Before the Storm (ch. 12)

Chapter Twelve

The trip back to the planet was completely uninterrupted, something Sketch was convinced boded ill fortune for their dealing with the Harbormaster. There weren't any signs of Y'bari cruisers or Starless Dominion battleships, and the automated docking system recognized them as a returning vessel, so they didn't even have to go through the standard negotiations and just passed through an automated scan, one that all of Sketch's systems were able to easily defeat without so much as batting an eyelash.

When

The Praeteritus

landed, Jez and Lara both asked if he wanted them to come with him, but he figured the faster he moved, the better chance they would have of getting off the planet before the Harbormaster tweaked onto what he was doing.

Theoretically, they hadn't done anything against local laws, but the Exovites frowned on people leaving their ranks, and they hadn't had a chance to talk to Pertixi before she left, which he imagined was going to sit poorly with them, whether they had any right to complain or not. They couldn't ban people from coming and going, but that didn't mean they couldn't do everything possible to strongly discourage people from leaving. And Sketch was convinced they were going to give him shit about her leaving without them having a chance to 'change her mind.'

Sketch needed to make sure he wasn't drawing attention, so he rented another of the stevrids, and started riding for Serena and Aliara's location. Halfway there, he opened radio comms and called out to them. "Hey, ladies, I'm back on the planet," Sketch said. "How're we looking?"

"It's been quiet and lonely," Aliara said. "We've been moving around here and there but nobody's come to talk to us so far. How'd the delivery go?"

"Getting the baby out was far easier than getting it where it was going," Sketch laughed. "Our departure plans have changed slightly. Are you being watched right now?"

"Not as far as we can tell, why?"

"I need you to be absolutely certain," he told them. "Things are going to get a little dicier than we'd originally planned for."

"How fucked are we?" Serena asked him over the comms.

"Not

that

fucked, unless you've picked up some local bodyguards or something."

"We've had a couple of Exovites following us on and off, but I haven't seen them in the last several hours, so I'm thinking we lost them."

"Any inclination of what they wanted?"

"We're outsiders," Serena said. "I think they were hoping to either rob or rape us, and that because we aren't Exovites, and that means the authorities will be lenient on them."

"You still look like her?"

"Oh," she said. "Maybe that's keeping them away. Me looking like Pertixi."

"I'm heading towards you on the map," he said. "Looks like you're part way up the mountain?"

"We're heading down now," she replied. "How do you want to handle it?"

"We'll figure it out when we meet up."

"Got it." And the comms flicked off.

As strange as it was, Sketch had to admit there was something calming and soothing about riding one of the stevrids. It was relaxing and allowed him to just sort of take in the scenery without paying too much attention to the path itself, the creature more than happy to wander around or over anything that got in its way.

Ten minutes later, however, his radio clicked back to life, and the voice on the other end of the line didn't sound happy. "Hey, uh, boss?" Aliara's voice said to him. "I think we may have a problem on our end."

"You're being followed?"

"Worse," she said. "I think someone's trying to overtake us."

"Are you worried?"

"Can we call it concerned?" she said. "I could probably take three or four of them in a fight, but it's looking like closer to ten."

"Any idea what they want?"

"Seem like robbers, but could just be friends of Pertixi, I guess?"

"I don't think they're friendlies, boss," Serena said.

"Then start evading, pick up speed and head for me top pace."

"These stevrids don't exactly have a fifth gear, boss," Aliara said. "I'm thinking it may turn into a battle sooner rather than later."

"Well, try and make it as later as you can, so it'll be three versus them, instead of two."

"I think I see your stevrid just down the hill a bit, so we're racing."

"Good gods," Sketch muttered, "it looks like you've got half a dozen following you."

"Get ready then, boss, because I don't think they like the look of you."

Sketch brought the stevrid to a halt, hopping off it, tying it to a tree before grabbing his rifle. He moved to get behind a rock and used the top as a tripod, getting a bead on the groups of pursuers his people had behind them. Sure enough, they looked up to no good. The looks of people changed a lot from planet to planet, but raiders had a sort of universal look to them that could be spotted a light year away, and these men were definitely raiders.

