"A Tale of Ill Fortune" - for beta
Heck with it, y'all can see it. And give an honest critique. Don't be kind.
All of this work:
(c)1989-2012 Dreia Melinkoff
The Nadiran freighter Ezhan Kajin'dar entered low orbit of the world the Nadiran called Javra-var. Its cargo carried a million neos' worth of precious stones, and with it, the hopes of a family.
The cargo drop-box slipped gracefully from the belly of the ship, its landing jets alight. It would coast down gracefully, then spend a brief few moments in freefall before its parachutes deployed.
That is not what happened.
Two landing jets flickered out on the edge of the world's gravity well. The box fell through the atmosphere like a stone. Two plates jarred loose from its belly, and fell away like specks of dust. And in a moment, the drop-box was encased in flame.
Nothing would remain but randomly scattered shrapnel.
“Turn it off. Turn it off!” a voice muttered, more dispirited than angry. The voice belonged to Arjannu Zhadva, captain of the Kajin'dar.
“Ai,” came the navigator's response. The navigator reached up with one long, slender hand - he turned a strangely quaint dial. The viewscreen shut off, and Kajin'dar's bridge was again cast in nothing but its customary faint red lights.
“Vad'ech," Arjannu cursed softly beneath his breath. What worse could go wrong, he asked himself. With the profit from that shipment, the clan would have bought two new freighters (and even more drop-boxes), and they would be nice, shiny, functional freighters fresh out of Tectra's shipyards. A marriage would be arranged for Arjannu's son, and a future secured for the children his son might one day have.
Now those hopes were lost in a shower of debris over Javra-var's worst desert.
Arjannu stood from his chair. He adjusted his patched, careworn robes.
He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment.
He opened them again, and looked at his bridge.
The navigator turned in his seat. “My apologies, Dan'ai,” he said softly, addressing Arjannu as “elder brother”.
“You have useful input this time, Varmana?” Arjannu growled. He had no idea why he had chosen his dreamy, wistful youngest brother as his navigator. The young man passed his time playing music and learning languages of people with whom the clan would never speak. Useless folly, he considered.
“Elder brother, I sense much negativity from you,” Varmana said. “Might I suggest that nothing we could have done could saved this shipment. Our Ancestors might be angry to know we think we have their power.”
“You are saying I should forgive myself, that there is nothing I could have done,” Arjannu replied.
“Yes,” Varmana replied, softly.
“Curses! Of course I could have done everything!” Arjannu said. “Now, get us out of here.”
“Ai,” Varmana said. “Where?”
“Home. And you will tell Father we have lost his shipment.”
~
Arjannu sat in the Kajin'dar's makeshift shrine room. He tried to get comfortable on his prayer cushion, and he failed: his long legs grew numb, and he shifted yet again.
Arjannu's bleary eyes looked at the shrine. Above the simple Drinai altar, hung the list of names of the Varen. The first of the Varen was the first ancestor of Clan Zhadva, who was said to have lived during the time of the Scattering as a lowly water (and waste) technician on a tradeship. Since the Scattering, Arjannu's clan and all of the Nadiran lived on their ships, calling no one world "home".
The last of the four hundred names, at the bottom of the scroll, was that of his uncle Kajendu whose final words had been too profane to record, as he clutched his chest and collapsed at the dinner table.
Arjannu struggled to mutter a prayer to himself, but he could not find words.
His mind still went over the events of the past few days.
Drinait'thon Jinandra had been on the clanship, awaiting a birth, and by custom, the blessing of a birth always took precedence over the blessing of a shipment. Coincidence alone had caused both the birth and the shipment to occur too closely together for Jinandra's already tight schedule.
Perhaps leaving without Jinandra's blessing was the worst mistake.
Due to expected poor weather conditions on Javra, the Kajin'dar was forced to make haste before the destination's storm arrived: this meant forgoing Jinandra's blessing, but it would not do to arrive at Javra with the drop-box being blown off-course by gale strength winds. And due to an agreed-upon drop-off date, the Kajin'dar could not simply just wait out the storm.
