Before The Storm (Ch. 01)

When it came to mail deliveries, he had been sticking to the Lingham fungal infection as his reason for dropping off the mail on the edge of town, and everyone had been fine with that, but now that it seemed like the Dominion had finally seen the end of its patience with that problem, he was going to have to come up with something new. The excuse would hold for a little while longer, but not nearly long enough.

His quarters were very sparsely decorated, but still had a few relics of his old life, the traditional robes of the order of The Calm hung symbolically on the wall, a clear box containing what fragments of his Ashaka that he could find when he awoke, and a very old poster from the prestellar days, from a jazz album called "Bitches Brew." The poster had been acquired after he'd returned to the land of the living, and it wasn't for the right album, but it would do for now.

As he approached the first of the three planets in Colby's Hole, Maneath Major, which the system was named after, he glanced at the weather topside and saw that there was a large fogbank rolling in, which was fine by him. He dropped down through the atmosphere and brought his ship down to the designated delivery spot. The terraforming colony had specifically hired him because his costs were a little lower than most, and so they were willing to put up with his slight eccentricity to save some cash.

The Praeteritus touched down and within ten minutes, he'd used the loaders to move the portion of delivery that went here - two heavy bore drills, a base block and one of the seed pods, as well as over half of the mail - and placed it all into the security of the safety crate, closed it up, locked it up and took his credits from the lockbox attached to it. Job done, he headed back into the ship, closed up the ramp and headed towards the bridge.

Unlike a lot of ships, The Praeteritus didn't like doing vertical landings, and so she had a bit larger of a footprint on the ground, having to lay flat like a giant saucer, which was another reason why he didn't mind having to stay on the outskirts of town. But even with the fog and the forward momentum needed to get off the ground, The Praeteritus wasted no time in getting starborne again.

The trip from Maneath Major to Maneath Minor was only a couple of hours, and as soon as he was within the planet's atmosphere, he went to repeat the process, only to see there were people hanging around the dropoff zone.

"This is Praeteritus to the terraformers below," he broadcast down to them via radio. "You must relocate away from the dropzone so I can put her down and unload your cargo. I am unable to do so until you have vacated from the area."

"This is Glesh Colony to Praeteritus, that's a big ol' negative," a very laidback voice said to him. "We've been having problems with raiders stealing from our dropboxes, and so we're just gonna take delivery of this one in person, if that's okay with you."

Sketch frowned. "No, Glesh, it's not fine. I'm still infected with Lingham spores, and the Dominion has made it very clear what they're gonna do to people who break quarantine, so either you can clear out and I can drop this safely in the lockbox, or I can just keep it and sell it off to the next junker I find because you were too stubborn to follow protocols."

There was a long silence on the radio before it clicked on again. "We were meant to understand that the Dominion was providing Lingham cures free for the asking now," the voice said suspiciously.

"Yeah, I heard about that at Relling Gate, but I also remember when I took this job that the mandate was to get the base blocks and the mail out as quickly as possible, so I told them I'd stop in to take the cure and spend the week in observation on the way back and not delay my delivery," Sketch said, trying to layer as much exasperation in his voice as possible. "You fellas just need to back out a couple of clicks, and you can watch me on scopes. You see bandits coming, then you can rush in, but it'll take me less than ten minutes to get everything unloaded into the box and be on my way." He sighed, shaking his head. "Shit, if you'd have moved when you saw me, I'd already be back out of atmo by now, instead of yapping here with you. So what do you want to do here, Glesh?"

There was another long silence before the radio clicked on again. "Roger that, Praeteritus, we are backing up to a distance of two clicks. Just be quick about it."

"Roger that, Glesh. Praeteritus out." He turned the radio off and watched the levtrucks haul ass for a safe distance. Once they were two kilometers away, Sketch brought the ship down and headed for the cargo bay.

As he opened the bay ramp, he said to Helen, "You see those trucks move an inch, you holler at me and we're off this rock and these people don't get their shit, you hear me?"

"Heard, boss."

What should've taken ten minutes Sketch managed to get done in seven, taking the money from the lockbox first before giving the colony their heavy bore drill, their base blocks, their seedpods and their mailbag. As soon as he had everything stowed in their storage pod, he sealed it up and hurried back onto the ship.

