CHAPTER V: THE TRILANCER
Monte Cristo, Trilance-Class Pursuit Ship
Rift Lane, in transit across the Platinum Accords
December 17, 2771
“Backtrack,” the Trilancer managed through fatigue and a shot of sadness. “2 minutes, 39 seconds.”
The 3x6 screen across from him cycled backward through the footage, dated four years ago in the corner. It was just as he remembered: a luxury bathroom attached to a grandiose office, fit more for a queen than a Senator, but Dirana made it more ‘workspace’ than ‘worship.’ Retro gold and bronze accents around black stone, but cluttered with papers, empty glasses and dishes — some of which were his own, so he couldn’t begrudge the mess. He watched his own POV splash water on his face. Under the running water, the noise of a cocktail party muffled beyond the walls — a Junovian holiday gala, he remembered. Footsteps padded around the main office as a deep, confident, feminine voice spoke.
“Sorry about Jaya,” Dirana said, light Arabic accent tracing her words as she tried to strike up some humor. “She gets…spirited this time of year.”
“Might be due to all the spirits,” the Trilancer retorted. The woman tried to laugh.
“Well, not all of us could make drunken speed records like you.”
Even years later, the Trilancer still heard her smile through her voice. It was a fledgling smile, but it was clear as day to him. The POV turned, heading out the bathroom to see her leaning back on her desk.
Dirana Sulem, in all her glory. Flawless bronze skin crawling with intricate dyed body art, rings and gold bracelets. Her lithe frame was wrapped in an orange Sari trimmed with gold, leading up to an open chest, razor-sharp features and expansive black curls, delicately held in place by a few hair ties. He watched her through his past self’s POV, wistfully revisiting her cocky half-grin and daring eyes. Surely this time, his past self would see what he’s been taking for granted…
“Hm,” was all his past self replied. The Trilancer shook his head.
“Moron,” his present self chided under his breath. Laugh hard, he thought. Tell her it was a great joke. Tell anything besides what you’re about to tell her. But his past self didn’t heed his words.
“Where are you staying?” Dirana asked, a spark of hope in the droll question. “You flew in so fast I didn’t get a chance to ask.”
The Trilancer of Holidays Past turned back to the sink and grabbed a hand towel, drying himself in the mirror. “Old Fluellen settled around these parts, if I recall,” he said, “Ex-Trilancer, he’s got a cottage on that smaller moon — the yellow one, what’s it called? Mater…some such?”
“Maitreya,” she corrected with that half-grin.
“Such is the one. Not a half-day’s flight.”
“Oh…” she trailed a little deflated, “That’s lovely, I…I didn’t know we had Trilancers nearby.”
He glanced back at her and gestured to himself, she pursed her lips.
“That’s not what I mean, you know that.”
“Supposing I do.”
“Maitreya is in a long orbital cycle, you’ll be in your ship half the time you’re here…”
“Not unfamiliar.”
“Not exactly vacation either,” she retorted, kneading her hands nervously. “I have plenty of space at my apartment, I can make up a spare room. My mother’s in town for the Solstice, she’d love to see you again.”
The Trilancer finally chuckled. “Would she now?”
“She’s never forgiven you for cheating at backgammon.”
“Then she remains a liar, I came by victory honestly.” They shared a small laugh. It was scarce and fleeting, but real. He missed the sound of her laugh — no, that wasn’t it. Laughter on its own was nice, but it can come cheap. People laugh out of courtesy, or worse yet, pity.
He missed her sound when he made her laugh.
The Trilancer of Holidays Past hung the hand towel on a rack and leaned on the doorjamb, really looking at Dirana, as much as he was able. “She would love it, hm?”
Her half-grin faded to an earnest, close lipped smile. Suddenly the high-powered Senator was the grounded Girl Next Door again. “…So would I.”
For a second, the Trilancer felt warm again. It was short lived. He knew what came next in the recording. His past self strode across the office and teasingly hung over Dirana as she leaned back on her desk. She tilted her head and smiled.
“I miss you, habibi.”