As much as he would love to start picking them off, he felt obligated to fire a warning shot, so he aimed his rifle just to the left of what looked like the lead raider and blasted a shot that clipped part of a tree off right next to him. The man let out a sharp whistle and his people came to a halt.

"Who's blocking my hunt?" the man shouted down at him.

"Name's Sketch, and those're my people you're hunting, so I'll ask you kindly to back away."

There was a giant wave of laughter from the men up the mountain above them. A couple of shots in his general direction followed before the lead raider gave another whistle. "No can do, Sketch," the leader said jovially. "See, you've got two women down there, one of whom's an Exovite, which means she ain't part of your crew. Now the other one, the P'Nox, well, normally I'd say we could arrange some sort of deal where you take her and leave the Exovite, but you done take a shot at me already, and the boys here, well, they ain't never had P'Nox pussy before, so they're itching to give'er a try. But, hell, I'm feelin' generous. You hop on your stevrid and high tail it outta here and don't look back, and I swear me an' the boys here won't shoot you in the back on your way out." That evoked another round of laughter from the raiders.

"I got a counter proposal for ya," Sketch said, getting his rifle lined up quick and precise. They were at quite the distance, and the stevrids' constant motion made their riders a little harder to line up. Thankfully, Sketch had never been one to slack on his target practice. His first shot took the lead raider's head clean off at the neck, leaving a vaporized stump atop the man's shoulders. That made the lot of them scatter, and they began taking shots at Sketch's position, as well as the two women and their stevrids, who were doing their best to remain within some level of cover, although the bandits elevated position and the mostly grassy mountainside made that difficult.

Serena's stevrid took a blaster shot in the hindquarters, clipping the right back leg of the creature off, as it slumped down to the ground. Aliara jumped from the back of hers and leaped over Serena, grabbing her by the hand before flying over her and landing not too far from where Sketch had taken up hiding. Serena's form was still covered in the illusion, and so everyone, himself included, saw her as Pertixi. "Looks like the diplomatic approach is out, huh, boss?" Aliara teased.

"Can't leave you two alone for even a few days without you picking up trouble, can I?" he joked back, taking another shot, clipping the head of a raider's stevrid, sending the beast and its rider tumbling down the mountain. "I wasn't aware the Exovites had a raider problem."

"We're far enough from the colony itself that you're within the lawless boundaries," Serena said, running from Aliara's rock over to Sketch's, taking a couple of potshots along the way. "They don't give much a damn who you are out here, if they can rob, kill or fuck you, sometimes in that order." She leaned in and kissed him for just a moment. "Thanks for saving our asses."

"Not saved yet," Sketch grumbled. He tried to gauge where to best put his next shot, and plonked it right into the flank of a stevrid who was trying to cross in front of some of his pals, thinking he could get to a better vantage point. Instead, he caused three stevrids to trip over their bodies, the tangle of them dwindling their numbers down by half. "Though we're getting there."

"Hey man, what if we just pack it in and let you three leave?" one of the raiders said from a position of cover. "You're clearly more of a pain in the ass than you're worth, so why don't you just go and we'll leave once you have."

"Except, again, you're just gonna shoot us in the back when we go, so, let's not and say we didn't," Sketch said, picking off another bandit who'd been trying to flank them from the side, putting a rifle shot right through the man's eye, the blast not having enough range to expand and take off his entire head. "Nothing stopping you and your men from trodding back up that hill and around to the other side, though."

"You're just gonna plunk some more rounds in us as we go," the raider in cover replied. "That ain't gonna work for me either."

"I give you my word, you and your boys start heading up that hill, I won't shoot any of you," Sketch said, seeing Aliara finally having gotten her pistol out, searching for targets, while Serena had pulled a pair of optics from her bag and was scanning, trying to count them all up.

"See, now what about them ladies, though?" the raider yelled back. "I think they ain't gonna be so kind, so maybe we're just gonna wait it out until either we sneak away or we get the drop on you. Figure we're pretty committed at this point, so we can't come back empty handed, 'specially since you clipped the squad leader."

"Y'know, he was speaking ill of my people, and I can't imagine you'd have taken the same kind of behavior lightly."

