Inherit the Stars (16 page)

The muffled beat of Susuron drums reached Kivita's ears while she passed the airlock checkpoint. A Naxan trade rep in a dark green jumpsuit with silver piping and tassels clicked his tongue in greeting. Like all human cultures in the Arm, the Naxans spoke their own deviation of Meh Sattan.

“May your transactions go smoothly,” he said, then clicked once and handed her a chit stack. Like on Haldon Prime, once a chit was activated by glue pen, it bound her in agreement with a merchant. Hack attempts met with permanent expulsion from Naxan consortiums, sometimes even a beating from their mercenaries. Not that she'd ever tried that.

Trying to look casual, Kivita glanced into corners, down aisles. Had anyone followed her here?

Kivita walked by an antiquated pathogen detector, where an Ascali male played the conch drums. A nearby stall sold Naxan clapper sticks, in case travelers could communicate only in yes or no answers. Years of detritus and carbon filth caked the metal-grate floor. Multicolored ceiling lamps lit her way into the first cargo chamber.

Twenty wall platforms contained an airlock, with each magnetized to a customer vessel. Decent heating, gravity, and life-support systems kept everything comfortable, but the air scrubbers needed changing a decade ago.

Aisles crammed with stalls lined the circular bay, while mercenaries hired by the Naxans patrolled the area—Ascali, human, and Aldaakian freelancers, armed with swords or batons. Firearms were prohibited, as much to protect hull integrity as customer safety.

Kivita hurried along, disregarding the proffered wares. One Inheritor carpenter sold wooden Vim idols, with each piece resembling a tall humanoid with solemn features. A Naxan florist sold cultured roots, fruit shrubs, and vegetable pots, though some already wilted from the carbon-heavy air.

“Give thanks unto the Vim for their blessings of technology! Without their wisdom, we would not be able to survive in space!” An Inheritor prophet walked the aisles, waving a yellow banner. “Who taught you the secret of artificial gravity? Who revealed to you the faster-than-light capabilities all starships now enjoy?”

A Solar Advocate, dressed in a shimmering silver tunic, preached in an adjacent aisle. “From the stars we were born, and to the stars we shall return. Heed the wisdom of the Solars! We all contribute to the structure of the universe. We are all centers of gravity and energy.”

Sighing, Kivita strolled into another aisle. When she'd visited Tejuit as a child, all the products and the worlds they came from had fascinated her. Now they were all shallow bits of cracked nostalgia. Most people possessed the same tired, lonesome look of spacers who had left behind homeworld, family, and friends.

She paused to finger the glittering merchandise of a Naxan jeweler, though the necklaces and bracelets didn't interest her. All those years spent in cold stasis, all those trips to debris fields and disparate worlds . . . all of it the empty glories of a fool blinded by wanderlust. But she'd seen so much. Kivita touched the Juxj Star in its pouch.

She wanted to see more.

A Tannocci woman attired in a studded black skinsuit traded in cloaks, shawls, smocks, and even rare ply underthings. The fabrics glimmered as Kivita thumbed them, silky smooth and durable.

“You would look even more gorgeous in my wares.” The Tannocci woman's Meh Sattan had thick glottal stops after each
e
sound. Red rouge stretched from her eyes in a thin line to her chin.

Kivita chose her words with care. “You have great stuff here, but I'm looking for any Tannocci Sages that might be aboard.”

From the corner of her eye, she could see an Inheritor merchant studying her.

“Then find him with this. My relatives sewed this fine red cap, maybe just for you,” the woman said, then lowered her voice. “Two cargo bays over.”

Kivita scrawled two packets of Haldon bread on a computer chit and handed it to her. “Will this cover it?”

The woman took the chit and grinned. “Stay gorgeous!” She blinked three times slowly—an old Tannocci warning sign.

Kivita donned the pillbox-shaped cap, which matched her bodyglove and cape well. Leaving the aisle, she jostled through the crowd. A few hands brushed her bottom. A pimple-faced teenager bumped into her, but Kivita slapped his hand away from the pouch.

She winked. “Wasn't born last sleep cycle, you know.” As the teenager fled, a figure darted behind a stall in her peripheral vision. Flesh prickling, she walked faster.

Even this far from Inheritor space, the prophets had agents searching for any sign of heretics. Sages, outlawed by the prophets, might know something about the gem.

