Apex

 

Contents

 

Chapter 1

J
ALIA
WOKE
WITH
a start, sitting up in her sleep pod, sweat glistening on her forehead. It took her a moment to realize where she was, for her head was awash with the lingering sensory numbness of the dream state and the only illumination in the dark chamber was the muted blue/green status lights on the wall to her left.

She pressed a hand to her forehead, putting pressure on her temple and settling herself. She'd had another nightmare. The third in the past four days.

The Junta breathed in deep, then shook away the last bit of haziness from her vision before pulling her legs and tail out of the enclosed portion of the pod, crunching her knees up to her bare chest to clear her feet, then swinging them over the edge of the padded sleeping compartment and feeling for the dark floor below.

She flinched when her feet touched cold . . . then realized that she was covered in sweat, worse even than the last sleep cycle. Whatever it was about jumpship travel, the longer the journey lasted the more her unconscious mind protested. Fortunately they were less than a day from arrival in the Hellis System, and Jalia intended to stay awake for the remainder of this jump.

Flicking the sanitation cycle switch on her sleep pod, the nude Junta stepped into the nearby cleansing chamber and closed the arced door on the semi-­clear vertical tube that lit up when she stepped inside. A moment later warm water rained down on her petite, red-­skinned body that appeared black against the mood lighting. Her race reacted to the green spectrum of light with calming neural waves, which helped to wash away the nightmare-­induced adrenaline while the tiny streams of water rid her of her sweaty sheen.

Her fleshy, half-­meter-­long tail coiled up behind her back, itching and rubbing a knot in her spine. Her sleep pod may have been padded, but she'd never grown accustomed to the thing. It hadn't been custom-­fitted, rather it had been acquired from another unit, repurposed to the captain's quarters on her ship along with the cleansing chamber and a few other items of Junta technology. Her homeworld and race didn't possess starships, thus some ad hoc customizations had to be made when she'd purchased the Zaklorn freighter some eight cycles ago.

Jalia took her time beneath the water streams, for there was little to do during jumpship transit. Her ship sat parked inside the massive vessel along with dozens of others being ferried between star systems, and aside from routine maintenance she and her crew had an abundance of spare time on their hands.

Most of her crew had left the ship and secured temporary accommodations in the city that was the interior of the jumpship
Vernera
, which carried an onboard population upwards of 600,000 not including passengers and the crew of the docked ships. Jalia had spent most of her free time roaming the city while never spending too much time away from her ship. Security was decent on the
Vernera
, but she didn't feel completely at ease leaving her home entirely in their hands.

Not that someone could steal it. It was locked behind massive bay doors on the jumpship hull, and even if they were opened and the ship exited, they were traveling 197 times lightspeed. Without the jumpship's massive engines there was no way for her little ship's gravity drive to bleed off that much speed. Any hijacker would be marooned to interstellar drift, assuming they didn't run into a star or nebula, which would end their journey within a microsecond. It was often debated amongst starship crews which fate would be worse.

Either way, you ended up just as dead.

When Jalia had finally recovered from her nightmare she palmed a wide, flat switch on the interior of the clear tube and activated the drying cycle. Air jets replaced the water and she spread her legs, arms, and tail wide to let it get into all the cracks. She leaned her face upward and shook her six headtails, flicking off water as the limp tendrils flopped to and fro. Unlike her proper tail, her headtails had no muscle tissue, only a combination of cartilage, fat, and sensory neurons. They made up for a lack of ‘ears' that many other races possessed, as well as adding other sensory input . . . which also made them rather tender. One surefire way to piss off a Junta was grabbing her headtails, or in the case of the males, headtail. They possessed one, with musculature, but lacked a pelvic or ‘proper' tail.

