The Ties That Bind – Tales of the Breaking Dawn

Well, I’ve finally gotten everything put together, and now my short story collection, “The Ties That Bind – Tales of the Breaking Dawn” is now available for purchase. Right now I have it in the following formats:

Printed Chapbook

CD – this is a little different from the audio version I podcasted

Kindle

iPhone/iTouch version

Free PDF Download

Now, some of you might have read the story over at Ray Gun Revival, so you might be wondering what makes the printed version special (other than the amazing cover art created by my brother), or you might have listened to the free podcast version and now wonder what the CD has that’s so special? Well, first, the chapbook and Kindle versions of the story have an essay at the end that tells how the story came to be, from its small beginnings to what it is now. The CD has brand new opening and closing credits, and there is a final track that contains hilarious bloopers and outtakes from the voice recording sessions. I hope those spark your interest.

And listen, don’t just take MY word for it. Here are just a few of the kind words that have been said about the story…

“Hard-hitting space opera in the golden age tradition, relentless and full of dark action.”
– David J Williams, author of The Burning Skies

“Whether regaling us with tales of anti-gravity pirate ships sailing an ocean of sand, or putting us aboard a cargo runner racing through coven gates and deep space perils, Justin Macumber delivers one hell of a fun story. What more can any reader ask?”
– J.F. Lewis, internationally published author of ReVamped (Void City, Book Two)

“The Ties That Bind is some of the best sci-fi I’ve read all year and the crew of the Breaking Dawn will have you rooting for their success on every page. Exciting, smart and well written, this is a story that is seriously worth reading.”
– Jeremy Robinson, author of Pulse and Antarktos Rising

Anyway, I’m really proud of what I’ve put together here, and I hope some of you decide to check it out. This story won Honorable Mention in last year’s Writers of the Future contest, and this year it was in Ray Gun Revival, so I couldn’t be more happy with what it’s done for me.

Thank you for reading this. And, if you buy a copy, thank you especially for that.

Oh, and by the way, if you want to see a higher rez version of the front and back cover, click HERE.

Also, if you would like to listen to this story rather than read it (though why you wouldn’t want to read my brilliant prose is beyond me), the bottom of this pave has players and download links for each episode.

And now, on with the show…

The Ties That Bind

*

Tales of the Breaking Dawn

This story is dedicated to Jason, April, Winston, Robert

and all the rest of my old buddies at the Wing Commander Pilots Club

(later transmogrified into Infinite Stars).

You guys were my friends, my critics, and my cheerleaders.

I wouldn’t be writing today were it not for you. Long live the Essex!

* * *

Part One

For several long and agonizing seconds, Jessica Quimbly, captain of the star-freighter Breaking Dawn, felt like her insides were being pulled in multiple directions at once. Her head throbbed in pain. The space around her ship was a swirling abstract of darkness and kaleidoscopic light. And then, as quickly as it began, it ended. The universe reverted to its normal dimensions, and her body sagged into her pilot’s seat.

Suddenly, red lights flared inside every corridor and room of the ship, and a sharp Bleet! erupted from overhead speakers. Flashes of light lit up the hull, followed quickly by flacks of metal debris that racked across the windows surrounding the pilot’s station.

“Cam!” she shouted. “Would the weapons specialist like to tell me what the hell is going on?”

Behind her, standing at a workstation that was a rat’s nest of monitors and wires, Cam was an island of calm in a sea of chaos. Considering that he was an android, such a disposition was only to be expected. Dangling network cables terminated at plugs near the base of his hairless skull, and his hands danced quickly across multiple keyboards.

“Though I risk stating the obvious, Captain,” he replied, his too-smooth face composed, “it appears we are under attack. IFF isn’t picking up any transmissions though. I have our drone fighters cycling up now, and they’ll launch in thirty seconds. Point defense systems are activated.”

Jessica tightened her grip on the control sticks and glanced at the radar screen near her left knee. There she saw five red symbols buzzing around her ship like angry hornets. What few weapons the Dawn had were firing in a near constant barrage. The red dots danced through the fusillade nimbly and fired back in return. The ship shook with each blast.

Drifting into the distance behind them was the reason for her recent discomfort, the Coven Gate Sisters Weirding. Nearly identical to every gate Jessica had encountered in her travels, it was circular in shape and had a diameter of just over a kilometer. Large though it was, its most notable features were the four massive coolant fins that sprang from its outer edge like the petals of a flower and radiated heat generated by the gate’s immense power core safely into space.

The aft bridge door slid open. Through it rushed Boo, Jessica’s second in command and the Dawn’s usual pilot.

“Jessie!” he yelled, two of his four long arms reaching out to grasp handrails so that he wouldn’t fall as the ship bucked beneath his broad feet. “Please tell me we aren’t under attack.”

“They came at us right after crossing through the gate,” she replied as she spun the ship into a sharp angle.

Never taking his mechanical eyes from the monitors before him, Cam said, “The markings on the fighters indicate that they are from Captain Harkens’ ship.”

“What?” Boo said. “I thought those pirates stuck to the other side of the spin!”

“They usually do,” Cam replied.

A series of dull thumps reverberated through the body of the freighter.

“Drone flights Alpha and Gamma have launched,” Cam said. “Hull integrity is at ninety-six percent.”

Pushing the engine throttle forward, Jessica spun the Dawn away from the pursuing fighters as gracefully as the lumbering vessel would allow. On her radar screen she saw ten small green blips burn away from them and race toward their attackers.

“Have you spotted the Bloodpack yet, Cam?” she asked. “Harkens has got to be out here somewhere.”

“Negative.”

Boo brought up a display panel that sat on an articulated arm and called up Navigation. He already knew where they were – the Loomis’kka System – but he wanted to know exactly how far they were from Loomis’kka Prime, their destination.

The freighter shuddered as the pirate fightercraft unleashed their particle guns. Cam fended them off with their drones and cannons, both working in harmony as his cybernetic mind tied their efforts together, but against such agile ships there was little he could do.

Jessica glanced at a status display and saw her ship’s hull weakened slowly but surely. Her options limited, she hit her afterburners and forced the freighter to fly in ways its makers had never intended. Sweat poured down her back.

After several nerve-racking minutes the pirates began to fall back, and the hits became less and less frequent. She wasn’t sure if that was because of her fancy flying or Cam’s remarkable tactical skills, but either way she was grateful. Her ship was designed for transporting cargo, not heavy combat.

“Captain,” Cam said, “our attackers have ceased pursuing us.”

She grunted and twisted her lips. “Not that I’m looking a gift horse in the mouth, but wasn’t that a bit easy?”

“Were I to theorize,” Cam replied, “I’d say their primary mission was to keep the gate secure.”

“Perhaps, but don’t recall the drones just yet. No use tempting them to come back for more.”

“Aye aye, Captain.”

The Dawn blazed its way further into the system, and the pirates faded into the distance. As seconds turned into minutes, their minds began to ease. Jessica was almost ready to issue a Stand-Down order for the ship when a large red blip appeared on her radar.

“Captain, we are picking up a vessel inbound from the direction of Loomis’kka Prime,” Cam said. “Again, there is no IFF, but by its size and hull design I would say it was the Bloodpack.”

Jessica tugged at her left earlobe. “Any indication they’ve spotted us?”

“Unless they actively ping us or transmit a hail, there is no way to know for sure.”

“Alright then, let’s play this safe.”

Her steady hands guided the freighter into a shallow turn to angle her vector well clear of the approaching vessel, and she pushed the engine throttles to their safety stops. To her relief, the Bloodpack didn’t change its heading. Once both ships had their engines to each other, she brought the ship back to its original course.

“Captain, it would seem we are clear of danger,” Cam said.

With a grateful sigh, she pulled back on the throttle and locked her controls down. After that she removed her headset and jumped up from the pilot’s seat. When she was clear of the lowered enclosure, she gestured to it with a sweep of her arm and said, “Boo, she’s all yours!”

The Kleeetan chuckled and lowered himself to the seat. “Aye, skipper.”

“Cam, how much longer until we hit Loomis’kka Prime’s orbit?”

The android paused for a moment as he interfaced with the ship’s systems, and then said, “Six hours.”

“That can’t be right,” she replied.

“No, that’s accurate,” Boo said. “I saw it on the nav screen while you were busy keeping us from getting shot out of the sky. The Sisters Weirding gate is now only half as far from Loomis’kka Prime as it was when our navigation charts were last updated.”

A line formed between Jessica’s eyes as her brow furrowed. “How? And better yet, why?”

“I think they knew.”

“Knew what?”

“That Harkens was going to try and use their gate as a way of setting up a presence in the system.”

Thinking his words over, she nodded. “Could be. But, how would they have known far enough ahead of time to move it? That couldn’t have been quick, or easy.”