"No movement?"

"They're antsy, but so far they're holding."

"Good," he said, heading back up to the bridge of the ship. As soon as he was up there, he fired up the engines and prepared for take off. "Praeteritus to Glesh, your goods are in the box and the horizons are dry of bandits. Stay safe."

"Thanks again, Praeteritus," the voice on the other end of the radio sighed in relief. "And sorry about the hassle. We just desperately need those seedpods. Safe travels."

Sketch had the ship up in the air as Helen flashed a warning sound at him. "Bogies on the ridge, boss," she told him.

"Well, shit," Sketch grumbled. Normally he wanted to get involved as little as possible, but these colonists had held to his rules and the last thing he was going to do was leave them to allow some pirate scavengers to come and plunder their much needed supplies. "Drop a chaff tube into one of the torpedo launchers, Helen."

"You sure boss?"

"No, but, fuck it," he said, bringing The Praeteritus towards the oncoming bandit convoy. Once he was about half way between the dropzone and the convoy, he launched a chaff blast out in front of the bandits, scattering shards of metal, feces and heated block waste like a shower of fiery sparks, causing the bandits to swerve suddenly and stop, the cloud of dangerous debris forming a little wall between the convoy and the terraformers, who were just trying to get their mail.

"This ain't none of your business, mailman," a voice said to him over the radio.

"Delivery ain't complete until they have everything out of the box," Sketch said back to them. "And you folks couldn't even wait until they did before you decided to charge."

"And what if we decide to shoot you out of the sky?"

He flipped the radio to mute for a second. "Helen, they got anything that could do that?"

"A couple of the vehicles have some rockets that might punch a minor hole in our hull, but nothing that would do any serious damage," she replied.

He flipped the radio back from mute to transmitting once more. "You fire on me and I'm gonna fire back, and I assure you, my firepower is a great deal more menacing than yours."

"That so?" the voice laughed. "Then why'd you throw a shitbomb at us?"

"Consider it a very strong discouragement," Sketch said confidently. "But hey, if you want to play 'Mine's bigger,' then game on, hillbilly. I'm happy to waste one or two heavy slugs and earn the thanks of the terraformers. They ain't paid for the slugs, so I don't want to have to use'em if I don't have to, but I will."

"I think you're bluffing mailman," the voice said.

"Fuck around and find out."

A few seconds later, Helen's alarms started blaring, but the rocket wasn't moving so fast that The Praeteritus couldn't easily just twist and get out of the way. As soon as it did, Sketch brought up the targeting system and fired one heavy slug right at the levtruck that had fired the rocket at them. While Sketch's ship was quick and agile, the raiders' vehicles were meant to go forward or backward fast, but not side to side, and so the slug blew a giant hole through the center of the vehicle, and Sketch could even see a couple of puffs of red mist that he suspected had been bandits until a few seconds ago.

"You wanna go for round two?" Sketch said to them.

There was no reply on the radio, but the remaining raider vehicles turned around and started heading away from the dropzone as quickly as they could, none of the rest of them wanting to be evaporated so casually. They were scavengers and pirates, not bloodthirsty berserkers.

Sketch called back to the terraformers. "There you go. One heavy slug on the house, even. You got everything?"

The voice of the lead terraformer sounded utterly relieved. "Thank you again, Praeteritus. Feel kinda bad about giving you hassle before."

"Just happy to see everyone get what's coming to them," Sketch told them. "Heading starborn now. Journey well." He touched a couple of switches and The Praeteritus headed back up away from the planet and into space.

That was it for his legitimate stops, and now he had one final stop to make, over on the third planet in Colby's Hole, an utterly desolate shithole called Vemex. At some point the terraformers would likely make their way over to Vemex, but so far, the place had remained about as deserted as was possible, the surface almost entirely volcanic rock, cold and unwelcoming. There wasn't even breathable atmosphere on it, but that was where his third delivery was supposed to be going.

It wasn't uncommon for the less legal of his deliveries to be made to planets without atmosphere, as smugglers and those who employed their services liked to be able to conduct their business without prying eyes. He'd felt like Vemex was a touch excessive, since large swaths of Maneath Minor were so desolate and remote that they would've been just as good delivery points, if not better, but the client had made their destination incredibly clear.

