I am. The words that I spoke over and over as I drifted through oblivion, while sparks skirled from fried engines. It must have been months. I passed silently, the Sabre a mobile tomb. I saw the home of the Corsairs with its antlike activity and passed unnoticed. I tumbled past a nomad lair and saw the turrets adjust to follow my gravity affected trajectory. Gazing down the strange shaped weapons I saw my death, and welcomed it. Death spurned me. I am, I uttered in my litany. I am, but shall not always be.
Death would have been kind, I think. I am not what I was. The maverick pilot who tore through Corsairs, House and Nomad alike with equal glee, sharpened by the genetic work of the beloved hated Cardamine. Hated. There are no words for the torment of being without Cardamine. Your genes reject you, they rip your mind with delusions. Horrors that were beyond anything I could have conceived dissolved the sabre that encased my ego, and demons danced on my soul.
My cache of Cardamine had lasted two months, I used it sparingly. On the day I inhaled my last weak breath of tainted air my nerves burned. Two days and my brain became equivalent to fried neurone steak. Withdrawal was not possible, the Cardamine was a part me. Is a part of me. All that anchored me was the litany. I am. Ayem. I lost my name. I dont imagine it was a great name, Id barely begun to wage my war of acceptance among my people. Perhaps it is a dead name, a name inscribed on the hull of a sabre held in place by the gravity of a jump hole.
When the Hessians found my sabre in the sigma systems, they threw a few green bolts my way. I assume to see if they could dislodge any weaponry or cargo. The ship must have looked a state, meteor scarring covering burn scarring. The cargo bay had partially opened to space. The Sabre held though, and I reached a level of lucidity, or at least I flailed and hit the comms. I cast my litany out into the stars and it brought me to their home. A Cardamine sleep chamber is no Maltan bed, but it served.
With no name, I had no credit balance to activate. No way to pay these warriors for their aid and so I worked. I slogged beside their mechanics, tweaking their borderland imports with what little I could salvage from my ravaged memory. My muscles remembered more than my mind, though they were wasted. Atrophied. It took time to regain my former shape, the firm and cut figure. For a time I must have seemed half dead as I shambled among those hulking warriors. They did not allow me to stay weak, however. What I earned, I owned among them. If I earned nothing, I was given nothing. A fair rule, I felt.
It took time, but I paid my debts. The monetary ones, the spiritual ones I could never repay. I took my repaired Sabre, battle scarred still. They say that scars on a ship are the stronger part, due to the reinforcements that are part of repairs. Or the weakest part, depending on the mechanic. Since it was my work I had no doubt that it could withstand more than in that last fatal engagement. When I cast off, I was alone again. I drifted through Rheinland space and found myself in Liberty where an alert patrol found me. A long fight lead to reinforcements and I was forced to disengage, though on the run to the Rogues stronghold in the Badlands the pursuers dropped off, leaving only one. I slowed and he opened fire.
I released myself then, I tore apart the restraints that had held my consciousness together in the long darkness and through my recovery. I took his ship to pieces and laughed with the pure cruelty of my action. I am. I exist. That was the moments meaning. Still shaking, I docked in the Badlands and prepared for the journey home. I longed for Maltan air.
An irony then, that my life at home was so short lived.
I had gained a Falcata, my sabre long since having lost much of its significance in a galaxy of ships kilometres long. Gaining status in Malta had been difficult, I was not recognisable after the revenge my genes had wreaked upon me, though my people could not deny I was one of them by the very scars that marked me apart. I was apart. New factions had risen in my society, great cruisers and destroyers hung in orbit around Malta, a chilling sight for it seemed a harbinger for more hostile ships of equal size. I could not bear to imagine Malta burned by orbital bombardment after the effort it had taken to return home.
Given orders to cleanse Alpha of bounty hunters, I voided Hammerhead after Hammerhead and even reduced gunboats to slag. My bomber was slow, but I began to mould to its reactions. I felt each strike dissipate on the shield, each pound on the hull. My work one would have assumed, would have yielded rewards. Any graveyard however, has its ravens. Any corpse, its vultures. A mission had been concluded, Malta expressed its confidence that I would progress far. It was time to claim the loot my work had yielded and yet there, streaking towards me was another Falcata. The moment he killed his engines, he glutted himself on the spoils and took off back for Malta. For a moment I merely coasted there, disbelief written plainly on my face.
What I earned, I owned. The first social rule I had gained on my return to humanity was violated.
It seemed the Falcata growled as I engaged the warp engines, as eager as I to redress this insult. I saw the thief dive down into Maltas skies, the great destroyers hanging in space around the docking port. Broadcasting my complaint, I was met with derision. The gleaming NovaExpress rose through Maltas skies almost languidly, as if it were taunting further, the Outcast its pilot had stolen from.
The inferno cannon dissipated his shield. I watched the antimatter lick through his ship like some fiend from my most horrific delusions. The shards of broken metal fell back towards Malta. A traitorous rain.
In that moment I became an outcast from the Outcasts. The irony did not escape me, just as I did not escape Malta unscathed. The destroyers moved almost as one, shocked into action. Perhaps the first time I saw them move. I understood their intent. Two systems away they finally caught my Falcata. The rage they vented on me was an answer to the crime I had committed.
The cries were of murder. All I felt in my veins was cold, cruel revenge.
Ayem ibn Sina sat on a finely wrought chair on the veranda of his private villa and looked out over the golden fields that spread out beyond the horizon. He was not an overly tall man and his flesh was marked with scars from the lesions he had developed when he had been without Cardamine, drifting in space. The effect was that of a leopards fur in reverse; his skin was a dusky brown and the scars were pale. That had also been when he had lost his name, though by his research he had managed to regain that much.
