The bryce connection, p.1
The Bryce Connection, page 1
The Bryce Connection
The Science Officer: Volume 9
Blaze Ward
Knotted Road Press
Contents
The Unbloomed Rose
1. Bethany
Le Bistro Parisien
1. Afia
The Forest Goddess
1. Rainier
2. Javier
3. Rainier
4. Javier
5. Rainier
6. Javier
The Adventure Seeker
1. Behnam
2. Zakhar
About the Author
Also by Blaze Ward
About Knotted Road Press
The Unbloomed Rose
One
Bethany
The tram car felt cold, but Bethany was certain that it was just her body’s reaction to all the adrenaline washing through her blood. Nerves, she was pretty sure. After all, the hard, gray-green, plastic seat had warmed up fairly quickly when she first sat down an hour ago.
Back when she had boarded with everyone at the very first stop: Jackson Crossing Starport.
The other three cars behind her on the train had been equally full at the time, as well. Travelers returning home, or passing through, or perhaps lost like her.
As her car came into a curve, Bethany twisted her torso around enough to look in the window of the last car, half a rugby pitch back. Just making sure. It was as empty as this one, that same boring, off-white interior, well lit, with nobody to keep it company.
She had the car, apparently the whole train, to herself now, though there had been at least twenty other folks up here at first, dancing carefully through that elaborate minuet that travelers did when they all boarded a subway, some seated, some standing.
Minimal eye contact and hushed voices.
Bethany had made sure her body language communicated fierce professionalism to the men she had seen. A young woman with places to go, not interested in petty small talk, or casual flirting.
Not that she was above playing those games. Bethany knew she looked good. Concord Fleet officers were expected to be in good physical and mental shape. If she wasn’t one anymore, it hadn’t been long enough ago to lose those habits.
Long legs with a good butt from walking as much as she could and climbing ladders on the stacks. Lean and tan because she made it a point to get outside in the sun every day, regardless of the weather. Too easy to just wander into the bowels of a library and never come up for air for days, or maybe weeks. French-braided hair that couldn’t decide if it was dirty blond or mousy brown.
Neither could she.
But it was good enough to keep all the strangers at a remove. Over there. Safe.
She stared out the tram’s windows into the passing darkness, hoping there might be an answer for her there. All she could see in the islands of light every hundred meters was that indeterminate zone where close suburbs were finally giving way to milo fields. Blocks of modest, wooden-frame houses, crammed together on barely-larger lots, petering out like freckles, as the tracts of farmland held stubbornly on, giving ground a single hectare at a time and no more.
Bethany could appreciate that level of quiet stubbornness. It had gotten her where she was.
If she only knew where that might be.
The map icon over the door showed the last stop, the other end of that ribbon that had brought her here from the starport. One last glance down to reassure herself, as the tram slowed.
Navy blue slacks, tough enough for any weather, since she hadn’t been sure what season would greet her on this planet. Broken-in athletic shoes in a blue so dark as to be nearly black. Light gray sweater underneath the forest green longcoat she had retained from active service after removing all the patches and regalia.
Enough to protect her.
Around her neck, a blue and white striped, knitted scarf, the treasure from her hunts through second-hand stores. The one new thing she wore, because the letter directing her to this place, this planet, this tram stop, had been specific.
Money for passage. Wear a very particularly-colored scarf. Ride the Green Line tram from the Starport to the last station. Someone will meet you there.
Just how badly did she want a job?
Every other avenue seemed to have ended, to bring her here. Four years of Academy, training to be an officer and a gentlewoman. Six years of active service with the Concord Fleet, a staff-weenie researching the archives for senior officers.
And then, nothing.
Another round of budget cuts that meant she didn’t have a job any more. Just a small severance package designed to get her somewhere else, where she wouldn’t be their problem.
The tram lurched slightly as it came to a stop, a hiccup in the current keeping the maglev aloft. Just another thing breaking down because there wasn’t ever enough money to keep it working right. Bethany held tight to the scuffed, nickel pole as the tram lowered itself to the ground, but nothing else tossed her sideways. Not physically, at least.
Mentally, she just had to hold on as well.
She was here. Wherever here was.
The end of the line. Literally as well as figuratively.
Bethany took a deep breath and rose, pulling her small, green backpack from under the seat and slinging its weight over her left shoulder.
The door opened, letting in cool, night air and the smell of farmland. Dirt, not cow shit.
Not quite home.
Nothing to do now but go forward.
Bethany exited the car with a heavy, silent step, arriving on the rough concrete of an alien platform and a cool breeze. She told herself that this was the start of an adventure, but she still stuck her right hand into a coat pocket to feel the comfortable, plastic weight of the stunner she had brought to this strange planet.
Protection from unexpected dangers.