The Kleeetan thought for a moment and then said, “Maybe they had a premonition.”

As Boo’s words entered the air, Cam stopped typing, and the absence of the ever-present clicking noise caused Jessica to turn.

“Captain,” the android said, his tone flatter than usual, “I am aware that most of the galaxy believes the Coven to be some sort of mystics or seers, but that is, and I mean no offense, organic superstitious nonsense. It is more than likely that contacts the Coven have within the criminal community alerted them to Harkens’ plan. They could not refuse him passage through the gate without risking a pirate war, so instead they moved it closer to the safety of Loomis’kka Prime and its military forces. It doesn’t take voodoo or psychic powers to see that.”

Jessica wanted to laugh at Cam’s all-too proper tone, but she decided it would be better to just nod and smile.

“Very good,” she said. “Makes perfect sense.”

Cam nodded. “Of course it does.”

“Oh, and go ahead and stable those drones now that the excitement is over.”

“Aye aye, Captain.” Cam working quickly and quietly. Beneath his breath she just barely heard him whisper, “Supernatural powers. Really.”

Smirking, she exited the bridge. Coming down the short corridor from the opposite direction was Duka, the ship’s engineer. His usually dark and hairy face was pale.

“You should warn me when we’re going to get into a tussle, Jessie,” he said with a laugh like rocks being ground over each other. “That way I can prep the engines properly.”

She returned his laugh. “The funny thing with pirates is that they don’t like to give much in the way of a warning. Besides, I never fear the Dawn’s engines giving out. You’re a marvel of your profession.”

Duka reached out and patted her on the shoulder with a hand that held too many fingers with too many knuckles. “You flatter as well as you fly, and I thank you.”

The alien engineer lapsed into silence, and Jessica was content to stand quietly next to him. She’d known him all of her life, and his presence was a comfort. Her father, Patrick Quimbly, had purchased the ship just before she was born, and the first crewmember he’d hired had been the E’Loean engineer. In the years since Patrick’s death, the engineer had become a mentor and something of a surrogate parent to her.

Finally breaking the stillness he said, “Perhaps it’s just me, but that last gate crossing was especially painful.”

A pensive expression crossed her eyes and mouth. “I’d have thought by now you’d be used to it.”

“I’ll never get used to it,” he grumbled. “Your father never used the Coven.”

Despite herself, Jessica grew hot where she stood. “Well I’m not my father. I know the rest of you don’t like the Coven, and to tell you the truth I don’t either, but they’re willing to let us use their gates, and sometimes that can shave days from our travel times. Advantages are too few and far between out here to not use them.”

“But at what cost?”

She shifted around in her chair and fluttered her hands in the air. “Cost? Yeah, the Covens charge a steep fee, but it all works out.”

“That isn’t what I meant.”

“Oh, what, are we going to go into that again?” she asked. “Are we really?”

Duka opened his mouth, but then he closed it and shook his bushy head. “No. You know how we feel about the Coven, but you’re the captain.”

Biting back the retort that had sprung to her lips, Jessica sighed. “You should have Zen give you something for the nausea.”

“No. I’ll be okay. Just a small glass of Refflik Tea, and then I’ll hit the tube. Sleeping makes it better, except for the nightmares.”

“You don’t always have them,” she said, her tone hopeful.

“No, I don’t. As you humans say, knock on wood.” He raised his right hand and rapped it against the top of his large head.

Jessica smiled. “That’s more like stone than wood.”

“So it is. Call me if you need me.”

The E’Loean engineer patted her shoulder one last time and then ambled away to the galley in his odd but endearing three-legged gate.

Jessica watched him go, sad that her choices caused those close to her pain, and angry at the universe for forcing her to make those choices in the first place. But, she knew nothing could be done to change things, so she turned to her cabin door. She needed to get all the rest she could before they arrived at Vimm’skka Station. Once all of their cargo was unloaded, the task of finding another job would begin.

#

The trip from the Coven gate to Loomis’kka Prime was brief, but the wait to dock with Vimm’skka Station felt like an eternity. Hundreds of ships flew in orbit around the planet, all of them waiting for clearance to land, clearance which was often long in coming. But, as soon as the Dawn was docked, unloading its cargo fell to their cargo chief, Ferron Cth.

“Will you tell that bucket of rust to get the hell out of my way?” he shouted at a nearby dock robot. The droid wasn’t perturbed by the fierceness of Ferron’s voice, but the Dunadon wouldn’t have cared even if it had.

Gray skinned and nearly hairless, Dunadons are a large and incredibly strong species. Like most Dunadon males, Ferron sported a single small horn above his nostril ridge, which he’d had capped with a brass tip, and formidable tusks descending past the sides of his grim mouth.

“They will be moving in just one moment,” the dock robot replied, one metal hand extended toward a hovering pallet practically overflowing with bags of grain. “Please wait until I give you permission before you begin unloading your cargo.”

Ferron snorted thickly. “I’ve got time sensitive stuff here!”

Its hands still moving in precise motions, the droid gave a negative beep in reply. “Not according to the manifest you have supplied us with. If this manifest is not complete, I will need to have you submit a new one, and it will then have to be personally inspected by an import official.”

“Now, now. No need for all that. I just meant that our employer requested this cargo to be delivered as quickly as possible. Our manifest is most certainly complete.”

That wasn’t entirely true, but it was said with enough conviction that few would challenge it. Ferron had been inspected only once in his entire career, luckily during a shipment that actually had been above-board, so his record was clean. He intended to keep it that way.

“Then perhaps you should have arrived sooner,” the robot replied flatly. Rolling forward, the droid extended one of its many arms and handed him a slim computer pad. “Please keep this on you at all times while working in the dockyard. From our records I see that you have been here once before and are qualified for dock handling by the Dol’mire’s Conglomerate Board Of Commerce and Transportation. As such I will expect your work here to be efficient and problem free. Are we clear?”

“Crystal,” Ferron replied.

“Yes or no, please.”

Grumbling, the Dunadon rubbed his lips against his long tusks and said, “Yes, we’re clear.”

“Very well. Your loading area is now ready, so you may begin moving your cargo at this time. Is there anything else I can assist you with?”

Ferron tucked the pad into a pocket on his dungarees and turned back toward his ship. “Nope, I’m good, tin head. Off you go.”

Not insulted in the least, the droid spun around and wheeled off toward the next ship on its list.

“Everything okay?” Jessica asked as she walked down the cargo ramp from her ship.

“Aye, skipper. It shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours to clear everything out.”

“Everything?

“Yes, ma’am. Everything. No problems at all.”

She hadn’t expected anything less, but it always came as a comfort when unlisted cargo wasn’t searched or sniffed out.

“Very good. Sar Donn’hha will be most pleased.”

“I do what I can, skipper.”

Patting his thickly muscled left arm, Jessica smiled. “And you do it well. If you need me or Boo, we’ll be in the Stargazer seeing what jobs are available.”

Ferron nodded his gray head. “Will do.”

“Oh, and before I go, make sure to call Zen as soon as our provisions get here. She’s been breathing down my neck all week to get the kitchen stocked again, plus she has some medical supplies coming in for sick bay.”

“It’ll be good to have new grub aboard,” Ferron told her, patting his belly. “Pickings have been slim.”

“Too slim, I know. We’ll get that fixed.”

Around the back of the Dawn appeared Boo, his shaggy face showing how happy he was to be on the station and able to stretch his legs.

“You ready to make some money?” Jessica shouted to him over the din of the docking bay.

“I’m always ready!”

Grinning, Jessica nodded to her cargo chief and then walked off with Boo toward the entrance to the inner sanctums of the station, leaving Ferron to his work, which he set to with his usual dogged determination.

#

Looking through the glass entrance doors, Jessica saw that the Stargazer lounge was busier than she’d ever seen it before, and the sight of it depressed her. She preferred the bar the way it had been when she was young, before the Conglomerate had become a powerhouse in the galaxy. “Sometimes progress just isn’t worth it,” she said.

Nodding, Boo grumbled, “You read my mind.”

With shared smirks they entered the lounge. Pulsing music nearly hit them like a wall when the doors opened. A few of the lounge’s occupants turned to look their way, but after little more than a cursory glance they turned away without looking a second time. Neither Jessica nor Boo rated more interest than that.

“You go and get us some drinks, and I’ll find a table,” Jessica shouted.

“Your usual?” he asked.

Jessica nodded and handed him a credit chip. He declined it with a hurt expression, and then walked toward the crowded bar. She then searched around for an unoccupied table, eventually finding one near the back. As soon as she was seated she activated the computer screen that sat on the table top and entered her credentials so that she could access the Intergalactic Trade and Transportation Network.

After entering her identification, she pulled up the details on her latest job and saw that Sar Donn’hha had marked her contract as completed. He’d also transmitted the remainder of his payment, along with an unexpected bonus. Jessica smiled and tapped a key that marked her acceptance of the contract closure.

