Assault on the Gods

CHAPTER 1-2

“You’re Ardeva Korrell?” he asked as they shook hands.

“That’s right.”

“There aren’t many female ship’s captains, are there?” His speech was as quick as it was blunt. Dev couldn’t decide whether that was a good or bad trait.

“There was one other beside myself in my graduating class of a hundred and ten,” she answered formally. “However, there are even fewer red-haired, left-handed midgets in the profession.”

“I suppose so. Where are you from?”

“Eos.”

Larramac raised an eyebrow but said nothing, a gesture that made it impossible for Dev to interpret his thoughts. “And you want to be a spaceship captain.”

“I am a captain. My credentials and licenses are all in order. What I’m looking for is a ship.”

Larramac nodded. “My problem is I’ve got a ship and, at the moment, no captain. Do you ask a lot of questions?”

“In what way?”

“Do you have to know every single thing that happens on board your ship?”

“It’s a captain’s duty to know everything that’s going on—”

“I fired my last captain for being too inquisitive.”

“—But there are some things that are not as important to know as others,” Dev temporized quickly. Personal preferences must sometimes bow before the winds of necessity, after all. “My primary job would be to get the ship safely from one port to another. Everything that touches on that is my responsibility, from maintenance through astrogation. Other matters may be peripheral to the running of the ship, and on those I can tread most delicately.”

Larramac ruminated for a moment, stroking his goatee. He reached into a pile of papers and took out a sheet Dev recognized as the application she had submitted the week before. “According to your resume, you’ve had a lot of different jobs. You haven’t stayed with any ship more than a year. Why is that?”

Dev sighed. Someone always asked this question, though the answer always seemed so obvious. “Prejudice. A lot of men don’t like serving under a female captain. Those who don’t mind that are uncomfortable about my being an Eoan. You’ll notice if you check my references that my employers usually give me the highest recommendation. I’m a good captain who’s been the victim of circumstance.”

“I don’t pay very much; I can’t afford to. Six hundred galacs a month, plus standard benefits.”

For a captain with her training and experience, that sum was laughable; unfortunately, her financial situation was not. “I should be earning easily twice that,” she said. “But business, I suppose, is tight.”

“I’m hardly in the same class with Lenning TransSpacial or deVrie Shipping,” Larramac admitted. “I go to the little planets they miss, the ones with the lower profit-to-cost ratios. I have to lick the bowl they hand me, so to speak. I get by, and I’ve been able to build. The company has grown over the last couple of years, and I don’t see any reason why that growth shouldn’t continue. I keep people on if they can do the work, and I’m pretty good about raises. If I like the way you make the first run, we can talk about a salary increase.”

Dev looked her prospective employer over. He seemed the honest sort; a bit over sincere, a bit given to enthusiasms and brashness, but far from the worst of bosses she’d served.

“I’ve taken the liberty,” Larramac went on, “of looking up your name on my chart.”

“Chart?”

“Yes, the patterns of letters all have meanings, whether you know it or not. You’ve got a good name; it blends in well with everything else.”

“I’m sure my parents would thank you; it was their choice,” she said dryly. She wondered briefly about the sanity of someone who would chart a person’s name before deciding whether to hire her. Oh well, anyone who runs Elliptic Enterprises must have a few eccentricities.

“There is one thing I would like to specify,” she continued. “I must have complete disciplinary authority over my crew.”

“Why is that?”

“For one thing, it’s traditional. But more than that, the crew must know you back me on all matters. As I’ve said, some men resent taking orders from a woman. Unless my word is law—enforceable law—I cannot guarantee the smooth running of the ship.”

“Sounds reasonable. Have we got a deal, then?”

Dev nodded. “Deal. When do you need me?”

“Foxfire is due to leave in two weeks. I suppose you’ll want to come down and see her firsthand before then.”

Only two weeks to get to know a cargo ship from top to bottom? “Space, yes! I’d better start tomorrow getting the feel of her, learning her capabilities and idiosyncrasies.”

Larramac looked at her strangely. “I thought you Eoans didn’t swear by Space.”

“Popular misconception. We aren’t particularly awed by the mystic powers of the universe, it’s true; but when I’m speaking Galingua I have to make do with the phrases that express my thoughts, including the conversational clichés. Ideological purity is no substitute for comprehension.”

“You’re a strange woman, Captain Korrell.”

“I shall choose to accept that as a compliment, Master Larramac.” She smiled. “Anything that isn’t a direct insult is easier to accept as a compliment.”

“I insist on being called Roscil.”

“And personally, I prefer Dev for myself.”

“Then Dev it is. Would you care to have lunch with me?”

Dev hesitated. That, though she hadn’t mentioned it, was another of the reasons she had moved from job to job—overly amorous employers who thought a female captain’s duties were horizontal as well as vertical. She was neither a prude nor a virgin, but she’d learned, through bitter experience, that s*x frequently fouled up business relationships. On the other hand, her financial situation was such she couldn’t afford to turn down a free meal. Larramac’s bluntness was refreshing, but it could become just as obnoxious as someone else’s fanny-patting. I suppose I’ll have to find out about him sometime, she thought. It might as well be sooner than later. “That sounds like a good idea,” she said.

***

As she trudged through the Daschamese rain, Dev thought warmly of that lunch. Larramac’s brash exterior might intimidate most people, but she’d seen beyond it. Larramac, a lonely man inside, would rather reject than be rejected. He didn’t make a single pass at her that time, for which she had been grateful. He’d made one about a week later, which she had been able to fend off skillfully without hurting him. Ground rules thus established, he kept politely within them.

