Tyr

The ship rumbles all around me as it fires itself through the void between Paxia and its moon, Aeo. My knuckles around the controls are almost white with the tension in my body.

My title. It took a while for that to truly sink in but, damn it all, that tubby bureaucrat took my title! It has not been an advantage yet … but now with the power of spaceflight back it will surely prove to be useful. And he took it!

“Incoming call from … the Palace of Varrasque, Paxia,” the ship’s AI informs me coolly.

I curse outwardly — Wrax’s home. My King.

I close one eye and then wave a hand, though I don’t want to comply. “Put him through.”

“Connecting.”

I swallow; my throat is dry.

“General Tyr.”

General, I note. I run my hand over my jaw before answering. “My King,” I say. “This is an honor, to what do I owe—”

“Cut the crap, Tyr,” he says, injecting some sort of English language idiom that I don’t understand into his sentence. He must have learned some of his bride’s language to please her, and the thought of doing anything so arduous and boring for somebody else makes me roll my eyes. “What did you do to upset Alko? Do you have any idea how many reports he has filed with my wife in the last hour?”

Reports. How very honorable and powerful of the admiral, I think with a suppressed laugh. “Many apologies for that, my King,” I tell Wrax. “He wished for me to fly a ship top to bottom with those damnable flashing lights, filled with the voice of that latest AI — the one who I swear to Paxia can read my very thoughts! There was no way I was going to sit inside that metal cage and allow a ship powered by nothing but machinery take me to anywhere it felt like!” I am on the verge of ranting now, but the king pauses me with a quiet noise from deep in his throat.

Wrax has known me for many years — we fought together in the Suhlik Wars, and I know that he trusts me deeply. And I him. He also knows how little I trust technology, and he knows why.

The FMS Cataclysm, sixteen years ago, turned out to be aptly named. It was a brand new military spacecraft. My father was the best pilot in the Firosan system, and my mother was his Firosan first mate — as Soraya was to me. As the most competent crew around, they were selected to test pilot the Cataclysm, and the first three tests went perfectly.

Then at the height of war, a Suhlik engineer presumably gained access to the mainframe while the Mahdfel military forces believed themselves to be stealthily staking out an enemy outpost. When they returned to the Cataclysm, the defenses were all completely down, and the AI was up to the eyeballs in viruses.

The ship drove them out into the deepest, darkest bowels of space. It refused to land anywhere, to communicate with anyone, to send out a distress call. They could not override their ship AI.

My parents died after their food stores ran out. Months of terror later — of knowing that it was coming but they could do nothing — they died in each other’s arms. It was only then that the ship was discovered by a random mercenary vessel and transported back home. Almost a year after the Cataclysm went missing.

“My King…” I speak again to fill the silence. I am wondering how to apologize, when he speaks first.

“They tried to make you fly a ship other than your Eclipse?” he clarifies. When I grunt my assent he lets out a low chuckle. “Well, I will let them know that they were being unreasonable.”

A weight is lifted off of my shoulders at once. I catch a glimpse of my reflection, surly but relieved, in the black void beyond the windows.

“Now, about your mission. There’s been a slight change of plans.”

“Yes?” I ask.

“Well … the teleporter, over in the Waste on Paxia,” he says delicately. “Your mate was supposed to be sent there.”

I bristle immediately. “I have no mate!” I spit.

“But you entered the Earth Lottery?”

“I did no such thing! I would never be so disrespectful.” I growl and yank the ship to the left with more violence than is necessary to stay the course.

There is a short silence. “Soraya is dead.”

“This has nothing to do with Soraya,” I say, but in a sense we both know I am lying. Although I never felt the sort of connection with my Firosan colleague that my parents describe, we got along very well and she was perhaps my closest friend. I was to claim her and have children with her — our families were putting pressure on both of us — but we put off the consummation for many years. And then she died. It feels very callous of me to enter the bid for another mate when, in a way, I have already had one and I did nothing to save her life or continue her bloodline.

