The Reforged Trilogy: Book 1 — Crucible of Stars
Chapter 5
Cold Heart
“I think the stars shine so bright in the sky to remind us to look up from the mud.”
– Michael Cyrus, Prian police pilot (102 MA)
Not all civilizations prospered equally under the Central World Alliance. One of these unlucky planets was Prianus, which had the misfortune of being located on the edge of the core and outside regularly traveled galactic trade routes.
Prianus was a tectonically volatile world covered in deep forests and high, rocky mountains. But there weren’t many useful metals or minerals in those mountains, and the frequent quakes made large-scale mining operations infeasible. Being of such little interest to the Alliance, Prianus didn’t benefit very much from the cooperative efforts of the CWA.
Like other founding worlds of the Alliance, Prianus was vastly overpopulated. Only the terrible cold and thin air of the high Prian mountains preserved any of the planet’s wilderness. In these places, birds held the evolutionary advantages of mobility, range and larger hunting territories than animals on the ground. Recognizing the uses of these traits, the humans of Prianus domesticated dozens of bird species and brought them down from the mountains.
Far below, the cities of Prianus were bursting with people. Too many people. Prian life expectancy was ten years less than on any other human planet. Long before joining the CWA, death had become an accepted part of Prian existence, codified into a culture of ritualized dueling. Predatory birds became prized weapons, trained to fight to the death with humans and animals alike. Such duels were considered barbaric by the rest of the Alliance, but remained a cornerstone of tradition in Prian society.
Being so remote also meant that Prianus received little military support from the Central World Alliance Armed Forces. CWAAF was a vast galactic army made up of soldiers from every member world and charged with the protection of the entire core. In theory, this included Prianus, but the logistical details of mobilizing troops across such distances usually resulted in years-long response times. When the CWAAF could respond to a Prian call for aid at all.
To prevent any one planet from being able to subjugate another, individual Alliance worlds were forbidden to maintain their own armies. Prian delegates strenuously objected to this decision, but were overruled and the already wild fringe world lost all control of its own population. Competition for Prianus’ sparse resources was vicious and the planet became an open, festering wound of crime and corruption.
Denied the ability to raise an army as the populace tore each other apart, the Prian government turned to their domestic police precincts to restore order. The cops of Prianus accepted this duty with grave pride, even as they were warned that no additional resources could be spared to assist them.
The Prian police had been charged with the task no other force in the galaxy was willing or able to undertake, so they went to work. The cops were underpaid and overburdened, with the highest mortality rate of any profession on their planet. The badge of a police officer became a mark of integrity and bravery on Prianus, a modern knighthood of the strictest moral code. New recruits willingly endured rigorous and often painful physical and psychological tests to prove their worth. Necessity and devotion bred strong ties between the officers, and an even stronger sense of honor and civic duty.
The crime rate on Prianus remained the worst in the CWA. But for more than two hundred years, the Prian police held back the bloody tide of total chaos and brought some measure of peace to their planet.
Xia left Coldhand alone in darkness. The lack of light bound him more efficiently than any restraints. The bounty hunter had only one brief glimpse of the bunkroom as Xia had locked him inside, leaving his improvised prison largely a mystery.
Coldhand felt his way slowly across the room and sat down on the corner of the single small bunk. The sheets were rough and stiff under the fingers of his right hand. By the feel of them, the bedding was cheap and infrequently used. The Blue Phoenix didn’t take on many passengers.
The hunter ran his cybernetic left hand along the frame beneath the bunk, but the scrape of his illonium fingertips was a dull and distant sensation. The supports were metal, probably more fibersteel — most starships were predominantly built of the stuff — but Coldhand couldn’t get much more information than that from his artificial nerves.
Twenty percent.
Coldhand stood and reached out through the darkness again with his right hand. There was a jarring impact as his fingers encountered the wall sooner than he expected, but then Coldhand felt the smooth plastic of the door controls. They were all deactivated, of course. If he was going to open the locked door, he had to get to the wires behind this panel.
Coldhand felt along the edge of the control pane until he found a small indent in the wall — the repair access point. There were specific tools designed to fit into that notch, but the hunter figured he could probably muscle the latch open. He worked the fingers of his right hand into the divot and pulled. The panel didn’t move. Coldhand tugged until his fingers throbbed and stung, but the plastic held.