Of course, there were other things she could have strangled him for—such as his insistence on coming along on this first trip to “see how well you do.” Despite that, she was reasonably satisfied with him.

Lights from another Daschamese bar twinkled faintly in front of her, and she turned toward it. As she approached, she could see, standing beside the building, the cart the Daschamese had lent the ship—a pretty fair indication her wayward crewmen were there. She quickened her pace.

The two men were easy to spot the instant she entered the bar—they were the only splash of color in the place. Gros Dunnis, the engineer, was a hulking male, a full two meters tall and clad in a spacer uniform of dark green and silver. His red hair and full red beard were matched, at the moment, by an almost equally red face that signaled his intoxication. Dmitor Zhurat, the robot-wrangler, was a much shorter, squatter man—in fact, he was about the same size and shape as the natives. Still, his red and blue uniform stood out easily among the drab earth colors used in the Daschamese clothing.

Zhurat was the first to spot her. “Well, if it isn’t our pretty little cap’n comin’ down out of her tower to join us. Gros, we have a distinguished visitor. We musht show her dignity.”

Dunnis, a more pleasant drunk, beamed at her. “Hello, Captain, care to have a drink with us?”

“You both should have been back at the ship two and a half hours ago,” Dev said evenly. “I think you’d better come along with me.”

“We musht have forgotten the time,” Zhurat sneered. “But join us in a drink and then we’ll go.”

“You know I don’t drink.”

“That’sh right. You’re too good to drink with ush, aren’t you?”

“‘The sane mind needs no external stimuli to relax,’” Dev quoted.

“Are you calling me crazy?”

“I’m calling you drunk and disorderly. Your pay is going to be docked, and you’ll be given penalty duty. I’d advise you to come along peacefully, before there’s trouble.” She spread her feet slightly in a crouched stance, prepared for anything.

In the corner, the proprietor showed signs of agitation. He kept repeating something over and over. Without taking her eyes off Zhurat, Dev switched on her helmet translator once more. “…too many in here, there are too many in here,” the bartender was saying.

“My friends and I will be leaving in a second,” she told him.

The proprietor; though, was little comforted by her promise. He clapped his hands together several times in what Dev had come to understand was the Daschamese gesture of nervousness. “The gods will be offended, there are too many,” he said.

Dev ignored him and continued speaking to Zhurat. “I’ll tell you only one more time. Let’s go.”

“Damned shnotty Eoans,” Zhurat muttered. “Think they’re better’n anybody elsh...”

Dev moved smoothly across the room and clamped a hand on her subordinate’s shoulder. “Come on, Zhurat, it’s time to go. You’ll be a lot more comfortable back on the ship. We don’t want to offend these people’s gods, do we?”

“Let go of me!” Zhurat bellowed. He shrugged his shoulder to rid it of the captain’s hand, but the fingers clamped tightly, painfully, and would not leave. He stared up at Dev’s face and found it as stern as a marble statue. He looked back down quickly at his half-empty glass.

“You don’t want to make anyone angry,” Dev repeated in mild but firm tones, “the gods, or me.”

“Gods!” Zhurat snorted. He stood up and Dev removed her hand from his shoulder. “There are no gods.” He turned his own headset back to translate and repeated his remarks. “There are no gods!” he said loudly.

He staggered to the center of the room. “You’re sheep, all of you,” he said. Dev assumed the computer translated “sheep” into an appropriate local reference. “You have no guts, you have no fun, you have no lives. You live in these miserable little huts because you’re afraid to grab life for yourselves, and you make up these big, bad gods as an excuse so you don’t have to do anything. You’re frauds, all of you, and your gods are the biggest frauds of all.”

The atmosphere within the room had become deathly quiet. All eyes, human and Daschamese alike, were turned on Zhurat. The silence was like the one between the last tick on a time bomb and its detonation. Dev cleared her throat. “I think you may have hurt their feelings,” she said.

The remark only fed his fires, though. “I’ll show you,” he shouted. “I’ll show you all.” And he raced suddenly out of the bar.

“Come on,” Dev said to Dunnis. “Help me catch him before he hurts himself.”

The rain was coming down even harder as they went out after him, a cold, beating rain that dimmed the vision and pounded the head. The rhythm of the falling drops was almost enough to drown out her thoughts. Dev felt disoriented, and the glow of her lantern went only a few meters before the blanket of darkness absorbed it. Zhurat was nowhere in sight. She had no idea which way he had gone, but straight ahead seemed the best choice. She grabbed Dunnis’s hand and pulled him along behind her like a little child.

Twenty meters ahead, they saw Zhurat standing alone in a small cleared space between some huts. “Come on, you bastards,” he shouted. “Where are you? Let me see the power of the great gods of Dascham!”

Dev grew aware of eyes peeking through c****s in the huts, likely staring in disbelief at this strange being who challenged the gods. Was he brave, foolish, or a god himself that he could speak like this?

“I defy you!” Zhurat yelled. “I, Dmitor Zhurat, defy the gods!”

Forever after, that scene remained etched in Dev’s memory. Zhurat standing alone in the clearing, his arms raised to the sky, fists clenched and waving in the air. Then a deafening explosion, and a quick flash, blinding in intensity, caused Dev and Dunnis to close their eyes. Dev could have sworn she heard a crackling sound and…was that a scream over the driving rain? She could not say.

When Dev could open her eyes again, Zhurat had disappeared—only his smoldering uniform lay on the ground amid a pile of quickly dampening ashes.