured we’d be getting a call pretty soon to wade in and rescue those fat little merchants. For that, we charge double.

The Ex-World Fleet prides itself on staying tight, so we ran through two mock battles as easy as putting on our shoes in the morning. I had plenty of time to watch this tinker fleet and wonder if they had real coffee on one of those boats. I was going to be pretty peeved if they got themselves killed and wasted perfectly good coffee while I had nothing better than caffeine water rations for the last six months.

I thought those tinkers were fools, but I didn’t dream they were damned suicidal fools. I couldn’t believe my eyes when they took their entire fleet and flew it straight at Scylla, right into the monster’s mouth. I’d have insisted on protecting them if I’d known that was their plan.

Scylla waited until they were good and close before flinging out all six of her massive harpoons at once. Six ships were struck. The smallest practically exploded when the harpoon pierced it. As the other five struggled against the barbed hooks slowly reeling them towards the doom of Scylla, the merchant fleet scattered.

A black ship, too small to be anything but a single pilot fighter, appeared out of the tinker fleet. I didn’t see which tinker it came from. The black fighter slipped through the mayhem of fleeing merchants and fired a precision shot that neatly severed the cord on one of the harpoons, freeing the round ship it had speared.

“Well, they have one man out there with some brains,” I snarled to no one in particular. “Too bad he waited until it was too late.”

I watched as the newly liberated ship fired one of its thrusters and went spinning off at a crazy angle, so eager to get away from Scylla that it forgot the other danger of this passage. The freed ship was only able to celebrate its survival of Scylla for about two minutes before Charybdis captured it, pulling the doomed ship into its inescapable gravity well.

The stars behind Charybdis warped and shimmered as it activated the fell technology that allowed it to suck down entire ships without pause. There was always that strange moment before the ship disappeared where it warped, almost fading out of existence. You can’t ever record it clearly. I’ve tried.

“Sir, the Scyllans are broadcasting a live feed of their attack,” the comm officer reported to me unnecessarily. The Scyllans always did that. They liked to brag about their brutality. “Do you want to patch it into your comm?”

“No. Offer sanctuary to the survivors, but don’t hold your tongue if you feel like lecturing them,” I replied, already weary of watching the tinkers flounder and die. I tapped the power button to switch off the comm implanted in my right temple and enjoyed a few hours of peace in my bunk.

“Admiral Aeneas, the tinker fleet continues to decline our protection,” reported the petty officer on duty when I returned to the bridge.

“Really?” I asked, my interest piqued. “All of them?”

The petty officer frowned thoughtfully. “They let one of the captains speak for the lot of them. He says they had arranged payment to the Scyllans in return for safe passing, but the Scyllans double-crossed them. He was very angry, mostly at himself for not guessing that Scylla would betray them.”

I might have tried something similar if I hadn’t known the Scyllans. “I see. And who is their leader?”

The petty officer had the brains to look ashamed. “I don’t know, sir. The others just call him
Captain
. He was the one flying the black fighter.”

Having nothing better to do in this region of the spheres, we followed the tinker fleet into the Trojan Camp and picked up a job escorting a Hathor transport ship. It was a straight babysitting job and there were no complications. When we were done, we came across the L4 tinker fleet, this time they were preparing to head back to their part of the spheres.

“Offer them our services,” I ordered, confident they’d had plenty of time to see reason.

The answer came back within an hour. “They decline, sir. But Captain wanted to know if you were still our commander, sir,” the comm officer told me. “He asked if Admiral Aeneas is still the leader of the Ex-World Fleet.”

I raised an eyebrow. “And what did this Captain say when you affirmed it?”

The comm officer had the grace to look embarrassed as he relayed Captain’s response. “He wondered how the great Aeneas could sleep at night with two monsters on her front doorstep. He seemed to think you must be getting on in years to let something like that slip.”

Years of experience in command kept me from choking on my caffeine water, but only just. Before I could voice any of the blasphemous responses in my mind, the comm officer hurried to finish his report, “The tinker Captain also wanted to know if we could procure for them a Class C8 cargo hull? He said they’d pay premium rates.”

Well of course we could procure a Class C8 cargo hull. We had more than half a dozen of those bloated cargo ships beached like whales around a destroyed orbital not too far away. Class C8 cargo ships were used to transport entire armadas of the Worlder Fleet at a time. If we had known the Earthers only planned for it to be a one-way trip up, we may not have bothered saving them.

“Tell them we’ll have to look around. That such things are hard to come by,” I grumbled.

The comm officer cleared his throat. “Captain said to tell you he had twenty pounds of the freshest from Columbian Coffee Conglomerate. Dark roasted. I could hear him drinking it. I could almost smell it, sir.” The man was dangerously close to whining and I sympathized. Ex-World Fleet missed its coffee.

Two days later, the tinker fleet had their cargo hull. “Tell them it will never work,” I growled at the petty officer as he poured more water into my coffee press. “No, don’t. If those hubris-blind dolts think they can sneak between Scylla and Charybdis inside the dead body of a cargo ship, they deserve what they get.”

I decided it would make a good training exercise for the Ex-World Fleet to fly far around Scylla and Charybdis just in time to meet the tinker fleet on the other side, if any of them made it that far. I doubted they would. I’m not the sort of monster that would deny my crew what promised to be a good show.

We were getting bored when the cargo ship lurched into view. They must have rigged up a remote steering mechanism, but even in its prime the C8 drove like a pig. The tinker fleet had to be inside steering it. There was just no other way to get that boat to fly. You could practically hear the Scyllans slavering through the void. I settled down with a fresh steaming mug of coffee to watch the show.

As soon as the cargo ship blundered its way between Scylla and Charybdis, the Scyllans let their harpoons fly. I noted that they had fixed Captain’s damage. All six harpoons sunk into the side of the C8. The lines went taut, pulling the cargo ship slowly towards Scylla. I waited for the inevitable tide of escaping tinkers to flow out of the bloated ship. Scylla would be too smart for that trick. She’d reel the cargo ship in fast and snap up a few tinker ships before they could get away.

Instead, four harpoons shot out of the cargo ship away from Scylla, towards Charybdis. I clutched my coffee mug with shock, scalding my palms as I stared with disbelief. There was a strange spark on Charybdis as the barbs sunk into it and held tight.