Twenty percent.
The fingers of his new hand were numb and slow. Like they were too cold.
Or dead.
His guitar hit the floor with a discordant shriek. The broken strings curled up like the legs of a dying spider. Jess buried her face in her hands and started crying again. Logan only watched in clinical disinterest.
The seal on that control panel would be no match for Coldhand’s cybernetic servos. He clenched his left hand in the darkness, listening to the metal-on-metal clack of his fingers. But he remembered what the surgeons had told him, too — the artificial hand had only twenty percent feeling. That was the best their technology could manage. Twenty percent sensation was far too clumsy to pry off the control facing without snapping or shattering it. Once it was broken, there was no hiding what he had done.
How had Coldhand gotten himself captured by a band of barely armed civilians? It would have been illegal to simply shoot Kessa for interfering with his hunt… but Coldhand didn’t have to help the girl and certainly didn’t have to go with Maeve to get her to safety. The advantage of staying close to his mark had vanished as soon as Coldhand stepped onto the Blue Phoenix.
It had been a gamble. Trying to take Maeve down with Kessa nearby wasn’t impossible, but it put the pregnant girl in danger. Maeve might even have been willing to turn Kessa into a hostage to ensure her getaway, if the fairy’s bounty posting was any indication. But she hadn’t done anything like that.
In fact, Maeve’s entire demeanor was… confusing. She taunted Coldhand and didn’t seem particularly interested in preserving her own life. Yet when cornered, Maeve fought more like a demon than like an angel. But even that had fallen away when Kessa appeared and begged for their help.
It would have been smarter to press his attack back on Axis. Injuring or killing Kessa in the crossfire might have generated some extra datawork, but Coldhand promised himself that he would not hesitate again.
What was done was done, and now Coldhand needed to regain control of the situation. Here, Maeve had all the advantages — she was on her own ship, with her own crew. She had weapons and Coldhand did not. He had to get out of this room, off of the Blue Phoenix and back to his ship. And then he could resume the hunt and finally capture Maeve Cavainna.
Coldhand sat back on the bunk. The fibersteel bulkhead was cold against his bare skin, but he didn’t shiver.
The bounty hunter was still considering how to proceed when he heard the sound of footsteps outside. Coldhand couldn’t pick out any voices, but the door gave a warning chirp as it unlocked and then hissed noisily open on old compressors. Green-tinged light from the hall flooded into the room, silhouetting the unmistakable bulk of Tiberius Myles in the doorway. Coldhand stood up and squinted into the sudden brightness.
Whatever access code had unlocked the door also reactivated voice control over the lights. The bunkroom lit up at Tiberius’ curt command and Coldhand was finally able to inspect his prison. He took it in at a glance, though, and then returned his attention to his visitor.
Visitors. Maeve Cavainna stepped into the bunkroom behind her captain and the door slid shut once more.
“Sit down,” Tiberius instructed, gesturing to a desk now visible on the other side of the bunkroom and the chair bolted in front of it.
“I’ll stand,” Coldhand said.
Tiberius looked annoyed, but only sighed and then shrugged. “Fine. It’s your spine.”
“Your copilot shouted something about fire over the com,” Coldhand said. “Since you’re still flying, I doubt that he meant weapons fire.”
“No,” Tiberius agreed with a nod. “We’re in orbit around Axis’ sun right now.”
Coldhand felt the sweat running down his skin. The air was hot, but not as hot as it should have been. Maeve watched the bounty hunter, her gray eyes lingering on the scar over his heart. Or what used to be his heart before the surgeons replaced it with metal and plastic.
“Phenno,” Coldhand concluded. “Lots of it. Enough to cover the entire hull?”
“That’s right,” said Tiberius. With a grunt, he dropped into the chair that Coldhand had declined. “The Axis police birds chased us halfway across the system. You’re right, though. That is a lot of phenno and we’ll have to fly all the way out to Stray to replace it.”
“But you’re still in orbit of the sun,” Coldhand said. He hadn’t felt the superluminal engines engage again after that first short jump. “Why?”
“We do not yet know where to go,” Maeve answered. She remained standing in front of the door. “You are more familiar with the Sisterhood than I am. We require your assistance.”