Few ­people in the galaxy knew of that distinction. Most Junta seen in galactic society were female . . . slaves, sold by pirates, slavers, or the clans on her homeworld. Many of her Kella-­clan sisters had seen that fate forced upon them when they reached puberty. Her world was so poor, and morally deficient, that the clans sold off excess female population to the galaxy as servants or sex slaves. Jalia, as a member of Kella's ruling family, had been exempt from that practice, though arranged ‘marriages' were common between clans and that was one of many reasons she'd struggled to escape her homeworld through a combination of ingenuity, manipulation, and blackmail. As it was, she was the only Junta starship captain, male or female, in the known galaxy.

Which meant that virtually everywhere she went she was recognized as a slave, being barred or questioned as to her purpose when trying to enter various establishments. She was a second-­class citizen at best, as far as most races were concerned, though the lachar pistol that she wore in a blatant hip holster had forestalled many such assumptions, prompting her to make it a permanent feature of her daily wardrobe.

After making sure she was thoroughly dry Jalia left the cleansing chamber, which immediately powered down as soon as her feet left the pedestal. Her captain's quarters reverted to darkness, but her eyes adjusted quickly and the faint status lights were enough for her to move about and toggle the main illumination strips to three-­quarters intensity.

Four rows of bars on the ceiling lit with white light, along with two lateral ones ringing the walls just below the short ceiling. Jalia blinked away the excess light and opened a compartment next to her sleep pod, which had already finished its cleaning cycle. She pulled out knee-­length pants, with tail hole, and slipped the flexible garment on, wriggling her tail through the tight opening. To the dark blue pants she added a matching, loose, sleeveless shirt and black strap jacket. She retrieved her gun belt and strap sandals from the small table opposite her sleep pod, slipping on and snugging up the footwear first.

The straps came all the way up to her knees, with bits of skin visible all the way down to her toes. The sandals matched her jacket, equally black and just as gaudy. With practiced ease, she slipped her gun belt on and fastened it below her navel, then grabbed an assortment of currency chips, access cards, and identification slips from the tabletop where she'd dumped them last night. Those quickly disappeared into discreet pockets.

Lastly, Jalia grabbed a thin, blue, flexible ribbon and tied her headtails together so that they hung behind her head rather than resting on her shoulders. She checked her image in the reflective comm panel then left her quarters, thumbing the exterior lock as she left.

Her ship, the
Resolute
, was small but still over four keets in length, which was just over two kilometers by the old Human standards. A few races used the ancient measurements, others used their own, but most held to the commerce standards, in which ‘keets' were the designated units of local measurement. Distant measurements, used for space travel, were measured in ‘wesks' and ‘weskits,' the latter being 1/1000th of the former.

Most of the ship's bulk was comprised of engines, fuel cells, and cargo holds. The actual living sections of the ship were sparse, accommodating a crew of eight. Jalia operated with six, including herself. Two were Uria, two Presca, and one Fret. All her crew were bipedal, had two arms, and vocal-­equipped within her hearing range, as per her choice. No Junta crewers were available offworld and she didn't want to have to train one from scratch, so she chose those most similar in biology from the available recruitment pools. Still, she had little in common with the other races.

One of the Presca was still onboard when she left the ship, going over manifests. She trusted him enough to lock up on his own and headed out the short docking umbilical and into the jumpship's bay ring, which possessed all types of maintenance ser­vices for the docked ships, ranging from spare parts to fuel stations. Jalia bypassed the ring via a nearby stairwell, jogged up five levels, and ended up on the observation promenade.

Some hundred-­plus ­people could be seen wandering to and fro in front of enormous windows spanning the length of a road-­like chamber stretching off into the distance. To her right she could see the twin set of windows on the far side, which allowed a view of the starboard docking bay and the vessels berthed within. The
Resolute
was parked in the port bay, nestled up just below the windows and mostly out of sight.

Several restaurants and lounges dotted the open-­air promenade. For some reason, the denizens and passengers actually liked looking out at the motionless starships. Various designs could be seen, from different races and manufacturers, but beyond that Jalia didn't really see the point. The view hadn't changed for the past eight days, but nonetheless a fair number of ­people frequented this section of the ship.