To fly without the Drinait'thon's blessing was common, and only the superstitious believed such a portent of ill luck, but like most spacers, Arjannu believed in portents.
Drinait'thon Jinandra had left a brief communique for Arjannu, as the ship entered the Javra system: “Pray. It may indeed work out as They have intended. All things unfold according to Their plan.”
Arjannu shook his head. He stood from his prayer cushion. He didn't have the concentration for prayer. If the Varen were as powerful as some believed, he considered, their plans would unfold with or without his help.
~
Arjannu returned to the bridge, and heard the strains of lutesong that meant Varmana was alone on the bridge without any other member of the crew.
“How far from home?” he asked.
“Two days,” Varmana said. Varmana stroked the lute that lay in his lap, that was only the latest piece of his collection of foreign instruments.You're fortunate I won't report you for spending your money so foolishly, Arjannu said to himself: but like Arjannu's son, Varmana had no hope of good marriage, so Arjannu knew it really was no concern of his own what his brother did with his money.
Varmana's expression was dreamy, far-away.
“What was that?” Arjannu said.
“What?”
“That. There it is again. Put your harp down and pay attention.”
“It's not a harp,” Varmana said. Suddenly, he sat bolt upright. “I heard that too.”
Varmana's fingers suddenly flew over his console.
“Something... something has landed-”
Arjannu's eyes went wide. “Landed on us?! What? Vad'ech. What?”
“Communications just went dead. They are jamming us.”
A sound issued through the entire ship: a sound that struck Arjannu as remarkably like the opening of a pressurized bottle. Only much louder.
“Was that the airlock?”
“Yes,” Varmana said. He swivelled around in his chair to face Arjannu. “They are boarding.”
“Vad'ech,” Arjannu said. He considered the options: there could only be one thing that could land on the dorsal side of a light freighter, and dock airlock-to-airlock. Well, two things.
One of them would be pirates.
The other would be...
“Vad'ech,” Arjannu cursed softly. “I'm going to meet them. Wake everyone. I want everyone on the bridge.”
~
Arjannu strode down Kajin'dar's narrow hallways. He spotted three dark-robed figures in the hall, a meter or so from the airlock: they moved in unison, without so much as a swish of their hooded black
robes.
The shortest of them strode forward. The black-robed figure moved like a soldier, with unmasked power in his black-cloaked limbs.
He reached up and swept back his hood, revealing his narrow onyx eyes and the sharp, angular planes of his features.
He extended his arm, with his hand palm forward.
Arjannu gasped.
There was a tattoo on the palm of that hand. A symbol Arjannu didn't quite recognize, but it looked suspiciously like some variant of the Prefect's Seal.
“I am Agent Ehras of the Prefect's Hand,” the figure said, bluntly. “You will take me to your cargo hold. We are authorized to inspect all of your drop boxes and view all of your visual records and crew and cargo manifests. When we have done so, and only when we have done so, you will be free to go.”
“What? What is this all about? Why have we been boarded?”
Agent Ehras said: “Should you resist, we are fifteen minutes from our command vehicle and more Agents will board your vessel and we will have what we wish, nonetheless. If you do not wish to show us what is on your ship, my commanding officer is on that ship, and he is a Master and you are aware that Masters have their own methods of finding out what they want to know. It is rare he gets to use his abilities and he likes to keep them sharp. It is your choice.”
Arjannu issued one ragged sigh. He did not wish to find out just what it was that Masters were capable of. The stories he'd heard, would be enough. “Very well. Come along,” he said.
~
After the Agents had left, and the Ezhan Kajin'dar returned to the clan, Arjannu called a family meeting. Thirty people, young and old, sat at the low table.
Like all meetings, it took place at a table resplendent with food. To call people together and not offer them food, was an affront to the manners of even the lowest of Nadiran.
Arjannu laughed. He wanted to cry, but could not find it within himself.