Her words had the formal, musical cadence that was distinctly Arcadian. Most of the refugee fairies had learned Aver only late in life and spoke it with a thick accent that often made them difficult to understand. Of course, the rest of the Alliance considered the Prian accent nearly indecipherable, too.
“The princess here thinks you can tell us where to take Kessa,” Tiberius said. “Somewhere she’ll be safely out of the Sisterhood’s reach.”
“I don’t have to tell you anything,” Coldhand answered. “Except that you wasted a great deal of money.”
Tiberius opened his mouth to say something, but Maeve was faster. She lunged toward the bed and seized Coldhand by the shoulder. Her high cheeks were flushed scarlet.
“You will help us, Logan,” she hissed.
The fairy’s grip tightened under Coldhand’s collarbone, digging her fingernails into his skin, but he felt the pain only distantly — just a dull pressure against his chest. Tiberius was standing again, his brow folded into deep, furious lines.
“Maeve!” he barked. “What the hells are you doing?”
Coldhand grabbed Maeve’s hand and pried it off of him. She struggled in his mechanical grip and beat her long wings once, but couldn’t keep her balance. With a yank and twist, Coldhand locked her wrist and drove the fairy down to her knees. Her wings slapped against the steel floor, shaking loose a few white feathers.
Coldhand looked down at her. Beneath the dirt, Maeve was a beautiful woman. Her body was slim and well muscled, but she dressed herself in stained spacer’s pants and a torn, dirty shirt. Her long black hair hung in tangles around her shoulders. Maeve’s face was recently washed, still damp and beaded with water at the hairline, but the skin around her eyes was purple and bruised-looking. The veins of her contorted arm were dark, scabbed along the inner elbow with a dozen needle punctures. Why did Maeve do this to herself?
The Arcadian hissed in pain, spitting her rage at Coldhand. She was little more than an animal, and a sick one at that. Why did she even fight for her own miserable life, much less that of the Dailon girl? He didn’t understand.
“Why do you care about any of this?” Coldhand asked.
Maeve stared up defiantly from the floor, her hand still twisted unnaturally in his cybernetic fingers. She bit her lip so hard against the pain that blood ran from one corner of her mouth. The fairy was just another fragile thing protesting Coldhand’s touch.
The hunter tightened his grip and Maeve’s gray storm-cloud eyes burned with furious agony, but she refused to cry out. Coldhand should have felt her hand in his, the warm softness of her skin and the heat of her blood rushing to her reddening fingers as he crushed them. But he felt nothing in his cybernetic hand, nothing in his cybernetic heart.
Something clicked. Coldhand looked up to see Tiberius pulling a bulky null-inertia gun from the rig under his arm and thumbing off the safety. NI weapons were dangerous on ships in the vacuum of space — their massive lead slugs could all too easily punch through the hull of the Blue Phoenix and vent precious oxygen to freeze uselessly in the darkness beyond. And there was a sun out there to consider, as well.
The old captain must have been very certain of his aim to draw such a weapon on his ship, or else very stupid. Tiberius leveled his gun at Coldhand.
“Let go of her!” he ordered.
Wresting the gun away from Tiberius would mean losing his grip on Maeve and giving her the chance to resume her attack. Trying to fight them both at once might force Coldhand to kill the fairy, just to reduce his opponents.
He released Maeve. Another opportunity would present itself. Coldhand simply had to be patient.
Maeve jumped quickly back out of reach. The white skin of her hand was already darkening with bruises to match the ones around her lips. She flexed her injured fingers experimentally. Apparently content that no permanent damage was done, Maeve shoved her hands into her pockets. Tiberius frowned at her.
“You’re not helping anything, princess,” he said. “Get out.”
Maeve glared and then nodded curtly to her captain, angry color bright in her pale cheeks. Stiffly, she spun on her heels and stalked out of the room.
“Princess?” Coldhand asked.
Tiberius was still frowning at the door. He turned back to the bounty hunter. “What?”
“Why do you call her princess?”
“Oh. That.” Tiberius sat down again and scratched at his gray beard. He didn’t reholster his weapon. “Maeve says she’s the last survivor of the Arcadian royal family.”
“And you believe her?” Coldhand asked.
“Why not?” said Tiberius. “As I understand it, that black hair of hers is a dead giveaway. Mark of the royal line. Have you ever seen another Arcadian with anything but blond hair?”
