Weekly Drabble #405: The Adventures of Scamper; The Ahab Chronicles, Part 7

This week's prompt is from uberdrops with 'moar Moby', so moar Moby it is.

~

Part 7:

Skyler had been in Leader Ar’Vansma’s offices on Gohenghist several times. Mostly when the mining vessel’s commander wanted to dress her down and couldn’t be bothered to seek her out to do it. His complaints had never been about her work ethic; despite her low rank she’d been good at her job, probably as good or even better than any of the Worker technicians. Once the Kobolds started vouching for the quality of her work, her enemies on the staff couldn’t even smear her that way. Instead, it was always about the problems she caused. She complained too much, she was ‘provoking’ and ‘distracting’ the Workers from their duties, she was causing interpersonal issues with the staff.

On Gohenghist, the Workers were ‘the staff’ and the Kobolds were ‘the crew’.

Ar’Vansma’s office had been exceptionally neat. Everything had been stacked, sorted and in its place. Valerhas’s leader’s office looked as if a bomb filled with paperwork had gone off. Stacks of datapads took up every available corner, while piles of datascrolls, flimsies and printouts covered every other inch of space, leaving only a cramped path from the door to the desk and to an old couch itself mostly covered with files, ‘pads and ‘scrolls. Skyler couldn’t begin to imagine what was on them or why Ehaaayd needed to root through that many personal documents instead of having everything on his personal computer.

The woman glanced around the room. On the wall to her left was a series of glossy printouts papered over the bulkhead, creating a mosaic map of the local astrography. Nearly twenty systems were on the map, others clustered nearby, connected to the larger map via wires, string or just lines of neon marker. Smaller notes were stuck onto the larger pages, referencing events that Skyler had never heard of. Some were scribbled out, others circled and underlined. On part of the wall, along one of the neon lines were three words: IT CAN TRAVEL.

The wall across from the door was covered in images of... things. A lot of them were of the asteroid mimic and parts of its body. There were sensor images of different asteroids and even large pieces of space debris, each image annotated. One picture was of a tri-winged craft completely unfamiliar to the woman. She couldn’t even tell how large it was. There was a single note stuck to it: PREDATOR/PREY?? Another image was of something like looked like a helix of arms coiled around each other. Its note had the word POLYMORPH, but it had been scribbled out with a different marker and a new comment put underneath: NO; IRRELEVANT. There were more pictures of wrecked starships. Dates, location, times were written on each of them, along with ‘CONFIRMED’ or ‘UNCONFIRMED’.

On the wall to the right were reams of news stories and reports on and data from lost ships and colonies. Some were given bits of coloured markings that corresponded to locations on the star map or pictures of wreckage on the other wall. Entries from the articles, passenger and cargo manifests were listed and underlined, as were flight plans and specific parts of incident reports, but for what significance, Skyler couldn’t begin to guess.

Ehaaayd’s desk was piled with more junk. Data drives and crystals, tablets and flimsies took up almost every square inch of its surface, leaving only a small clear space in front of the three monitors. One of them was replaying the telemetry from the ‘feeding event’ over and over. Another was running some kind of analysis, the data flashing by too quickly to read. The other just glowed with an open document, but the woman couldn’t make out what the Judiciary had been writing.

The only other thing of note on the desk was a solid glass case with a hologram of a female Judiciary holding up a small girl. They were smiling at the viewer. None of the various ‘scrolls or documents so much as touched the base of the crystal projector, like there was something unclean about them that Ehaaayd was doing his best to keep away from what she assumed was a picture of his wife and daughter. She didn’t know much about Judiciary family structures, just enough to know that their marriages were much more legally intricate than human ones and she didn’t even know what that meant.

The leader was slumped in his chair, wide-set legs spread out as he stared at his working monitor, seemingly unaware of the human’s presence, even though he’d summoned her here. In his secondary arms, he held yet another ‘scroll, artificial fingers tapping softly on the grip. Just before the silence became unbearable, he turned to Skyler, his real eye and crude prosthetic staring at her like he was surprised to see her.

She’d been made to wait by superiors before as little power plays, but here it felt as if he’d genuinely forgotten in the brief seconds between him letting her into the room and her arrival at his desk. “You’ve dressed,” he said.

Uncomfortable, the woman scratched her left shoulder. “Yes.”

“Good. And you’ve eaten?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” He was silent for a moment again. “You have questions.”

Skyler nodded. “I do.” When Ehaaayd didn’t say anything more, she took a step forward. “What was that?”

“That,” the grey-skinned Judiciary said with complete solemnity, “is our enemy.”