Drinait'thon Jinandra sat across the table, assessing Arjannu with his aged, hooded eyes.
Arjannu's wife San'ehri sat next to him, with their son on the other side of her. San'ehri Arjannu'dari reached under the table, grasped Arjannu's hand: her dark eyes met his, and there was the hint of a warm smile on her lips. “Tell them the story, Arja,” she said softly.
Arjannu took a deep breath.
“Drinait'thon Jinandra here, was not able to bless us before we left. He said that all things, however, happen according to-”
“That is not what I said,” Drinait'thon Jinandra boomed. “I said: All things unfold according to Their Plan.”
“Yes, yes,” Arjannu said, his voice cracking.
A small head peeked out from behind Arjannu's wife. “You set off without the Drinthon's-”
“Drinait'thon,” San'ehri corrected their young son.
“Drinait'- Drinithon's blessing,” the boy said.
“Yes, we did,” Arjannu told the group. “Drinait'thon Jinandra said it would all work out.”
Drianit'thon Jinandra smiled a superior smile, and nodded his silver head.
“What happened?” a small girl said from across the table. Her mother leaned forward, shot a glance at her, hushing her.
Arjannu bowed his head for a moment. “After we left for Javra, we were beset by one malfunction after another. There was a malfunction of our mapping meaning that we could not drop the drop-box over the right location. Then two of the drop-box's landing jets blew out. It fell from the sky, and some shielding plates fell off, and it burned up in the atmosphere.”
“What happened to all the precious stones?” an elder clansmen asked.
“Nothing,” Arjannu said. “There were none. The drop-box was packed with telechai'd, with illegal drugs. Apparently our supplier sent us with telechai'd instead of skystones. You all know the penalty
for carrying drugs. But the drop-box burnt up. When the agents of the Sen'mare Khar boarded us, they could find no incriminating evidence and had to let us go.”
Drinait'thon Jinandra nodded, sagely. “I told you,” he said: “The Varen are always kind.”
Arjannu closed his eyes, feeling his wife squeeze his hand. Warm feelings filled him. The clan would remain poor for now, he thought, but indeed their fortune was great. He looked up at his wife's face, and saw her smiling back at him: her smile told him that tonight they would work on a second child.
~
Back on the command ship, Agent Tanesh Ehras strode into his commanding officer's office.
“Tanesh,” a soft-spoken voice said.
Tanesh Ehras stood in the doorway, and he saw D'Veen Sevesh seated at his wooden desk, with the chair's back to him.
“Veh'ra D'Veen,” Tanesh said, with a slight bow of his head.
The D'Veen turned in his chair to face Tanesh. His graceful, long-fingered hands held a flute, and it was obvious Tanesh had interrupted the black-haired, gold-eyed D'Veen in his solitary music.
“What did you tell him, Tanesh,” the soft-spoken D'Veen asked.
Tanesh's lips quirked, and he struggled not to smile.
“I told him, sir, that you were a Master. I told him you were just itching to practice your 'abilities' and that he would make a great candidate.”
There was a long silence.
“What abilities are those, Tanesh?”
The D'Veen set his flute on the desk before him. He reached for his tea bowl, removed the lid, and sniffed at its contents before raising it to his lips.
Tanesh finally smiled.
“You know. Crawling into his mind like a worm. Mentally violating him. Typical stuff everyone thinks that Masters do.”
The D'Veen's brow furrowed. He set his tea bowl down. He reached for the small bottle of oil which he used to oil his flute.
"Which you know to be an untruth that I do not care to perpetuate," the D'Veen finally replied. "Along with the untruth that a D'Veen is ever called a 'Master' or that there is a 'Mastery'. Well, then. You're free to go. Unless you have something else to tell me.”
The D'Veen looked up again, eyes meeting Tanesh's.
"One more thing, Tanesh?"
"Yes?"
"Please refrain from perpetuating wrong beliefs," the D'Veen said.
Tanesh smiled again. “Got it."
