Chapter Two: Unannounced
"Do you think they'll be worth anything?" Clio asked as she leaned back in her chair, sipping her drink slowly. As she spoke, her eyes roamed around the room of the cantina, taking in who was around. Luther already knew what she was looking for, and he shook his head at her, amused.
"I don't think that's really the important part," he said. "Imagine the historical value."
She rolled her eyes at him. "Historical value, yes. We can learn plenty about people who are dead and never coming back. Just what I always wanted."
"Instead you would have us take everything we find down to the swap hub and see what we can get for them?"
"Yes!" Clio said. "Imagine the pearls we could get for the right thing. It's worth a lot more than knowledge."
"The queen begs to differ," Luther pointed out.
"The queen never needs to know."
There was no point in arguing with her, Luther already knew that. Clio was his most stubborn friend, and the fact that he'd known her since he was a child didn't make things any easier. It just meant that he could chart the course of just about any argument he had with her in his head and already know the outcome. Reliable and annoying, that was Clio.
Where he had decided to use his talents to protect people, she had gone for pure exploration. Being able to bend and shape the water to her will helped her find things that other people could only dream of getting to, and if anyone said that what she did was a waste of her powers, she would give them a glare that made them turn around and leave, keeping their opinions to themselves for then on.
She was a fierce thing, strong and brave and powerful, and for a good chunk of his life, Luther had fancied himself in love with her.
Strong women were his type, of course. The ones who could give him a challenge. The ones who didn't see him as some all powerful creature, but just someone they could pit their own strength against.
He and Clio spent countless hours sparring in the practice arena, pitting their powers against each other and trying to come out on top.
It ended in a draw, more times than not, and even though Luther was a fully trained warrior, Clio still managed to best him at least four times out of ten. Anyone else would have been humiliated or outraged that they could be outmatched, but it just made his admiration for her grow.
Even now, in a time after they had tried to be together (with disastrous results), he still found himself wishing for her at times. Usually when she was flaying someone with the sharp edge of her tongue, or when she emerged from a body of water, skin glistening and deep blue eyes alight with the thrill of discovery.
"You're not listening to me," she said now, pointing her glass at him. "You know I hate it when you don't listen to me."
Her tone, sharp and teasing, jarred him out of his thoughts, and Luther made a face at her. "You're not saying anything I haven't heard you say before," he said, giving her a smile. "I don't need to listen."
That just made her purse her lips in irritation, and it took a good amount of effort not to laugh. Their respective duties and motivations (and horrible relationship) aside, she was still his favorite person to spend time with.
He was about to suggest that they go see what the next cantina had to offer when the ground suddenly shook with tremendous force, and the sound of something crashing echoed from a distance.
The musicians in the corner of the dimly lit cantina stopped playing, and around them the din of conversations came to an abrupt halt.
The tension in the room was thick as everyone waited, poised on the edge of their seats, listening. There were no further sounds or shaking, but people seemed reluctant to relax again.
Luther set his glass down with a decisive thump on the polished driftwood of the bar. "I should go see what that is," he said.
If it was a matter of public safety, then it was something he needed to be involved in.
"I'll come with you," Clio said, knocking back the rest of her drink.
"You're not a warrior, Clio."
"Please," she said. "I'm aware of that. I'm going because there could be something valuable in the offing. That sounded like a ship crash, and there could be cargo still on board."
"What if it's our own cargo?" Luther asked, not waiting to see if she'd keep up with him as he laid down pearls for his drink and then headed for the door.
"Wouldn't be, would it?" Clio said. "We don't have any shipments due in for a while. It has to be something else."
"Could be a personal craft," he pointed out.
"Could be. Doesn't mean there won't be valuables lying about."
He sighed as they hurried from the entertainment sector of town towards the main square. "Sometimes I think you were born without scruples," he said.
"You love me anyway."
It was an innocent enough quip, for all the truth that was in it, and Luther opted to keep his mouth shut as they went.
It wasn't hard to find the site of the crash. A thick plume of dark smoke was rising up into the air, and it was easy to pinpoint where it was coming from.
A mangled cargo carrier was in the middle of a large crater, a good distance outside the city square. Luckily it seemed like no one who had been around was injured, though it was hard to say what the state of the crew of the carrier was.
People were gathered around the lip of the shallow crater, whispering and talking amongst themselves. When someone saw Luther hurrying forward, a cry went up.
"A warrior!"
"It's Lu! Let him through, let him through!"
Luther couldn't see any of his fellow warriors around, so he had to assume that he was the first to make it to the site. He stepped into the crowd and peered down into the crater at the ship. It was of a make that he didn't recognize, and he frowned, taking in the symbol, like three crossed swords, that was just visible on one side.