He put a hand on her waist, leaning in most of the way, but paused at the last second. Her eyebrows lifted, daring him as she always liked to. He hesitated, seconds passing like hours, until he finally pulled back.
“Apparently not in front of your gilded entourage,” he said coldly. Her face pulled into a scowl and furrowed brow.
“Excuse me?” she demanded, pushing off her desk, eye level with the Trilancer.
“A scad of high value people at this party, and I’m the only one in need of armed escort,” he shot back. She closed her eyes with regret as he stepped back, pacing as she rubbed her temples. Once again, his present self noted, he proved to be her living headache. “And hells bells,” his past self went on, “When I got inside and you saw my proper face, you called me a ‘mutual acuqaintance.’ That’s what I am when all your Senate pals are watching?”
“You showed up to a United Planets gala in a Trilance! You were wearing armor and a mask!”
“Apologies I’m not of monied prospect, Senator.”
“Don’t give me that! We could’ve fitted you for a suit in ten minutes, you came here to make a spectacle! Congratulations, you’re a great big man, you scared all the soft little politicians — there, are you satisfied?”
The Trilancer took an incensed step forward. “And we don’t have good reason?”
She swallowed, knowing she hit a nerve. “I didn’t say that. I don’t blame you for not liking them, but—”
“So why invite me?”
“Because I wanted to see you! Maybe fix whatever’s going on between us! And I wanted them to see us together! I wanted you here, with me!”
“You always had the chance for that, Dira. I’d move stars for you. Why now? Why does it matter more that you’re seen with me at some Junovian Solstice??”
“I thought it’d make you respectable!” she blurted. Her eyes flared and her lips pulled in, immediately regretting what she said. “…Wait, wait, I didn’t…”
“Really??”
“I’m sorry,” she put a hand up, slowing her breath. She was trying to calm down, while the Trilancer remembered doubling down. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way, but you’re not leaving me with many options. I love you. I loved you before you were a Trilancer, and you loved me before politics — but I’m a sitting power in the United Planets now, I won’t sacrifice that!”
“I never asked you to!”
“No, but my whole world is in the public eye! You say you want a life with me, but then you keep running off with criminals!”
“No, what I do is right lawful — I bring judgment on criminals. You’re the one who works with them, off in that monument to half-measures and broken promises!”
“Right,” she scoffed in sarcasm, “Because you’re such a public servant. You know, I’ve noticed injustice has continued — that’s odd, isn’t it? You keep going out and brutalizing people one at a time, surely that should’ve fixed it by now!”
“Well it’s more than you’ll ever do,” he hissed.
His present self turned away from his screen, shame in his belly just as swollen now as it was the very second he said that. He didn’t need the feed to tell him what happened next — the flash of anger in Dirana’s eyes, her mouth falling open just slightly. The smallest quiver on her lower lip. He knew she was angry, but that was a reflex — he’d seen her angry before. What stopped him cold was the look of hurt. It was gone quick, she recovered as fast as a seasoned debater would need to, but to him, that split second was seared into his mind forever.
Dirana was a political progressive, she was no stranger to being doubted and dismissed. Countless people told her she was idealistic and naive, as countless more would in the future. But not him. Never him, he’d promised. He’d be assertive maybe, he’d stand by his convictions, but he would never demean her fight for justice, her work for restoration and social consciousness. He would never belittle her intellect, her lived experience, her passion.
But then he did.
In a fraction of a second, all the times he made her feel safe, the times he promised that he saw her, heard her, were marred. Even if he spent the rest of his life making it up to her, even if she said she forgave him — it wouldn’t matter. Once done, never forgotten.
Stolen story; please report.
Sitting on his bunk, his back to the screen, the Trilancer heard the rest of the recording. His past self stammered out of his rage, stepping forward wit his hands out.
“I…I’m sorry. I’m not thinking plain, I never should’ve said that, I let my—”
She backed away from him, shaking her head remorsefully. She stepped behind her desk, putting it between them — that alone nearly floored him back then. She folded her arms and glanced off, unable to look at him. “Clearly this was a mistake,” she said, voice cracking.
