Sispyhus Rising
…left them all behind
Luckily for Sarika, Jared and Shannon were taking a break from the preparations for their job when she and Taylor arrived back at the ship. They both looked up from their datapads as Sarika stormed into the kitchen, with Taylor following close behind. Jared noted that Taylor was looking very confused.
"He is not from this universe," Sarika ranted, jerking her right thumb over her shoulder at Taylor as she spoke. "He doesn't know what a Browncoat is, he doesn't know Mandarin-"
"Sarika, calm down," Jared interrupted her.
"I will not calm down!" Sarika yelled. "There is something very rutting strange going on here, and I want to know what it is!"
"Sarika, bìzui or I'm dropping you off on Paquin the next time we're across that way and leaving you there for good. I'm not going to tell you again."
"I'm going to my room," Taylor volunteered, wandering away through the kitchen when Jared waved him off. He was smart enough to know that while this particular conversation would have him as its primary topic, it wasn't for his ears. Shannon got up and closed off the kitchen once the corridor was clear.
"I know you know what's going on with him," Sarika said, her tone accusatory.
Jared was silent for a moment as he considered how to answer her. "You're right," he said finally. "I do know what's going on with Taylor. But unless you calm down, I won't tell you a thing."
Sarika glared at him, but sat herself down at the table and took a few deep breaths. "Okay, I'm calm," she said at last.
"This does not leave this room," Jared said to begin. "Taylor does not know about this, and I'm going to wait until after this job to tell him. And believe me, I will know if he finds out before I have a chance to explain it to him."
Sarika nodded furiously, not trusting herself to speak in case what words left her mouth would give her cause for regret.
"You've heard of the Travellers, I take it?"
"Yeah, my ma told me about them," Sarika replied. "Said they're folks from the past that get slingshot from their own time and place to here."
"That's what Taylor is. Something happened to him, I don't know what and I'm guessing he doesn't either, but it was violent enough to send him five hundred years into the future – from Earth-That-Was."
Sarika just stared at Jared, mouth open slightly in surprise. "How is that possible?" she whispered. "That would make him…" She quickly counted off on her fingers. "He's almost prehistoric…"
"Not really, no," Shannon said. He knew as much as Jared knew, which admittedly wasn't a lot. "How old did that medic guess he was?"
"I think she said he was about twenty-eight."
"Sounds about right to me. He was born in our prehistory, for this ‘Verse anyhow, but he's still only in his twenties."
"I had no idea," Sarika said quietly after a short silence. "I really didn't." She rubbed a finger over a scorch mark on the tabletop. "Though I should have picked up on it when he said he was from Los Angeles – I thought he meant Angel City, over on Valentine. He must feel so lost – his whole world's gone. I can't imagine that happening to me."
"I daresay none of us can, Rika," Shannon said. "It's up to us now to help him to learn how to live in this one."
As Shannon spoke those words, a tiny spark ignited in Sarika's mind. "Are we going to help him get home?" she asked.
"Rika, even if he could go home, Earth-That-Was is a dead world – you know that," Jared said patiently. "And it would take years to get there. Decades, even."
Sarika waved him off. "That's not what I meant. I swear I heard somewhere about this new tech someplace called Leviathan is trying to invent, to make travel between sun systems faster than it is at the moment. I think it was called a wormhole."
"I don't think something like that would let him travel back through time."
"But can we try anyway? I mean, after this job is finished of course."
Jared and Shannon looked at each other. The Sisyphus being both their ship and their home away from home, what either of them decided was final – and if they considered Sarika's latest request to be a fool's errand and not worth spending any time on, then it wouldn't be granted.
"To be completely honest, I think it's a suicidal idea," Jared started. "And there is absolutely no guarantee a wormhole would do what you're thinking it could."
"Not to mention that time travel is a tricky business," Shannon added. "It's been done, yes, but only in controlled trials and studies. And it's only been to a set point in the near future, not to half a millennia in the past. Plus you saw the mess he was in when he arrived here."
"I know all that," Sarika said, her tone turning heated. She dragged her hands through her messy hair, fingers snagging on tangles. "Mostly I want to do this for him because, well…he has family back home. He's married, and he's got two kids. Plus I think he said his wife is expecting another baby – or she was when he left. And I'm thinking he probably misses them a lot." She shrugged. "That's all. I don't have any other reason."
"After the job is done, then," Jared agreed. "But only until we get another job – and if that means we only spend a couple of weeks on this, then that's the end of it. Dong ma?"
Sarika nodded. "Hao." She pushed her chair back and stood up. "I'm going to go talk to him. Might even start to teach him a bit of Mandarin. If this doesn't work and he ends up stuck here for good, then he's going to need it."
Taylor looked up from reading one of his books upon hearing a chime at his door. "Come in," he called out.
Somewhat to his surprise, the door slid open to admit Sarika. She carried a book under one arm, and in both her hands was a tea tray holding a teapot and two cups. "Truce?" she asked. She sounded a little sheepish.
"If that's tea you've got there," Taylor replied. He found a bookmark and placed it in his book, reaching across to put it on his night table.
"It's tea. And I know you like it, so…" She gave him a tiny smile.
