If you haven't read the first two in this trilogy, you might want to turn around now ;).
Also--this is hasn't gone through final edits ;). And the odd space between paragrapghs is a Blogger thing, not mine.
Chapter One
Vas froze as Terel and Pela raced off the bridge with an unconscious Deven on their gurney. The voice that Vas just heard had been a disturbing combination of the Deven she knew and one of the Devens he’d become when he came back from dying and had been in three bodies a year ago.
It was the worst of the three—the asshole pirate.
She forced that issue aside for the moment. She wasn’t certain what she’d heard—aside from the voice of a dead Pirate of Boagada saying that even though Deven had been the Clionea nuns’ Pirate before, he was tagged to be it again.
Something supposedly impossible.
He’d also said that Deven would save or doom everyone. Then Deven channeled the jerk pirate persona he’d had when he came back from the dead.
Mac jumped the Destroyer’s Curse through a dozen gates as they escaped the Nhali mining world as it blew up. Vas finally told him to stop, but this system looked too busy for her liking. She didn’t enjoy thinking of hiding and licking their wounds, especially after a fight they mostly won. But that was what they needed now. Too many things had gone on lately, and the issue with Deven could be catastrophic.
“Mac, find us another less busy system. We have no idea if the Nhali can connect us to that planet, but if they can, they will blame us for it blowing up.” Never mind that the Nhali had been digging up a converted planet left behind by the Asarlaí thousands of years ago. An extremely unstable and dangerous planet.
Mac nodded and blasted them back through the gate. He went through two systems, slowly, before Vas agreed to a location. No signs of advanced technology. And the only planets were far from the gate.
“Good work. Gosta, Hrrru, find us a place to hide. I’ll be in the med bay.” Vas was proud of not racing after Deven immediately. But they were now in a safer spot and she trusted Gosta and Hrrru to find a place to settle and hide.
She needed to know who was in Deven’s head. If it was that jerk pirate, she’d lock him up immediately.
“He’ll be okay.” Aithnea’s voice coming out of her comm as she jogged down the corridors wasn’t as soothing as it might have been if she wasn’t dead.
“That pirate. I heard that pirate’s voice.”
Aithnea hadn’t been around when Deven reappeared after being blown apart. But she’d read and listened to the files. “He was seriously injured that could be behind it,” Aithnea sounded too soothing. She was the mother superior of the dead group of Clionea nuns, but they were warrior nuns. Soothing usually wasn’t high on her list of descriptives. Even when she’d been alive.
Vas slowed a little as she went down the corridor to the med bay. If Aithnea knew something, she needed to know before she went to see him.
“What do you know? You heard that he’s our new Pirate of Boagada, is this something because of that?”
The Pirate of Boagada wasn’t a member of the Clionea nuns—at least not a regular one. The nuns were a female order, but the Pirate could be any gender. They served for a year or two doing things in concert with the nuns. Oftentimes they worked around the nuns' stricter agendas.
Then they had their memories wiped out—something they agreed to before accepting the position.
“Yes. And while that did sound like Tilthias, the last Pirate of Boagada, it might not have been. No one has held the position twice.” Her voice dropped and seemed to be talking to herself. “At least any that survived.”
Vas was almost to the outer med bay doors when Aithnea muttered that. She stopped and glared down at her comm. “What did you just say? Rather, what did you mean by what you just said?” As far as Vas had been told there had never been someone to hold the position twice. But the nuns weren’t around lying if they felt it was necessary.
“You shouldn’t have heard that. It’s our fault, you’re coming into some Keeper skills I didn’t think would be there yet.”
She went silent and Vas was ready to find a way to drag Aithnea out of the comm by force by the time she spoke again.
“There were two times that circumstances required replication of holding the position. They both died. I can give you the boring details now, or you can check on Deven.” There was a level of sameness to her words. A balanced and non-emotional way of speaking that Vas remembered from when she was taken in by the Clionea nuns when she first escaped her home world as a kid.
It never boded well.
