Kara King & The Beyonders: The Nightwind Glyder Heist

Chapter Five:

Oracle

Time to Supernova: 7h 22m

Canis Odo

“Throck Morton, still riding the high from liberating the Aethersprites?” Canis stepped forward and grabbed the glass of Atilesian Whiskey. He turned his head back and gave a half wink to Kara and Gita in a way Throck couldn’t see. He looked down at the glass and shot it. He never much had the taste for the smokey beverage and for him this was the only way it was going down. “Barkeep, we’ll have another one of those for my companion here and an artichoke liqueur.” Canis took Throck by the arm in a dignified way as if they were a pair of ladies strolling through a garden in the Earth regency era. A nod to the bartender indicated that he should have the beverages ready at the far end of the bar, away from where Kara and Gita finished checking in.

“Well, you know, as long as they’ll shower me with wealth and goods and I think I can keep riding that high.”

“And how are they? The Aethersprites I mean, I presume they only shower you with the greatest of goods for all the good you did them.”

“Oh, they’re good. Still trying to figure out a way to join the council.”

“So, it’s true? What they say about-”, Canis stopped suspensefully. Truthfully, he only meant to give her the opportunity to reveal all the interesting and exciting things. Everything he did now was to hold her attention and enrapture her to him. He only needed a few more moments. By the time they were on the other side of the bar, Kara and Gita would be far enough away that even if Throck remembered she had crossed paths with a rival of hers, they would be long gone.

“Their forms? Oh yes. We didn’t even know for ages that all the steam gear we had was practically enslaving them. It was only part way through my rebellion against the Torus, they were the fascist rulers before, that we realized the steam was alive. Had minds of its own.”

“And what? You liberate a planet from these tyrants and give it all away?”

“Well, they were there before us. And anyways our technology all ran on steam and well, them.”

“Ahh, I see. It just… steamed the fair thing to do.”

Throck’s eyeroll carried into her entire body, but Canis pulled her back an with a coy chuckle. “Oh, don’t mind me. I love these stories. Sorry for adding a bit of foolish humor to it. You don’t get access to much comedy with the books I read in the depths of Aranak’s scriptoriums. So you were saying, you gave it all back.” Canis caught eyes with the barback who ran their glasses over. He handed the whiskey to Throck and took the liqueur. They touched the brim of each glass lightly and continued towards a grand staircase which led to a much higher promenade overlooking the first floor.

“Yeah, so we gave it all up, my friends and I, but during the undoing of the Torus we sent out this massive radio blast calling for help.” She looked directly at Canis now. They had walked over to some chairs in front of the large glass viewing wall and sat. Somehow he became like a shadow with the intense red light from the sun bathing the room. It almost made him fade into the background if it weren’t for the shadows of is facial features and onyx black hair. “The radio thing is a different story altogether but we got lucky I suppose. It seemed like some kind of climactic twist in those holoplays or films you have.”

Clearly not used to being a part of the empire yet.

“We finally overthrew the Torus and we think our biggest issue now is going to be figuring out a new form of government. Instead we were all pretty shocked when a spaceship descended through the layer of acid rain filled clouds.”

“Someone passing by got your message for help?”

She chuckled and took a sip of her drink, swirling the liquor like a sommelier before swallowing in a rough sigh. “Yeah. It wasn’t meant for them. We had allies on the other side-”

Canis could see a slight crimson gleam at the bottom of her eyes well up. He thought of standing and making some anecdote about the sun, some passing comment to gracefully give her time to recover herself. That would be the proper thing to do on his homeworld or with the kind of company this event attracted, if you didn’t know your company that is. While they were enemies at times, Canis admired Throck. She was some kind of bounty hunter now but always found herself doing the right thing instead of taking in her bounty. Usually that was because The Beyonders had set some kind of ultimatum up for her in the past. She could follow them or save the people of this small village on a small backwater planet. It was almost always something she could have ignored and no one would have known or faulted her. At any rate, Canis admired her integrity and he felt now was the time to show her as much.

Canis passed Throck a handkerchief, “They didn’t make it?”