Boo appeared at the table a second later, drinks in two of his large hands. The one he sat down in front of her was bright red and fizzled furiously, while the one he placed before his own chair was dark and thick.

“The least they could do is put a gun to my head while they’re robbing me blind,” he grumbled as he sat down.

“Prices getting that bad?”

“Bad? How does twenty Glomers sound?”

“For just two drinks?”

“Two drinks, my right eyes! That was for just your Zoodien Twist! Mine was another fifteen! I suggest you drink it slowly. There won’t be another one. Not from my meager wages anyway.”

Gently picking up the glass before her, Jessica took a shallow drink, and then carefully put it down to the right of the screen, far from any danger of being accidentally spilled. “Don’t whine just yet,” she said. “Sar Donn’hha threw a bit more in than we contracted for, so we’re all a little richer.”

A twinkle appeared in the pilot’s four eyes. “Zen’s contacts really came through.”

“For a doctor, she sure knows some unscrupulous people,” Jessica said. After taking another sip, she looked back at the monitor and hit a button that brought up a screen of freighter contracts. As they filtered through the list, a light started to flash in the lower right corner of the screen, indicating an incoming transmission.

“A call?” Boo said. “Who could possibly be calling us?”

Raising her eyebrows, Jessica hit the CONNECT icon with a tentative finger and said, “This is Captain Jessica Quimbly.”

A window opened on the monitor. At first it was dark, but then a face suddenly filled the frame, and the man it belonged to huffed air in nervous gasps.

“Oh, Jessie!” the man shouted, his head trembling. “Thank the Gods I found you! I need your help, and I need it fast!”

#

Part Two

“Why do I get the feeling this isn’t a social call, Jack?” Jessica asked.

Sitting in the Stargazer lounge, Jessica and Boo looked down at the computer screen that sat on their table. Peering back at them from the screen was the exasperated face of Jack Connelly, a man Jessica had known for over a decade. She’d first met him during one of the last runs she and her father had made together before his death.

“Perhaps because of my harried expression?” Jack replied.

“Don’t snap at me, Jack. This call has to be costing you a fortune, so just tell me what’s going on.”

After huffing for a moment, Jack said, “I’m in a bit of a bind. My ship’s in a bad way, and I really need your help.”

Jessica frowned at the screen. “What’s wrong with the Wandering Star? Do you need a loan or something to help get her fixed?”

“No, that’s not it. I need you to pick up some cargo for me and deliver it before the contract time expires. It’s really important.”

“Then call for an extension. I’m sure whoever your contract is with would rather get their cargo late than not at all.”

Jack pulled at the hairs on his chin and shifted his gaze from left to right. “Not these people, Jessie. The contract. . . it’s with the Gorawnies.”

“What the hell?! The Gorawnies? Jack, are you insane?”

“Now, you listen here –” he began, but Jessica cut him off.

“No, you listen! The Gorawnies are not people you want to get involved with! Jesus, Jack! Those guys are nothing but criminals, and folks like us have no business dealing with them.”

The older man looked ashamed, but anger brought a hard glint to his eyes. “First of all, I don’t need lessons in life from a girl less than half my age. Secondly, I’m trying to join the Trade Guild, and the Gorawnies are charter members. A sponsorship from them would give me a serious leg up.”

“The Guild?” Jessica said. “Since when have you been interested in joining with them? If I recall correctly, the last time the Guild came up in conversation, it was said in the same breath as words like ‘corporate shills’ and ‘damn whores.’ You suddenly have a change of heart?”

Jack’s angry expression reverted to one of embarrassment, but the older man tried to hide it under a layer of bluster. “I’m gettin’ too old for this small time independent stuff. A man has to start thinking about his retirement at some point, and these milk runs we’re making just don’t cut it anymore. Guild membership is practically a golden ticket.”

“That may be, but once you’re in the Guild, they own you. And to make matters worse, you’re willing to get into bed with the Gorawnies to do it.”

“Age changes things, Jessie,” Jack said, his face drooping. “You’ll see. Besides, the Gorawnies have never been convicted of anything.”

“Now you’re rationalizing.”

“Yeah, maybe, but I entered into an agreement with them to deliver some cargo, and with my ship now out of commission I can’t complete it.”

“What’s wrong with her?”

Jack ran a shaking hand down his stubbly cheek. “It’s her damn armor-capillary system. She’s sprung a leak, and the weight shift has completely thrown off our engines. If we try to engage our drives at more than half-throttle we list around like a drunken sailor.”

“Dammit,” Jessica replied. “So, not only are you in a world of hurt, but now you want us in it with you?”

“I’ll pay you of course. Everything I would have made and more. I just have to get their cargo in. If I don’t, it won’t be pretty. I hate to ask, but you’re the only person I know who can help me.”

“Save the guilt trip. You knew I would help before you even called.”

Shaking his head, he replied, “I didn’t, but I hoped.”

Jessica shrugged her shoulders and tilted her head. “Either way, you know I can’t leave you hanging out to dry like this. Where are you and what do I need to haul?”

“We’re in the Shush’ka Shipyards out in Outpost 8A-14, but the cargo isn’t with us. I couldn’t take a chance on dock scanners finding it. . . whatever it is. . . so I dumped the cargo pod and left it in the Proxius asteroid field.”

Boo gasped. “You mean you left their cargo just spinning with the rocks?! Are you insane?”

Jack jumped to cover the speaker on his comm terminal, then replied, “Of course not! The asteroid belt isn’t very thick, and an onboard nav system can move it with air thrusters if anything gets too close. Trust me, it’s safe enough. There’s a passive homing beacon on it though, so in order for you to find it you’ll need to ping the belt with an encrypted transmission burst. Once you do that it’ll light up enough for you to find it.”

“I know the drill,” Jessica told him. “Don’t forget, it was dad who came up with that smugglers package in the first place.”

“That’s right. I’m sending you the encryption credential right now. Once you’re at the Proxius conduit node, start broadcasting. It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes for it to ping you back. I’m also sending you the delivery file so you know where to take it. When you’re done, call me back here and let me know so that your money can be transferred.”

“The money will be sent over now, Jack.” Jessica’s voice was unwavering. “There’s a lot that can go wrong, and I’m not going to risk being left out to dry along with you should that happen. I love you like an uncle, but even that has limits.”

The elder freighter captain glowered at the screen, but his anger and frustration meant little in the face of her resolve. “Alright. I’ll transmit payment as soon as I hang up with you. You’ll find it more than reasonable, I assure you.”

Nodding once to the screen and then once to her second in command, Jessica said, “Sounds good.”

“I appreciate you doing this for me. I know you don’t agree with what I’m doing, but you’re sticking by me anyway, and I’ll never forget it.”

Giving him a half smile, Jessica replied, “Oh, I think you can count on that. I foresee many retellings of this over drinks in the future.”

Jack smirked back. “I guess I deserve that.”

“I’ll call you when the dust settles.”

“I’ll be waiting, Jessie. Thanks again.”

Jessica and Boo gave their farewells. Once the call window faded to black, she downed the remainder of her drink and pulled up a banking window. True to his word, Jack deposited a healthy sum of money into their account.

“You know this won’t end well,” Boo said as they stood from their chairs and began walking toward the exit of the lounge.

“Nothing involving the Gorawnies ever does. Then again, my karma is pretty clean, so there’s always hope.”

Boo grunted and shook his head. Seconds later they were free of the lounge and headed back toward their waiting ship.

#

“And that,” Jessica said with an air of finality, “is the tall and the skinny of it.”

Everyone around the table that served as the primary gathering place for meals aboard the Breaking Dawn grunted and sat back to mull over what she’d told them. After several seconds of silence, one crewmember stood up.

“I’ll not say that I’m entirely pleased with all this,” Zen squawked, her cream-colored feathers barely bristling, “but as your people say, no use crying over spilled muff.”

“Milk,” Boo corrected with a light chuckle.

Zen’s pitch black eyes slid over to the Kleeetan abruptly. “Pardon?”

“Milk,” Boo repeated. “No use crying over spilled milk.”

Clicking her beak lips, Zen tossed her head and shrugged. “Fine. Milk. Thank you, Boo. But my sentiment stands. We are committed, and we have been paid, so I think we might as well get the task done with as quickly as possible.”

Jessica looked around the table. None of her crew appeared happy to be working for the Gorawnies, even if only tangentially, but no one stood up to say they refused either. Nodding, she said, “Okay then. Get to your stations. I’m going to be pushing the engines fairly hard all the way, and I don’t want any surprises.”

Everyone filed out of the room, some going fore and some aft. Jessica and Boo made immediately for the bridge. The Kleeetan lowered himself into the pilot’s seat while his captain went to a command station above and behind him. As he strapped himself in and began pre-flight checks, she put on a headset and brought her communications display online.

