Backyard Starship: Origins 2 Read online

“Calafus, see if there’s a medic anywhere near this system, now!”

  The answer was immediate. “Yes, but—”

  “No. No, no, no. Yes, but? Is that your way of telling me that—are you shitting me? Of all the medcraft floating out here, she just happens to be nearby?” Darghis spat.

  “I need… a doctor?” Petyr managed, weakly. He was on the floor now, propped against the bulkhead and doing his best not to vomit. “Wait—is this a bad doctor?”

  Darghis shook his head, squatting next to Groshenko with a look of genuine concern on his harsh features. “No, she’s an excellent doctor. She just takes some getting used to, is all,” he answered, then cast his voice up to address his AI. “Why is she here, anyway?”

  “Her ship transponder declares she’s on travel assignment. Nearby colony had an outbreak of something hideous, and she signed a contract to come clean it up. How much should we pay her?” Calafus asked.

  “Whatever she wants. I’m guessing he’s going into mild shock from the anti-grav and stressors and everything else. Get her docked to us, and we’ll go aboard her ship,” Darghis said.

  “What’s her name?” Petyr asked idly. Darghis lifted him like a child, then a single thump rattled the ship as the doctor’s craft made fast to their airlock.

  “Just call her B,” Darghis said, and a hiss of air exchange began as the two ships opened to each other.

  “Why B?” Petyr asked weakly.

  Darghis answered. “You’ll see.”

  The medical craft docked, and less than a second later, a female voice invaded Petyr’s awareness.

  “You dumbasses gonna bring the patient to me, or do you want me to turn my medsuite inside out and come to you? That costs extra, you know,” the voice—presumably B—said.

  Petyr lurched against Darghis, who was already bustling him toward the airlock. “Of all the shit we have to deal with, this is—”

  “What?” Petyr slurred

  Darghis looked at Petyr, alarm spreading over his face like a shouted warning. Without another word, Calafus cycled the airlock just as Petyr began to lose his vision, smears of black edging his sight down to a tunnel, and then a point.

  Petyr felt a small, cool hand on his face, then understood, in haze, that they were through the airlock and aboard B’s ship. The air smelled of rain and flowers, and in seconds, Petyr was being lifted onto a cushioned table that creaked as he settled into the soft material. When he opened his eyes, he was stunned.

  B was short and curvy, and she had hazel eyes and full lips pulled to one side in a sardonic twist. On her upper lip, she had a piercing—a red gem that flashed when she spoke.

  She also had antennae, like… an insect. They emerged from the top of her forehead, were twenty centimeters long, and bent in the middle, as if each one had an elbow. They moved independently of each other and struck Petyr as the single strangest thing he’d seen in a day filled with strangeness. Petyr blinked repeatedly because she was stunning, if not for her air of impatient anger, and even that did little to quell the flash of fascination Petyr felt as he looked at her.

  “How long?” B asked, her hazel eyes affixed on Petyr’s clammy skin and pallid face. She was clearly unaffected by Petyr’s looks, a fact that gave him an unexpected pang of annoyance.

  “Moments. He got sick, you were passing by, here we are,” Darghis said.

  “What’s his name?” B asked.

  “Petyr Groshenko. Human, pure human,” Darghis said.

  B made a sound of disgust. “A Russian? You’re about to scorch bonds for me to heal a Soviet who’s just come up the well? You really are an amateur, Darghis.” B leaned down over Petyr, then snapped her fingers in his face three times. “Hey, Petyr. I’m going to ask you some questions, and I need to you answer me immediately. Can you do that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Great. He’s already better than every other Red Army prick I’ve had to treat. Alright, let’s get to it. Petyr? What’s your brand?” B asked.

  “Brand?”

  “Oh, for—yes, you walking chemical factory. Your brand. Tobacco, vodka, and any other meds coursing through that toxic dump you call a cardiovascular system. You’re KGB, right?”

  “I… ah—”

  “I’ll take that as a yes. Answer the question, toy soldier. I don’t have time to screw around if I’m going to treat you. Your brand. Now,” B repeated, her voice cracking with authority despite being oddly sultry. One antenna lifted, like a raised eyebrow, as she awaited his answer.

