Dark Tempest. Manda Benson

He lowered himself first. Jed watched him step away from the rungs and look up with an eyebrow raised in a sardonic fashion she didn’t much care for.

      “Now back away from the ladder.”

      Wolff took two steps backward and was lost from her vision beneath the floor. Without hesitation she stepped over the edge, breaking her impact with the floor of the lower level by bending her knees. The man looked a little surprised, faintly amused even, at her sudden descent and unwillingness to expose herself to any threat he might pose.

      “Pick up one of those canisters.” Jed pointed to the nearest crate.

      Wolff turned his back on her to pick up the sealed cylinder, and Jed saw opportunity left open like a gate before her. She seized her gun with her right hand and darted her left hand toward the weapon on his belt. Wolff moved with a reflex that seemed almost of the calibre of her own kind, twisting in an instant to snatch his own weapon, and as he did he grabbed Jed by the wrist. Her feet slid on the floor. She flung out her shooting hand to maintain her balance. Light blazed from her neutron pistol, the shot hitting the Shamrock’s bulkhead wall with a thunk. Immediately she decreased the GravSim intensity to mitigate her impact with the floor. She fell on her hip, Wolff still gripping her wrist and their weapons aimed respectively as gravity resumed normal service.

      The man appeared startled by the sudden fluctuation, and stared at Jed, breathing quickly. “Are you hurt?” he asked politely.

      Jed frowned. “Fool.”

      “I am a fool?” Wolff waggled the end of the neutron pistol he held. “I shall ask you not to try that again, Archer.”

      Jed saw his IR-UV bifocals had reflective sidepieces that gave him effective all-round vision with a mere glance toward the wide-angle silvered surfaces. He had watched her. His response was not reflex but calculated defense. She stifled a vocal expletive directed at herself. Stupid! Unobservant!

      “Now how about you get up?” Wolff pulled at her wrist. His sweaty grip revolted her. “And we try again, remembering that your duelling advantage over me is negligible.”

      Jed got up and pulled back from him. “Take your hand off my arm!”

      Wolff relinquished his grip then pushed her hand away. Both cautiously lowered their weapons, watching the actions of the other.

      “The canister,” said Jed at length.

      Wolff picked up the canister.

      “Now two of those packets, and fill that flask from that phytoculture tank.” She pointed to the tank, a squat barrel in one corner with a few pipes running from the wall conduits to it. A spyglass in the front looked in to its illuminated contents—a sea of translucent green organisms suspended in water.

      Wolff filled the flask from the tap and bent down on one knee with Jed watching his broad back. He sealed the container and put the four objects in his inside jacket pocket.

      “Now back up.” Jed looked back up at the shaft they’d climbed down. “Me first, and you to follow.”

      Not taking her eyes off him, she mounted the rungs. Working on balance, she climbed back up, watching him until the last minute before swinging herself back up to the Shamrock’s upper level. “Proceed!” she called back to him, placing her hand on the handle of her weapon.

      The metallic ring of hands and feet on rungs drifted up from the lower level, and then Wolff’s head came up through the gap. “Easy, tiger.”

      He led the way back up to the bridge once more, and placed the food down on the table while Jed slotted the canister into the console heating unit. Within a few minutes the contents were ready.

      Jed poured out half the levigated esculents and balanced her bowl on her knee, shoulders hunched over the thick soupy solution coloured like dried blood. It had the bland smell of a thousand different types of sustenance.

      Wolff ripped open a hermetically sealed polymer bag and tipped out the roll of fibre loaf it contained. He tore into it with his teeth and fingers, dipping the bread into his bowl. Jed sipped the steaming, nourishing liquid from a spoon.

      “Am I putting you off?”

      Jed glared at him over the rim of her spoon. Secretly she envied his ravenous glut—biting, chewing and swallowing with stoic rhythm. It had been a very long time since she’d had the appetite to eat like that, or the digestion to cope with such gorging.

      “This is good.” Wolff licked up the remainder from the bowl, and poured water into a glass. He held it up to the light, scrutinising its pale green tinge. “Ah, filled with vitamin C and other vital antioxidants. Tastes like shite, of course.”

      Jed swallowed a mouthful of her drink. As far as she was concerned, she might just as well have been eating woodpulp in various degrees of dilution. Tastes and flavours were pale shadows beside the effulgence of conurin.

      Wolff knocked back the phytoculture’s offering and devoured what was left of his bread. Jed picked over her dish, shredding the bread listlessly and abandoning half the roll in the dish.

      Wolff raised his eyebrows. “Do you intend to honour your part of the agreement?”

      Jed folded her arms and leaned back on the seating. “There is little to be said. Any other Archer in this galaxy would tell you a story identical to mine.”

      “And if any were to, it would still be a new tale to my ears.”

      “My ship was built in the Greater Docks of the OverHalo.”

      “No, now you’re telling me about your ship. I want to know about you.” Wolff shifted his weight forward and rested his elbows on his knees.

      “An apprentice to a senior learns the Code until she can afford her own ship.”

      “Ah, and who was the senior, your mother?”

      Jed gave him an intolerant look. “Archers do not breed.”

      “Of course, back to the evils of regular conurin use. Your mother was a ‘common man’, as you call us, and your sire was an unfortunate condescender?”

      “A male Archer?” Jed rolled her eyes.

      “What you’re saying implies star Archers have no common blood, while I was under the impression they were a distinct race.”

      “We have no more blood in common than has the rest of the race of men. We are all doubly recessive in a particular set of genes. Certain dynasties have Archers in their bloodlines.”

      “And I suppose those genes are linked to certain traits in appearance, unless one does come across Archers with dark skin, or light hair.”

      “That supposition would be correct.”

      “So a certain talent was discovered in you at a young age and a senior adopted you?”

      “Yes. It progresses from there, as I said.”

      “But do you remember nothing of before you were an Archer? Say of planetary life and who your parents were?”

      “Not of ancestry, nor of planets. I adopt my ancestry as my ancestors adopted me.”

      “But surely you remember something of where you lived? Everyone remembers something about their childhood.” Wolff slackened the belt on his tunic and stifled a belch. “They say you can’t forget growing up on a planet. Did you grow up on one?”

      Jed looked uneasily at the man, then at the console. She could tell him what she liked. He had no right to know the events of her life up to the age of nine, and it wasn’t as if he’d find out from some other source.

      “I remember nothing.”

      Wolff shrugged again. “And your culture, revolving around a particular drug and a strict code, verging almost on religion?”

      This angered Jed, and she turned to him fiercely. “Do not compare my