She didn’t like the sound of that ‘our’. It felt too much like she was being included in whatever this was. “But what is it?”

“Have you ever seen evil?” Ehaaayd answered her question with his own. “Not the simple evil of men, women and sapient souls, born of anger, fear, lust and other paltry emotions but true, pure evil?” He took at her. His artificial eye twitched in its socket like it was impatient for an answer. “Have you, Broken?”

“No,” she said, her throat dry. “No, I... I don’t think so. I’ve seen things that...” She paused. The Judiciary didn’t care. No one else had. “No,” she cut her off. “Is... that what that is?”

“Ashi’wi calls it a cosmozoan,” he said, rising to his feet. “Some of the crew call it a Naiad, others say it is a naught but a monster. To me, it is the thing that took everything I cared about in this universe away. As he spoke he reached down, the fingers of his primary hands gently touching the edges of the hologram’s prism. His voice became softer. “I was a scout ship pilot for Heghmarve, an explorer ship. We were sent out into this region to look for raw materials, habitable or easy to terraform planets... the usual mandate. My wife and our daughter usually remained home during my postings, but this one would be so long... I convinced Deuuna to join me.” He set the crystal back down, eyes lifting to the collage of wreckage, blurred images and visuals.

“I was sent out on a scouting run to the nearby system to mark locations for in-depth study. When I returned, I was eight light-hours away from Heghmarve’s last location. By the time I received the distress calls, it was already over. I listened to them die. Begging, screaming and then... then, just silence. But they weren’t dead. Not yet. When those arms lock back together, they cut off all radio waves, but the vessel inside is still alive, still being dragged into...” his right hand touched a picture of the beast’s grinding maw, curling into claws. “I spent years trying to convince others of what happened. My sensor data was useless, the comm logs inconclusive. It knows how to hide....” his bulk trembled with grief and unfathomable rage.

“Somehow, I managed to talk myself into this ship. It took years to find the beast again, tracking it through rumour, fable and the silence left by its own victims. Years more have been lost when it slips away. It toys with us, laughs at us, revelling in our incapacity...” his voice shuddered, then he straightened, regaining control. “Every time it evades us, I find it again. won’t let it escape. My crew may not call it the same name, but they know what it is. They’ve seen it, and many have survived it...” he looked down at his artificial secondary arm and the scars across the left side of his body. “We’ve wasted years chasing ghosts and specters, hunting phantoms and following stories and rumours that lead to naught but dead ends. But bit by bit,” he tapped a picture of an asteroid. “We’ve learned more about it. Soon, we’ll find a way to kill it. To make it pay for all the lives it has destroyed.”

Skyler bit her lower lip. The fervour she’d noticed in Ehaaayd on the bridge was back. She didn’t need to know any more of Valerhas’s leader to realize this wasn’t just zealousness she saw, but obsession. “Well...” she began. “Good, uh, luck with that.” What else could you say to such a statement? What were you supposed to say to it? “But could tell me when you’re making port again? I can get out of your hair then.”

Ehaaayd turned to look at the smaller woman. “Valerhas has not made port in the last four years,” he told her. “We will not leave this system while it is still here. I will not let it escape again. Fortune brought you to us, Scamper of Gohenghist. Would you defy that?”

“I don’t want to sound ungrateful for the rescue, leader,” Skyler protested. “I am grateful. Without you, I’d be breathing vacuum right now. You saved my life, but this... this isn’t my fight. I’m not part of this.”

“You are now,” Ehaaayd told her. “All of us are part of this battle. Destiny placed you aboard my ship. You have a role to play now, whether you think you do or not. If that is not enough, then show the gratitude you say you owe me.” He turned away. “Mission files have been made available for your access. You will speak to Prelate Daanz-Trep-Comp for evaluation of your technical skills. Welcome to Valerhas, little Scamper.”

“Leader-”

“Go now,” he told her without looking. “I still have much to review from the feeding event. The fight against evil never rests, Broken. Neither shall we. No,” he said, locking eyes with one of the images like he was staying into someone’s face. “No, we are not going anywhere. We see you now, but this time you won’t escape... not this time....”

The hairs on the back of her neck standing up, Skyler backed out of Ehaaayd’s office. She was already forgotten, his one-sided argument with the monster continuing, shifting in tone as he included a wife and daughter long dead in the conversation.

Leader Ehaaayd wasn’t just obsessed, Skyler realized. He was insane... and she was trapped on his ship, stuck in a star system where just beyond Valerhas’s hull, a monster slumbered, waiting for its next meal. There was no way out. Not for her, and she’d come to realize, not for anyone else aboard Valerhas.