"What happened here?" he asked, hoping someone had seen something.
"Luther!" A woman came forward, a child at her side, clutching her hand.
He recognized her as Briasa, the woman who sold sugared fruits and nuts in the market. Her child was Salim, and the boy was looking at the crashed carrier with wide eyes.
"Salim, away," she said, tugging him back. "Luther, I saw it."
"Tell me what you saw, Briasa," Luther said.
Her eyes were just as wide as her son's as she began to explain what she had seen. "I was walking home from my stand, you know, like I do every night. And then something went streaking through the sky. It looked like a ship, but it was too far away for me to be sure. I couldn't see anything but bright light, and it wasn't heading in the right direction to be going to the harbors. There was a loud clanging sound, like metal smashing into metal, you know, and then it was falling. It seemed like it was going to hit the square, but it fell here."
"It wasn't shot down?" Luther wanted to know.
She shook her head. "Not that I could see. It was probably already on fire or damaged before it even got close to falling here."
Curious. "Did anyone emerge?" Luther asked.
"No. I don't imagine many survived that fall, you know. Hopefully the cargo wasn't alive."
Her voice was heavy with sadness as she spoke, and Luther had to agree with her. He just hoped that no one had been hurt. There was only one way to find out, and that was to pry the ship open and see what there was to see.
It was a large carrier, but it was built for objects, not people. Usually carriers like this would be staffed by one or two people, one to pilot it, and one who knew about the mechanics and would keep an eye on what they were transporting.
Luther could see no way to get the thing open from where he was, and it was still burning slightly, so he called water to his hands, eyes closed for a moment as he concentrated on the sound of waves hitting the shore and the pressure of the ocean inside of him.
The water streamed from his fingers and went down to the ship, dousing the flames and leaving it sodden and still smoking slightly.
From there, there was nothing left to do but climb down into the crater and investigate.
He did so, moving carefully, and on the ground above, he could hear the arrival of more of the warriors who had been nearby. But he kept moving. If anyone was still alive on the ship, wasting time talking wasn't going to do anything to keep them alive.
Luckily, ships like this were designed for things of this nature. They were essentially made up of two parts, one front section that could fly on its own if need be, that had its own hatches and doors for easy entering and exiting, and a back section, that was where the cargo was kept. When it was attached to the front, a sort of tunnel opened up between the two, allowing people to move back and forth freely, but the cargo portion couldn't fly on its own, and was designed so that the tunnel between the two sections could be closed with the press of a button or a voice command, and the cargo bit could be dumped if need be, in mid flight, allowing the front half to continue on safely.
That it hadn't been done here didn't bode well for the state of the pilot.
Luther got the door open and climbed on board, and there was the pilot, slumped over the command console, bleeding sluggishly. He didn't need to, but Luther checked the vitals all the same, unsurprised when it came back that the man was dead. He sent a quick blessing to the depths for him, and then continued on.
There was no sign of anyone else in the front section, and he pushed through the tunnel to check the cargo half.
"Hello?" he called. "Is anyone alive?"
For a moment there was no sound, and then a shaky voice called back in a language he didn't understand at first. Most of them were blessed with a gift of tongues that allowed them to pick up languages quickly, and by the time he got to where he'd heard the voice, he could understand.
"Here," a female voice was saying. "I'm here. Please. Help me."
Luther moved a crate out of the way and found the woman curled up behind it. She was...not anything he'd seen before, small and with only four limbs that he could make out.
It dawned on him as he looked at her that she was a human.
How very curious.
"You're safe now," Luther told her, the words unfamiliar in her language on his tongue. "I'll get you out of here."
She let out a shaky breath and looked at him, treating him to the sight of her lovely, if slightly bloody face. How a human managed to get on board a cargo carrier that was clearly made on some other planet than Earth, he had no idea, and this wasn’t the right time to start asking probing questions about it, all things considered. He’d wait and do it when she had been seen to.
“Who are you?” the woman asked him, seeming to shrink into herself even more. It occurred to him that he was a complete stranger to her, and she looked like she’d been through an ordeal already.
“I am one of the warriors of this place,” he said, offering her a hand in what he hoped was a gentle seeming manner. “I’m here to help.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why are you here to help? They told me...they said…” She trailed off, shaking her head and pulling her arms around herself. There was a haunted look in her eyes, and Luther could only imagine what ‘they’ had told her, whoever they were’ but he knew whatever it was probably hadn’t been very nice.
