BIRTHRIGHT 2 – THE GATHERING
by Soledad
Author's note:
For disclaimer, rating, warnings, etc., see the Prologue.
A few lines of dialogue are modified versions of what was said in Double Helix.
CHAPTER 1 – THE FIRST STEP
Meitner Drift was one of those places Tyr would never want to revisit. Ever. It was the sort of space settlement that always seemed to be on the verge of breaking apart, due to the one or other technical failure. Not a place any self-respecting Nietzschean would set foot on of his own free will.
Which made it eminently well-suited for this particular meeting.
That, and the fact that it was the place where Harper had been sent to fix that G-array before taking off to join the pan-galactic surfing competition on Infinity Atoll, and Tyr had volunteered to pick him up, saying that he had some old business to wrap up here.
Which, in a sense, was the truth.
He docked the Maru, paid the usual fee – including the usual bribe; one did not risk docking any spaceborn vessel at Meitner Drift without bribing the dockmaster, not if one wanted to find it again upon one's return, that is – and went to find Harper first. Learning the unpredictable human's whereabouts was his frits imperative, as he couldn't move on to his other, most important goal until he had done what he'd been actually sent here.
Going to Drift Security was a task that made Tyr hate Meitner Drift even more. Not majorly because there still existed various charges on him, for assault and battery, mayhem and attempted murder. Those things hadn't happened on this drift, and the officials usually ignored what had happened on other places, as long as the visitors paid for the service offered.
No, the main cause of Tyr's reluctance to go to the security office was the very person of the head of Drift Security.
Lieutenant Nehemiah Falco was a half-breed – the result of an assumedly less-than-voluntary union of a Nietzschean father and a human mother, equally despised by both races… which, understandably, didn't make him a very nice person. He was bigger than the average human, but considerably smaller than Tyr, which wasn't unusual (even most Nietzscheans were), and his forearm spikes, too, were smaller than those of an average Nietzschean male – another sign of his half-breed status.
What he had inherited in full extent, though, was the typical Nietzschean attitude. So much of it, in fact, that Tyr suspected Drago-Kazov blood in his veins – the Dragans were, as a rule, muscle-bound cretins – although nobody knew anything for certain about Falco's father. Or about his mother, for that matter. Everything said about the questionable origins of the sturdy, strawberry-blond security chief was either rumour or gossip.
Which was understandable, for both sides of the affair, actually. Had he been the result of a voluntary mating, it would have been a shame for his Nietzschean parents. Wasting one's precious genes for a kludge woman was considered… well, not exactly a crime but extremely low style. It showed that no Nietzschean woman had found him worthy for breeding, which was the ultimate shame, even for the lowliest, prideless Beta. Had he, on the other hand, been the result of casual rape, which happened all too often on Drago-Kazov controlled worlds, it was understandable that the human parent preferred to remain silent about it. In case she was still alive, that is. Giving birth even to a half-Nietzschean child wasn't exactly a safe thing for a mere human.
When Tyr strode into the office, Lt. Falco was standing in front of the back wall, checking a long row of security monitors. He preferred to stand, as his bulk usually gave him the advantage of intimidating the shit out of the petty criminals whom he was dealing with on the daily basis, before even having said a word.
In Tyr's towering presence it didn't really work, of course. So he reacted to the Kodiak the way he always did when facing full-blooded Nietzscheans – with a scowl.
"What do you want?" he scoffed.
This little display of bad tempers failed to impress Tyr, however. Being bad-tempered was something he had developed to an artform years ago.
"I'm looking for a human named Seamus Zelazny Harper," he replied calmly. "He should have arrived from Infinity Atoll two days ago. I want to know if he actually has."
"Your kludge running away from you?" Falco asked with a smile as genuine as the given word of a Nightsider.
"He is not my kludge," Tyr answered in disgust; a half-breed speaking about humans like that was really low class, he found. "Nor is it any business of yours. Just tell me whether he's here or not."
"And how much is this information worth for you?" Falco asked smugly.
Tyr shrugged. He was certainly not going to bargain with this inferior creature. Not that he'd consider every half-breed inferior by default – his father's housekeeper sprang to his mind as a glorious example on the contrary – but this man was definitely a complete waste of Nietzschean genes, regardless how he'd come to their possession.