He had not been impressed. It was an unremarkable name. Marco. He had discarded it, and kept the name born of his long absence. Ayem. Ibn Sina was the name of his family, a proud family that in the distant stretches of time were Islamic immigrants to the Hispanian nation when the Sol system had been their home. Ayem had discovered that he was not alone and also that he was not the long-lost head of the family. It took little effort to correct that oversight.
It is said of Maltan politics that fools die young and the old are gnarled with their cruel wisdom. It is not untrue. The assassination of his uncle had taken mere weeks to accomplish. The lecher had been visiting a slave girl from Liberty for some months and his wife kept a tight lipped silence about the affair. When she was offered a controlling stake in the family as opposed to her trophy wife status, Susa ibn Sina soon fell to Ayems wiles. She had arranged for the slave girl to be absent from her cell in the slave complex. There was message left to Raul ibn Sina, Ayems uncle, to find the slave girl in an idyllic spot close to the golden fields, where there was a small artificial lake built by Rauls father. On reaching this secluded spot, Raul found no slave girl, just Ayem with his long and heavy black hair standing barefoot on the shore of the lake.
Ayems servant, Sehti Vehk, subdued his uncle and then pierced each of his eyes with a knife. They turned the man loose in the fields and let the grass bleed Raul ibn Sina dry.
Susa ibn Sina had turned out to be a fine partner. Her knowledge of the Dons and the market allowed the family to improve their holdings. Their land, previously almost neglected, increased its yield by an impressive margin and improvements in slave health care reduced the cost of buying new, untrained slaves. Ayem knew that Susa had a small stake in the last improvement, as she had followed her departed husbands route of lust. He understood that this week it was a Kusari man sharing her bed. If it kept her content, he was not against such behaviour. For himself, he seemed to have lost many of the urges he had indulged as a younger man. Now knowledge drove him. While most of the profits of the ibn Sina family were recycled into the improvement of their Cardamine growing capabilities, Ayem kept a private account.
From this he had funded the Sicarius, a Rheinland Pirate Cruiser, whose captain was Sehti Vehk. The Sicarius had been tasked with exploration of the borderworlds and the furthest fringe of known space. Regrettably, it had been intercepted by Corsairs and was a floating wreck somewhere in the Omega systems. However, the information the Sicarius had relayed was invaluable. A religion that based the nomads as its source was spreading from the fringe, seeking its way inwards. It had already penetrated the Houses.
The Spirits Ayems voice carried on the gentle breeze bowing the grass stems. Sehti Vehk who leant against the low, outer wall of the veranda glanced back across his shoulder to his master. They evade me, Sehti. I understand humans, I comprehend the Outcasts only too well but the Spirits? Ayem shook his head, and then raised a glass of wine, smuggled fresh from Gallia. Are they gods? Is that why I cannot see inside their minds?
Sehti shrugged. No other answer was forthcoming.
Ayem frowned at his minion. That was not a rhetorical question.
Enough of our people treat them as though they are. Your slaves make offerings to them, so that they dont have to face the wrath of the Spirits. Sehti gave an amused snort, but his expression shortly became more serious. Youve been near them again, havent you?
Ayem finished his wine in one short draught. Yes. I witnessed.
You damn fool. What if they realise what youre about?
What Im about?
Your research!
I only want to talk to them, Sehti. I only want to learn their games, their speech and their rhetoric. I want to understand their sophistry and return it to them. Ayems eyes were intense as they locked Sehti in his place. Sehti shivered. I want to play with them.
They arent chess pieces, Ayem! Theyre the Spirits. Scary, ruthless Spirits!
Nevertheless, this is my path. But in the mean time, we must protect them. The greatest block to diplomacy is in not knowing ones counterpart. If we allow the ones we know to die, then we have to start over again.
Arent they all the same? A group consciousness?
No, surprisingly. There is a relay of information between separate bodies of consciousness, and that relay acts as the simulacrum of a consciousness while allowing a certain amount of autonomy. You should have seen by now that each of the greater Spirits acts in a different manner.
Im too busy running, most of the time.
We must develop a stake in Tohoku.
Sehti was silent as he assessed his Masters shift in thinking. The Consortium incident?
Just so. It has come to my attention that they are attempting to set themselves as guardians of the Golden Crysanthemum sect. Much as the ibn Sinas currently do to the Spirits. However, there has been a schism, regrettably due to the Golden Crysanthemums desire to kill one of theWilde. The tone with which Ayem said the last word was neutral. He was still not entirely sure how to deal with the hybrids, as he preferred the pure effect of Cardamine on the human consciousness which allowed for complete individuality, compared with the union of Spirit and human, which lead to the near total suppression of the human consciousness. They fired on and damaged a Spirit in my presence. It had been quite amenable, too. There may have been some potential in communication with that one.
You want to pit us, and by extension potentially the Outcast race, against a group of bio-mechanical war machines?
Just so.
Sehti spat over the side of the veranda. The wind was picking up and caught the globule, tossing it against the wall only a few feet down. Sehti watched his saliva cling there and glimmer in the evening sun, regretting the action. Youll have to expect casualties. Ship replacements. Morale. And we have no capital ship operational at the moment to base ourselves in, which will mean long resupply trips after patrols.
The money has been arranged. Funds will be transferred as and when they are required. With regards to engagement, it is only to occur when either our pilots or the Spirits are fired upon. Ayem broke into a bright smile. For morale, I shall lead the first patrol wing in my Falcata.
Youre mad, Sehti slumped. Ill be waiting at the hangar with the pilots. My Switchblade will fly on your wing for the first. No arguments. I want to see this threat with my own eyes.
Acceptable.
Sehti adjusted his shirt, doing up the buttons.
Not acceptable, said Ayem, and watched his servant blush. Well, perhaps there were still some urges that tugged at him.