Jalia walked down the promenade until she arrived at a primary lift hub, hopped in a transit cube, and jetted off through the jumpship's interior toward the city proper. She emerged at the intersection of two of the city's passenger streets, with her cube popping up from below ground next to niches for three others, presently unoccupied.

She left the cube and two Herrans took her place. The quadrupeds barely fit in the compartment together, but they managed and quickly rose up through the ceiling, moving to one of over 150 levels within the city.

Jalia wandered the streets, passing by a number of entertainment districts before she arrived at the center of the city where a vast open-­air park sported rolling hills and a large central lake. The ceiling of the chamber was some 50 levels up, with high-­priced apartments situated above, able to look down at the park through their transparent floors.

The Junta walked out through the grassy knolls, avoiding the clusters of ­people gathered for all manner of recreational activities, and ended up at the edge of the lake where a small cluster of thick-­trunked trees rose up and shaded the ground from the warm overhead lights. She sat down and leaned back against one, pressing her headtail bundle against the rough bark. She tolerated the mild discomfort and let the organic sounds and smells wash over her senses.

She relaxed for a long while, having nothing else to really do and not favoring the crowded kiosks that reminded her of her overpopulated homeworld. There were few ­people in this section of the park and Jalia appreciated the seclusion. Eventually, her growling stomach prompted her to stand up and consider whether to head for one of the smaller restaurants on the jumpship or to hit the foodstuff stores for a snack.

Before she decided, she noticed a ripple on the lake. Frowning, she slipped her second eyelids into place, enhancing her distance vision by a factor of five. There was no aquatic animal life in the pond . . . or so the Gorovan information network said. The interstellar corporation's jumpship brochure stated that it would be both logistically improper and potentially hazardous to keep unsapient life-­forms in a public access body of water, not to mention potential allergic and viral medical complications.

The database cited an incident by their primary rival in the jumpship industry, Yiori, in which a male Teeri died from petting an ilkori saber fish in a decorative pool. It had been a freak allergic reaction to a chemical in the fish's scales, but Gorovan pressed the point for all its worth, noting that they valued the wellbeing of its passengers too much to take the risk of a similar incident no matter what aesthetic value was lost.

Jalia had been to the lake every day this week and had yet to see so much as a crease in the reflective surface. With no wind, the lake's surface was normally a flat mirror, which made this moving ripple all the more curious.

Whatever was causing it, it was moving towards the shore, a bit down the sandy edge from Jalia's position. She leaned back against the tree, arms crossed over her supple chest, and watched closely. A few steps out from the shore the ripple slowed and a mass of brilliant green hair broke the surface, followed by a smooth skinned, blue female's face.

Jalia blanched, blinking several times, not immediately trusting her eyes.

The figure walked calmly out of the water, her tight-­fit black bodysuit shaking off the water and appearing to dry almost instantly. Her blue arms were bare and immediately rose up to her head and wrung the water out of her long ponytail. After finishing she retrieved a thin grey robe left on the shore's edge and wrapped herself in it. Her blue skin disappeared, her face hidden deep within the robe's folds, and the Cres quietly walked up off the sandy shore and headed across the dark green grass, ostensibly back into the crowded city streets.

The Junta followed from a distance, cursing herself as she did so. Stalking someone was immensely rude, but she couldn't help herself. Cres had always fascinated her, and were rarely seen outside their own territory. They even had their own fleet of jumpships . . . so what was this one doing here? Jalia felt compelled to follow her, though she didn't really know why.

Normally, drifting into the packed streets would deter pursuit, but Junta were used to living in crowds so Jalia had little trouble tailing the Cres from a discreet distance. Their race was the most reclusive in this part of the galaxy, and not a lot was known about them except that they were highly intelligent, militant, and worshipped the long extinct Human race. It was rumored that they went to great pains to recover even the simplest of Human artifacts, though they weren't alone in that endeavor.