Deeper into the hive ship, merchants from across the Cetturo Arm called out offers of Naxan sauce garnishes, Tannocci sword training, refined Freen copper, and dozens of other goods. She fought salvager instincts to inspect the best deals. In the next cargo bay, thick aromas from food stalls made Kivita's mouth water: fried Susuron algae, Haldon bread, and Bellerion reed cakes. An Aldaakian booth doled out protein slush and Touu gelatin, while an Ascali one traded jiir juice, alcohol, and bark powder.

A slight tingling irritated her scalp. Kivita's body flushed with heat, and she licked her lips. Was more alien data about to enter her thoughts? She couldn't blame it on a cryomalady anymore. Something had changed within her.

After several minutes of pushing through hungry crowds, Kivita reached the bay mentioned by the Tannocci woman. Extra mercenaries patrolled its dim-lit aisles, and refugees huddled near the bulkheads, begging passersby. Contrasting the fare offered in the previous bays, prostitutes, drug purveyors, and Sages sold their services.

“Look like you come outta a lonely, cold cryopod, honey,” said a male prostitute in chaps and skinsuit. “I'll get you warm and wet real fast.”

Kivita continued without answering. Other
prostitutes tried to woo or beckon her along the way. Now, though, Kivita wanted only one man, and he'd rejected her. Just seeing Sar had made her feel alive again, in ways she'd thought herself long dead. Damn him.

Aldaakian armorers and tool smiths watched her pass with flat stares. One sold cryomasks for those addicted to the chilled air. Other dealers sold varieties of vapor-producing mollusks and decanters to inhale the fumes. Several spacers stumbled or lay near such stalls, no doubt having bartered away a full cargo hold for a few minutes of bliss.

At the end of the aisle, a Tannocci man in a black cloak and jumpsuit studied her with bored blue eyes.

“I'm looking for a Tannocci Sage,” Kivita said in a low voice. Behind her, a mollusk-vapor addict moaned and urinated on a stall.

“So you think all Tannocci men in a Naxan hive ship might be a Sage?” he asked in a soft voice.

“No, and I don't think all Tannocci men are assholes. Are you the guy or not?”

He rubbed his chin. “Did a woman who sold you that red cap send you?”

“Yeah.”

He smiled. “Then enter. I don't get as many customers like the others in this bay. The Naxans always place low-traffic merchants with these types. I am Jandeel.”

Kivita stepped into a collapsible stand built from metal and canvas. The thin walls allowed little privacy. Jandeel sat at a table fashioned from a scrapped terminal, and crossed his arms.

“Now, what would a comely Inheritor like you want with a Sage?”

Hmm, how to answer . . . A Sage memorized
everything he or she saw from texts, songs, poems, to starship blueprints. Though honored as scholars on Tannocci worlds, the Inheritors arrested them as heretics.

“Quickly, now, I haven't got an entire waking cycle. You dress like an urbanite, but your drawl betrays lowly origins. Farmer? Perhaps even a salvager?” Jandeel grinned.

“Yeah, yeah, you have me there. Bet you don't get many salvagers with questions about the Vim.” She leaned on the table, staring at him.

Jandeel's grin faded. “The prophets have a conversion stall three cargo bays over. I'm sure they can answer your questions.”

“Do I look religious? Okay, you're suspicious because I'm from Inheritor Space. But I need a Sage, not a prophet. You guys are always gathering stuff from old paper books, chits, and whatever datacores you can get your hands on.”

“Yes, but few really listen.” Jandeel's gaze turned hard as steel.

Kivita leaned closer and whispered. “I can write an entire crate of Haldon foodstuffs on this chit. Fortified with protein and antioxidants. I even have sugar-powdered reeds.”

“You salvagers always boast. Fill out the chit now, so I'll know you are serious.” Jandeel's left hand crept beneath his cloak while he scanned the aisle outside.

She did as he asked and handed it over. “C'mon, Sage. The Vim?”

Jandeel put the chit into his belt pouch. “The Inheritors claim the Vim placed humans in the Cetturo Arm to punish them for some ancient misdeed. They hope if they assemble the wreckage and debris left behind by
the Vim, they can leave the Arm and rejoin them in the galactic Core.”

Kivita snorted. “I'm from Haldon Prime, remember? I know all that.”