  “Sobranie, any vodka at all, and I—sometimes Benzedrine, if I—"

  “How did you know this, B?” Darghis asked, bewildered by her assumptions. They’d only been aboard her ship for two minutes, if that, and she was deconstructing Groshenko’s composition without hesitation.

  Or bedside manner.

  She snorted, and both antennae raised at once. “A Soviet. With you, on your ship, which means you’ve plucked him off-world without any planning for his particular needs. You’re a gifted spy but absolute shit at planning for species-specific contingencies. This is the second time you’ve needed to treat a guest, right?” B asked.

  “That was an accident, you—” Darghis began, heated.

  B laughed, a bright sound that Petyr certainly couldn’t enjoy because he was busy turning away to vomit.

  She snorted at Groshenko’s plight but still placed a pan under his head on the floor, and she did so with a soft look on her face. “They always purge, and you should’ve known that Yonnox wasn’t going to make it. You need to protect your investments better—hold him. Petyr, stay still. I’m giving you an injection. Chest or ass?”

  Petyr looked up, bleary-eyed but still male enough to attempt a leer.

  “He’s got spirit, I’ll give him that. And no, the question is not about what part of me you want, my young agent. It is about where the first injection will go. I’m not going to lie. These will linger,” B said.

  “Ass,” Petyr managed.

  “An excellent choice,” B agreed, plunging a needle into the muscle of Groshenko’s left cheek. He hissed in pain, drooled, and then—

  He exhaled. A full, long exhalation, nearly musical in composition.

  “Wha—what—” Groshenko mumbled.

  “Freefall. Takes away the nausea permanently. We’ve got two more to go, and they’re optional, but not really if you’re out here in the empty. I’m giving you a nicotine blocker and a staged injection for your liver function. Trust me, you’ll want these. Do I have your permission?” B asked, left antenna lifted in a question.

  “Yes.”

  “Firing one,” she answered, sending another shot—this time, into Groshenko’s right ass cheek—and then a third, a smaller shot filled with a tiny amount of bright blue fluid that danced in the limited gravity. All three shots were given in syringes that looked, to Petyr, totally ordinary.

  The results were certainly not.

  Petyr felt lassitude, warmth, and then clarity, all in the span of a minute. When he tried to sit up, B put a firm hand on his chest and held him flat, grinning even as her antennae pointed down at the table.

  “Stay,” she said.

  “Alright,” Petyr agreed, because it seemed like a good idea and he had nowhere else to go.

  Darghis made an impatient sound, his eyes flickering over the prone Russian, and B took offense.

  “If you could shut it while in my surgery, I’d be grateful. No, don’t make another sound. I’ve got Discon in liquid form if you’re bored, but he needs to be still for longer than you can be patient.

  “Discon? The real stuff?” Darghis asked. It was an expensive intoxicant no matter who was buying—medical staff or black-market junkie.

  B twitched a lip, gem flashing. “Is that a real question?”

  Darghis bowed slightly. “Apologies. I’m used to… rougher crew, I think. I’ll take an inhalation. Can you dose it for—how long will he need to be here?”

  “Thirty minutes,” B said.

  “Thirty-minute dose then, and my thanks,” Darghis said, meaning it. Of all his vices, Discon was at the top.

  B lifted her head and spoke quickly. “Prep key dose Discon three units. Fading effects, not instant.”

  “Dose prepared, B. He’s good to go in the front module,” answered B’s ship, a male voice that had an accent Petyr could only describe as an American redneck.

  “Up front with you then. You’ll ease out of it, and it’s on me. Let him rest for whatever it is you’ve got planned, yeah?” B asked, but it wasn’t a question. It was an order. “Go on, now.”

  Darghis, the addict so close to his prize, gave Petyr a look and then touched B on the shoulder as he moved past, his steps becoming robotic. In seconds, he cycled into the bow module, and Petyr heard the ship speaking to him in low tones as the Discon was administered, and the Bolunvir began his half hour of stupefied bliss, courtesy of a doctor who wanted him out of the way.

