Exiled (The Emberling Book 1), page 1
EXILED
THE EMBERLING
BOOK 1
DANIEL YOUNG
CONTENTS
Enter If You Dare…
The Emberling Series
Foreword
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Also by Daniel Young
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ENTER IF YOU DARE…
A starship captain faced with an impossible choice.
An amnesiac awoken on an alien world.
A timecop lost in a constantly-changing history.
These stories and many more await inside the page of Portal, a short story collection from the mind of Daniel Young. Six distinct worlds with their own strange rules, pitfalls, and challenges.
Nothing is as it seems...
Enter the Portal if you dare!
THE EMBERLING SERIES
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Exiled
Recoil
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FOREWORD
The Emberling series is an homage to a certain type of golden age space opera. Thrilling stories in which hard science isn't a concern and the planets of distant star systems are easily accessible, habitable, and full of alien races and strange creatures. Retro technology sits right alongside playful new inventions.
In other words, this is old-fashioned adventure sci-fi. I hope you have as much fun reading it as I did writing it!
—Daniel Young
1
Slim Taggart had never considered himself a paragon of either virtue or wisdom. He had always tried to do the right thing, inasmuch as he understood what that might be, but he’d erred as much as any man, and far more than some.
He was, after all, a smuggler and a thief. But he was a good one in his estimation. He did his very best to never steal from individuals that didn’t deserve it.
Was it his fault that so many in the galaxy deserved it?
“Here,” said a gruff voice from somewhere behind him.
Taggart sat up. He was riding on a cart rolling down a country road on the planet Vion. It was in the middle of a nasty civil war, which didn’t serve to improve his opinion of the galaxy. The cushions underneath him were the bodies of dead Vions stacked like logs. Some kind of native creature pulled the contraption. The old Vion steering the cart seemed barely to care that one of his bodies was still alive.
Taggart twisted around and strained his eyes past the driver’s shoulder. Sure enough, the road wound into a hamlet that couldn’t contain more than five houses. He could see the other side of the village even before he entered it.
“This is the village of Cilidea?” Taggart knew nothing about his client or where they wanted to go. Just where to find them.
The old Vion grunted. It was clear he wasn’t slowing down so Taggart rolled off the cart and landed on his feet in the middle of the road.
As he watched the cart trundle out of sight, he tried not to think about how this wasn’t the first time he’d gone into a war zone for too little money – or how it kept happening.
He’d have to get creative to get himself and the client off the planet, but fortunately, he was good at that.
He studied the houses. He only had a limited number of options.
He was just about to start walking when a door opened nearby. Raucous laughter came from inside. A huge Vion stormed out, and Taggart caught a glimpse of at least ten people sitting around inside. It looked like a watering hole of some kind.
He stepped inside and a fetid, rotten smell assaulted his nostrils. He almost ducked outside to catch his breath, but a dumpy Vion was already coming toward him. Everyone on this planet seemed to be dumpy. It was a wonder they could fight a war at all.
The Vion took his hand and started tugging him toward one of the tables. He tried to protest, but the creature twittered in an insistent tone. Taggart didn’t want to offend it by refusing.
The creature towed him over to a table already populated by four gargantuan aliens. Taggart didn’t recognize what species they belonged to. He kicked himself for not doing more research on this planet.
Then again, he’d only be here for a few minutes, in an ideal scenario. He just had to find his client.
He turned his head, trying to see someone who might be looking for him. He was the only human on the whole damn planet, so his client should be able to spot him a mile off.
The Vion proprietor twittered some more and motioned to the giants sitting at the table. Taggart couldn’t understand the creature until the Vion grabbed one of the monster’s cups.
The monster grunted something, but he didn’t stop the proprietor from taking the cup away. The Vion thrust the cup right under Taggart’s nose, and a wave of stench nearly knocked Taggart off his feet.
He reeled and recoiled from the horrible stuff. “Whoa! No, thank you! I’m not thirsty. Thanks, though.”
The Vion shoved the cup back to the person he took it from. The monster grunted again. The Vion went into another twittering fit and tugged Taggart over to the bench.
The little creature practically shoved Taggart down on it. What the hell else did he have to do?
He sat down and, thankfully, the Vion left him alone. Taggart nodded to the monster across from him. “How ya doing? I’m looking for someone—a visitor from another planet. I’m supposed to meet them here.”
The monster grunted again. Taggart could see him clearly, now that they were sitting directly across from each other.
The monster’s long, lanky black hair draped a puffy, swollen face. Dull eyes stared in a glazed blank at nothing. Two enormous arms rested on the table surrounding the cup, but this giant didn’t seem to be drinking anymore. Taggart didn’t blame him, but it looked like the monster was already so far gone that he didn’t even remember the cup was there.