Jandeel leaned so close, she smelled Naxan sauce on his breath. “What the Inheritors don't teach in their trite state programs is that the Vim were not gods. They did exist, but no one really knows why they left the Arm. The Inheritors also do not mention why humans, Ascali, and Aldaakians all breathe the same atmosphere, or why all three races have the same physiology. The same red blood, the same gravitational sensitivities.”

Despite her dim surroundings, Kivita squatted beside Jandeel's chair with interest. Old fears of zealots spying one's every move made her whisper in his ear. “Go on.”

Jandeel seemed to sense her trepidation, and whispered back. “Even the Kith have two arms, two legs, a head. Why? Only the Sarrhdtuu are different. Many Sages have postulated that the Sarrhdtuu are not only the Vim's ancient enemies, but may have wiped them out. The Vim may not even exist anymore. Are we in the Cetturo Arm their children or their former slaves?”

Kivita's thoughts switched to images she'd received from the Juxj Star: cryopod-filled ships, or the Ascali leaving those tubes. Kith building crystal structures, and Aldaakians with light hair on their heads. Ships hundreds of light years away, hinting at a past waiting to be discovered at the edges of her consciousness.

And the word “Cradle” repeating over and over in her mind.

“Vim datacores?” she asked, shaking away such thoughts.

Jandeel waited until five laughing prostitutes
traveled down the aisle. “The Inheritors hoard them, never revealing what they find. Other humans hide them if found, like Tannocci nobles or Naxan merchants. The Aldaakians want them, but what they use them for, who knows? Only certain gifted humans can decode them, using brain waves. Have you heard of Savants?”

“No. Go on.” Kivita's head tingled.

Two male Ascali mercenaries walked by. One glanced into their stall.

Jandeel fidgeted beneath his cloak. “Savants can recall a datacore's contents by touching it. Someone else must copy the information while the Savant recites it. Like a Sage.”

“So that means a Savant doesn't remember all of it afterward?” she asked.

“Yes.”

Kivita bit her lip. Nothing she'd received from the Juxj Star had faded from memory. “Anything else?”

“The Inheritors either kill or imprison Savants, according to rumor. Out here in Tannocci Space, some claim Savants are sheltered by the nobles. I bet you've never heard of the most famed one, since you come from an Inheritor world. Most have forgotten her name, even in my trade. A human queen from Susuron, who lived during feudal times.”

A lump rose in Kivita's throat. “What was her name?”

“Terredyn Narbas, from a lineage shrouded in legend. The Inheritors executed her, the story goes. She wanted to spread knowledge contained in the datacores.”

Kivita's hands shook as the tingling in her head strengthened. “Are you . . .” She scanned the aisle behind them, her heart beating faster. “Are you a Thede? Will you help me?”

Sweat beads broke out on Jandeel's brow. “Help you with what? The Thedes are rebels, even in this system. Why, if an Inheritor merchant so much as heard you, you'd be reported—”

“Can you help me?” She gripped his hand. Images of the colony ships from her visions came to mind again. From Jandeel's bewildered gaze, it seemed he'd just seen the same thing in his own thoughts.

His eyes widened. “Are you a—”

A gloved hand covered Jandeel's mouth as a dagger sank into his left side.

Kivita leapt up as two hands grabbed her from behind. A cold blade touched her throat.

“You are far more pleasing to the eye now than when you wore Orstaav's polyarmor,” Shekelor Thal said, withdrawing the dagger from Jandeel's side. The Sage gasped and slid from the stool. Four burly pirates in polyarmor entered the stall. One of them held a small device with a blinking screen. When the pirate turned it off, the tingling in Kivita's head stopped.

The bastards had tracked her. How?

“The Naxans will have your head if I so much as scream. Everyone knows who you are.” Kivita tried not to look at Jandeel as he squirmed on the floor.

Shekelor smiled. “You flatter me, but my name is known, not my face. Cooperate, or I shall remove your fingers. Blood won't show in that pretty bodyglove you're wearing.”

How had Shekelor found her here, much less escaped the confrontation over Umiracan? His purple eye ticked, as if lacking full control of his green-rigged augmentations. Shekelor's other eye stared at her with a sinister gleam.

“Yeah, you're such a charmer. Guess Sar got a good profit for me, and you're here to collect? Bind this man's wound, and I'll come as quietly as a summer snail. I know you need me alive.” Kivita's nonchalant tone differed with the furious pounding of her heart.