“Traffic control, this is Breaking Dawn requesting immediate clearance to depart.” Her words were crisp, clear, and direct. A reply was not long in coming.

“Breaking Dawn, you are not yet cleared for debarkation. Stand down while we secure an exit lane for you. One moment please.”

Tapping the screen to her left, she brought up the ship’s status display and saw that all systems were reading within nominal ranges. For a ship as old as she was, Breaking Dawn was fitter than most starcraft half her age. All her crew saw to that.

Next she brought her navigation displays to life and started charting a route to Proxius. There were two to choose from, but neither was an easy trip, and ultimately it came down to deciding which was the lesser evil. One route consisted of eight hops; seven of them through standard Conduit nodes, and one through a Coven gate, with the entire trip taking an estimated six days. The other route took only three days, but there were four hops, and all of them were through Coven gates, the last two being within hours of each other. She didn’t want to put any of them through that sort of stress, but the saved time was too great to ignore. In the end, it really wasn’t a choice at all.

“You’re now cleared to leave Vimm’skka Station, Breaking Dawn” the traffic control operator said. “Exit vectors have been uploaded to you. Deviate from them and you will be fined accordingly. Have a good day.”

Jessica checked her screens and saw the uploaded flight plan. “Thanks, traffic control. Breaking Dawn out.” She then added the transmitted exit vectors to her Proxius nav route and forwarded it to the piloting station. A disgruntled snort came seconds later.

“Four Coven gates?” Boo asked. “Was it something I said?”

She laughed, but it was a sound with little humor in it. The coming journey promised to be a trying one, and she silently cursed the bond that had caused her to help her old friend. Had it been anyone else in the galaxy, she would have turned them away without a second’s thought. But Jack was different, and the old man knew it.

Still, she thought, Zen’s right. We took the job, and we took the payment. No use grousing about it now. Let’s just get it done and move on. The sooner we get all these Coven gates passed us, the better.

#

For the fourth time in nearly as many days, space unraveled itself around Jessica in terrible swirls of light and dark as her ship flew through yet another Coven gate. It was a horrible feeling, like she was dying in slow motion, and it never got easier no matter how many times she went through it.

“One. . . two. . . three. . . four. . . five. . .” she whispered, her eyes closed and her skin clammy. “Six. . . seven . . eight. . . nine. . . ten.”

By the time she was done counting, the medicine Zen had given her kicked in, easing her stomach and frazzled nerves. Going through a Coven gate was bad enough, but how the Coven themselves could stand to live inside them was something she would never understand.

Checking her navigational screens, shea saw that her ship was approximately six million klicks from the conduit node in the Proxius system. At maximum burn that meant about an eight hour trip to reach the asteroid belt. She didn’t like pushing her engines that hard for so long, but she trusted Duka to keep them operating in the green.

After initiating the ship’s autopilot program, she sprang from the piloting chair and exited through the aft hatch to make her way toward the galley. As she entered the communal room, Zen came through the hatchway that led to the crew’s sleeping pods, a small black bag in her hands.

“Did the medicine help, Captain?” Zen asked, looking a bit green around the beak herself.

Jessica nodded. “So far, so good. Thanks for the popper.”

Zen nodded, settled into a chair, and opened her medical bag and pulled out a med-patch. After removing the adhesive cover, she settled the patch over the thin feathers of her neck. A satisfied sigh escaped her beak.

Seconds later Ferron joined them. After a silent greeting he opened a cabinet door and began rummaging around in the pantry until he found a large bag of dehydrated meat. The snack never failed to calm his stomach.

“How long until we pick up the package, skipper?” he asked around mouthfuls of chewed flesh.

Zen, whose species was strictly vegetarian, looked at him with barely disguised disgust. Ferron didn’t notice.

Opening a refrigerated cabinet, Jessica replied, “Eight hours, give or take. After that we hit the node and get rid of it as soon as possible.” As she finished speaking, she withdrew a pouch of chilled nutrient-enriched fruit juice, closed the refrigerator, popped the top off her drink, and started sipping.

“And then we can get back to our normal lives,” Boo said as he shuffled through the same hatchway Zen and Ferron had used. Sleep was still evident in his four brown eyes and in the sags of his dog-like face.

“Anyone heading down to the grease pit?” Ferron asked. “Because, if not, I thought I’d take a snack down to Duka, see how he’s doing.”

“Take him a few of those galonaan podberries,” Jessica suggested. “He loves those.”

Nodding, Ferron plucked two handfuls of the sickeningly sweet fruit from a bin and shoved them into one his pockets, and then started walking toward the aft passageway that led toward the ship’s main engine cluster.

“Do you mind watching the helm?” Jessica asked Boo as she finished the last of her juice and dropped the plastic pouch into a recycling bin.

The Kleeetan pilot answered with a silent shake of his head. He then took hold of a tall metal cup and filled it with steaming coffee, coffee only he could stomach. The strong smell of it made Jessica’s nose wrinkle up in disgust.

“Okay, thanks. I’m going to take a shower and then snooze for a bit. If I’m not on the bridge in five hours, beep my cabin.”

He nodded, screwed a lid onto his cup, and shambled toward the bridge.

The walk to her cabin was short, and she crossed into it with relief. It wasn’t much, but it was home. The Breaking Dawn only had one full-fledged living compartment, and it was hers. Everyone else on board slept in sleeping tubes, with their few possessions stored in personal lockers, but as the captain of the ship she had a room all to herself, and even if the quarters were cramped she did all she could to make them her own.

Articles of unwashed clothing were draped over her desk chair and the foot rail of her tiny bunk, while under it were three pairs of boots that had been kicked off and forgotten. One corner of her desk was cluttered with a haphazard collection of makeup containers, half-empty perfume bottles, and an ancient squeeze tube of hair gel that had hardened past the point of usefulness. The slim closet door next to her desk was half open, and poking from it were the barrels of two handguns that hung in leather holsters from a coat hook, both of them in need of a good servicing.

“Hey dad,” she said to a portrait of her father that sat on the shelf over her bunk. “Hangin’ in there? Yeah, me too.”

Also on the shelf was a picture of her mother, Muriel, a young woman with an angelic face that echoed strongly in her own. Her mother had died minutes after giving birth to her one and only child. All Jessica knew of her was what her father had passed on through stories.

As the hatch closed and locked behind her, she sat down in her chair and undid the buckles of her boots, which were shuffled off to join their companions beneath the bunk. Next she removed her socks, her vest, undershirt, and trousers.

A full length mirror was secured to the wall next to her small bathroom stall, and in it she quickly looked herself over. At five and a half feet tall, Jessica was in average physical condition. She’d never felt that she was an overly attractive woman, at least by human standards, though none of her lovers had ever seen fit to complain. Her eyes were gray like the ocean under a stormy sky, and her hair, which was naturally a deep red, hung in thick curls that fell just past her shoulders.

Down her arms and back were tattooed thin swirls of black, red, and blue lines, the result of a drunken stay in a strange port. It was the only thing she and her father had ever shared cross words over. Two weeks after the argument, an accident in the forward cargo hold took his life. In his will he’d left everything to her, including his stake in the ship and its business, which amounted to just over half of the freighter’s total worth.

I can’t believe it’s been so long since he died, she thought. How is it possible to feel this young and this old all at the same time?

With a shake of her head she finished disrobing and stepped into her shower. A hot water shower on a small ship like hers was a luxury she rarely allowed herself. Lathering up was a delight, but it was nothing compared to the joy of hot water cascading down her skin to wash the suds away. Next she washed her hair, and then she brushed her teeth. When she was done she felt like a new woman.

On a hook next to the shower was a towel, which she used and then threw onto the rest of the dirty clothes in her chair. For a moment she toyed with the idea of reading her latest email download, but the warm water had drained the last reserves of her energy away, so instead she collapsed onto her bunk and sank into several hours of much needed sleep.

#

“Are we ready to broadcast?” Boo asked from the command console as the Breaking Dawn reached the outer edge of the Proxius asteroid belt.

Jessica, her nap still fresh across her pink face, reached out, grabbed the engine throttle, and pulled it all the way back. In space there was no such thing as a true stop, but so far as the rest of the Proxius system was concerned, she was as good as parked. “We are now.”

Boo tapped a series of buttons on his communications panel that sent an encrypted transmission burst into the asteroid field. Several seconds later, a beeping sound came through the bridge speakers, and a light began flashing.

“Looks like the package is where Jack said it would be,” he said.

On her nav screen, Jessica saw an indicator icon slowly pulsing at the very edge of the display. “We’re lucky it’s still in range. The belt isn’t too crowded out that way, but I’m not taking any chances, so get Cam to man the guns. I want him ready to fire on any stray rocks that get too close. And then go get some sleep. We’re nearly on the home stretch, and I want you frosty.”