“After this, you, me, Jasiel, and Nitya are talking.” Vas ignored any further responses and pushed open the med bay doors. Deven, Terel, and Pela were nowhere to be seen. Divee was monitoring the new bio-bed and the unconscious Kantari prisoner inside. He jumped to his feet as Vas raced in.
“Captain!” He was startled but both snub blasters remained in his hands.
“Where is Deven?”
“Terel and Pela are with him in the decon room. She didn’t tell me why, but she has a full contagion warning lockdown on them.”
Vas ran down the way he pointed. The Destroyer’s Curse was a new ship to her—well new enough and she’d been so busy that she hadn’t fully explored the massive thing. The back of the med bay was huge and contained more rooms than hopefully they’d ever need.
She rounded a corner and found one room with enough warnings splashed across it that no one would be crazy enough to enter.
Aside from Vas.
She used her palm to override the warning code and entered a clean room decon area. The system checked her, and then she knocked on the inner doors.
Terel and her assistant Pela were in decon suits and Terel pointed to more of them hanging inside the decon area. It wasn’t clear whether she was afraid that Deven might be contagious—or if he was the one in danger.
Vas scrambled into the suit and was just sealing the helmet when the doors whooshed open.
“Terel, what the hell is wrong?” She’d barely stepped past the doors as they shut.
“I don’t know. We almost lost him coming down here. Three times. I didn’t have a chance to call you. We’ve been resuscitating him.”
Vas looked down at Deven. He was even paler than he’d been on the bridge, but she couldn’t see any external injuries. “Did something get inside him on that planet?”
“It might have?” Pela glared at the screens she was monitoring. “Whatever is going on, it’s seriously messing with our ability to scan him.”
Vas watched as the two furiously fought to save him—from whatever was killing him.
“Damn it, Aithnea said that people who’d been the Pirate of Boagada twice died—could that be it? He was declared to be the next one on the command deck.”
“We need those damn nuns in here, now.” Terel looked ready to snap something at the mention of the nuns.
“I’m here,” Aithnea’s voice came from one of the speakers. “And Jasiel is on her way down. Nitya is having some issues with the ship; we didn’t escape unscathed. But, I don’t believe this has to do with that. Bluntly, the two Pirates of Boagada died after they’d completed their tasks. And yes, in both cases, they were aware it might happen. I’m not getting much from Deven’s mind, it’s too unstable right now. I don’t think Tilthias’ announcement caused this.”
“Keep trying to reach him.” Terel settled down a bit, but she didn’t seem convinced that the nuns weren’t at least partially responsible.
A ringing sound came from outside of the decon clean room behind them. Pela hit a button and Jasiel ran inside and quickly put on a suit.
Even though she was over eight hundred years old, Jasiel looked to be an extremely fit woman in her sixties. Unlike Aithnea and most of the Clionea nuns, who almost all kept their hair cropped, she kept her gray hair long but coiled atop her head.
She was the founder of the most recent incarnation of the Clionea nuns and the only nun still living. For now.
“What’s happened?” Jasiel winced and shook her head as she came into the room. “And what is that horrific sound? How can you stand it?” She’d started to approach Deven, but stopped and took a step back to the doors.
“What sound?” Vas always had good hearing, and since her Keeper training it had improved. But aside from the low-level sounds of the machines fighting to keep Deven alive, there wasn’t anything that would cause that reaction.
“A high-pitched…oh.” Jasiel grabbed her helmet and collapsed.
“Pick her up, get her on a table,” Aithnea said. “I’ll try and find what she was talking about. For the record, I’m not sensing anything. But being disembodied does have its limits.”
Vas and Pela lifted Jasiel onto a bed and Pela scanned her.
“She reads fine. Simply unconscious. Without a reason.” Pela narrowed her eyes and looked between Jasiel and Deven. “She’s not in danger of dying like he is, but could these two be connected?”
Terel glanced up from Deven. “That would probably be a question for Aithnea. Well? Did the nuns have disorders we need to know about?”
“No. We were possibly the healthiest people in the Commonwealth. But there’s something between the two of them. I still can’t hear anything that would have caused Jasiel to collapse, but there’s a strange vibration between her and Deven. Vas, can you roll Jasiel’s cot to the far end of the room?”