"What did they tell you?" he asked her, head tipped to one side. Maybe finding that out would help him find out who was behind this and what it had been done for. Or if it was all an accident that he was getting too worked up over.
"They said they were taking me somewhere that I could be useful," she murmured, not meeting his eyes. "That I would be an oddity there and that was useful to them. I don't even know what that means."
Neither did Luther, honestly. "Well, I suppose they were right about you being an oddity. I don't think Lin-Vayel has ever seen a human before."
She glanced up quickly, and fear flashed in her eyes. "Who's that?"
Luther smiled. "It's where you are," he explained. "This planet is called Lin-Vayel. And no humans have ever been here before. At least, as far as I know, they haven't."
That didn't seem to do anything to reassure her, and Luther didn't really want to stand around this thing talking about it until she understood. There would be time for that, later. For now, they needed to move.
"Come," Luther said. "We will leave this ship."
"And go where?" the woman asked, eyes wide again.
"I..." He faltered because, actually, that was a very good question. Where was he going to take her? There was investigating to be done, and someone (meaning him more than likely) would have to tell Queen Varen what had happened. He couldn't take a human before the queen, not before he'd spoken to her, and he didn't know where else was safe.
Not that he thought his people were going to do anything to hurt the human, but...there were a lot of them and only one of her, and well. Things happened. Some of his kind had been known to be rash, and while they had expanded their trade allegiances and explored more planets over the years, that didn't really mean that things were safe for a human woman.
Which only left one place, really.
"Somewhere safe," he said. "Somewhere you won't be bothered until we can sort some things out."
She still looked skeptical, but she nodded and allowed him to lead her out of the crashed carrier.
In retrospect, it would have been so nice if someone had cleared the civilians from the scene before they emerged, but that hadn't been done, and Luther coming out with a human woman behind him caused quite the stir. People were calling out questions, looking at the woman with distrust in their eyes, saying things that led Luther to believe that they thought the woman was the one who had crashed the cargo carrier into their planet.
And he didn't have time to refute those claims. Not now. He had to get her out of there and then get to the queen. This was an urgent thing.
"What are they saying?" the woman murmured to him, and Luther had a moment to be relieved that for the time being, none of them were speaking a language that the woman could understand.
"They just want answers," Luther replied softly. He glanced over at Amon, who had arrived to help, and gave a hand gesture that clearly said 'you handle this, and I'll be back'. Amon made a face, but inclined his head and jumped into the fray, keeping the people back while the other warriors moved in to begin exploring the wreckage more.
"They aren't the only ones," the woman muttered under her breath, just loud enough for him to hear it. "Where are you taking me?" Her tone was sharp, but Luther could hear the fear in her voice, and knew that she was worried about her safety.
"There's nothing to be afraid of," he murmured to her. "I'll keep you safe."
He only hoped that someone was going to keep him safe if the queen was displeased with his actions here.
It was rather like an encounter Luther had had with the queen a few years ago. He'd stood in front of her elaborately carved throne and told her that something strange and not at all good had happened, and then she'd looked at him with eyes that seemed to bore right through him, demanding that he tell her the story from start to finish.
Which he had, of course. One didn't deny the queen when she wanted information. But it had been painful and worrisome, and he'd spent the entire time poised on a knife edge in his mind, waiting for her to dress him down for a failure that wasn't his fault.
In the end, of course, she hadn't done that. She'd merely been concerned about the issue at hand and said that they should keep an eye on things. Which was true.
But this, this was different. There wasn't enough information to really make an informed guess about what had happened, but the whole thing seemed oddly personal and very strange to Luther, and his instincts were buzzing.
So, he went to stand in front of the queen again.
She looked down at him from her throne, one dark eyebrow arched. She really was a beautiful woman. Her skin was perfectly pale, smooth and creamy looking. Her eyes were crystal blue, and her hair fell in dark waves around her shoulders and down her back. Her eyes were heavily lined with dark pigment, and her lips were dark red. She looked beautiful and untouchable, tempting and frightening all at once.
Luther swallowed hard.
"Why is it," she began, voice ringing out, "that when something odd happens, you are always involved?"
"Wish that I knew, Your Majesty," Luther said, giving a little bow. "Although this time I wasn't really involved, I was more...adjacent."
The brow climbed higher. "Adjacent," Varen repeated. "Were you not the one who pulled this human woman from the carrier."
"Well, yes," Luther admitted. "But she was injured and frightened. I couldn't just leave her there on her own."
“You were perfectly capable of leaving here there,” the queen said, no emotion in her voice. “You just chose not to.”
