Tobias Buckell - Ragamuffin

He screamed and twisted, snatching the collar out of the air and opening it. He managed to get around the raised tentacle and pushed the collar hard against Metztli’s face. It cut deep into the Teotl’s flesh and left eye, but as Metztli thrashed, the collar sliced into Jerome’s hand. His thumb floated free with a burst of blood.

Jerome felt a quick, stabbing prick on the side of his neck.

Pepper hit the Teotl in the head, a crunching punch that Jerome could almost feel.

Fire ran down his chest and into his stomach. His eyes blurred from the immediate rush of pain.

“I’m sorry,” Jerome told his dad. “I’m really sorry.”

Metztli hung in the air, knocked out or hopefully dead, tentacles limp, as John grabbed Jerome.

Jerome tried to say something else, but already his jaw had locked, and he could only see his father’s face as John leaned in.

John squeezed Jerome’s hand as he convulsed, looking around in confusion. Tears welled up and drifted free of John’s eyes.

“Pepper, kill that piece of shit.” John looked over to his side. “Kill that thing now .”

Jerome wanted to apologize, to hope they’d be okay.

And maybe it would be. People coming out of the wormholes had incredible skills. They might yet save both him and Xippilli, and Jerome would fall asleep and wake up somewhere nice and clean, well rested, fixed, several days from now.

Yes, that would be nice, he thought.

Very nice.

Pepper watched Jerome’s last spasm and bit his tongue until he tasted salty blood.

John looked at him, tears still leaking.

“Not yet,” Pepper said, hating himself. “We need Metztli.”

“Why? What the hell do we need that thing for?”

Being the calm one, eyes on the prize, really stank right now. “Because we need this ship, John.”

“Fuck them.”

“John…” Pepper didn’t have words. He moved over, grabbed John’s head, and touched his forehead to his old friend’s. “We bring… the body… with us. We take care of things, like we always do. Right?”

John nodded slightly.

“Okay. We take care of things first.”

John looked up. “I hate that calm you have.”

Pepper tilted his head. “Okay. But just get your son, let’s move on. There is time for grief later.”

John pulled away with a sob and grabbed Jerome’s body, which Pepper looked away from.

Grief.

There’d be a reckoning later. A full reckoning. Pepper pulled the Teotl closely.

These aliens, with their focus on adaptive personal engineering and sublimation of self to the greater good, were effective and dangerous. Ultimate survivors. They communicated and made you think of them as human. Words.

But they weren’t human.

No.

Or at least, not human enough to realize that John and Pepper would not easily put this behind them.

Deep, slow breaths.

Then he yanked the collar out of the unconscious Teotl’s face and pocketed that. Jerome had shown quick thinking, there. He’d done good. Stayed on his feet. Pepper admired that in a person. Jerome had been a young man with a mess for a past, but had pulled through and been dumped into a bizarre situation.

They should have left him on the planet, but even then, the chance was high Jerome would have been hunted down by some Azteca and sacrificed.

Pepper looked down at the Teotl.

When the time was right, being half-blind would be the least of this particular creature’s troubles. That he vowed. That he would not forget, this moment, these feelings.

Nashara used drones and ships to create a detailed update to the world around them as she approached the crippled craft hanging a third of the way between the two wormholes.

“That one Hongguo ship is still just sitting still outside the upstream wormhole,” Cascabel said.

“The Datang Hao .” Nashara looked down at the scale model of their environment. The tiny tube hung nestled deep in the Ragamuffin shield. “Something important’s on it.”

“Something that could force a large, military ship like the Shengfen Hao to…” Cascabel waved and a ghostlike image of the gutted destruction appeared in the lamina before them. A long trail of debris hung out behind the alien craft, spewing out from large gashes in the hull. “Like it did the people aboard that habitat.”

The image faded away. “There must be a Satrap there.”

Piper joined them. Each version of herself was taking to wearing different clothes. And hairstyles as well: Cascabel had dreadlocks. Piper had kept a close-cropped military fade. “Most of my occupants are sealed within the bay docks, they’re trying to negotiate with me now, rather than try to shut the Wuxing Hao down.”

Nashara hadn’t thought about that. Piper had been firing on the Shengfen Hao and also trying to fight the Hongguo from within.

“I’m worried about Cayenne on the Takara Bune ,” Piper said. They all were, but Piper had accelerated the Wuxing Hao up above them to try to catch up to the upstream wormhole since the engagement.

The acceleration had also served to pin her crew down until they’d agreed to cease their attempts to shut the lamina down and kill Piper in the process. Tidy.

Hell hath no fury like a Nashara, Nashara thought.

“The warning didn’t say anything much,” Piper said. “We’re not sure if she’s fighting with the crew, or dead, or captured. If captured, I’d hate to think of what is happening. I like Etsudo, but something about this is making me feel really uncomfortable.”

“I agree.” Cascabel nodded. “But Magadog is moving to help out with the Duppy Conqueror close behind, and we can use either ship’s communications as a relay point to help Cayenne once they do their work. Joining in, that’s a waste of a powerful ship.”

Piper considered that for a second. There was one last thing left that Nashara wanted to try. Would her twinned self want to do it as well? “Then I want to try for the upstream wormhole. There are going to be a lot of Hongguo coming through, maybe more Satraps. If we get cut off, or destroyed, my being on the other side may help send warning to other humans. The girl did say this was a genocide, not just Raga-cide.”

Nashara nodded. She’d come to the same conclusion. The word had to get out before Hongguo poured out of the wormhole. “Get everyone off your ship.”

“I’m working on it,” Piper said.

The Wuxing Hao began to speed up, moving into higher, faster orbit to overtake the upstream wormhole. An almost suicidal run, but if anyone could do it, she could.

Cascabel and Nashara turned back to each other as the Toucan Too slowly tapped the massive curve of hull before them.

Nashara popped her request for a mobile device with a high bandwidth communications array and lamina projection out to the Ragamuffins.

They replied that they would be able to set something up for her particular needs.

A large tender, the Cornell West , had made several stops at the large Ragamuffin ships patrolling the wormhole. There had been just a few terse messages back and forth with the ancient Ragamuffins aboard the alien craft. The cylindrical bulks of the Starfunk Ayatollah and Xamayca Pride already jutted from the docking bays.

A grounation would be held aboard the alien craft. And there would be enough Ragamuffin troops to solve any problems that might arise.

Nashara followed the Cornell West in and docked. She watched the outer cameras as muscular organic clams rose out of the walls to hold the ship in place.

Then waited for the bay to seal itself and pressurize.