"It can save me time… and you a broken nose, if given freely," he said.
Falco eyed him suspiciously, as if measuring whether he was serious. Of course, Nietzscheans seldom joked, and if they did, it was even worse for the participants of the joke, especially when said participant was not a Nietzschean. So the security chief wisely decided to cooperate and checked the logs of the last two days for Harper.
He found nothing.
"It seems, your… human hasn't arrived yet, Nietzschean," he said. "Unless he came aboard secretly, as a blind passenger."
Tyr frowned. Harper had no reason to sneak onto the Drift secretly – at least none that he would know about. Maybe the dockmaster could give him some more information; it was more likely that he remembered Harper, being a Perseid and working with ships himself.
Tyr turned around and left the security office, without bothering to thank the security chief for his efforts.
The dockmaster, being a Perseid, looked very much like other Perseids did. Tyr had never looked long enough to one of them to notice any differences. They were all hairless, with a metallic-looking bluish-grey skin and extended, intricately ridged chins that had earned them the less than flattering nickname chinheads, way back when they first met with humans, several thousand years ago. And while Nietzscheans rarely used nicknames given other races by mere humans, Tyr had to admit that this one was, indeed, a perfect match.
Despite the fact that he barely reached to the big Nietzschean's collarbone, the Perseid didn't seem intimidated by Tyr's size – or by his menacing look. What was more, Tyr had the feeling that the Perseid's self-confidence – unlike Falco's – wasn't just a show. It was hard to guess a Perseid's age, but the dockmaster had an air of cast experience about him that saved him from panicking easily.
Him being relative, of course.
Even though Tyr knew, intellectually, that Perseids were as much female as they were male, he involuntarily thought of them as males. Most other people did the same, for reasons none of them could really explain. Neither could Tyr; he only knew that his particular Perseid dockmaster, with his bald skull, high forehead, strong aquiline nose and generous mouth looked to him as a well-respected man in his prime.
He decided to treat the man accordingly. He couldn't know when he might need some favour from the steely-eyed creature, and dockmasters as a general rule were to be kept in a mellow mood.
"Do you know a human engineer by the name of Seamus Zelazny Harper?" he asked in the manner Nietzscheans used when dealing with strangers they respected for some reason. "He was sent here to fix a G-Array, a few days ago."
The Perseid seemed to recognize the respectful manner he was handled with, because he nodded benevolently. "I remember. He did a good job, in an astonishingly short time. That young man does have a way with machines. Too bad he left for Infinity Atoll right afterwards. I could've used him on at least four places, and he could have earned good money."
Tyr managed to extract the only piece of useful information from the Perseid's chatter with relative ease.
"You mean he hasn't returned yet?" he asked with a frown. That was… simply unbelievable. That little kludge certainly knew how to push his envelope, didn't he? Dylan hadn't been happy to learn that Harper had taken a detour without bothering with such technicalities as asking for his captain's permission to begin with. Now, he'd be furious.
If he knew that Harper still hadn't returned, that is. But that was a piece of information Tyr didn't plan to share with the good captain yet, despite being in hailing range from the Andromeda. Harper's absence without leave provided him, quite unexpectedly, with more time for working on his plan, and he welcomed the chance.
He might even consider covering the little professor, should Harper offer him anything useful in exchange.
Not paying any more attention to the Perseid's continued babbling about the surfing competition still going on, Tyr nodded curtly, thanked the dockmaster with all the politeness a Nietzschean could manage to display for a chinhead, and left.
It was time to approach his second, incomparably more important goal. He would simply pick Harper up on Infinity Atoll later. He didn't mind to feel true sunshine on his face for a change, and he hoped that Freya wouldn't, either.
Deciding where Freya might be waiting for him – if she had, in fact, come here at all – was a delicate matter, as he didn't know her very well to begin with. Checking the Drift Directory, he discarded the idea of the Nightsider-owned casino, offering Flash and other narcotics as a sideline business, not to mention a wide variety of types of entertainment, raging from boringly harmless through downright idiotic to flat-out deadly. He didn't think that Freya would drink, gamble or partake of any illicit substances. She was too strong for that.