"That sounds about right. Can't say I hold much contempt for ya over killing the squad leader, though," the raider laughed. "He was a right dick."

"See, now you got me feelin' all bad that I can't convince you to just turn tail and leave safely."

"I just don't know how I'm supposed to trust you, fella, considering you done already killed like half my patrol."

"More like a third, don't be so modest."

"Sounds to me like you done this before."

"More than a few times."

"How's it usually end?"

"Never to one party's satisfaction."

"Got any ideas on how to avoid that?" the raider shouted down to him.

Sketch sighed, nodding slightly to himself. A few months ago, he'd have just had to shoot this all out, leaving nothing but bodies in his wake, but now that he had an Ashaka on him again, there was another option, one he had to consider. In the old days, the distance and the numbers would've provided no challenge or difficulty, but he hadn't been able to practice with the new Ashaka, and his confidence that he would be able to pull off such a feat was more than somewhat shaken. But the only way to regain that confidence was by doing.

You're not going to be able to do this.

'You can go to hell in a handbasket,' Sketch thought at the voice coming from the Ashaka. 'I'm doing it anyway.'

"You see them start walking up the hill," he said to Aliara and Serena, "you let them walk."

"Boss?" Aliara asked questioningly.

"Just do it."

He started revving up the engine inside of the Ashaka, spinning the Path of The Calm. He could feel about seven or eight minds scattered around the hill above them, and he started to shove each of them full of as much Calm and tranquility as he could. They were all in a heightened state of fight or flight, which made it a bit more difficult, but this sort of thing used to be the kind of thing he could do in his sleep. He admitted to himself that he needed to get back into practice with his abilities and start doing routine drills like he had when he'd first joined the Order. But for now, he would simply have to brute force this one, even if it made his head hurt.

There was a scaling difference between tapping into a single mind and tapping into multiple minds, and for an accomplished Storm, handling dozens, hundreds, even thousands of minds at once, for a simple degree of a path, presented no real challenge. But the giant expanse of time he'd been without an Ashaka had left those finally honed skills in disarray. So each time he added one more mind to the chain of people he was pushing down the Calm, he could feel the pressure inside of his skull double up.

Still, one by one, the bandits began to turn and walk back up the hill, most in a leisurely fashion, but a few hiking quickly, or taking their stevrids. Those on stevrid stopped to pick up their colleagues, and within just a few minutes, they were back at the top of the mountain and headed down the other side of it.

Which was good, because right about there was the point Sketch passed out.

* * * * * *

When he awoke, he was the back of one of the two stevrids, tied to the front of Aliara, held up as she rode one of the two beasts and Serena rode the other. "Ah, looks like you're up, boss," she said to him. "You blacked out for about half an hour, and we decided to ride back to the house, and figured you could tell us what the new plan is while we're on our way. I was a little bit nervous that you were going to be unconscious for longer."

"Oof," Sketch said, reaching up to rub his aching head. Clearly it had taken more than he'd anticipated to drive the soldiers off. "Inside of my skull feels like it's got flensker rats tap dancing on the inside of it. How far are we?"

"Nearly there," she said. "I can see the house just on the ridge."

"Great," he said. "Get us there and get us inside."

A few minutes later, the stevrids reached the house, and Sketch unhooked himself from Aliara then hopped down, as did the two women, all three of them heading inside of Pertixi's house using the key that she'd given Sketch.

Once inside, Serena dropped the projected illusion and ran over to throw her arms around his neck, pressing her lips, and in fact her entire body, against his firmly, trying to mold herself onto him before she finally pulled back from the kiss. "I don't like you being gone from me for so long," she told him with an impish smile.

"Sorry," he said as he blushed a little bit. Her hands had both settled on his ass, and when he tried to pull away from her, she prevented him from moving away.

"Don't do it again unless you have to," she said, and there was a little bit of an edge to her voice that almost made Sketch worry a little bit. "I don't like being away from you that long."

Sketch worried that maybe her exposure to such a raw blast of the Warmth had left her a little skewed towards needing him regularly. He'd seen signs of it during their time together, but the way she was clinging to him felt slightly awkward, her fingertips digging into the fabric clinging to his skin.