Not having one wasn’t a mistake she was likely to make, ever again, even if elbows and teeth had been enough to save her then. She wouldn’t have the Navy behind her any more.
Civilian.
What the hell did civilians do, anyway? She had wanted to be an officer for so long she could barely remember a time when any other trajectory was possible.
Now being a civilian was likely.
Anybody need a professional historian?
A man stepped from behind a pillar, well down the track, and stared at her.
Bethany’s step barely stuttered as she took him in.
Average height for a guy. Maybe 1.8 meters tall. Bethany was tall for a girl, giving her a towering two whole centimeters over the man, but he outweighed her by at least a third, well-muscled and solid. A man who worked on keeping himself in shape.
Physically imposing.
She would have guessed him to be just past forty, as the man kept his nearly-black hair short and neat enough to show off where it was starting to turn gray over his ears. He was clean-shaven and had a rugged, masculine face, lantern-jawed in a way that would keep getting even more attractive for another few decades before he finally started to look old.
Handsome. Dark skin, Hispanic in tone, when her hidden bits were the pinkish-white of Anglos who never got out in the sun.
They were the only two people on a platform that seemed to stretch for nearly a kilometer, with the stairways down, leading elsewhere, on the far side of him.
Bethany squeezed the stunner, trying not to sweat all over it.
She had suddenly gone from too cold to too warm, despite the cool, evening air.
There was nothing for it now, but to start walking in that direction. He would talk to her.
She glanced back over a shoulder, but nobody was obvious.
If it was a trap, she had yet to understand the parameters. Still, an officer and a gentlewoman. Trained and dangerous, even for a librarian.
She could do this.
Her footsteps were silent as she slowly approached the man.
He had an easy smile on his face, and his hands at his sides, not in a pocket where they might emerge with a knife, or a gun. Blue dungarees that had seen better days. Long tunic in scarlet peeking out from the bottom of the black leather jacket he had zipped up halfway.
Intelligence sparkled in his eyes.
He nodded when she was about five meters away.
“Ms. Durbin,” he said simply in a low, tenor voice with almost no accent.
So. He knew who she was. And why she was here. Hopefully.
Bethany stopped walking and glanced again to the rear.
Nobody.
Just her and him.
She pulled the palm-sized weapon and kept it low at her side, just like she had been trained to. Made sure it was obvious that she wasn’t a victim.
His eyes followed the movement before they came back up and locked with hers.
“Probably unnecessary,” he said with easy eyes.
“Probably?” she inquired in a voice that managed to not crack with the stress in her belly.
He shrugged with his whole body and his face then grinned like a frog.
“I can’t speak for the natives,” he said. “But I’m not even in the top ten most dangerous people I know.”
“I see,” she said.
Bethany wasn’t sure if she was supposed to be relieved, or concerned.
“Have you eaten?” he asked carefully.
She hadn’t today, beyond bar munchies she had been able to nibble while stretching out one weak, cheap beer as far as she could.
Without income, every drachma was import ant these days.
“I have not,” she said, offering no more than that.
Strange man. Strange platform. Strange planet.
“Can I buy you dinner, Ms. Durbin?” he asked, almost formally.
“Dinner?”
On the ship, it had been mid-morning when she arrived. Here, late in the evening.
The culture shock of traveling through space. Your time was always relative to someplace else.
“The reason I picked Jackson Crossing,” the strange man explained. “One of my crewmates assures me that it has the best greasy spoon diner anywhere. I’m a sucker for that sort of thing.”
Bethany filed that piece of evidence. Cataloged it. Wondered if it would be valuable.
All information was useful, to someone, someday.
That’s why people needed historians.
There was always too much data. Not enough information. Someone had to understand how to pull out the pearls and ignore the dross. While filing everything else against some future need.
She considered the situation. The man.
That letter with the possibility of a job.
Treasure map, maybe.
Did X mark the spot?
The man waited patiently. He was relaxed, with a face communicating calmness.
Like he wasn’t sure she would take him up on the offer. That she might turn around and get back on the train before it left.
As if that was an option at this point.
Where else am I going to go?
“Yes,” she decided. “That would be acceptable.”
He smiled, nodded, and pivoted on his heel.
“This way, please,” the man said as he started to walk.
Bethany took a step. His stride was short enough she could keep up.
“I don’t even know your name,” she ventured.
He glanced back at her with sudden concern.
“Oh, right,” he said. “Navarre.”
“There are news reports of a terrible, dangerous, pirate captain named Navarre,” she said. “Originating out of the Meehu Sector.”
Navarre nodded again and kept up his pace, glancing back just enough to make sure she was still moving.
“Yup,” he said agreeably. “That would be me.”
Bethany fought to keep from freezing again. Or sweating all over the pistol in her hand.