Nodding, Boo stepped back from the command station and said, “I’ll have him right up.”

She waved her hand and yawned. “I’ll call if an asteroid hits us.”

The Kleeetan laughed as he exited the bridge. Once the door closed behind him, Jessica tapped her nav screen and set up a series of checkpoints that formed a route through the asteroid belt to their target. The navigational computer checked her course against the drift of all the asteroids detected and found it to be a sound flight path. As she finalized her preparations, the bridge door whisked open.

“Ready for some target practice?” she asked Cam over her shoulder.

“I don’t require practice, Captain. My skills are constant.”

She shook her head and grinned “It’s just an expression.”

“I know, ma’am.” As he spoke, the android settled into the tactical station and plugged himself into the ship’s sensor and weapons grids. Within seconds he and the ship were one. “Tactical is ready.”

Knowing they were as ready as they possibly could be, Jessica nodded and hit a button that activated the ship’s intercom system. “Everyone, we’re about to go swimming with the rocks. Start praying to whatever gods you find comfort in. Bridge out.”

With that done, she grabbed the throttle and slowly pushed it forward. The ship’s engines throbbed to life, and into the asteroid field they flew.

#

Part Three

Hauling cargo wasn’t normally a difficult job, but then again, the payload wasn’t usually free-floating in the middle of asteroid belt.

All in a day’s work, Ferron thought. As the cargo chief of the Dawn, he approached every task with the same steadfast determinism.

Clad in a white environmental suit that didn’t quite fit his large body, the Dunadon stood before a computer terminal next to the forward-facing cargo doors. Magnetic boots kept him locked in place, which was good since the doors were open to the depths of space and the artificial gravity had been turned off. Everything in the cargo bay was strapped down to keep them from bouncing around in the icy emptiness, including his loader droids, which were useless in a zero-gee environment.

“Skipper,” he said into his helmet mike, “if we can’t get that pod to stop spinning we’re going to have a hell of a time getting her aboard.”

“I realize that, Chief,” Jessica replied from the bridge. “If I could, I would, but its motion is just too crazy. Otherwise I would have just scooped it up myself.”

“Just do what you can, skipper” Ferron said.

“I always do, Chief.”

Beneath him, Ferron could feel the ship start spinning along its lateral axis. Less than a minute later, the captain had gotten as close as the she could to matching the spin of the freight pod. With that done, Ferron pressed a button on his console, and from the ceiling descended a grappling cannon. It only took him a moment to get the grappler’s crosshairs centered on its target. “I’m ready to fire, Skipper.”

“Fire away, Chief.”

“Affirmative. Firing grappler now.” A second later, a small metal rod shot from the cannon and flew toward the cargo pod, unspooling a length of carbon nanofiber behind it as it flew. Moments later, the magnetic tip at the front of the rod hit the metal container with a thump and latched on.

“We have a lock,” Ferron said. “I’m bringing her in now.”

“Understood.”

A button press began the retraction process. Above him the winch started reeling the nanofiber in. After a few moments a warning light began blinking. Scanning his display, Ferron saw that the differing rates of rotation was causing the fiber to bunch up and twist in the reel mechanism, which if left unchecked could cause it to seize up. He hit a button, and the winch stopped.

“Skipper, we’ve got a bit of a problem, so I’m going to go take a walk. I’ll be right back.”

With a half-hearted chuckle, he reached down to grab one of his suit’s dangling carabineers, gave it a test yank, and then looked up.

This should be fun, he mused to himself, only half joking.

#

“Just what do you think he meant by that?” Jessica asked her android crewmate from the pilot’s chair.

“Knowing Ferron, it could have meant anything.”

The captain stewed in her seat. Her first instinct was to call the cargo chief back to get a better explanation of what the problem was he’d discovered, but she trusted his judgment and let him handle it as he saw fit. She regretted her decision seconds later when she saw, at the bottom of her field of view, a small figure moving away from her ship down the length of nanofiber line.

“Ferron Cth, what do you think you’re doing?!” she shouted into the comm.

“I’m kinda busy right now, skipper,” he replied, his breathing sounding harried through the bridge speakers. “Sorry.”

The comm channel squelched closed, and all Jessica could do was watch in horrified amazement as her crewman drifted down the fiber line toward the slowly spinning cargo pod like a rotund spider. Tiny white puffs from his suit’s air thrusters pushed him along.

“I don’t believe his enviro-suit was designed for that sort of activity,” Cam said.

Slumping into her chair, she replied, “Tell him that.” From where she sat, his large body seemed so small and insignificant in the vastness around him.

Several minutes ticked past as he traversed the line, but once he reached his destination he let out some of his safety line and clambered toward one of the pod’s outside walls so that he faced against the spin. A sustained burst of air from his suit jets shot out in harsh white streams, crystals of compressed moisture flying out from him like bits of snow. Gradually she could see the pod’s spin slowing. Outrageous as it was, Ferron’s solution was working.

“At that rate he won’t have much air left in reserve for the return journey,” Cam said as his cybernetic mind processing the data the ship’s sensors gave him.

Nodding, Jessica opened her comm. “Ferron, that’s good enough. Head back in now.”

“Just. . . another. . . couple. . . of seconds,” the Dunadon replied stubbornly.

She was having none of it. “That wasn’t a suggestion, Chief. It was an order. Move it. Now.”

After a few seconds, Ferron said, “Okay, skipper. Coming back in now.” He then drifted from the pod and started pulling himself back down the line.

“Cam, access the cargo bay grappler controls and start reeling it back in now.”

“Aye, Captain.”

Smoothly, the nanofiber began winding in again, and the freight pod retracted at its former pace. As soon as it and her cargo chief made it back inside the bay and the doors were closed, the captain opened her comm.

“Chief,” she said, her voice silky smooth and even. “As soon as you’ve got our package stored, please meet me on the bridge. Thank you.”

The temperature outside the ship was absolute zero, and inside the bridge it wasn’t much warmer, with the center of the chill sitting squarely in the pilot’s seat.

#

“I would like to offer you the chance to explain,” Jessica said, “why I shouldn’t haul you down to the cargo hold, lock you in the smallest container I can find, and then leave you on the nearest available docking platform with nothing but a can opener to get yourself out.”

Ferron’s eyes looked straight ahead, and his hands were held behind his back. “One of the reasons you hired me is because I can think quickly on my feet. I see a problem, and I work to resolve it as efficiently as I can. That’s what I did here.”

Tapping her chin with her right index finger, Jessica nodded a bit too harshly for it to be a genuine expression of agreement. “Okay, and exactly what in your experience led you to believe that you could perform an impromptu spacewalk, and not only that, but one done in a suit that wasn’t designed for it, and, to make it even better, do it in the middle of an asteroid field?”

Unsure of how to respond, he said, “Skipper, I don’t know what it is you want me to say. I saw a problem, I saw a way to fix it, and I acted. If I’d thought for a moment that I couldn’t get the job done or that there was another immediate fix, then I wouldn’t have done it. There wasn’t any real danger.”

“But there was!” Jessica yelled, slamming her hand on a console next to her. “The instant you clamped yourself to that line and exited the ship you put yourself in danger. Should I count the ways?”

Ferron shook his head, but it didn’t matter. The question had been rhetorical.

“One,” she said, raising an index finger, “you could have run out of oxygen. Two,” another finger went up, “your clamp could have come loose. Three, an asteroid too small or too fast to be detected could have slipped past Cam and blown you into another dimension. Four, a radiation storm from the Proxius star could have cooked your juices. Five, your suit could have gotten torn on the cargo pod.”

Before she could get started on her other hand, the Dunadon raised both of his hands and stopped her. “Skipper, you’re right, okay? I guess if I’d thought about it a few more seconds, all those things might have occurred to me. But they didn’t. I acted, and everything came out alright. Can’t that be enough?”

She lowered her head and gave it a slow shake. “No, it can’t, and I guess that’s what’s bothering me. This is so unlike you. You’ve always been smart in the cargo bays. I could depend on you to respect the danger.”

“You still can. The cargo bays really aren’t as dangerous as you’re making. . .” Ferron stopped speaking as a thought occurred to him. After several long seconds he said, “Is this about me, or about your father?”

Jessica locked eyes with her cargo chief for a moment, and then she dropped her head. “I’ve lost one person I care about in that hold. I won’t lose another.”

“I’m sorry, skipper. You’re right. It won’t happen again.”

Nodding, she said, “It’d better not.”

Ferron sensed that the storm had passed. “If there’s nothing else then, I better get back and see if anything shook loose.”

“Go ahead,” she told him with a sigh. “I might join you later and see if I can’t take a peek inside that pod. After all this trouble I think we deserve a look.”