The only problem was there wasn't anything there.

When Sketch brought The Praeteritus down through the atmosphere, he had the sensors checking all around the designated drop off point, looking for the lockbox that would have the other half of his money, and would signal the exact location the client wanted, but there was nothing but static and cold dead rock in every direction.

"Any chance that weather might've damaged our dropzone beacon, Helen?" he asked her, scanning the surface for anything, especially since his illegal dropoffs were generally watched from a couple of kilometers away. But there was nothing, and loads of it.

"Vemex doesn't have any real weather, boss," the ship's AI told him. "And I don't see any signs that anyone's been here for quite some time."

"Take us back into orbit and we'll hang around for a day, just in case they're running behind or something," he sighed. "I hate it when deliveries go bad. I'm stuck trying to hock whatever it was they had me delivering, and nine times out of ten, it's something I know fuck all about, and I have to trust our fence to not be scamming me."

Sketch gave the client a full day to show up and set up the beacon, but during that time, not a single ship even approached Vemex, and by the end of the twenty-four hours, Sketch had given up. Another package for the dead letter office. He didn't want to wait any longer than he had to, because Colby's Hole was well off the beaten path and he wanted to get back towards more civilized sectors, even if they were more prone to danger.

He set course for Relling Gate and then headed back to his quarters to do some more study, falling asleep during a documentary on the Starless Dominion's outer reaches. He dreamed, as he often did, of drowning beneath a giant ocean, lost and aimless, unable to tell which direction was up, the undercurrents blowing the bubbles of his breath in every direction. He knew what the dream was about. It was about lost time.

When he awoke, he heard the sound of a blaster warming up, opening his eyes in surprise. Standing next to his bed was a woman who couldn't be more than a couple of decades old. She had lightly tanned skin and almond shaped eyes, with hair that seemed to have three distinct colors woven together - golden, onyx and copper, each striped in equal measure. She was dressed in heavy robes, covering much of her body so well he couldn't even get a good gauge of her figure. Her face was awash in freckles, and her hands that were clenching onto the blaster were shaking and unstable, not just from nervousness but post-stasis shock, something he was more than familiar with. Based on the level of the shakes, he estimated she'd been in cold sleep for somewhere between two and five years.

She was beautiful, and her deep green eyes were blinking, trying to stay focused on him while she was keeping the blaster as level as she could. "Who the fuck are you?" she said, her voice cracking a little, as the muscles were used for the first time in a long time. Her accent had a touch of refinement to it, nothing at all like the sort of people he had to work with these days.

"Sketch," he said, trying to remain calm, knowing that he wasn't going to be able to maintain, especially with a blaster pointed at him. "You're on my ship, The Praeteritus. I'm guessing you were probably in my cargo that I was supposed to deliver, but no one was there to pick you up."

"We have to go back!" she said, the weapon still trembling in her slender fingers. "Wherever you were supposed to take me, you need to take me back to there! He wouldn't abandon me!"

He moved to sit up, and felt the throbbing at his temples, a sign that things were about to change in their dynamic quite a great deal. Four options, one of which would be the end of him, two of which would be manageable and one of which would be extremely complicated. "My normal practice is that deliveries are done without any contact between me and the client, and you being this close to me isn't good for you," he cautioned. "There weren't any vessels anywhere on Vemex-"

"Where?"

He paused for a second. "Where you were supposed to be delivered. If anyone had been traveling to Vemex, they would've almost certainly come from Relling Gate, and we would've passed them along the way, but we haven't seen any ships, so whoever was supposed to meet you at that delivery point, I'm pretty sure they aren't coming."

"He has to! He just has to!" the girl said to him.

"You really are putting yourself in terrible risk by being this close to me," he honestly told her. "I can't stress this enough - you should go back and climb back into your stasis pod and I can-"

"Shut up! Shut up!" she said, her hands shaking even more. "Let me fucking think!"

"Staying close to me isn't going to make that easy," he said. "I promise you, if you go back to the hold, I can try and find out where your friend is."