He didn't think he'd find her in the Chichin-owned bars, the human gambling emporiums or in the Than equivalent of a cantina, either. Mitner Drift being a fairly insignificant place when it came to eating places, it left The Philosopher's Café, a shadowy bar run by a Mandau Pride Beta – a crippled veteran who, due to an arm lost in some backfired kidnapping mission, couldn't feed the impressive army of his children any other way.
Tyr had never been to Meitner Rift before, but he'd heard from other mercenaries that this was a good place to visit, and one of the owner's wives an excellent cook. He welcomed the change. Aboard the Andromeda, the only way to get some proper food was to cook for himself, and while he was good at it, after a while it became bothersome.
Stepping into the Café felt like coming home – even if only for a short time. He hadn't realized how much he missed being among his own people. Sure, these were mostly Mandau Pride mercenaries – old acquaintances of the owner, no doubt – but at least they were Nietzscheans.
Tyr was among his own, surrounded by strong men in leather and metal, with spiked forearms, well-trimmed goatees and either short-cropped or tightly bound hair. There were a few women among them, displaying the same over-confident attitude as their males. They wore a Sabra crest on their leather vests, were dark-skinned and almond-eyed, with curly black hair and a sort of wild, almost animal magnetism only Nietzschean women of a good bloodline were capable of emanating.
No sign of Freya, so far. But it was interesting to know that Sabra Pride ventured this far from their usual territory. Things between them and the Jaguars must have heated up lately.
Tyr fired the information for later consideration and looked around to find an empty table. There was one near the front door and he took it immediately, glad to have a clear path of escape, should things become ugly. There was always a good chance for that to happen when Nietzscheans were involved.
A boy about the age of twelve came to his table and offered him the menu on a hand-held electronic display. Tyr gave it a cursory look and ordered a meat and vegetable stew containing beets, parsnips and carrots, a green salad and pears poached in wine. Unlike other Nietzscheans, who spent their lives in abundance, he had learned to value small comforts. He tossed his credit chit to the boy, hoping that the rumours would prove right and the food good. The exclusively Nietzschean clientele filling half the Café seemed content enough.
The boy returned with his food and the credit chit. There was still no sign of Freya, and Tyr began to doubt whether she had come at all. A formal request was usually honoured among Nietzscheans, even if the one making it was unworthy. But he couldn't know for sure just how angry and disappointed Freya might be. He had betrayed her people, made them homeless and abandoned her to a fate he knew all too well himself.
In any case, it was Freya's turn to act now, and since he needed nourishment, he could as well eat while he was waiting. Tomorrow morning, he would set off for Infinity Atoll to pick up Harper. But these few hours – and the following night – were his to settle his own affairs.
The food was, indeed, excellent, and Tyr relished in the luxury having it provided for him. When he finished, the boy took away the dishes, and shortly thereafter another boy appeared on his left – a small kid, probably seven or eight years old – and looked up at him with big, surprisingly earnest eyes.
"Kodiak," he said in a low, soft voice, "you are sought after."
"By whom?" Tyr asked, as he couldn't be certain that the child had been sent by Freya. People who wanted to hire him had been known to use children to establish contact before.
"A woman," the boy whispered. "Gold-haired. Blue-eyed. Clad in black. Sad."
Well, that settled it. The woman might have been Freya, after all. Or else the bait in a trap.
"Where is she?" Tyr asked with a barely audible growl.
"Outside," the thin, spiked arm of the child gestured towards the sorry excuse of a garden area Meitner Drift could offer. "By the fountain."
With that, the boy retreated hurriedly, mingling with the other children – possibly the owner's own offspring – assigned to do small tasks in the Café.
Tyr rose without hesitation. Whether Freya was truly willing to listen to his explanation and consider his offer or was planning to lure him in a trap, he had to go. He had been the one initiating this meeting. He couldn't back off now in any way that would have been considered honourable.
Of course, most people – especially those enslaved by Nietzscheans – would say that the Über race had no honour whatsoever to begin with. And from their point of view, they might even be right.
The truth, however, was a little more complicated – as usual.
Nietzscheans certainly couldn't care less for other people's interpretation of honour. As they considered themselves superior, they didn't see any advantage in following the morale restrictions of inferior races. Especially those of the mother race that had brought forth their own, driven by the urge to produce something better than themselves.