Throck staved a quivering lip from moving anymore and took a deep breath with a sigh that halfway sounded like a laugh. “No.” She dabbed at her eyes and handed the handkerchief back, resolute once more. “We were just trying to reach some reserves, some allies, we had in waiting. Anyways, that message for help was picked up and a cheap water hauler that I guess felt compelled to help.”

“So youre introduced to the empire as what, an envoy?”

“A kind of ambassador. The Aethersprites don’t have suites that are both airtight and can allow them to articulate or gesticulate yet.”

Canis nodded understanding now. “So until then, they rule your world and your people act as the messengers between them and the empire.”

“Yeah. I did my time making sure we got accepted into this empire, but now I’m done. I’ve been wanting to see what’s out there.”

“Well you’ve had a good time seeing it so far, that’s for sure. Not to mention events like this are special ones. You’re likely the only person from your planet here.” They both sat there staring at the star through the glass specially tinted to ensure no one’s eyes would burn. Canis rolled the last bit over liqueur around in his glass and took it down. “I’m going to get another. I figure I owe you a drink.” It wasn’t a question of whether she wanted one or not, nor was it an offer, and Canis was good on his debts. He left her there thinking he would return.

Instead Canis returned his beverage to the bar and walked up the grand staircase. He had laid eyes on the lift but pushed the thought aside. His job was primarily surveillance on this mission and he needed to get a lay of the land. See what other complications might be attending this party. He couldn’t afford to lock himself in a box when every step afforded him a new person to look at.

Several minutes later, Canis was looking over the railing of the top floor in the atrium. He pulled out a set of spectacles that rest on his nose without any arms leading back to his long red ears. Canis tapped on the right hand corner of the classes twice which cause his vision to zoom in enough to view two levels below him. He noted down two dignitaries of planets The Beyonders were no longer welcome at, then zoomed in more until he could see the first floor of the reception room. Throck Morton was still down there looking around, for him likely. The Head of Security was still down there too.

Canis tapped four times on the left side of his spectacles until they zoomed out all the way and put them back in his pocket. Now, he flicked out his left wrist so that he could see a bracer like device. Americorp made these kinds of devices the cheapest and fastest so that they could be easily accessible, but Canis’ was a much finer design. It came from the old elvish company, now imperium owned, Soorseweave. They made some of the highest end tech that never came cheap. He tapped the sundrytech and a muted display lit up beneath the smooth carbon fiber device.

Canis opened a software Zee had designed for their crew, though he had also leaked it to black market contacts for a nice sum. In fact, the method for their communications was devised by him too and their use of it eventually popularized it as the preferred encryption and decryption software on short to mid-range communications. The software pulled up and showed four sets of two interlocking rings. The outer ring, the green one, represented the radio frequency. The inner ring, the yellow one, represented a fragment of the forty-eight kilohertz frequency. Canis tuned the outer rings to the four radio channel they used every mission, then he adjusted in inner dials. The first ring sampled the third quarter of the 48,000 audio frames which passed through the channel every second. The second ring took the first quarter, the third took the fourth, and the last ring tuned into the second quarter. An small implant in the back of his head near his jaw allowed him to hear the channel clearly and speak into it with as little as a whisper and still sound perfectly clear on the other side. Canis could hear the channel become clear suddenly as the fragmented samples from each channel were spliced into one local channel and arranged in the proper order.

Canis was about to speak but he knew he would get an earful from Zee if he didn’t send a cautionary ping. Their software was set up so that a tone would chime for everyone currently in the channel when someone joined in. The joiner would send an audio ping through their sundrytech that would bounce back and notify them how many people were currently in the channel. If everyone followed protocol, there shouldn’t be anyone in the channel and everyone would join back in ten standard seconds later. Canis’ device returned a null ping and suddenly three beeps signaled returning participants. All the channels remained quiet. “We’re clean.”

Kara and Gita sounded off right away in that order.

“Crown is on the move.”

“Stellar is in the room getting ready.”

Canis’ turn. “Oracle is set in reception all, though I could do a lot better with security’s footage.” He could almost feel his voice being spliced into four chunks and scattered out across the waves.

There was a beep. Everyone went silent.

“Breach is on the move.”

Kara responded, “Heard and understood. Don’t worry Oracle we’ll get you there. Just got our kit drop. Its on the docket.”