“Certainly,” Wrax says. “We can continue this discussion later, but the fact remains that an Earth woman intended for you has been sent through the transporter from her home planet and the law states — on both planets — that you must do your best to reproduce with her. She has a 99 percent DNA match with you. Such a high number is almost unheard of. It appears to be fated.”

“There is no such thing,” I say, far more disrespectfully than I should be talking to my king, whether on a voice call or face to face.

“General, I have serious matters to discuss with you,” he says, his voice darker. I make a note to speak up less.

“Please, go on.”

“The transport receiver in the Waste has been tampered with. Sabotaged. It appears that somebody on Paxia is … uncomfortable with the fact that Kivak has been imprisoned and his work has stopped. It seems to be that the Suhlik have more allies than we thought living on our home planet.”

This revelation causes me to grit my teeth. There are men on Paxia who are fine with the Suhlik draining the resources of our beautiful planet? I had thought that Kivak must be the only insane man, but perhaps there is a group of insane men, all clustered together in one place, doing insane things.

“Whoever it is, we must assume this saboteur is very much against the idea of our bloodline continuing with these humans,” he continues. “This means that your mate—”

“She’s…” I begin with anger, but then I trail off. I do not have a mate. There is nobody fated for me. I am supposed to live alone with nothing but my bitterness as company. I know this. But I cannot keep arguing with my king.

“—is in great danger. And, Tyr, whether you want to consummate your relationship is up to you, but you cannot let this women come to any harm when she is technically under your watch.”

“No,” I concede. “I cannot.”

“The backup receiver is on Aeo. Collect her and bring her back to Cara and I in the Palace of Varrasque. We will commune with the goddess and we will determine the greatest course of action from here.”

“And,” I dare to say, knowing the answer, “hypothetically, if I were to refuse to collect this woman?”

I can almost hear Wrax’s face muscles tensing with disappointment at the thought. “Then you would be refusing orders from your king. You would be convicted of treason and of destroying our alliance with Earth with intent to harm the Mahdfel. Can you imagine what the ambassadors will say?” He is exaggerating a little because he is angry at me, but we both know that he absolutely could try me for these reasons. “I also need your help. We are hurtling headfirst into a full-scale war with the Suhlik, that much is clear, but we are far from prepared. We cannot allow them even the smallest of victories or we are dead in the water. Do you understand me?”

I roll my thick shoulders to work the new kinks out. If the ship’s AI truly wanted to be useful, it would learn how to squeeze the tension from my muscles.

“I understand you,” I say, and it is the truth. I do, but that doesn’t mean I’m happy about playing bodyguard to some helpless, frail Earthling that our useless technology glitched into my life without my permission!

“Fine, you must have affairs to attend to on your ship, so I will not keep you,” Wrax snaps. Before I can reply, the connection goes dead.

“Would you like to end the communication?” the ship’s AI asks. Her voice soothes me — she has barely any actual power on this ship, and anything she can do can be manually overridden with minimal effort. All she is, therefore, is a pleasant and musical female voice.

What I can’t abide is somebody in my life to change things, to disparage my simplistic way of life, and to lock choices away from me.

What I will not abide is change. Everything is perfectly fine as it is.

Better than fine … it’s adequate.

I look back at my crewmates to see Vyken and Ashok engaged in a game of dice, and Axion nowhere to be seen. I wonder if Alko was the one who set me up for the Earth lottery, and I clench my jaw.

It would make sense — the bureaucrat would surely believe that it would make his life easier to have softened, pliable underlings. But he underestimates me.

As surely as I will never get behind the controls on the FMS Prototype, or allow self-regulating, automated technology to alter my body or my lifestyle, I will also never allow some frail human woman to change anything about the delicate ecosystem of my existence.

I look down at my thick legs, clad in comfortable leathers for the flight, and punch my left thigh hard, feeling nothing but sturdy Paxia-grown wood beneath the fabric. The line where my flesh ends and the cheap prosthetic begins aches dully, to remind me of its existence, and I get back to the ship’s controls with resolve tightening my features.

If I were going to let something new into my life, I would have done it by now.