No Palms
STARDRIFT – Episode 1: Dead Reckoning (Scene 3)
Jel Darm only caught up with Vizier when he reached the Unit Breaker. With his face flushed red he was breathing hard.
“This is not what I am paying you for.”
Vizier paused at the top hatch of the ship. “You haven’t paid me squat so far.”
“But back there, you could have said something. Backed me up.”
With one hand tight on the handle of the hatch Vizier thought about this. It took a moment. “I’m not your bodyguard and I have no knowledge of any of the details of your deal. What would you have wanted me to do, slap the woman or wrestle her guard?”
Vizier was calm but he wasn’t holding back. Who he really wanted to slap was Jel who stood there, eyes rolling around in his head as he searched for something to say.
“And the transponder? It’s from this ship. Are we flying without one?”
Jel pushed past Vizier onto the ship.
“You better forget about any of that, or you can forget about this job.”
Without a transponder finding a Ripple Gate had to be done by dead reckoning. That meant star charts and a lot of complicated maths. Possible, but it could give you a horrible headache.
“Do we have a transponder or not?”
“The ship has a transponder and that is all you have to know.”
Vizier took a breath outside after Jel had disappeared from sight. He had been stranded on the asteroid too long already. This was his way off, and he couldn’t know when the next would come along. And if he stayed he was in close proximity to a Kilyem Merisi who might have taken an interest in him. No, he had to be on this ship and be leaving.
When he stepped back on the ship Jel stuck his head out of a cabin down the corridor. “We must be going now. You have the ship on idle, right?”
Vizier looked forward to the cockpit. He didn’t have to, he could feel the hum through the soles of his boots. “I do. The drives will be warmed up and I’ve checked the flight controls.”
Then he looked past Jel to the back of the ship. This cargo is something he had to see. Just now they were transporting Seranti palms and then he’d have to listen to their forlorn songs echoing through the ship for the whole trip.
“Once I’ve cleared the cargo hold we can be off.”
Jel threw his whole body out of the cabin and got in Vizier’s way. “There’s no need for you to go back there. The cargo is secure, I checked it myself.”
“I’m not sure I’d trust you if you checked which way your head is facing, Jel. But I don’t fly a ship if I don’t know the cargo is secure.”
“Leave it,” said Jel but Vizier elbowed him out of the way and took the ladder down to the cargo hold. Behind him he could hear Jel getting back on his feet and stomping after him. But he didn’t come down the ladder too. he stayed on the upper walkway that ran around the hold.
The Unit Breaker was built as a hauler. The hold was big but the cargo only took up a small section of floorspace. All gathered in a tight bundle and secured with straps it looked like a small angular island.
“Leave it alone!” shouted Jel from above. “You can see it is properly secure.”
“Right,” mumbled Vizier under his breath. “But I really want to know what it is.”
He released a strap and opened the latches of the first crate. It was filled with artefacts, wrapped and cushioned that said it wasn’t just stuff, it was something valuable, probably worth a fortune. He looked up at Jel with a frown on his face.
“These are antiquities. From where I don’t know but you’d need certificates of origin, cultural permissions and such to transport these.”
“Yeah?”
“You have them?”
“That’s the deal with Cira Warten.”
So, not really then concluded Vizier.
“Where are they from?”
“What do you care? They’re not worth anything to you.”
Vizier took a wrapped bundle from the crate. It was round and felt like a ceramic pot. Could be rare, could be fragile. He tossed it from one hand to the other. Looked up at Jel and lifted an eyebrow.
“Right then,” said Jel holding up a hand for Vizier to stop playing with the pot. “The stuff’s all from Arogym. Nobody cares about any of it.”
The pot went back into the crate and Vizier closed the lid and secured the latches. Jel seemed to care a lot, maybe not for the pot, but certainly for the money and the deal. But Arogym?
“That planet has been under quarantine for almost two centuries. Is this stuff contaminated then?”
Jel laughed and waved his hands around aimlessly. He seemed to do that a lot, maybe to distract from what he actually said. “Not at all. Stuff wasn’t on the planet then.”
Then was when the war went biologically toxic and the various factions engaged in the civil war on Arogym wiped each other out through mutual annihilation. Horrible piece of cautionary history. The planet was a despoiled wasteland.
“Then it was looted before. Probably cost some innocents their lives.”
“They’d already be long dead,” said Jel with a shrug. “But now that you’ve seen the cargo, can we get going?”
“Not done yet,” said Vizier and walked to the other side of the stack of cargo where there were bigger crates.
“If we don’t get going I’m firing you. Remember, I’m your way off this rock.”
Vizier stopped, hand resting on a latch. “That point is wearing thin. Fire me and you’ll need another pilot. If you need to leave so urgently then that won’t happen. Just a moment while I check these out and then we can go, boss.”
Jel said nothing but he made strangled sound and started pacing back and forth on the walkway.
The crate contained a life support unit. Vizier leaned forward and saw the unit was on and the control panel indicated there was a person in stasis inside.
The grey alloy metal of the coffin was dull against the amber glow of the panel. A sign of life, but not life. Half-life.
“Well shit, this is not good,” he whispered to himself.
He stepped back and looked over the rest of the cargo. There were seven crates of the same size. Transporting artefacts of dubious origins was one thing. But these were people.