He heard her shaky exhale and might as well have been able to read her mind. His shoulders slumped and his head tipped down. “…Yes it was.”
While she clearly meant inviting him tonight was a mistake, the Trilancer implied something larger. That wasn’t lost on Dirana, finally looking back at him. Her face cycled through the realization of what he said, then wanting to tell him that wasn’t what she meant…and then that she agreed with him anyway. A long beat of silence passed.
“I thought you were different,” she said, heartbroken and mournful. The Trilancer turned and marched for the exit. “Al,” she called him. The sound of his name stopped him as he retrieved his jacket and helmet. “You know what you stand for…and you’ve never given way on it. I always respected that about you,” she sniffled, wiping a tear away. “…I love you, but I won’t let losing you change what I am. And I know you wouldn’t want it to, I don’t…I never wanted to change you. I know your life is dangerous, just…don’t lash out at anyone else because you’re angry at me.”
The Trilancer’s present self tensed up. Even as he walked out of her life, she was still looking out for others. He wished he could reach through time and smack his younger self across the face, order him to go back for her. Tell her he could never be angry at her, that he’d…Oh, whatever. He knew what came next.
His past self simply donned his helmet and gave her was one final,
“Yes, ma’am.”
The Trilancer felt a tear stream down his cheek and smack on his bunk. He thought about himself that night, replacing his sadness with frustration. He punched the wall, pain rocked his knuckles and flared up his wrist. Better to focus on this pain here and now. Distract him from the pain of yesterday.
Todays are the most dangerous, but yesterdays always hurt more.
“Power down,” he commanded the screen behind him. The image faded and the lights went up.
The Trilancer’s quarters much reflected the man himself: style in little ways, but no more done up than necessary. 12x12 scuffed metal walls of earthy green beneath overhead lights, a desk braced against one wall covered with paper books and data pads, a sink and toilet slapped into one unit in the corner beneath a panel mirror, a common design for ships intended for prolonged time in space — the original design being taken from prison ships was perhaps foreboding, but saving room is saving room. A kitchenette faced the other wall, a boiling pot of shredded pork and peppers on the stovetop, his homemade hot sauce waiting beside it. Suspended on hooks by the sliding door were his helmet, jacket, holster and sword, though the sword hung more like an antique.
It might’ve been a commonly accepted staple of captaincy to own a sword of one kind or other, but unless you were meeting a diplomat or entering a negotiation, these days it didn’t serve much purpose besides vanity. If a captain was reduced to fighting with a sword, they’re losing the ship.
He grabbed a fresh shirt and glanced at his reflection. His olive skinned, rough-cut face and cloudy, vacant eyes showed him the same nothingness he’d been accustomed to. His muscular torso sported a handful of bruises, but no wound penetrated his armor. He sighed, a little disappointed.
No new scars for the collection.
As he slipped his head through the shirt, he instinctively counted all his tattoos by tapping each one with a finger: the feathered serpent Quetzalcoatl coiling around his left bicep, the horned Wyvern around his right, bright sun on the back of his left hand, Kashar proverb on his left hip, "Monte Cristo" on his right ribs and a series of numbers and bar codes on his left shoulder blade. He was still all there.
He tied his long, dark hair in a messy bun as his door slid open. Chief’s voice cut through his daze: "What was it, two sword masters?"
The Trilancer met her eyes, the power behind them like a sleeping bear. Her physique wasn’t far off from that, despite being north of 55. The shoulders beneath her cutoff shirt were almost as broad as the Trilancer’s own, her tan arms crossed over her chest, covered in even thicker tattoos than him.
"Two sword masters, three history scholars, a slaggin’ award winning engineering professor and seven different combat trainers, then your years at the Academy, and you still don’t have a lick of sense."
"Four history scholars," he corrected glibly.
"What the hell were you thinking?"
"Just now? How much I appreciated the quiet."
"I didn’t think I had to babysit you anymore, then you pull this nonsense on Roost.”