They assessed each other for a moment. Tanesh bowed his head. With a spring in his step, he strode out of the D'Veen's office.
All of this work:
(c)1989-2012 Dreia Melinkoff
The Nadiran freighter Ezhan Kajin'dar entered low orbit of the world the Nadiran called Javra-var. Its cargo carried a million neos' worth of precious stones, and with it, the hopes of a family.
The cargo drop-box slipped gracefully from the belly of the ship, its landing jets alight. It would coast down gracefully, then spend a brief few moments in freefall before its parachutes deployed.
That is not what happened.
Two landing jets flickered out on the edge of the world's gravity well. The box fell through the atmosphere like a stone. Two plates jarred loose from its belly, and fell away like specks of dust. And in a moment, the drop-box was encased in flame.
Nothing would remain but randomly scattered shrapnel.
“Turn it off. Turn it off!” a voice muttered, more dispirited than angry. The voice belonged to Arjannu Zhadva, captain of the Kajin'dar.
“Ai,” came the navigator's response. The navigator reached up with one long, slender hand - he turned a strangely quaint dial. The viewscreen shut off, and Kajin'dar's bridge was again cast in nothing but its customary faint red lights.
“Vad'ech," Arjannu cursed softly beneath his breath. What worse could go wrong, he asked himself. With the profit from that shipment, the clan would have bought two new freighters (and even more drop-boxes), and they would be nice, shiny, functional freighters fresh out of Tectra's shipyards. A marriage would be arranged for Arjannu's son, and a future secured for the children his son might one day have.
Now those hopes were lost in a shower of debris over Javra-var's worst desert.
Arjannu stood from his chair. He adjusted his patched, careworn robes.
He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment.
He opened them again, and looked at his bridge.
The navigator turned in his seat. “My apologies, Dan'ai,” he said softly, addressing Arjannu as “elder brother”.
“You have useful input this time, Varmana?” Arjannu growled. He had no idea why he had chosen his dreamy, wistful youngest brother as his navigator. The young man passed his time playing music and learning languages of people with whom the clan would never speak. Useless folly, he considered.
“Elder brother, I sense much negativity from you,” Varmana said. “Might I suggest that nothing we could have done could saved this shipment. Our Ancestors might be angry to know we think we have their power.”
“You are saying I should forgive myself, that there is nothing I could have done,” Arjannu replied.
“Yes,” Varmana replied, softly.
“Curses! Of course I could have done everything!” Arjannu said. “Now, get us out of here.”
“Ai,” Varmana said. “Where?”
“Home. And you will tell Father we have lost his shipment.”
~
Arjannu sat in the Kajin'dar's makeshift shrine room. He tried to get comfortable on his prayer cushion, and he failed: his long legs grew numb, and he shifted yet again.
Arjannu's bleary eyes looked at the shrine. Above the simple Drinai altar, hung the list of names of the Varen. The first of the Varen was the first ancestor of Clan Zhadva, who was said to have lived during the time of the Scattering as a lowly water (and waste) technician on a tradeship. Since the Scattering, Arjannu's clan and all of the Nadiran lived on their ships, calling no one world "home".
The last of the four hundred names, at the bottom of the scroll, was that of his uncle Kajendu whose final words had been too profane to record, as he clutched his chest and collapsed at the dinner table.
Arjannu struggled to mutter a prayer to himself, but he could not find words.
His mind still went over the events of the past few days.
Drinait'thon Jinandra had been on the clanship, awaiting a birth, and by custom, the blessing of a birth always took precedence over the blessing of a shipment. Coincidence alone had caused both the birth and the shipment to occur too closely together for Jinandra's already tight schedule.
Perhaps leaving without Jinandra's blessing was the worst mistake.
Due to expected poor weather conditions on Javra, the Kajin'dar was forced to make haste before the destination's storm arrived: this meant forgoing Jinandra's blessing, but it would not do to arrive at Javra with the drop-box being blown off-course by gale strength winds. And due to an agreed-upon drop-off date, the Kajin'dar could not simply just wait out the storm.