Taggart turned to the other three at the table and realized they belonged to a different species. They had tusks, wore thick metal helmets, and now Taggart saw that they were all armed with huge knives and swords. An enormous battle axe rested between them and the first monster. What the hell were they doing with those in a war against pulse artillery?
Taggart dared to slide a few inches closer to them. “Excuse me. I’m looking for someone. I’m supposed to meet someone here and take them off the planet. Have you seen anyone around here—someone who looks or acts out of place—someone from another species?” He glanced toward the door. “Would there be anywhere else in this town where people gather in public, or is this the only one?”
All three of the tusked aliens turned toward him. Taggart’s blood ran cold when he realized he might have just made the worst mistake of his life, but at that moment, the creature across from Taggart grunted again.
Taggart glanced over to see the monster coming out of his stupor. He shoved his cup across the table. “Take it. Drink it.”
Taggart held up his hand. “No, thanks. I’m supposed to be flying in a few—”
Rapid footsteps approached him from the side. He glanced around and didn’t see anything until an impossibly short person hustled up to the monster’s side.
Taggart blinked at a completely different kind of alien. For such an out-of-the-way planet, Vion was turning out to be a thriving hub of all kinds of unlikely species.
This one couldn’t be taller than Taggart’s sternum, and it was obviously a female. Huge, glassy black oblong eyes took up most of her angular little face. Her eyes came to a point up near the creature’s forehead.
Her chin came to a point, too, and large, peaked ears stuck up well above her domed skull. A hooded black cloak covered her head and shoulders, with slits cut into it to leave her ears free.
She glided up to the monster and yanked the cup away from both it and Taggart. “I told you not to drink, Qiao. How many times do I have to tell you?”
Qiao grunted again and tried to take the cup back from her, but she yanked it out of his reach with surprising quickness. She set it on a different table, took hold of the monster’s arm, and started dragging him off the bench.
“Get up! We have to go! How many times do I have to tell you? What good are you to me if you’re blitzed out of your mind all the time?”
“I’m not blitzed out of my mind all the time,” he rumbled in a deep, chesty voice. “Just some of the time.”
“Let’s agree that it’s most of the time, which is too much of the time. Now you’re trying to get our pilot drunk, too.”
Taggart’s jaw dropped. “You? You’re the person I’m supposed to—”
“Quiet!” she snapped. “Where’s your ship?”
“Well…” Taggart shuffled his feet under the table. “That’s a problem. I don’t exactly have one at the moment.”
2
She stared at him and then snorted. “Of course you do. How did you get on this planet without a ship? Stop joking around. We have to go. Come on, Qiao.”
“Fair point,” Taggart said. “I should say I had one. It’s just no longer functional. Or all in one piece, actually.”
She stared at him and he felt compelled to continue lamely.
“My ship got shot
“You better not be lying to me,” she snarled at last.
“Why would I lie? I’m here to do a job, and—”
“How can you do a job without a ship? The job is transporting me and Qiao off the planet.”
“I realize that. I’m just saying—”
“Forget it.” She turned away. “I’ll find another pilot.”
“Wait!” He lunged after her and grabbed her arm. She stiffened and turned around. She leveled him with her deep black eyes, and something in that stillness coming over her told Taggart to drop his hand. Touching her was a mistake—a much bigger mistake than talking to the tusked aliens.
He couldn’t let her walk away, though. He needed this job. Paying jobs didn’t come his way every day—certainly not often enough to let a paying client just walk.
“Look,” he began again. “I might not have a ship, but I still think I can get you off the planet.”
“How? You can’t flap your wings and fly us away.”
Qiao exploded in loud laughter. For a guy who was just gorked out of his mind on that rotten drink, he sure snapped out of it fast. His eyes sparkled, and he shot Taggart several knowing smirks on the side, like they were sharing a joke.
“Be quiet, Qiao,” the little creature snapped. “This isn’t funny.”
Qiao tried his best to settle down and failed. He kept giggling to himself so hilariously that Taggart started to feel the urge to join in. Qiao’s laughter was infectious. The more this little alien told him to stop, the funnier he found the whole ridiculous situation.
The little creature turned back to Taggart. “What’s your name?”
“Slim Taggart.” He stuck out his hand. “Nice to meet you.”
She looked at his hand and didn’t move. “Charmed.”
“So.” Taggart squirmed. “Aren’t you going to tell me who you are?”
“My name is Yannik Xawei.”
Taggart’s jaw hit the floor for the second time. He might not know everything about all the crazy alien species running around the Siri Sector, but he knew enough. That name—Xawei—it could only come from one language. This little creature must belong to the Astral. They were notorious assassins known and feared throughout the galaxy for their speed, skill, and ruthless daring.