"We did the job."
"Yeah, and then you painted the room with the Zolara Clan! Needlessly, mind you!"
The Trilancer grabbed his gun belt. "They were in the way."
"Like hell they were," Chief argued, "I was on comms, Nara charted an exfil point the opposite way, but you turned around to go play cowboy."
"Watch your tone, Chief," he fired.
"My tone?? Boy, I’ve half a mind to wash your head in the latrine!”
The Trilancer fixed his belt, trying to brush off his growing frustration. "Zolara won’t notice a passel of bottom feeders missing Sunday dinner."
"I don’t care if they had no names and blank faces, we won’t be getting contracts if you can’t hold Trilancer Code!"
"Nobody saw us."
"And what if someone did?"
"What do you want from me, Chief?! I acted, that’s what I do!”
“And you never learned the proper time and place for it!”
The Trilancer sighed and grabbed his jacket. "Well, you’re the one who says I was born in the improper era. Skyfield’s right soft," he mused. "Life grows mighty sheltered and tedious, in my imagining. I expect I was better suited for a time of action."
Chief’s stare narrowed. "You call it action because it’s distant from you. Because you don’t have to wake up and live, eat, sleep and breathe it. You think this life’s some grand adventure, hop-skipping around the galaxy to hunt bad guys, and you can just do as you please when you feel so compelled. I grew up calling it ‘war.’ That was our plucky little adventure."
The Trilancer winced. This was why he doesn’t talk much these days.
"We had to worry about burning alive in trenches, or asphyxiating in the flying scrap we threw together overnight, or inhaling metal shavings mixed with our friend’s ashes, leave our lungs all tore up for taking a breath," she paused, the memory clearly not far from her mind. She looked at his face, almost nostalgic, as if he were one of the ones she lost back then. Then her face hardened again. "It’s ‘action’ when you’ve never lived it. Don’t go looking for thrills at the end of a gun.”
The Trilancer grabbed his helmet. "Thrills?" he grinned sarcastically. "Have I not made my boredom with this life apparent?"
He moved past her into the corridor, she leaned on the doorjamb with frustration. “Boy, you keep knocking on Hell’s front door, sooner or later someone’s gonna answer!”
NARAAMI GUIDED THE TRILANCE OUT OF THE RIFT LANE AND FIXED HER vision on Valor’s Run, a perfect sphere that seemed almost completely smooth and black. Only a dozen apertures spanned the entire metal surface, each large enough to fit a triple-decker of Supercarriers, and each was congested with ships at all times. Each opening also blasted a light so intense that looking directly into it was said to be as dangerous as sun exposure.
As the Monte Cristo sailed towards one of the apertures, Nara conceded that Valor’s Run truly fit its nickname: "Pearl of the Fringe,” as beneath its hard shell laid a shimmering interior: skyscrapers miles tall, vibrant orange and red advertisements and light shows glinting off the innumerable towers of steel and glass, acres of cityscape so high that thee bottom rungs had been concealed by fog…or rather, pollution that was heavier than the artificial air.
The black shell of the planet itself served a function as well: of all the hundreds of glowing buildings in the distance, at least half of them pointed directly down, hanging off the ‘ceiling’ of the planet. Indeed, Valor’s run was known as one of the only planets in existence to have a ceiling.
They’re unreasonably proud of that.
Naraami flipped down the UV-layer over the ship’s viewport to dull the bright lights below, then activated the PA system.
"Attention passengers, this is your pilot speaking, we have begun our entry sequence into man’s lowest pit of depravity, please stow any and all valuables and kiss them goodbye once we land," she reported dryly, "Thank you!"
THE TRILANCER STALKED TOWARD THE BRIDGE, RUNNING A HAND ALONG coils bolted to the wall. These things raced through every nook and cranny of the Monte Cristo, ranging from the width of his pinkie to his entire arm, doing…well, numerous spaceship things. The Trilancer knew Cristo inside and out, but he was occasionally a little foggy on the minute details. Gifted engineer though he was, he’d not looked through a ship schematic in some time. He might not know the technical names of these coils, but he knew exactly where they went, and the sound and vibration they made, and with a touch of his fingertips he could perceive when something was amiss. They thrummed rhythmically, heat and electricity trembled into his hand in a way that told him Cristo was healthy. Like a pulse.