It wasn’t a question, but Luther felt the need to answer it all the same. “Maybe so, but she was in need of help, and I chose to help her. I do not regret that.” Instead of looking down in deference, Luther held Queen Varen’s gaze, letting her know that he was serious about this.
She held his gaze right back, not making any sort of expression to let him know if he was going to be in trouble for this or not, but then she smiled after a moment. It was just a small, slow smile, but it sent relief coursing through him.
“You are a good warrior and a good man,” she said, inclining her head. “And I do not fault you for what you did. But now we are involved in this, whether we like it or not.”
“What do you mean?” Luther wanted to know.
“I suppose that’s misleading,” Queen Varen continued, as if he hadn’t spoken. “We would have been involved regardless. We will need to prepare for some kind of attack, of course. Most likely not from the humans, that carrier was not of human make, and they couldn’t get all the way out here if they wanted to. But someone sent that ship to us for a reason.”
Luther blinked, surprised. “You don’t think it was just a coincidence? That maybe it crash landed here because we were nearby.”
“No, I do not,” she replied. “I do not believe in coincidence, Luther. There are no port planets nearby, and none of the planets in this quadrant do business with anyone with that make of ship. And then, of course, there’s the cargo.”
“The woman?”
“No. The other cargo.”
Luther frowned. The ship had crashed down less than two hours ago, and he had been under the impression that he’d been the one to inform the queen of what was happening. How did she already know what was on the ship?
As if seeing the question in his face, Varen smiled. “While you were seeing to the woman, I had Prinna examine the ship. She is quite efficient.”
Clearly, Luther thought to himself. What he said out loud was, “So it would seem. What did she find?”
“Troubling things. Contraband and things that were clearly stolen.”
“Contraband? What manner?”
“Comet Dust, for one,” the queen said. “Enough to bring down an entire city with a case of space head.”
Luther let out a low whistle. Comet Dust was a highly trafficked and highly illegal drug that no one could pinpoint the origin of. It had appeared one day on one of the Cael moons, and spread throughout the galaxy from there.
Over the years since it had appeared, Comet Dust was linked to more crimes and deaths than any other drug in recent memory. Which was troubling.
“It’s a good thing that carrier didn’t explode, then,” he said.
“Yes,” the queen agreed. “A very good thing. Aside from the drugs, there were all manner of stolen goods from who knows where.”
Luther frowned. None of that made sense to him. “If they meant to crash here,” he said, half really wondering and half just thinking out loud, “then why would they have all that with them? Why would they bring those things to our planet? What were they hoping to gain?”
“All good questions,” Varen said. “Unfortunately, we just do not have enough information at the moment to answer any of them. I will say this, I don’t think their arrival here was a coincidence or accident, but I do wonder if the crash was intentional. Prinna says the pilot was dead.”
“Yes,” Luther agreed. “He was.”
“Hm. Then if the crash wasn’t an accident…”
“Then there might be someone else we need to look out for,” Luther said, putting it all together. And wasn’t that just lovely? As if they didn’t already have enough to deal with.
The queen shook her head and sighed. “It is a mess,” she said. “But one we will handle. For the moment, I am leaving you in charge of the human woman. See to it that she is kept safe and kept contained. I don’t need her roaming around getting into more trouble before we’ve decided what to do with her.”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” Luther said, bowing. “Anything further?”
“Keep your eyes and ears open,” she instructed, her face set in serious lines. “This is not the first time odd things have happened here, and I cannot help but wonder if they are somehow connected.”
That was a frightening prospect, and one Luther hadn't even considered. It had been so long since the first incident, the one that had happened deep underwater and resulted in them killing two of the strangers who had been lurking in their ruins, that he sometimes forgot that it had happened at all. And he certainly wouldn't have assumed that that was connected to this in any real way, but now that the queen had said it, it was hard to think otherwise.
He let out a breath and glanced up at the queen. "That is...troubling."
"To say the least," she agreed. "You are dismissed. Come to me with any new developments."
"Of course, Your Majesty," he said and bowed his way out.
Prinna was near the door when he exited, because of course she was, and he prided himself on not visibly startling when he saw her.
"Luther," she said in her neutral tones.
"Prinna," he replied.
"The human will need food," she continued. "And to be kept safe."
"I'm aware," Luther said back, bristling a bit at the insinuation that he didn't know what he was doing here. Of course, he didn't, honestly, and the look that Prinna gave him proved that she knew it, too.
But no matter. It would be alright.
"Goodbye, Prinna," he said, resisting the urge to ask her about the things she had found in the carrier and what was to be done with it. He had his orders from the queen, and he was sure that leaving the human woman alone in his home for an extended amount of time was probably not the best idea.