"You think I'm fucking stupid, asshole?" she said to him, which made him flinch a little. "The minute you have me in the hold, you're just going to open it to the black and then I'm fucking dead!" She kept the blaster aimed at him, but it was trembling even more now. "No fucking thank you!"

If he'd had his Ashaka, none of this would've been a problem, but without it, being near sentient beings was always a massive risk, his abilities already activating without him being able to control them. He needed to know which path they were taking her down, so he could be prepared for whatever came his way. The Calm, The Rage, The Warmth or The Fear.

"Please," he said, trying to keep his voice steady. "Put the gun down and we can talk about this like two rational people."

"Shut the fuck up! You keep talking and talking and my head keeps pounding!"

He knew exactly what she was talking about. It was the reason he kept himself apart from sentient beings. His abilities had already identified the most prominent emotion within her, and was already seeking to amplify it. If he had had his Ashaka, he could've chosen an emotion and then deliberately cranked that up. He could've instilled her on the path of The Calm, the path the Order had been named after, but without the Ashaka, his abilities functioned without his control. Her mind would've been cleared of fear and anger, and she would've been able to engage in a rational conversation with him. The Calm was the path most used by the members of the order, but as Sketch had learned, it was the one that people went into reflexively the least.

If she was on The Fear, it was entirely possible that she would just pull the trigger and end his life, but it was also just as likely that she would drop the weapon and hide in the corner. The Fear was a defensive path that members of The Calm used for self-preservation, and wasn't something they liked to tap into regularly. It was generally a path that was only used briefly, to regain control of a situation, before transitioning into the path of The Calm.

If she was going on the path of The Rage or the path of The Warmth, he was likely in a massive amount of trouble, and he had no idea how he would manage. The Rage would mean he wouldn't have to worry about it, probably, as she would likely shoot him and then herself before he could even lift a finger to try and stop her.

It had been so long since his abilities had been presented a target, he was certain they were in complete overdrive, so whenever it settled in, her reaction would be extreme, no matter which path it had chosen for her. In his six years since his return to life, he'd only had three encounters, and all of them were within the first two years. Only one of them had ended well, and even then, Sketch had been forced to do something very drastic to ensure his safety afterwards.

Normally the first few steps along any given path would allow the initiate of The Calm, who were often referred to as Storms, to manage and refine the person's emotions, but without his Ashaka, he didn't have any control over what was happening to her.

His brown eyes stayed focused on her, trying to discern which path she was in the grips of, but it was hard to read, mostly because he had no experience with this woman at all. There was very little he could do at this point; whatever path she was on, her emotions were charging down it at top speed, and all he could do was prepare to help her manage that, to try and talk her through it.

Suddenly, she flicked the blaster's safety on, tossed it aside and lunged forward, grabbing his head with both hands as she shoved her lips against his, forcing her tongue into his mouth as she kissed him in a daze.

This was not what he was expecting, but it was one of the two worst possible cases, simply because of how intense the path of Warmth would be for her. He didn't know how long it would last within her, but the next several hours were going to be overwhelming. Typically the path of Warmth was associated with affection and love, but right now it seemed like it had tapped into a mainline of lust that was running through this woman's body. Trying to get her to slow down would be futile. Her mind and body had only one option, and the way out was through. He'd just have to figure out how to help her out of it on the other side.

She wasn't waiting for him to get a foothold on what was going on, however, as she reached down and pulled the heavy parka up and over her head, also tugging off what seemed like a tunic of some kind, tossing them aside, leaving her nearly naked from the top up, simple a bra covering her small, perky tits. He also, however, noticed that she had a distinctive tattoo on one of her shoulders, although he couldn't remember where he'd seen it before. It was a square with three circles in a pyramid shape inside of it. He knew the image was important, but he didn't have time to think about it, as she suddenly reached down and grabbed his shirt by the waistline and yanked it up, pulling it off his chest, exposing his pot belly and his hairy chest, but more importantly, exposing his arms, covered in the traditional tattoo sleeves of The Calm, from shoulder to wrist, marking him as an Adept, not as low as an Initiate and not as high as a Counselor. A Counselor might have been able to mostly control their abilities without the Ashaka, but even still, it would've been a struggle.