Coldhand shrugged in answer. Hair could be dyed and Maeve was still his target, royalty or not. But it could be true, he supposed. She might have come from the actual White Kingdom. If so, that made Maeve Cavainna at least a hundred years old. And unless she was a baby at the time of the Arcadian kingdom’s fall, probably more like two hundred. Old by human standards, but a fairy could live for several centuries.
None of the coreworld species had such long lifespans, even with the best Ixthian medical care. The canine Lyra survived only seventy-five central standard years. A human — one with a safer occupation than bounty hunting, at least — might expect to see a hundred and forty CSYs before cloned organs couldn’t compensate for the deterioration of age.
But Arcadians and the other rimworld races lived much, much longer. A rooted Jinn might survive for millennia before finally withering. No one had any idea how long the Nnyth lived, but if the Jinn and Arcadians were any indication, it was centuries or more.
Maeve Cavainna had surprisingly little self-control for a woman who had lived for more than a hundred years, Coldhand thought. Tiberius rested the gun against his knee, still aimed at the captive bounty hunter.
“Alright, let’s get on with it,” said the captain. “Do you know anything useful about the Sisterhood?”
“Yes,” Coldhand answered.
He had encountered the fanatical women too many times since leaving Prianus to avoid learning something about them. Coldhand had even taken a few bounties on particularly dangerous members of the Sisterhood.
“Well, don’t keep it to yourself,” Tiberius said. “Tell me what you know and I’ll drop you back on Axis.”
“Or I can kill you and your crew, then take this ship,” Coldhand countered. “I could pick up my Raptor and be one bird richer.”
Tiberius glowered at him. “What the hells is wrong with you, hawk? Maeve told me you helped Kessa. So why won’t you help the girl now?”
“My business isn’t with her. I’m only interested in Cavainna.”
“There’s no profit in Kessa’s death or her baby’s,” Tiberius said. “What would it cost you to give me a little information?”
Coldhand was silent. Tiberius growled in frustration and stood. He began to pace, gesturing with his null-inertia gun.
“God, I hate this,” said Tiberius. “I’m just a beat cop, damn it, not a detective!”
Coldhand narrowed his eyes at the other Prian. “You were a police officer? Back home?”
“Police! Stop where you are!”
The command echoed down the rain-soaked alleyway, but the sound of it was thin and fragile. The deep night was misty and dark, lit only in the staccato red and green of the squad car’s lights. Most of the dealers were already running, vanishing into the mist, but no one chased them. It wasn’t a few petty street sellers that the police wanted tonight. This was a much bigger bust.
Logan stood in the fog, gun raised and finger tight on the trigger.
“Yeah, sure was,” Tiberius said. He thumped the heel of his free hand against his chest. “Flew a wing team when I was young. The Blacktails.”
“Where?” Coldhand asked.
“Oak District.” Tiberius sighed and combed his fingers through his short steely hair. “But I got old and somehow not dead. When I couldn’t do the job anymore, I was out on my ass and there was just never money for a pension. I’d saved a bit. Not enough to retire on, but enough to hit the shipyards.”
“This ship is a Starwind TT-40 mark 3,” Coldhand said. “They scrapped this model sixty years ago.”
“She was all I could afford.” Tiberius stopped pacing and patted a dented fibersteel bulkhead affectionately. “I bought her for seventeen thousand cen, cargo and all.”
A shadow passed over Tiberius’ face, but it vanished swiftly. The old captain was proud of his ship and eager to talk about it. He gave away information like Docinia presents, more than Coldhand could ever have uncovered on the Axis mainstream.
“How could you afford a crew?” the hunter asked.
Tiberius didn’t seem able to pay them much. Maybe one of them could be easily bribed. Or was there something else that bound the crew together? But Coldhand’s tone must have given him away. Tiberius scowled and resumed his pacing.
“I think I’ve talked enough,” he said. “If you won’t be helpful, I’ll go spend some time with Orphia before this whole thing makes me crazy.”
Orphia? Coldhand knew the Blue Phoenix’s crew complement, even if he didn’t know a great deal about them. But he had never seen that name on any datawork.
“I’ll come back later,” Tiberius grumbled. He keyed open the door. “Maybe you’ll feel like sharing then. But we’ll be flying out of here soon. The longer you wait to talk, the further we’ll be from Axis. I can have Gripper bring you a shirt.”