His musing brought him to the bridge, where Naraami sat relaxed at the navigation console, feet on the dash as the autopilot guided the ship towards a docking tower above the central hub of Valor’s Run.
"Captain," she nodded.
"Nara," he nodded back, his voice now scrambled by his synthesizer. Leaning on one of the tactical consoles, the Trilancer folded his arms and tipped his head down in thought. "Nara…what do you make of that business in Papa Dargo’s?"
"In general, sir? People know what part of town they’re in, business will bounce back."
"No, I mean…what we did there yesterday."
"Oh. Well, we fulfilled our contract and the mark mostly cooperated. In my approximation that’s pretty victimless."
The Trilancer nodded. "And…the affair afterward?"
Finally, Naraami turned and met his eye line. She could tell even through his opaque visor that he was looking to her with introspection. "You made a judgement call, sir. Improvised in a moment of tension. That’s your right as a Trilancer."
"Yes…but the contract had concluded just beforehand, hadn’t it?"
She took a breath and looked back out the viewport. "I’m of the opinion that a contract concludes when payment and proof trade hands. We carried important information on a rival syndicate, if the Zolara clan knew why we were there, they’d almost definitely have pursued us for it. So far as I’m concerned, sir, you were exercising rational caution."
The Trilancer chewed on this. Chief had admonished him for taking action against a rival syndicate while on the job, but now Naraami says that’s exactly why she approves of what he did.
Yet neither of them brought up the youngins in the den. The students, nobles and trust fund kids. The ones Zolara would’ve kidnapped and ransomed back to their parents. That’s what the Trilancer couldn’t shake. They were dumb rich kids in the wrong part of town. Life is unfair, and bad slag happens. Normally, he could square with that — in fact, that was one of his guiding principles. Yet the stories of Zolara’s abductees kept coming into his mind: always adults, but barely, usually no older than 18. Their wrists, arms, ankles and knees bound, kept gagged and immobile for days at a time to weaken their mobility, condition them to give up thinking about escape. Held in heated rooms to slowly tire and dehydrate them, deprived any sense of timekeeping. Fed twice a day, bathed once a week. Told to never talk, only allowed to answer yes or no questions by blinking once for ‘Yes’ and twice for ‘No.’ Stripping them of speech to further dehumanize them, convince them they’re powerless. Disobedience punished by skipping meals or gags soaked in vinegar. And even when they complied, they were…toyed with. Never tortured, as far as he’d ever heard, but taunted and teased by Zolara and her lieutenants. Kept like pets.
If the ransom was paid, she always gave them back, but they were changed. Timid and broken. The youngins were always found at drop-offs with a lipstick mark on their foreheads, often courtesy of Zolara herself. Something they could wash off, but never forget. A mark of her “kindness,” a gesture of affection twisted into an act of possession. A better fate than most other Outerbosses dished out, but she’d always stay in their minds, their sense of autonomy and privacy violated for the rest of their lives. Forever scared they might make another innocent wrong turn and get taken again.
In that second of recollection in the hallway of Papa Dargo’s, the Trilancer knew he could not abide. It wasn’t his problem, but he wouldn’t hold to letting Zolara take ownership of those kids’ personhood.
Frack, he thought, rolling his eyes, I sound like Dirana.
"Alright folks, you know the drill," he drolly said as he shook the intrusive thoughts away. "Client’s waiting in his penthouse. No weapons, lock down the ship. These doors don’t reopen without all three of us, clear?"
"Clear, sir," Chief and Naraami replied.
"Peachy. If you haven’t locked up your onboard belongings by now, that’s your problem."
"But…the ship’s on lockdown, sir," Naraami said.
The Trilancer shook his head. "It’s Valor’s Run, Deputy. They’ll find a way.”