Nonetheless, Nietzscheans had their own code of honour – event though it might seem barbaric and selfish to other people – and followed this code religiously. More so since this was the closest thing to religion they could ever have in a culture based on social Darwinism and the survival of the fittest.
One commandment of this code of honour was that if one filed a request in the formal manner – used only for the purpose of offering an alliance, proposing a marriage, declaring a challenge or other similar occurrences – one could not back off until the request was either granted or denied, in the same formal manner.
This was one of the very few cases when one was allowed to take great risks; in such cases the code of honour overrode even the highest Nietzschean imperative: the need to survive. Dishonouring a formal request was considered a proof of inferiority, in the area of intelligence and willpower.
Something an Alpha couldn't afford.
Contrary to common prejudice, not all Nietzscheans bred for muscle alone. Among Kodiak, values like knowledge, art, intelligence and wisdom had been held in just as high regard as physical strength, piloting skills or tactical instincts had been.
And that was exactly why Tyr had to take the risk of entering Meitner Drift's maze-like, pathetic garden area, with its crippled trees, puny bushes, yellow grass and holographic fountain. This Drift couldn't afford to waste precious water for mere aesthetic purposes. Thus while the basin of the fountain was real, molded from cheap plastic to simulate marble, the springing and dancing water above the wide, shallow upper dish was pure illusion.
Tyr spotted Freya as soon as he stepped out from under the ridiculous excuse of trees. She was leaning again the basin of the fountain, so that the holographic water seemed to fall down onto her pale face like spring rain. She was clad in black leather, pants, boots and a sleeveless vest; only her bracers were the same plated metal as earlier. Her long, straight blonde hair flowed down her back like molten gold.
She was as beautiful as Tyr remembered her, with those large, blue-grey eyes that always reminded him of the seas on the Kodiak homeworld of his birth, before it had been bombed to hell by the Drago-Kazov. Bit there stood bitterness and pain written in her once so proud and unconcerned face, and Tyr felt a stab of wasted guilt, knowing that it had been his hand, marking those elegant features with sorrow.
He stopped about a meter and a half from her, looking out for any possible assassins with half an eye, all his senses on alert. The fact that Freya had decided to honour his request didn't mean that she wouldn't' try taking her vengeance by having him killed later.
Or by killing him with her own two hands. Aside from the lack of physical strength to fight him in hand-to-hand combat, Freya was quite capable of killing him in at least a dozen other ways if he wasn't careful. Which was one of the reasons he wanted her on his side.
Somehow, Freya must have felt his presence, because she raised her head and stared him directly in the eyes. Her expression was cautious… uncertain.
"You requested to speak with me," she said in an even voice, "so speak. What do you want from me?"
"I wish to correct a grave mistake I have made," he replied. "I wish to regain that which I have lost due to a wrong choice."
"So, you have overstayed your welcome by your kludge friends and are now considering joining our Pride, after all?" Freya asked with a cold smile. "I'm afraid it's a little late for that, Tyr. You've betrayed us, destroyed our home… you've had your vengeance. Are you still not content?"
"I don't want to join Orca Pride," Tyr answered calmly. "I want you to come with me. To live with me aboard the Andromeda, as my First Wife."
"And help Captain Hunt restore the Commonwealth, so that civilization my return to the galaxies?" Freya raised an ironic eyebrow.
"Oh, please!" Tyr gave a derisive snort. "You can't truly believe that I've bought into Dylan's idiotic quest of noble sacrifice and honourable self-destruction!"
"I don't know what to believe," Freya said slowly, bitterly, "for I don't know anymore who you are – the man I fell in love with or the mercenary who betrayed us and made us homeless. But if Hunt hasn't managed to convert you yet, why have you signed onto his crew?"
"Because it has improved my means to a goal toward which I've been working since the day I broke out of the mines of Xochitl. I availed myself of the Andromeda Ascendant. Some day, the ship will belong to me."
Freya shook her head. "Hunt would not lose his ship by force. We tried that – and failed, thanks to you."
"Had Guderian not been such a lousy tactician with a complete lack of imagination, I wouldn't have turned against him," Tyr said dryly. "I never chose the losing side – and neither should you."