The cargo chief chuckled. “Good luck. The locking mechanism on that thing is a monster. Give me a week and a plasma torch, and maybe I could open it. Otherwise, don’t even think about it.”

She shrugged her shoulders and turned back to her piloting chair. “Probably for the best. No use sticking our noses in where they don’t belong.”

Nodding, Ferron gave his captain a salute and then walked toward the exit.

“Tell Cam it’s safe to come back in,” she said as she settled into the lowered chair.

“Will do.”

As the rear doors parted, bodies scattered away from the opening in as nonchalant a fashion as rushing bodies could, and all of them were pointedly not looking at Ferron or in the direction of the bridge. The Dunadon couldn’t help but smirk.

#

Jessica had been having a good dream, one of white sandy beaches, clear waters, endless Zoodien Twists, and the company of a handsome man. But, like all good dreams, it had to end.

“Captain, we have a problem,” Boo said, his urgent voice coming from a speaker in the ceiling of her cabin.

Grunting, she stood from her bed, pulled on a vest, and left her room. Boo was seated in the pilot’s chair when she entered the bridge, Cam was plugged in at his usual post in the tactical station, and Duka was standing at the command console.

“Okay,” she intoned, “what’s the bad news?”

Pressing a button on the console before him, Duka shook his head and replied, “This is,” before stepped aside to allow her a clear view of what it displayed. It only took two seconds of reading to understand just how complicated their life had become.

“Oh no,” she muttered.

On the console was a news feed from the Intergalactic Trade and Transportation Network. The headline read, “Tol-Yinush Worlds At War.”

The Tol-Yinush System was a rarity in the galactic community, in that it was a solar system that had developed sentient life on two different planets at approximately the same time. Their orbits had kept them at opposite ends of the solar system for centuries, but radio transmissions had brought them together decades ago, and despite the hundreds of millions of kilometers that separated them they’d developed a friendship.

That friendship died when, a year prior, a Yinushan governmental official was assassinated by a Tolesian dissident. Intermediaries from half a dozen worlds had been working to resolve the matter peacefully, but the news brief she read said that the peace talks had just ended.

Unfortunately for the crew of the Breaking Dawn, the fourth moon of Tol was their destination.

“Crap,” she said.

The E’Loean engineer nodded in sympathy. “What do you think we should do?”

Jessica pondered the question for a moment, and then replied, “I think we should turn around, head home, tell Jack sorry, and hope the Gorawnies don’t decide to take out a hit on all of us.”

Duka didn’t give her sarcastic words the dignity of a verbal response, and instead let his scowl do all the talking for him.

“Dammit, Duka, what do you think? We complete the mission. It’s not like we have much of a choice.”

“There’s always a choice, Jessie,” the old E’Loean told her.

Jessica smirked. “Thanks, but this time I don’t think so. If the cargo belonged to anyone else, I’d agree with you and hold off until things simmered down, but we can’t. If our cargo doesn’t get delivered, it’ll be our heads on the chopping block right alongside Jack. I’d rather risk a war zone than angering the Gorawnies.”

“I agree with the captain,” Boo said.

“You would,” Duka replied. The engineer’s downy face sagged for a moment, and then he asked, “What do you think our chances are, Jessie?”

“Honestly, Duka, I don’t know. The negotiations just ended, so I doubt the Yinushan have had time to get a decent number of ships blockading Tol and her moons yet. If that’s so, then I think our odds are good. Luckily, the Coven gate we’re heading to exits on Tol’s end of the system, so that’ll be a big help. But, I can’t make any real guesses until we get there and see what we’re dealing with.”

Duka nodded wearily. “Okay. Looks like you’re going to need everything this ship has, so I better get down to engineering and stoke the fires. You keep us from getting shot out of the sky, and I’ll keep the engines together. Deal?”

“Deal,” she replied, shaking his long hand.

As the E’Loean left the bridge, Boo looked up and said, “As soon as we get near the Coven gate I’ll hand her over to you.”

“You’re a great pilot, Boo. I trust you to handle whatever we run into.”

The Kleeetan looked at her with a horror-struck expression. “Are you kidding me? Captain, when it comes to the crazy stuff, I leave that entirely up to you. They say that the gods smile upon infants and lunatics, and I think we’ll need all the blessings we can get.”

Despite the troubles that were brewing, she couldn’t help but laugh.

#

As Jessica and the crew of the Breaking Dawn approached Coven Gate 7M9 – Unending Undying Unknowing, she tapped a button on the arm of her chair that opened a comm channel and said, “Gate 7M9, this is Captain Jessica Quimbly of the private cargo vessel Breaking Dawn requesting permission to transit. Please respond.”

The only time she’d ever spoken with a Coven gatekeeper personally was soon after she’d taken command of the Dawn. Her father hadn’t trusted the Coven, so under him the ship had never gone through one of their gates. Jessica hadn’t cared for them either, but a problem with a conduit license on her first delivery run as captain forced her to seek out the Coven and ask for permission to use a gate.

The voice that had answered her those many years ago had been unlike anything she’d ever heard before, and the memory of it wasn’t something she enjoyed recalling. “The Coven welcomes you,” was all the voice had said, but those few words had set her teeth on edge with the way they doubled and tripled in her mind like an endless echo.

Since that first communication, her messages had been answered solely by automated response system that let her know if transit was possible and what fees would be charged. So, after transmitting her hail to gate 7M9, it wasn’t an understatement to say that she was shocked when the small viewscreen by her right knee lit up to display a figure shrouded in a heavy cloak and surrounded by shifting darkness.

“It is a dark and heavy burden you carry, Jessica Quimbly,” the figure said, his words rebounding in her skull as though she were hearing two voices at once. “We fear that the price you will pay for it is more than you know. But do not let the darkness of others diminish your inner light. Do you understand?”

Her head ached from hearing him speak, but she grimaced through it and replied, “Yes, I do.”

“You do not,” the gatekeeper told her, “but you will, in time. Now go. Do not send us tribute. You will not profit from this enterprise, so nor shall we.”

Mentally recalling the credit transfer Jack had sent, she could have disputed the gatekeeper had she wanted to. Instead she said, “Alright. Thanks for the free trip, then, Gate 7M9.”

Closing the comm with a hasty button press, she shook her head to clear it, and then took hold of the engine throttle and pushed it forward. With engines surging, the Breaking Dawn flew forward, pointed straight for the swirling blue and black vortex that was the gateway. Bile rose higher in her throat the closer they got to it. Her skin prickled.

“Everyone ready?” she asked of those on the bridge behind her.

“Certainly, Captain,” Cam replied without hesitation.

Boo was slower to respond, but his voice was solid when he said, “The sooner we’re away from this damn thing, the happier I’ll be.”

Nodding, she tightened her grip on the throttle and pushed it hard to the stops. Energy flared from the rear of the ship as the main engines drove the vessel forward in a rush of power.

The swirling field grew larger before them like a bruise upon the skin of the universe, and her head became light and unfocused while her stomach flopped inside her. The feelings of sickness threatened to overwhelm her, but within seconds they were through the vortex and over ten-thousand light years away from the other side.

As soon as the Breaking Dawn passed beyond the nauseating boundary of the Coven gate, the blue-green world of Tol loomed large in the sky. Between them and their destination were five large starships.

Only five ships, eh? she thought. I think we just caught a break.

“Alright, folks,” she said into her headset. “It’s do-or-die time. After this is done, we’re all in for a long vacation.”

Cheers could be heard throughout the ship, and despite the danger that sat before them, Jessica smiled.

#

Part Four

“Attention incoming vessel,” a voice said over the loudspeakers in the Breaking Dawn’s bridge. “You have entered a restricted area. Please state your business and prepare to be boarded.”

As Jessica was about to reply, another voice came through the open communications channel and said, “Breaking Dawn, this is Traxal Diplomatic Vessel A-A17. If you turn about immediately you can disregard that order. You have not yet broached the zone of contention that surrounds Tol, despite whatever that overzealous Yinushan captain might say. But, if you continue on your present course, you will do so in less than one standard minute. Turn back now and stay under our protection, or carry on and risk the tender mercies of the Yinushan military. Your choice.”

“I appreciate the advice, A-A17,” she said into her headset, “but I’ve got a package I have to deliver.”

“Don’t say we didn’t warn you, Breaking Dawn,” the distant Traxal officer intoned. “More Yinushan ships are on the way, so if I was you I’d get my business here done quickly. Traxal Diplomatic Vessel A-A17, out.”

The small flotilla of ships grew closer and closer by the second. Pressing her intercom button, she said, “Duka, I’m about to punch this baby way past the red line. Tell me you’re ready for it.”

“We’re as ready as we’ll ever be!” Duka replied, shouting to be heard over the noise of the engine room.

“Good.”

Behind her, Boo said, “Any ideas about that fleet?”