Vas looked to Terel but at her shrug went ahead and rolled Jasiel against the far wall.
“She’s twitching.” Vas stepped within Jasiel’s eyesight and gently shook her arm. “Jasiel? Are you awake?”
“Yes. But wishing I wasn’t.” Her eyes didn’t open but her face was lined in pain that was visible even through the faceplate of the decon helmet. “What crushed my skull?”
“You reacted to a sound and collapsed,” Aithnea’s voice now came out of a closer speaker. “Not terribly gracefully, however.”
“A sound?” Jasiel cracked open her eyes. “Oh, gods my head.”
Pela came over and gave her a shot, then ran back to Deven.
“Better. Thank you.” Her face still showed pain, but she opened her eyes. “Let me guess, no one else heard it?”
“No. Do you know what it was?” Vas was already returning to Deven’s side.
“I might. Tilthias could have passed something on to Deven. And Vas. Until this is sorted, I’ll keep my mental shields up.” She didn’t make a move to get up from the cot yet.
Vas wanted to touch Deven but unless she took off her suit she couldn’t. He was still pale but appeared to be twitching now. She had no idea if that was good or not. “Tilthias shared thoughts with me in the cave where his body was buried. Or rather, his spirit did. I felt them but haven’t been able to go through them. Maybe that’s it?”
Jasiel slowly got off the cot. Whatever shields she put up, they must have worked as she came next to Deven and peered closely at his face. “It shouldn’t have caused a problem, but then all of those memories should have gone directly to Deven as the next Pirate. Not to the Keeper. I’d say his spirit had no choice. Aithnea and I need to sort this out. After we stabilize Deven.”
“Which is what we’ve been trying to do.” Terel waved at the monitors. “Any idea how to do that? Something is trying to kill him and I can’t find it, let alone stop it.”
Jasiel turned to Vas. “I wasn’t on deck, but you said you heard an odd voice come from him right before he collapsed?”
Vas gave her a brief rundown of Deven dying and then coming back as three people over a year ago.
Jasiel gave a low whistle. “No wonder he was chosen again. There’s a lot of mojo in him that I’ve never even heard of before. He’s Kilesh, right? They are known for being strong espers, and have hearty recovery systems—but that’s beyond anything from any species.”
Vas shrugged. “Marli said that something in him had changed. She had scans of him from years ago that didn’t match the ones she read a year ago.” She frowned. “And that was before the dead and back as three situation.”
“The Asarlaí woman who helped in your prior battle? It’s sad that she was lost for many reasons.” Jasiel nodded as she continued to study Deven’s face.
“I doubt we’d be alive now if she hadn’t done what she did. But I agree. We do have access to her secret home though.” Vas shook her head. “Aside from the fact it’s in the Commonwealth. Damn, for a moment I forgot that we still can’t get through there.”
Deven started twitching more and Terel came with more sedatives.
“Wait.” Jasiel held her hand up and looked closer at Deven’s face. “He’s trying to come back. I believe those twitches aren’t random.”
“Let me try something,” Aithnea said then went silent.
The twitching turned to spasms.
“Oh no you don’t. Knock this off now!” Aithnea’s voice echoed through the room. And inside Vas’ head.
“This is mine.” The words were good to hear, but the voice wasn’t. His green eyes were almost black now.
“It’s that damn pirate.” Vas looked around. “Not the Pirate of Boagada. The other one.”
Terel nodded. “That’s him all right. Have we lost our Deven?”
“Not if I have anything to say about it.” Jasiel rubbed her hands together—which wasn’t as effective as the suit had gloves—but then she put both hands on Deven and pressed down.
“You can’t do this!” The voice coming out of Deven shifted. “This body is mine!”
“It was never yours, go back to whatever spawned you!”
In her Keeper training, Vas had learned that the higher-level nuns had almost magic-like powers. Or at least ones that couldn’t be explained in an easy-to-understand manner. That was what she felt at that moment. A powerful fight was going on between Jasiel, Aithnea, Deven, and that pirate.
Just not one she could see.