"So, better lay the story on us, boss," Aliara said to him. "Where's Pertixi?"

"It turns out that she never had any intention of being split up from her baby," Sketch told them. "Her sister, on the other hand, wanted to have a baby of her own without going through the labor pains. She was going to have her sister sent back, and when it became clear that mother and child weren't going to get separated, she was quite willing to have both me and Pertixi knocked off. You can imagine that didn't work for me, so I put down the goons and told the sister that if I checked in and didn't find both Pertixi and the newborn boy alive and happy, I'd come back and burn her world to the ground."

"How'd the sister take it?"

"Like a woman without options."

"So who owns this house now?" Serena asked him.

"Nobody?" Sketch said with a little laugh. "Or, I suppose

we

do, since we have the key. Not that there's all that much here." He looked around at the interior of the log cabin, mostly just seeing sparse wooden furniture. In fact, if he'd been inside earlier, he'd have known that she had no plans to return, as all personal identifiers - pictures, mementos, art - all of it had been taken within Pertixi's bag or destroyed.

The place had been turned back into just a house, by removing everything that had made it once a home.

"We should break it in then," Serena said, running her fingertips along the back of his neck. "Properly christen it and shit."

Sketch shook his head. "I want to get us the fuck off this rock before--"

A triple bang against the door rattled the building, as Nikolai's voice shouted at them. "Pertixi, open up! I saw you ride back in with the outsiders, and I'm here to make sure you're doing alright!"

"Bollocks," Sketch grumbled beneath his breath. "Before that."

"What the hell are we going to do, Sketch?" Serena asked him as he started to head to the door.

"Something I hate," he said. "Tell the truth." He paused and unlocked the door then opened it. "Hey there, Harbormaster. What can I do for you?"

"Where's Pertixi?" Nikolai said, peering into the house. He was a shorter man than Sketch had imagined him being, the holoprojection somehow added size and scale that was apparently unearned to the squat, muscular fellow. "I saw her riding up with you and your P'Nox on the way in."

"Hate to tell you this, harbormaster, but she's offworld," he said to him. "You know that fella she was with? The one she was engaged to be wed to? Well, apparently just before he died, not long before their wedding, they shared an intimate moment. And when he died, well, she was with child. She knew that if she stayed here and gave birth to that child, she'd be exiled, but as it turned out, without her man here, there wasn't nothing left to keep her here anyway, so she decided to keep the child and bail on your world. Still, she was afraid your people wouldn't let her leave, or that they'd attack her when she headed out. So she contracted me to get her off-world. Now the original deal was that she was going to have the baby, give it to her sister and then we would bring her back here, and none of y'all would've been any the wiser that she'd given birth. As it turned out, though, that deal had been reached with the sister's desires in mind, and not Pertixi's herself, which was why I left my people here in the first place. Pertixi's decided she and her child aren't going to be separated, nor will they be returning here. Now you know it ain't illegal for your people to come and go, and you

certainly

know how your folks can be in treating deserters, so you can understand why she wanted privacy and secrecy. I ain't any happier about having to come back here than you are to having me back here, but other than covering her departure when I left last time, nothing been done that's a big deal."

"Dominion Weeping, Sketch, this is more than not paying an export tax..."

"What I figure is this," Sketch said to the exasperated man. "I give you the keys to this cottage, and then you can make up whatever story you want about Pertixi's death that saves you the most face. You can say she hung herself in depression over her lost fiancé. You can say she was attacked by bandits and died beyond the outpost outskirts."

"We don't have bandits on Jeratine, Sketch."

"Oh good," Sketch laughed. "Then I'll go back and tell those fellas who were attempting to rob and rape my crewmembers that they're just figments of my imagination, shall I? Or should I drop a dime to the Dominion, let them know you can't keep a tight grip on your planet and that bandits are harassing the visitors?"

"Fucking

hells

, Sketch..."

"You ask me, this works out best for you, Nikolai, because you get another home without having to do a lick of work, and you get a heads up that you have a bandit problem without it springing up on anybody's radar, so you can gather the forces you need to and go deal with it before it escalates too much."