Jessica brought her navigation screen up to her elbow and quickly took in the situation. Their destination was a landing port on Tol’s fourth moon, which was unfortunately on the far side of the planet. But, three other moons were on their side of the Tolesian homeworld, and she knew those could help even the odds. With her right index finger she traced out a flight path and sent it over to Boo’s console.

“Slalom, huh? With that many turns and burns it’s going to be risky, but if it does work there’s no way those big boys will be able to keep up.”

“Do you see any Yinushan ships that look like fighter carriers, Cam?” she asked.

“Not yet, Captain,” the android replied, “but these ships are of an unfamiliar design, so I could be mistaken due to insufficient data.”

Nodding, Jessica locked in the flight plan on her nav screen, opened the shipwide intercom, and said, “Buckle your seatbelts, ladies. This is going to be a bumpy ride.”

As soon as the last word left her lips, she silently counted to five, and then hit the afterburner switch on her throttle. The small freighter leapt forward with so much force that anyone not strapped in would have been slammed into the nearest bulkhead. It didn’t take long before red lights started flashing.

“Private vessel, you have now officially crossed into restricted space,” the Yinushan voice from before said. “The Traxal cannot interfere now. Heave to, or we will destroy you.”

She could feel the wild energies of her engines throbbing through her veins, seeping into her skin, and it gave her an almost uncontrollable feeling of power. “You have to catch me first,” she told the officious voice with a snarl.

Two thousand kilometers ahead of her was Tol’s third and largest moon. The heavily cratered object was huge on her screens, and she angled her ship toward its outermost edge. The Yinushan picket force hustled to intercept her.

As they neared the large moon, a new voice came over the loudspeakers.

“Cargo Vessel Breaking Dawn, this is Tol Defense Command. Why have you broken the zone of restriction around our planet? Speak swiftly, or you’ll have more to worry about than those Yinushan blowhards.”

“Tol Defense Command,” she replied, “we’re on a mission to deliver a cargo container. It was supposed to be delivered by Jack Connelly, but he had difficulties, so I’m bringing it in for him.”

“Connelly you say?” Tense seconds ticked past as the Tolesian reviewed his records. Finally he said, “Oh, that! Excellent! Breaking Dawn, you are cleared for approach. I’m transmitting authorization codes to accept the cargo now.”

Smirking to herself, Jessica looked at her screens and saw that the codes were a match. “That’s wonderful. Now, why don’t you tell those Yinushan ships that? It sure would make my life easier.”

“I doubt they’d listen to us,” the Tolesian told her. “Not that that would be anything new. But, I think we can assist you. I’m sending three of our fast attack gunships out to keep those buffoons busy.”

“That would be most helpful. While you’re at it, why don’t you get a ship ready out at your fourth moon? I don’t think I’m going to have time to stop by for drinks, and I don’t want to just shove this cargo out on your front lawn.”

“I’ll see what I can do, Breaking Dawn. We’ll be back in touch shortly.”

Glad that all the talking was over with for the moment, she tilted her control stick to starboard to increase her angle away from the Yinushan ships. As all of the spaceships drew closer, three small blips suddenly appeared on the top of her radar and quickly blazed a trail in her direction. Three of the Yinushan ships immediately peeled off to engage them, but the fourth one kept coming straight for them.

Leaving a torrential outpouring of energy in her wake, the Breaking Dawn slipped into the gravity well of the large Tolesian moon and sped along the outer edge of it toward the far side, boosting the small ship’s already hectic speed far past the point of sanity. Tiny pinpricks of light danced in her eyes.

“Jessie, I said I would give you everything the ship had,” Duka shouted in her ear, his engines roaring in the background, “but this is ridiculous! We’re popping coolant valves, and I’m losing antimatter stability!”

The captain looked down and saw that her engines’ heat levels were nearing critical levels. Fortunately, the space between her and the chasing Yinushan ship had grown to a respectable distance, so she slid her aching thumb off of the afterburner switch.

“Better?”

“For now.”

“I might have to do it again, so be ready.”

The engineer grumbled, then said, “Understood.”

Quickly they broke free of the large moon and headed toward the planet’s inner most moon. The chase continued as the ships hurtled across space, neither one giving up. Finally, as they started to round the moon, Cam said, “Captain, that Yinushan vessel has launched two smaller ships. They might be fighters, or they might be shuttlecraft. Either way, it’s trouble.”

“Launch half of our drones and power up the weapons systems. I don’t intend on becoming a part of this war, but we’ll defend ourselves if they give us no choice.”

“I understand, Captain. Launching drone unit Gamma now.”

Multiple blips appeared on Jessica’s radar screen. The small bits of light drifted back from her ship and started to run crisscrossing patterns with the two smaller Yinushan vessels. Energy blasts lashed between them. In the short skirmish the Breaking Dawn lost several drones, but they took one of the attacking ships with it. The second one poured on the speed and gained on them, but the remaining drones destroyed it before it could get close enough to shoot the freighter.

As they shot past the inner moon, she hit the afterburner switch again and urged her ship onward. The entire vessel shook around her, but within minutes they passed yet another moon. After letting off the afterburner she banked toward their destination.

“Breaking Dawn, this is Tol Military Command. Sorry to keep you waiting. We have a cargo ship in standby on the far side of the fourth moon, just as you asked for. What exactly do you have in mind?”

“Can she catch?”

“If you can get down to half your current speed and drop the pod in a stable wake, I believe we can accommodate that.”

“Then get ready, because I’m on my way”

“Understood,” the Tolesian replied. “We’ll be ready. Out.”

From behind her Boo said, “Aren’t you cutting this a bit on the dangerous side?”

Jessica laughed in spite of her aching body. “Desperate times call for desperate actions. I don’t like it either, but this place is just too damn hot to stop and enjoy the scenery.”

The Kleeetan copilot couldn’t dispute her words, so he nodded and went back to reviewing his screens.

Opening her comm, she said, “Ferron, are you ready to drop our little package off?”

“You do know, skipper,” the Dunadon replied, his tone almost chiding, “that this goes against every fiber of my being, right?”

“Considering your recent exploits, I’ll take that as a compliment.”

The cargo chief grunted. “We’re just about set. I’ve got the pod moved to the rear doors, and I’m lowering the grappler now. So long as you can keep a steady hand on the stick, I should be able to let her slip smoothly into our wake.”

“Good to hear, Chief. I’ll call you when we’re in place.”

The next several minutes whipped by in a blur. The Breaking Dawn raced faster than she ever had before, and the crew endured the stresses right along with her. The Yinushan ship behind her still gave chase, but there was no way they could catch up before she reached her destination. As they slipped into the fourth moon’s gravity field and rocketed toward the dark side, a Tol freighter pulled in behind them.

“Breaking Dawn, this is the Valorous,” the new arrival said over the comm. “We’re ready to accept your delivery. Call the drop.”

Hitting a button, Jessica replied, “Valorous, give us a moment to ready the package. Slowing to a matching speed now.” Pulling the throttle back, she then pressed another button and said, “Chief, are you ready?”

“I am if you are, skipper.”

She chuckled. “We’re as steady as I can make it. It’s all up to you.”

“I’m lowering the rear cargo doors. . . now!”

Through her earpiece she could hear a sudden rush of noise.

In the cargo bay, Ferron Cth hit a button. “The grappler is activated and the package is spooling out. Give me another few seconds to find the sweet spot.”

Jessica leaned over to a screen on her left and pulled up the rear camera. On it she watched as the cargo pod drifted behind them on its line, swaying slightly from side to side in their wake. As the nanofiber unrolled and the distance increased, the swaying decreased, until finally it was as still as if it were sitting cozy on a cargo deck. Further behind them the Tolesian freighter followed them exactly, her forward facing doors open and ready.

“Releasing now, skipper!” Ferron shouted.

Two seconds later the electro-magnetic head on the grappler deactivated, and the pod was in free fall, though at first it was barely noticeable. It wasn’t until the grappler was well back from the pod that it became apparent just how insane the whole thing was.

“You’ve got the drop,” she told the Tolesian ship.

“Acknowledged, Breaking Dawn. The drop is clean, and we’re moving to intercept.”

Jessica increased her speed, and in their wake the pod slowly tumbled though the vacuum of space toward the Valorous. Several seconds later the alien vessel crept forward and swallowed it with all the ease of a deep sea predator snacking on an unsuspecting guppy.

“The package is safely in our hold, Breaking Dawn. Command said to pass along their thanks for your efforts on our behalf.”

“If you can keep those Yinushan ships off our backs long enough for us to make it back to the Coven gate, that would be thanks enough.”

“Consider it done. Safe journey to you.”

Hoping for exactly the same thing, Jessica angled the freighter up and then shot toward the planet, which would give them a final boost of speed to assist them on their way back toward the gate from which they had come, picking up their few remaining drone fighters along the way. With the job done, a palpable sense of relief filled the cargo freighter. Jack, she knew, would feel the same once she told him the good news.