To fly without the Drinait'thon's blessing was common, and only the superstitious believed such a portent of ill luck, but like most spacers, Arjannu believed in portents.
Drinait'thon Jinandra had left a brief communique for Arjannu, as the ship entered the Javra system: “Pray. It may indeed work out as They have intended. All things unfold according to Their plan.”
Arjannu shook his head. He stood from his prayer cushion. He didn't have the concentration for prayer. If the Varen were as powerful as some believed, he considered, their plans would unfold with or without his help.
~
Arjannu returned to the bridge, and heard the strains of lutesong that meant Varmana was alone on the bridge without any other member of the crew.
“How far from home?” he asked.
“Two days,” Varmana said. Varmana stroked the lute that lay in his lap, that was only the latest piece of his collection of foreign instruments.You're fortunate I won't report you for spending your money so foolishly, Arjannu said to himself: but like Arjannu's son, Varmana had no hope of good marriage, so Arjannu knew it really was no concern of his own what his brother did with his money.
Varmana's expression was dreamy, far-away.
“What was that?” Arjannu said.
“What?”
“That. There it is again. Put your harp down and pay attention.”
“It's not a harp,” Varmana said. Suddenly, he sat bolt upright. “I heard that too.”
Varmana's fingers suddenly flew over his console.
“Something... something has landed-”
Arjannu's eyes went wide. “Landed on us?! What? Vad'ech. What?”
“Communications just went dead. They are jamming us.”
A sound issued through the entire ship: a sound that struck Arjannu as remarkably like the opening of a pressurized bottle. Only much louder.
“Was that the airlock?”
“Yes,” Varmana said. He swivelled around in his chair to face Arjannu. “They are boarding.”
“Vad'ech,” Arjannu said. He considered the options: there could only be one thing that could land on the dorsal side of a light freighter, and dock airlock-to-airlock. Well, two things.
One of them would be pirates.
The other would be...
“Vad'ech,” Arjannu cursed softly. “I'm going to meet them. Wake everyone. I want everyone on the bridge.”
~
Arjannu strode down Kajin'dar's narrow hallways. He spotted three dark-robed figures in the hall, a meter or so from the airlock: they moved in unison, without so much as a swish of their hooded black
robes.
The shortest of them strode forward. The black-robed figure moved like a soldier, with unmasked power in his black-cloaked limbs.
He reached up and swept back his hood, revealing his narrow onyx eyes and the sharp, angular planes of his features.
He extended his arm, with his hand palm forward.
Arjannu gasped.
There was a tattoo on the palm of that hand. A symbol Arjannu didn't quite recognize, but it looked suspiciously like some variant of the Prefect's Seal.
“I am Agent Ehras of the Prefect's Hand,” the figure said, bluntly. “You will take me to your cargo hold. We are authorized to inspect all of your drop boxes and view all of your visual records and crew and cargo manifests. When we have done so, and only when we have done so, you will be free to go.”
“What? What is this all about? Why have we been boarded?”
Agent Ehras said: “Should you resist, we are fifteen minutes from our command vehicle and more Agents will board your vessel and we will have what we wish, nonetheless. If you do not wish to show us what is on your ship, my commanding officer is on that ship, and he is a Master and you are aware that Masters have their own methods of finding out what they want to know. It is rare he gets to use his abilities and he likes to keep them sharp. It is your choice.”
Arjannu issued one ragged sigh. He did not wish to find out just what it was that Masters were capable of. The stories he'd heard, would be enough. “Very well. Come along,” he said.
~
After the Agents had left, and the Ezhan Kajin'dar returned to the clan, Arjannu called a family meeting. Thirty people, young and old, sat at the low table.
Like all meetings, it took place at a table resplendent with food. To call people together and not offer them food, was an affront to the manners of even the lowest of Nadiran.
Arjannu laughed. He wanted to cry, but could not find it within himself.
Drinait'thon Jinandra sat across the table, assessing Arjannu with his aged, hooded eyes.