  B looked down at Petyr with a sly, playful grin. It made her even more appealing, a fact that unsettled Groshenko to no end.

  “We’ve got a little time before we make our decision. How much has he told you?” B asked. “And you can sit up. That was theatrics.”

  Petyr did so, feeling almost no effects of his change in location, injections, or shock. As a KGB agent, he knew when it was time to harvest the wheat, and that moment was now. B had, in one act, removed his handler and her threat, and now she wanted to talk. That was obvious.

  “Almost nothing. He said there’s a list—”

  “The Shiraku’t,” B interjected.

  “Right, that. Worth millions, maybe billions. Shipwrecks across the—I guess across the stars,” Petyr said, running a hand through his hair, stunned by the sheer alien concept of it all.

  “Partially true. Did he mention the ships? The Streaker? There are three. One of them is in that green ditch, covered by native life. The other is owned by someone of great power. The third is on your planet, a fact that Darghis is unaware of. For now.”

  “How do you know this?”

  B’s antennae waved, languid and easy. “Simple. My boyfriend told me.”

  Petyr almost choked. “Boyfriend? What is this language? Are you—wait. You’ve been to Earth.” He tapped his cheek, thinking, as B watched him. “Are you really a doctor?”

  “Oh, I am, and a damned good one. Almost eighty years of medical practice and a reputation I’ve fairly earned. To answer your question, time is a bit different for someone like me. And my race,” B explained.

  “Boy… friend? This is an American word. Slang. He’s an American?”

  A shadow passed over B’s eyes. “He was. The first love of my life, and I had the misfortune to meet him on your planet. On Earth.”

  “Where? When?” Petyr asked, his training gone. He was beyond the reach of his teachings. He had to know.

  “Tunisia. 1943. And yes, an American. A Lieutenant in the United States Army. I visited Earth, let’s say, on the run from my mate, Jacamir.”

  “Why were you running?”

  “Other than the threats, abuse, and his fathering of eighty offspring across six systems, he had thinning hair, a fascination with lying, and the tendency to spend my money when I had to hibernate due to exhaustion. He chased me to your system. I hid in a place I thought would be safe, but it was far, far from safe. I met a man, and he helped me. We fell in love, and quickly,” B said. “It’s such a tired story.”

  Petyr snorted. “Of course. Alien girl runs away from horrific breeding machine with thinning hair, finds American soldier in the middle of a war, falls in love, and then abducts Soviet agent five decades later in search of a secret treasure. Why, it’s so trite I’m embarrassed to say it out loud.”

  B’s antennae waved in mirth. “Fair point.”

  “Who was this soldier?”

  “Frederick Vinton. A boy from Kentucky, grown to a man, and the only time I’ve ever understood what it meant to have someone lay their life down for you without hesitation,” B said, her words as desolate as a rainy midnight.

  “I’m sorry. Where was he killed?”

  “A battle. Germans, those murderous bastards. I’m sure they had help from off-world—who thinks those Prussian dullards invented the V-2? Not me, and not anyone among the stars. Rick was wounded giving me cover. Giving me time. To get away from Jacamir, your hellhole of a planet, and an entire company of something called SS troops, whose souls were as black as the place between stars. Rick fought Jacamir, and he took a horrific wound doing so. Jacamir’s bones are somewhere in the Tunisian dust if anyone ever cares to look. Rick saw to that. Jacamir was used to being a bully, not a fighter. Huge difference. He also made an error I’ve never forgotten, a piece of tactical advice that I’ll carry forever.”

  “Which was?”

  “Never fight a country boy who carries a big knife. Rick didn’t just kill Jacamir. He split him like a ripe peach. While Rick was doing his work, I took out Jacamir’s AI units, and the whole thing turned into a charnel house when the Germans got in range with their artillery. Rick was wounded, but I knew Jacamir was dead, and we were out of time. He told me to leave. He told me about finding the ship somewhere in those cold mountains, out on a patrol under a starless night. He was a junior officer, so getting lost was sort of a rite of passage. Tunisia may as well have been another planet for those American boys.” She shrugged. “I thought, even in the war, we would have time. We would find the ship, take it into orbit, and retire on the money, but that asshole Jacamir and the Germans and everything happened like a flood. Rick was howling mad and fighting off Germans after he killed Jacamir, but he still had the presence of mind to tell me he would leave word for me, somehow, for the one thing that could set me free forever.”