Taggart had never seen one before. He’d never even seen an image of one. They were mysterious, secretive, and hardly ever revealed their true origins.
Yannik observed his reaction with her enormous, impenetrable eyes. She saw that he understood.
Taggart pulled himself together in a hurry. If he still planned to take this job, he’d have to do a whole lot more than get Yannik and Qiao off the planet. He’d have to knock this job out of the park. He would have to execute it flawlessly, and without the smallest hitch. Yannik might kill him in his sleep if anything displeased her. Did he really want to take that chance?
“Well?” she demanded. “How do you plan to get us out of this hellhole without a ship?”
Taggart thought fast. “There are a lot of aliens on this planet. Some of them are bound to have ships. We can steal one from them.”
“I think what you mean is”—she pointed at him—“you’ll steal one from them. You’re getting paid to transport me off the planet. If I wanted to risk my cover by stealing a ship from one of these aliens, I could do that on my own. I don’t need you for that.”
She waved at the tusked aliens nearby. None of them paid any attention to the conversation about stealing one of their ships. Taggart didn’t even know if they had ships. He really should have looked into this planet more closely before he came here.
“Fine,” he agreed. “I’ll steal a ship and come back and pick you up.”
“How will you do that?”
Taggart shrugged. “I’ll think of something.”
Qiao laughed like that was the funniest thing he’d heard all week. Taggart cracked a grin at the giant, but instantly buried it when Yannik scowled at him.
“This lump…” She swatted Qiao’s elbow; that was the highest point on his body that she could reach. “This is Qiao Neslex. He’s a Krekza, and he’s my bodyguard.”
“Your what?”
“Bodyguard,” Yannik repeated with exaggerated slowness. “He guards my body.”
Taggart opened his mouth to argue. An Astral assassin didn’t need a bodyguard. If these two nutjobs ever got into any dangerous situation, it would be Yannik guarding Qiao’s body instead of the other way around.
Qiao’s eyes twinkled so much that Taggart couldn’t help sticking out his hand to the big guy. “Nice to meet you.”
Qiao grinned with delight and shook Taggart’s arm practically off his shoulder, laughing again. “Good to meet you, too.”
“Are you finished yet?” Yannik snapped. “He doesn’t need any help being sloppier than he already is.”
Taggart couldn’t tell which man she was talking to or talking about, but he was starting to like Qiao. Taggart only hoped the guy’s drunkenness didn’t come back to haunt them all in the messiest possible way.
“Whatever we’re going to do to get this ship, you should do it now,” Yannik was saying. “We need to leave the planet before the civil war gets any worse. Qiao and I will come with you.”
“No,” Taggart returned. “You stay here.”
“No,” Yannik snapped. “We’re coming with you. If you get into trouble…”
“You’re paying me to get the ship,” Taggart countered. “I’ll go alone.”
He cast a sidelong glance at Qiao. As friendly as the guy might be acting, Taggart didn’t want either of these two wild cards hanging around when he stole the ship—whichever ship it happened to be.
That part, Taggart could handle. He knew how to steal, especially when it came to something big, attention-catching, or with exceptionally high stakes. That kind of thing was his damn specialty.
Yannik leveled him with an even more piercing stare. He couldn’t read her expression, and he didn’t care to. He was prepared to walk away from this job, no matter the pay. He’d never take two strangers with him to steal a ship. No way. No, thank you.
She finally turned back to Qiao. “Fine. Where will we meet you?”
“I have no idea. It depends on… a lot of things.”
She groaned and threw up her hands. “You’re the most unprofessional pilot I’ve ever had the misfortune to deal with.” She pointed at him. “Go get your ship, but I warn you. If anything goes wrong, you won’t like the outcome. You have my word on that.”
3
Taggart strode out of the tavern and scanned the little hamlet. He was really starting to question the wisdom of taking a job from an Astral assassin.
Then again, everything always went wrong for him. That was the one truth he could always count on. Every plan, every job, every day.
That didn’t mean he couldn’t still pull it off.
He halted in the street outside and looked up and down the road. Where the hell could he find a ship in this rustic land?
A now-familiar shriek caught his ear. It came from miles away. Artillery thumped in the distance. Those fast-moving fighter craft whizzed back and forth over the battlefield. Someone on this planet had ships, but those were too far away.
He was just about to start walking when the tavern door slammed open behind him. The three tusked aliens came out carrying their swords and daggers.
They snarled to each other in a guttural undertone and set off together to walk around the tavern. Something about them sparked Taggart’s curiosity. They definitely weren’t Vions, so what were they doing on this planet? They must have gotten here somehow.