Arjannu's wife San'ehri sat next to him, with their son on the other side of her. San'ehri Arjannu'dari reached under the table, grasped Arjannu's hand: her dark eyes met his, and there was the hint of a warm smile on her lips. “Tell them the story, Arja,” she said softly.
Arjannu took a deep breath.
“Drinait'thon Jinandra here, was not able to bless us before we left. He said that all things, however, happen according to-”
“That is not what I said,” Drinait'thon Jinandra boomed. “I said: All things unfold according to Their Plan.”
“Yes, yes,” Arjannu said, his voice cracking.
A small head peeked out from behind Arjannu's wife. “You set off without the Drinthon's-”
“Drinait'thon,” San'ehri corrected their young son.
“Drinait'- Drinithon's blessing,” the boy said.
“Yes, we did,” Arjannu told the group. “Drinait'thon Jinandra said it would all work out.”
Drianit'thon Jinandra smiled a superior smile, and nodded his silver head.
“What happened?” a small girl said from across the table. Her mother leaned forward, shot a glance at her, hushing her.
Arjannu bowed his head for a moment. “After we left for Javra, we were beset by one malfunction after another. There was a malfunction of our mapping meaning that we could not drop the drop-box over the right location. Then two of the drop-box's landing jets blew out. It fell from the sky, and some shielding plates fell off, and it burned up in the atmosphere.”
“What happened to all the precious stones?” an elder clansmen asked.
“Nothing,” Arjannu said. “There were none. The drop-box was packed with telechai'd, with illegal drugs. Apparently our supplier sent us with telechai'd instead of skystones. You all know the penalty
for carrying drugs. But the drop-box burnt up. When the agents of the Sen'mare Khar boarded us, they could find no incriminating evidence and had to let us go.”
Drinait'thon Jinandra nodded, sagely. “I told you,” he said: “The Varen are always kind.”
Arjannu closed his eyes, feeling his wife squeeze his hand. Warm feelings filled him. The clan would remain poor for now, he thought, but indeed their fortune was great. He looked up at his wife's face, and saw her smiling back at him: her smile told him that tonight they would work on a second child.
~
Back on the command ship, Agent Tanesh Ehras strode into his commanding officer's office.
“Tanesh,” a soft-spoken voice said.
Tanesh Ehras stood in the doorway, and he saw D'Veen Sevesh seated at his wooden desk, with the chair's back to him.
“Veh'ra D'Veen,” Tanesh said, with a slight bow of his head.
The D'Veen turned in his chair to face Tanesh. His graceful, long-fingered hands held a flute, and it was obvious Tanesh had interrupted the black-haired, gold-eyed D'Veen in his solitary music.
“What did you tell him, Tanesh,” the soft-spoken D'Veen asked.
Tanesh's lips quirked, and he struggled not to smile.
“I told him, sir, that you were a Master. I told him you were just itching to practice your 'abilities' and that he would make a great candidate.”
There was a long silence.
“What abilities are those, Tanesh?”
The D'Veen set his flute on the desk before him. He reached for his tea bowl, removed the lid, and sniffed at its contents before raising it to his lips.
Tanesh finally smiled.
“You know. Crawling into his mind like a worm. Mentally violating him. Typical stuff everyone thinks that Masters do.”
The D'Veen's brow furrowed. He set his tea bowl down. He reached for the small bottle of oil which he used to oil his flute.
"Which you know to be an untruth that I do not care to perpetuate," the D'Veen finally replied. "Along with the untruth that a D'Veen is ever called a 'Master' or that there is a 'Mastery'. Well, then. You're free to go. Unless you have something else to tell me.”
The D'Veen looked up again, eyes meeting Tanesh's.
"One more thing, Tanesh?"
"Yes?"
"Please refrain from perpetuating wrong beliefs," the D'Veen said.
Tanesh smiled again. “Got it."
They assessed each other for a moment. Tanesh bowed his head. With a spring in his step, he strode out of the D'Veen's office.