“And a datadex.”
Tiberius turned in the doorway. “What?”
“I’m going to be here a while,” Coldhand said. “Give me something to read. I don’t care what it is.”
“Fine. Clothes and a datadex,” Tiberius agreed.
He left the bunkroom, leaving the lights on when he locked the door behind him. Coldhand spent the next half hour inspecting his prison until there was another tone from outside.
“I… I’m coming in,” said a voice.
The door slid open and a massive alien ducked through, with thick brown skin and green fur on his long, muscular arms — Gripper, the ship’s mechanic.
Gripper held out a faded gray shirt in one huge, shaking hand. Coldhand took it, which made the mechanic flinch violently. The shirt was printed with the white starfield logo of Starwind Enterprises and several sizes too large. Too large for Coldhand, at least — it would have been a comically tight fit on Gripper. The shirt must have belonged to Tiberius.
Coldhand pulled it on over his head and then looked up.
“The datadex?” he prompted.
Gripper dutifully removed a datadex from one of his pockets. The screen was tiny in the big alien’s hand and he flinched again when Coldhand took it. The Still Wind was on the datadex display, an old Prian book scrolled about halfway through. The screen was scuffed and scratched almost beyond legibility, but Coldhand didn’t care. He turned it over, illonium fingers clicking on the plastic. The datadex was an older, heavier model, nearly too thick for his needs. But it would do.
“Need… anything else?” Gripper asked in an unsteady voice.
“How many people are on this ship?”
“Um, five of us,” Gripper answered, taking a step away from Coldhand. “There’s me, Claws, Smoke, Silver and Shimmer. Uh, that’s me, the captain, Maeve, Xia and Duaal.”
Orphia wasn’t on his list. So who was she and would she be a problem? Coldhand didn’t know, but one problem at a time.
“Why the nicknames?” he asked.
“It’s a uh… a thing from back home. We don’t use birth names much on Arborus,” Gripper explained. “They’re useful for yelling at babies not to fall out of their tree, but that’s about it. I mean, Anandrou doesn’t tell you anything about me, does it? But Gripper…”
The young alien brandished his massive hands. His fingernails were long and nearly as thick as the datadex Coldhand held.
“I never let go of something once I grab on,” Gripper said. “Not a branch or a job. I never give up, right? Like this one time–”
“Cavainna,” Coldhand interrupted. “Maeve. Why do you call her Smoke?”
“I uh… I don’t really know if I should say. I’ve never even told her that.”
Coldhand fixed his gaze on Gripper. The mechanic hunched until his long arms brushed the floor, then pressed his balled-up hands against the deckplates. He shifted his weight back and forth on his knuckles.
“Smoke is just so tiny and light, and not just compared to an Arboran girl,” Gripper answered at last. “But she’s… poison. I mean, I like her — I think — but Smoke’s got a temper even worse than the captain. She’s destructive. To herself and everyone around her. Like fire.”
“Then why not call her that?” Coldhand asked.
“Because fire still burns,” Gripper said. He shook his huge head. His voice had gotten small and quiet. “I don’t think Smoke does anymore. I think she’s given up. I don’t know if there’s anything left inside her. Oh… and smoke flies. So does she.”
Gripper made a ridiculous fluttering motion that looked very little like Arcadian wings, but Coldhand got the idea. The Arboran fell silent and took another shuffling half-step back toward the bunkroom door.
“And what do you call me?” Coldhand asked.
“Um… Coldhand,” Gripper answered. “You’ve already chosen your own name.”
Coldhand said nothing. Gripper stood awkwardly in the door for a moment, then turned on his knuckles and squeezed back out into the hallway. It locked behind him with a beep and a muffled clunk.
When Gripper was gone, Coldhand crouched next to the door and slipped the corner of the datadex into the dimpled wall beneath the access panel. He worked it painstakingly up and down, and was rewarded with a loud click as the hatch swung open. The space between the bulkheads was filled with circuit boards and bundles of coiled wires. Coldhand considered the controls.
He wasn’t an engineer. Rewiring the bunkroom door would take time and a great deal of trial and error, but the unbroken access panel would let Coldhand conceal his work from his captors for as long as necessary.
Carefully, he pulled a red wire out of the wall and got started.