"And you are supposed to be the winning side?" Freya asked with deep irony. "What do you want to do with that ship? And, more importantly, how do you intent to seize it?"
"There are other ways," Tyr shrugged. "I'm about to familiarize myself with the territory and I'm waiting for my chance. It will come, sooner or later."
"More later, seems to me," Freya said. Tyr shrugged again.
"I have time. And while I work on it, I can also work on my long-term goals. One of which is the rebuilding of my Pride."
"A noble goal," Freya said. "And what place have you imagined for me in this grand plan, Tyr Anasazi, out of Victoria by Barbarossa? How do you feel for me?"
The question, asked in full formal mode, demanded an equally serious answer. So Tyr answered with the words he had once addressed to Guderian.
"Look at me, Freya. I'm alone. I'm childless. I've spent my entire life trying to prove myself, so that a female would claim me for her own. You have claimed me! I'd have the chance to be what every fibre in my being strives to be – a husband and a father – if only you'd choose to come with me."
"True enough," Freya said with a sad, little smile. "And you proved your worth against our males. You outsmarted us. You'd be a worthy father indeed. But you also betrayed us. You abandoned me. And killing us would have been less painful than what we must now endure. You are an unworthy husband, and I had to face my people's wrath because of you."
"They blamed you for what I have done?" Tyr shook his head in disbelief. "How… predictably inferior."
"They tried to kill me, Tyr," Freya replied.
"One reason more to come with me," Tyr argued. "My quarters aboard the Andromeda are large enough for a big family. We can have our own Pride, Freya. And when we have children of our own, we can seek out a small planet, out of the way, with only a small colony of settlers, in a system that won't be easily found. There are such planets out there, planets where we'd be safe. And when our children grow into adulthood, they'll help us to take back what's rightfully ours. To wrestle back the Progenitor's remains from the Drago-Kazov and reclaim our birthright in Nietzschean society."
"Our birthright, Tyr?" Freya echoed, with faint irony in her voice. Tyr looked at her in all sincerity.
"I offer you an alliance, Freya, most worthy progeny of Saladin Cree," he said formally, signalling that he was stating his honest intentions. "I offer you the rank and position of the Matriarch of the new Kodiak Pride. I offer you the chance to reunite the Prides with me and to make our people what they were supposed to be: like living gods, roaming the stars, bringing knowledge and civilization to their inhabitants. Do you accept?"
Freya looked at him with a bit of shock.
"Isn't that a little too big a destiny for a single man without a Pride?" she asked. "Unless you are the genetic reincarnation of the Progenitor, of course. But if you were that, we'd have already heard of it by now – or you'd have been long dead."
"I'm not a perfect match," Tyr admitted slowly, "but I'm close enough. The closest one that ever happened in our Pride. You know what that means."
"Freya nodded. "Kodiak Pride was known of their genetic closeness to the Progenitor and genetic reincarnations happening among them. Wasn't your own father the genetic double of a previous Alpha, Suleiman?"
"He was indeed," Tyr smiled, impressed, once again, by Freya's knowledge of his bloodline.
"So, if you are such a close match, even as Kodiak go, then this," she touched her belly briefly, "might be the real item."
Tyr's eyes widened in surprise. "Freya… are you…?"
"We'll have a child, yes," Freya nodded. "Olma and the others weren't happy when I decided to keep the baby – they wanted no trace of you among us – but I couldn't let it die. For some reason, I always felt that it had to live, no matter what. And it seems that I was right. So… I guess the best solution for all three of us is when I accept your offer."
Tyr grinned, unexpected happiness lifting the burden off his heard. "I'm honoured, lady mine. Now; what do you think about a short visit to Infinity Atoll?"
Freya's blue eyes lit up like a sunny summer day. "Can we afford the delay?"
"Certainly. In fact, I have to pick up the Andromeda's engineer there, who happened to take a leave – without bothering to ask our esteemed captain first. It's his hide Dylan will tan for being late, not ours."
"In that case – when do we start?"
"First time in the morning. Do you have any packing to do?"
"No. Everything I need is here… and here," and Freya gently touched first Tyr's chest then her own belly where their unborn child was slumbering.