He slammed the crate shut and glared up at Jel. “Who are they?”
“Refugees from Arogym of course.”
Vizier walked back to the ladder and climbed up to get to Jel and get this straight.
“That war was over two hundred and six years ago. Where did these refugees come from? And why are we transporting them?”
Jel tried to avoid Vizier and walked up the corridor towards the nose of the ship. He talked back over his shoulder.
“Their ship was damaged and they had been adrift in space. They, the stasis pods and artefacts, had been salvaged and now I’m only the middle man transporting them on the next leg from Fest Stop to Nustral.”
“That’s still smuggling people. And why is your doing it based on a deal made with a Kilyem Merisi?”
Jel stopped at the door of his cabin, half inside. “Kilyem what?”
Vizier leaned against the bulkhead and folded his arms. “You don’t know, do you? About Cira Warten?”
“Know what?”
“Your Cira Warten might look human, but she isn’t. What you see is just a skin for a Kilyem Merisi, a Skulker.”
Jel snorted loudly through his nose. “Skulkers are a myth. And even if they weren’t, there’s no proof Cira Warten is something other than what she is.”
“I don’t need more proof than my own experience,” said Vizier and he felt the cold weight of the events that gave him his experience rise up from deep inside. He clenched his jaw and pushed it back down.
“Well, as far as I know they are being taken to a medical facility at Nustral where they can be woken with proper precautions. This is really a rescue mission.”
It sounded plausible. Long term stasis could have adverse effects. Hell, Vizier knew of nobody that had done more than 20 years, let alone 200.
“You know this for a fact?”
Jel couldn’t look Vizier in the eye as he rolled one shoulder. “I don’t, but I also don’t know for a fact that it isn’t so.”
Vizier might have argued more but Jel wasn’t listening. He returned to the bridge, but he still had doubts. But it was easier to prepare the ship and start the decoupling processes than to dwell on all the implications.
Just as he had requested Fest Stop port control to lift the slider curtain Jel returned to the cockpit. Vizier gave him a look but Jel avoided his gaze with a scowl on his own face.
When the slider curtain was up there was only a polarised atmospheric membrane between them and space. Vizier eased the ship backwards out of the bay and then there was a shudder that run through the ship, and a sudden sharp tilt to the left.
Jel, who had only been leaning against a seat fell against the bulkhead and knocked his head. He struggled back to his feet but there was such violent vibrations coursing through the ship that he had to clutch onto the seat.
“So much for you being a good pilot!” snapped Jel.
“This ship’s old. You can’t expect everything to be smooth.”
The back end of the ship pushed through the atmospheric membrane and everything went quiet. Vizier looked over the console. A number of warning lights had come on. He ran through a diagnostic sequence, slowing down their reverse trajectory and got to his feet shaking his head.
“What’s wrong?” asked Jel, a slight quiver in his voice.
Vizier opened a hatch below the pilot seat and looked down into it.
“There’s a hydraulic coupling loose down there causing the shudder. Unless you want your teeth shaken loose on this trip it has to be tightened right now.”
Jel looked at the hatch, Vizier, and then out the side port. The port decking below was tilting at an acute angle and the gravity inside the ship fought with the asteroid gravity causing a nauseating sensation.
“But,” said Jel, “you should be at the controls, piloting the ship.”
“Agreed, but then you must do it. Climb down and fasten the coupling.”
Jel swallowed deeply, looked at the hatch and gripped tighter to the seat.
“I’ll give you instructions. But you have to do it now otherwise we’ll be crashing back into the bay, and upside down.”
Jel climbed down the hatch with grunts and wheezes. Once down there he looked up at Vizier. “Should I not have a spanner or something?”
“Not really, no,” said Vizier and closed the hatch.
Jel’s voice came through muffled as he asked where this bloody coupling was.
Vizier ignored him and ran through a quick sequence on the control board with his left hand while his right hand eased the ship back to level. Then there was a hissing sound followed by a pop.
Jel let out a muffled scream which cut out into silence. Then he appeared outside in front of the nose of the ship where he drifted for a moment with large eyes staring back at Vizier, anger mixed with shock and surprise.
But only for a moment before the asteroid gravity got hold of him and he dropped down on the port deck.
“Ouch,” said Vizier. “Don’t know the difference between a maintenance and an escape hatch, hey?”
Vizier switched on the intercom so that Jel could hear him outside.
“Jel, I am sad to inform you that you have failed your trial run. I’ll take this ship to Nustral but I’m not doing it with an ignorant whining worm hanging over my shoulder.”
Jel’s voice came back tinny and small. “You can’t do this.”
“Go tell it to your Cira Warten, see if she cares. I’ll leave the Unit Breaker with the authorities at Nustral where you can reclaim it if you can get there yourself.”
With his arms waving around wildly Jel kept screaming but Vizier had cut the intercom and there was only the peaceful silence of the hum of the ship in the cockpit.
The Unit Breaker eased smoothly out into space and Vizier started checks for crossing through the Ripple Gate. He was looking forward to three weeks of peace and quiet. No singing palms, only seven sleeping passengers, captain of a ship again.
© 2025 Gerhi Janse van Vuuren