#

The trip out to Outpost 8A-14, where Jack’s ship was being repaired, was anticlimactic after the blazing trail that had been torn through the Tol-Yinush System. Once they cleared the warzone they’d sent Jack a message letting him know that the mission had been accomplished, and a short while later he’d replied with an invitation for the crew to have dinner with him at Sun’s Sweet Smile, an upscale restaurant on the outpost.

Once the Breaking Dawn was docked, the crew spent plenty of time getting ready. By the time they finally assembled outside the ship, Jessica couldn’t remember them ever looking so well put together.

“You bunch of roughnecks clean up pretty well,” she told them with an appreciative laugh.

Turning her about and walking her toward the nearest station entrance with his lanky arm entwined around hers, Duka replied, “You don’t look so bad yourself.”

“You mean this old thing?” Most of her wardrobe consisted of stained pants and shirts that had seen far too many dirty nooks and crannies of the ship, but in the far reaches of her closet hung a dress or two, and the strapless green number draped around her was one of them. A green clutch purse in her right hand held her ID and a few credit chits, and her red hair was accented with an emerald and ruby dragonfly clip. Her meager makeup selection had held her back a bit, but she’d cobbled together enough lipstick and blush to pull it together.

It was a long walk to the Sun’s Sweet Smile, especially in heels, but when they approached the restaurant’s doors and saw how well-appointed it looked, they knew they were in for a treat. Inside they were greeted by a Traxal maitre d’ who whisked them to a table with little delay, at which was already seated the crew of the Wandering Star save for the captain himself, who was expected at any moment.

More than ready to enjoy themselves, everyone at the table consumed plenty of drinks, hors d’oeuvres, and pleasant conversation. Everything flowed so well that for a while none of them noticed that Jack had yet to arrive. But, as the empty glasses began to pile up, Jessica glanced down at her watch and realized that they’d been in the restaurant for over an hour. When she looked at Jack’s second in command, a fellow human by the name of Albert Reeves, she could tell he’d lost track of time too.

Reeves reached into his right pocket, pulled out a small communications device, and casually spoke into it. When a reply didn’t come, he tried again. When the third attempt failed, he stood up and started walking toward the exit. She followed after him, but not before putting on a relaxed expression and telling everyone to stay where they were and enjoy themselves while they checked on Jack.

Seeds of concern had taken root in Albert and Jessica’s minds, and they quickly walked toward the accommodations Jack had secured for himself and his crew on the station. By the time they reached the corridor that lead to his quarters, both of them were running.

The door to the suite was locked. Albert took out his passkey and swiped it against the scanner plate. It whisked open, and instantly they knew something was horribly wrong. The lights were off, and it was silent, but there was a faintly familiar smell in the air that threw their concern into full-fledged panic. Albert dashed to Jack’s room, and the doors opened automatically. As his hand reached up to activate the lights, Jessica almost asked him not to. She knew what they were going to find.

In the sudden harsh glare of overhead halogens they saw Jack sitting on a chair near a desk, his arms hanging down to his side. His head was tilted back, his eyes looked lifelessly at the ceiling, and a hole was burned into his brow. There was almost no blood in the room, and they couldn’t see any marks on his skin, so it didn’t appear as though he’d been beaten or tortured. It had been a straight hit, nothing more or less.

Jessica knew that there was nothing she could do, no aid she could give her old friend, so she dropped to the floor and cried. She could hear the material of her dress rip as she fell. Albert contacted the station’s security department, though they both knew that Jack’s killer would never be brought to justice.

Questions came fast and furious once security arrived. Evidence was searched for, pictures were taken, statements were made. By the time it was all over and both crews were released, the hour was very late.

The walk back to the Breaking Dawn took all the strength she had. Once aboard ship, the crew filed off to their sleeping tubes wordlessly, already having expressed all that they had to say for the moment.

Jessica fell fully clothed onto her bunk in exhaustion. As sleep was reaching out to claim her, the computer on her desk chirped. She ignored it at first, but it continued to twitter until the aggravation of hearing it was more powerful that her fatigue. She got up, slumped into her cluttered chair, and activated her console.

As soon as the screen lit up she saw that she had an incoming call. Assuming it was from Albert, she accepted it, but instead of the fellow human she saw an alien looking out at her. Its skin was dark and moist, and the face had a vaguely amphibious appearance. She’d never seen the being in her life, but she knew who it was instinctively. Or, at least, whom it represented.

“Captain Jessica Quimbly,” the figured uttered, the English words sounding fat and heavy as it spoke in ponderous tones, “I realize that the hour is late, and for that I apologize. Now, I’m sure that I do not need to tell you whom I represent. You’re an intelligent woman, someone who is wise to the ways of the universe, so I trust that you understand the gravity of this particular conversation. Am I correct?”

“Yes,” she replied, keeping her tone as even as she could.

Nodding slowly, the figure gave her a repugnant grin that was sloppy and wet. “Very good. Now, let me first say that I am sorry for your recent loss. It is never an easy thing to lose a friend. I understand that. But, when promises are made, and those promises aren’t fulfilled, retribution must be met out. You appreciate that, yes?”

“But they were fulfilled,” Jessica said, her voice taking on a pleading quality that she was horrified to hear echo in her ears.

“Yes,” it replied, eyes blinking in slow motion, “but not by the proper people. Perhaps, in your view, there’s no difference, but in our world it makes all the difference. If it will give you a small measure of relief, know that were it not for your swift and successful action, more than one person would have met an untimely end tonight. Several more.”

Chills ran down the length of her spine as the creature before her spoke of death and killing in such casual tones. She didn’t want to know what evils it had committed, what evils it was capable of, so all she had was silence in response.

“But let’s not continue to speak of such unpleasant things,” it said. “I called to congratulate you on a job well done. My employers and I were impressed not only with your professionalism, but also with your courage and daring. The situation gave us cause for concern, but you and your crew performed magnificently. As such, we wanted to extend to you an opportunity for further employment. This offer would also be an opening to other benefits as well, such as a Guild membership. We would, of course, pay your admission fees, along with sponsoring your application. You would be wise to see the opportunities that are being given to you and to take advantage of them, Captain. Shall I forward your acceptance of our offer to my superiors?”

Jessica would have been lying to herself if she didn’t admit that, for a fraction of a second, she was tempted. More contracts would be open to her, as would faster conduit lanes and cheaper docking fees. She’d never have to deal with the Coven again. But, none of that meant anything if it meant she would have to make deals with the likes of the Gorawnies.

“No, I’m afraid I can’t accept your offer,” she replied.

“That is. . . unfortunate,” it said, eyelids drooping.

Sitting forward, she said, “Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not declining because you murdered my friend. He was a big boy, he knew what he was getting into. I’m declining because, as meager as my life is, I like it, and it’s my own. I make my own friends, I do my own chores, I pay my own bills, and I do everything I can to make sure that the choices I make are my own. No one owns my soul. So, while I mean no disrespect, we have nothing more to discuss, now or ever.”

She expected anything from veiled warnings to outright threats, but the clammy creature on her screen only blinked liquidly and nodded. “Very well, Captain. As I said, you have a great deal of courage, so I cannot fault you for using it now. I regret that you’ve decided to not make your services available to us, but that is your choice. We are indebted to you, so we shall, as your people say, wipe the slate clean between us. I doubt that you will ever hear from us again. Good night, Captain, and goodbye.”

The screen snapped to black as the last word came through the speakers in her cabin, and in the silence that followed she started to shake. It was slow and subtle at first, but it quickly built in intensity, until her hands were clinched into white-knuckled fists and her body was doubled over. Through her ran jagged spears of anguish, or rage, of impotent fury, of helplessness, and mostly of sorrow. She wept for the life that had been lost, and vowed that nothing like it would ever happen to her or her crew. The Breaking Dawn was her ship, the crew aboard it her family, and she’d be damned before she would let anyone take those things from her.

THE END

Part One:

Part Two:

Part Three:

Part Four:

*Download Part One *

*Download Part Two *

*Download Part Three *

*Download Part Four *

The Ties That Bind – Tales of the Breaking Dawn by Justin R. Macumber is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License

No Responses to “The Ties That Bind – Tales of the Breaking Dawn”

1. Justin Macumber's Blog » Help a writer out, if you can… says:

   February 8, 2010 at 10:31 pm

   [...] The Ties That Bind – Tales of the Breaking Dawn [...]
2. Folded Word Reviews Chapbook by Justin Macumber « Folded Word says:

   April 21, 2010 at 1:38 pm

   [...] Reviews” Jessie Carty presents a video review of Justin Macumber’s fiction chapbook, The Ties that Bind, published by the author through CreateASpace/Positron [...]