Infinity Atoll was the dream of every surfer and sun-worshipper in incarnate form. A pleasant aquatic world, with vast oceans that covered eighty-nine per cent of the planet's surface, tropical islands where air-breathers could enjoy the sunshine, and of course, the best waves to ride in the three galaxies. At least so stated the advertisement created – and paid for – by the local Free Trade Alliance boss and surfing enthusiast Ronnie "Big Kahuna" Poipa. Who, by the way, was the host and sponsor of the famous Pan-Galactic Surfing Championship that took place on Infinity Atoll every three years.
The Championship itself was already over when Tyr and Freya arrived on the Maru, having done most of the way on autopilot, being busy with celebrating their reunion, but most of the participants were still down on the one or another beach, catching waves, skimming through half pipes and basically wallowing in the water. Finding Harper among them would have been a real pain, had Tyr not come to the idea of scanning for the engineer's dataport. It had some sort of repelling field, keeping the water out of it, and a scanner could locate it easily, if calibrated correctly.
"There he is," Tyr pointed out the slender form of the young man, paddling towards the shore, letting the wave's momentum catch up to him, and then he popping up on the board, shooting the curl. Freya watched Harper catching the waves in and cresting them with no problem at all twice more. She shook her head.
"I can't see what people find so fascinating in this… surfing. It's positively suicidal."
"I don't really understand it, either," Tyr admitted. "But according to Harper, it has to be something with control. Riding the waves, conquering the elements and mastering them… that sort of thing."
As if sensing that someone was watching him, Harper chanced a glance at the shore, spotted them and waved enthusiastically. Tyr gestured to him to come out, and he nodded and started to paddle towards the shore again, then stand up, dragging his board behind him. Tyr shook his head tolerantly, enjoying basking in the sun with his wife in his arms. It was good to feel real sunshine on his face again.
Freya, still curious, watched Harper wading out of the water – a scrawny little kludge with spiky hair and laughing blue eyes, and excited grin plastered all over his small face. It was hard to believe that this fragile thing had created the weapon that had killed a hundred thousand Nietzscheans back in the past. Nevertheless, that was the truth.
"It seems I'll have to re-evaluate my opinion about kludges," Freya said thoughtfully; during their flight, between bouts of lovemaking, Tyr had told him a great deal about the Andromeda's recent adventures. "Week as they may be, it seems that some of them are rather cunning. Especially those we wouldn't expect to be."
"It's tactically unwise to underestimate a worthy opponent – or an ally," Tyr nodded. "Assuming that all Nietzscheans would be automatically useless and inferior, as way too many of our people seem to think, would be foolish. The universe never makes things that easy. Arrogance can cause the downfall of a person. Or a Pride. Or even an entire race. If we want to succeed, we'll need allies – and unusual alliances can prove very profitable."
"You worked with humans before, didn't you?" Freya asked. "In your time as a mercenary."
Tyr shrugged. "I needed a team. Not even I can handle every situation single-handedly. They were idiots; cannon fodder, nothing else. But they served their purpose. With the Andromeda crew, it is different. Some of them are truly promising."
"Like him?" Freya nodded towards Harper.
"Like him," Tyr agreed. "He has great potential; a talent that's wasted on the Andromeda, distracting himself with mundane tasks fit for drones. Maybe one day we can make him a better offer."
"Maybe, but would he accept?" Freya's doubt was unmistakable. "Would he be willing to live among Nietzscheans, out of his own free will?"
"That's hard to tell," Tyr answered, "but I'd like to try – once we have something to offer." Then, turning to Harper who finally reached the shore, he added. "Harper, how kind of you to finally join us! Dylan is quite mad about your sudden decision to take the scenic route home."
"Well, I'll have to think of something to beswitch him, big guy," Harper laughed, stealing a curious glance at Freya. "I see you haven't been lonely. Care to introduce me to the lady?"
Tyr raised an eyebrow. "Why, Harper, I thought you'd recognize my wife. You've seen vids about our actions on the Orca asteroid, after all."
For several minutes, Harper was simply gaping for air like a beached Castalian.
"Oh, man," he finally said. "You've just solved my problem. I think Dylan will be too shocked to skin me for the delay. Oooh, that's something I have to see! What are you waiting for? Let's go home!
TBC