Why did a ruthless pirate need a historian?
Truck stop. Bethany couldn’t think of any other way to describe the establishment as the waitress guided them to a booth.
White, extruded-plastic booths down the whole left side of the long, skinny space and around the back wall. A low counter with permanent, backless barstools down the right side. A row of tables for two closer to the counter, and tables for four closer to the booths.
The kitchen was behind the counter, visible only through a small space where orders were yelled and plates offered in return, like odd, religious sacrifices.
Off-white table tops. Offer-white walls. Way too much lighting for the space, so everything was like noonday sun in here, in spite of the relative darkness of the parking lot she could see though the wall of windows.
About the only color in here for the furniture was the shockingly red seat cushions on the bar stools and the chairs. Even the waitress, an older woman with long-since-gray hair, was wearing a white skirt and top, covered over with a red apron. The booths were just raw-colored wood under her butt, sealed with enamel against wear, but old.
She seated them at the fourth booth and left menus, with a promise of naturally-decaffeinated coffee, whatever that meant, coming.
From the smell in the air, the coffee would be dark. Brewed hard, a while ago. Probably burned. Oxidized. And the restaurant seemed to specialize in potatoes.
Hash browns. Mashed with brown gravy. French fried. Baked and stuffed.
Whatever plate was being served, on any table Bethany could see, included potatoes. Meat dish. Veggie dish. Soup. You were getting potatoes. Bethany looked at the menu on the table top in front of her and wondered if she would transfer all the grease from the fingerprints onto herself, just touching it.
Navarre was seated across from her. He didn’t seem to notice anything out of the ordinary.
Just how cloistered had her life to this point been? Had she ever actually been in a place like this, at any point?
Navarre read the menu and ignored her, so Bethany took a breath and opened it.
Choice.
It was a civilian thing.
On a ship, you got whatever the wardroom had prepared today. Maybe three selections on most days.
On a base somewhere, you might get five options. A poor, junior officer from a lower class family, she had rarely been in a position to go off base for real restaurants.
This menu provided her with almost a hundred picks. Just cataloging the options made her brain hurt.
From the smells around her, whatever she ordered would be fried in grease and oil. Bethany settled for itemizing things on calorie density, just in case she heard this man’s spiel and decided to walk away. At least he could gift her several days’ worth of energy.
And where would she go?
The waitress returned with mismatched coffee mugs, steaming as they plopped down on the table top.
“What’ll it be?” the woman asked.
Bethany pointedly looked at Navarre.
He smiled brightly.
“Steak and eggs,” he picked. “Medium rare. Over easy. Crispy hash browns. Sourdough.”
Just like that.
So easy to be a civilian. To have enough drachmas to your name to just go order the most expensive thing on the menu like nothing at all.
The waitress turned to her.
Deep breath.
“I’ll have the sausage and cheese omelet, please,” Bethany replied. “And can I add some broccoli to it?”
“Sure thing,” the waitress said. “Toast?”
Bethany froze.
“What are my options?”
“White, wheat, sourdough, biscuit, muffin, or fruit.”
What do you want? As opposed to the military telling you what you are getting.
“Fruit, please,” she decided.
She was a civilian now. Small steps into reinventing herself.
“Coming right up.”
And they were alone again.
She watched Navarre formulate his coffee like a magic potion from a fairy tale. Perhaps a quarter deciliter of what looked like real cream from a tiny, white pitcher. Four packets of natural sugar that was a toasty brown. Not brown sugar, but not the industrial white substance she had known as a child, either.
Bethany liked her coffee black, although a little sugar for extra energy might be useful. She dithered for a second, and reached.
The smell emanating from the mug alone told her how strong this substance would be.
Rip. Pour. Stir.
Sip.
Warm.
Something relaxed in her. Bethany felt her shoulder blades come down.
She opened her eyes to his, staring at her. Appraising her.
Weighing her soul.
His eyes were so dark brown that they were almost black. And yet, they were warm, almost friendly.
“First off,” he said abruptly. “Thank you for coming. And for not freaking out on the platform. And for joining me for some dinner.”
Freaking out?
Oh. Pirate. Male. Potential threat to her life and womanhood. Or something.
When I’m holding the stunner and you aren’t?
Please.
Bethany nodded over the rim of her mug, using another sip as an excuse to remain silently evasive.
He suddenly rested his left hand on the table, palm down, halfway across the table. Like he suddenly wanted to hold hands.
Bethany glanced. And did a triple-take.
This man, who claimed to be a deadly pirate captain, was wearing a class ring from the Concord Academy at Bryce. She could see ’63 on the side.
So, former Concord Fleet officer, just like her. And sixteen years older. Bethany’s ring was tucked carefully into the backpack on the seat beside her.