  “The Streaker? With the list inside?” Petyr asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Rick said he would leave word? How?”

  “I don’t know. Your tech was nascent compared to ours. Your armies were still using small birds to carry messages. It was so primitive that I can’t fathom how Rick thought he could get word to me over the years. It’s not like he could leave a message for an alien woman named Bolowasc Gerti at some unknown point in the depths of time. Obviously, I go by B because—"

  Petyr began to laugh, long and hard, only stopping when his eyes ran with tears and he’d coughed himself hoarse. After wiping his eyes, he looked to find B staring at him like he’d gone mad, and, in a sense, he had.

  Among the things he’d learned as a good Soviet was the history of the Great Patriotic War. It was a subject he knew well, even intimately. Holding up a finger, he asked the most important question B would ever hear.

  “Did you ever come back? To look for Rick?”

  She nodded, eyes bright. “Six months later. Rick lived through the fight but only long enough to waste away in a field hospital near the city his allies had taken at hideous cost. He tried to work as a clerk, I think, but he never recovered from his fight with that prick Jacamir. He died, alone in that stinking tent your people called a hospital.”

  Petyr’s eyes grew soft, then triumphant. “Is the city, the battle—was it Bizerte? In Tunisia, yes?”

  B narrowed her eyes. “How did you know that?”

  Fighting the urge to roar with laughter all over again, he flipped a hand toward the bow. “How long will he be out?”

  “Long enough that we can put him back in his own ship and vanish,” B said, smiling.

  “Perfect. Let’s move him then, because we have some things to discuss, starting with a question. Did Rick’s death turn you toward medicine?”

  Opening the bow airlock, B looked surprised. “Maybe? Partially, anyway. It did something a lot more important than make me consider healing as a life path. Here, help me roll him over, the bastard.” She grunted a bit, then batted away a streamer of drool from Darghis, whose slack features were even more repulsive in his drug-induced repose. The Bolunvir mumbled something as he was propped onto a medical sled and pushed, like flotsam, toward the center airlock. “My trip to Earth was more critical in helping me choose my actual career. Beyond the medicine, anyway.”

  “Which is?” Petyr asked.

  “Prime lock open. Sending this guy back to his ship,” B ordered, ignoring the question.

  “Done, darlin’. He’s as good as gone,” came the velvety voice from above.

  “What accent is that?” Petyr asked, watching as Darghis rolled unceremoniously across the two-meter span of airlock into his own ship. Calafus closed up after he arrived, sensing that something was amiss with the pilot.

  “Pure Kentucky, thank you very much,” B’s AI answered. “And you can call me Rick. She does.”

  “Thank you. Rick.”

  B looked abashed. “I miss him. Still.”

  “I understand why. What kind of location system do you use? In this ship, specifically?” Petyr asked.

  “The TwoCentury. It places you in location, time, and gravity measurements, predicated on localized effects.”

  Petyr put a hand over his face, shoulders rising and falling with laughter. After another minute, he mastered himself with an effort. “I know Darghis will come to in a few minutes, so you might as well start heading toward Earth. This TwoCentury system, it uses two hundred data points, correct?”

  B looked at him with more respect. She knew the Soviet was holding back. “Yes. Exactly.”

  “Rick, if I give you something to search for on the Earth computer data banks, can you get access from here?”

  “Sure thing, friend. There’re satlinks aplenty to crack,” was the instant, drawled answer.

  “All right, can you process a simple cipher? A code that might be as basic as the first letter or number of something? Like a song?”

  “I have access right now, thanks to cable television satellites being about as secure as an open door. And as to the cipher, yes. Sure can,” Rick answered.

  “Then I need you to search for the following bit of doggerel from the American Army. Rick, the soldier, kept his word, B, and in a way that’s been hiding in plain sight for nearly fifty years.”

  “He… how?” B’s eyes were damp with the realization that Rick had, after all, delivered. He said he would do it, and he did.