"Well, come on and sit down then." He sat up so that Sarika could put her tray down on the bed and sit down next to it. "What's the book?"
"You said you didn't know Mandarin. So I went through my books and dug this out for you." She handed the book to him, and he fought back a smile at its title – The Idiot's Guide to Mandarin.
"Implying something, are we?" he asked lightly as he leafed through the book. Somewhat to his dismay Sarika's face fell, and she bowed her head. "Oh, hey, I was kidding – I didn't mean that you're an idiot, or even that I'm an idiot. It's just…where I'm from, there's a whole series of books with The Idiot's Guide title. That's all. I've even got a few of them at home." He set the book in his lap and poured tea for them both, and held one of the cups out to Sarika as a peace offering. She took it with a small smile and sipped her tea carefully.
"Can you tell me about your family?" Sarika asked as Taylor idly flicked through the book.
"What do you want to know?"
"Their names would be a good start."
Taylor raised an eyebrow at Sarika. "Well, my wife's name is Caroline. We met in college – she was studying to become a librarian, and I was studying architecture. The first time I saw her…" He trailed off, not even bothering to fight back a grin. "I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. I thought she was gorgeous. She didn't exactly feel the same way about me to begin with, sad to say – she was quiet and very bookish, and I was pretty loud and liked going to off-campus parties a lot. So she didn't like me very much. A mutual friend set us up during our second year, and once we actually started spending some time together, well…"
"So she liked you after that?"
Taylor shook his head. "No, not right away. She wouldn't go on a date with me for at least three months."
Sarika seemed to find this amusing, and she let out a snicker. Taylor gave her a mock-sour look. "Once we did start to date, we found out that we actually had quite a bit in common. We both loved to read, and we were both military brats – her dad was in the Navy, and mine had been in the Marines. I asked her to marry me during the summer between her senior year and my fourth year."
"When did you get married?"
"Right after my graduation. We were both twenty-three at the time. Our daughter Rhiannon was born four years later, and our son Lucas came along about ten months ago."
He fell silent and sipped his tea, holding the cup in both of his hands. Sarika studied him briefly before asking him another question.
"Do you have any pictures of your family?"
"I do, yeah." He set his cup down on the tray and slipped off his bed, wincing as he straightened up, and went across to where his laptop was stowed on a shelf. "You don't suppose there's somewhere I can plug this in, do you?" he asked as he carried it over to the bed. "The battery isn't going to last forever, and I'm not sure how much power it's got left in it."
"You'd probably need to ask Jared or Shannon," Sarika replied. "They might even know someone who can fit a perpetual power supply to it." She watched as Taylor set the computer down on the bed and pressed a button, turning it on. "It wouldn't be cheap by any means, but at least it'd save you the trouble of having to hook it up to the power all the time."
"I'll think about it." The computer's desktop loaded, and Taylor started tapping away at its keyboard. A few practiced swipes and clicks across the track pad had his Pictures folder loaded. "I'll show you my parents and my siblings first."
The first photograph he loaded was of his parents on their wedding day in 1976. His father wore his Marines dress blues, and his mother wore her wedding dress. "My dad's name was William, and my mom's name is Georgina. That photo was taken about six-and-a-half years before I was born."
"Your mother is beautiful," Sarika commented. "You take after her quite a bit."
Taylor gave Sarika a smile. "I hear that a lot, and I'll have to tell her that when I see her next. I think she'll be pleased to hear it." Here he gestured to his eyes. "I got my eyes from my dad, though. Only one of my parents' kids who did."
"Do you miss him? Your father, I mean."
Taylor nodded. "Yeah. I miss him a lot. Especially around my birthday each year." He lifted his father's dog tag away from his chest. "That's why I keep this with me. My mom always said I was his favourite, even though parents aren't really supposed to have favourite children. So she made sure I got his dog tag after the funeral, and I started to wear it when I turned thirteen." He skipped to the next photograph, one of the last taken of his father before he had died. "I've always tried my best to make him proud of me, but I drew the line at military service. I couldn't do it – I was always very conscious of what war was like, and I knew that people could be killed in action. And I didn't want that to happen to me. Not to mention that I didn't want to put my mother through that sort of hell twice. My older brother took up that responsibility instead."
"Can I see your siblings?"
"Yeah, sure." He closed the folder he had been going through and opened another. The first photograph he opened was of his older brother. "That's Isaac. He's in the Air Force – joined straight out of high school, about fourteen years ago now. He's married with kids as well, so I'm an uncle as well as being a dad – I've got twin nephews and a niece."
Next he skipped to a photograph of his younger brother, dressed in a white lab coat and holding a Bunsen burner, hair teased out in all directions and face blackened by charcoal. "And this is Zac. He's always liked blowing things up and playing with chemicals, so I think it was only natural that he ended up teaching Chemistry."
"Why is he dressed like that?" Sarika asked. She leaned closer, peering at the photograph.
"That was just for Halloween one year. He dressed up as a mad scientist." He let out a chuckle. "Perfect costume for someone like him."
The last photograph he clicked through to was of his sister. "This is Jessica, I take it?" Sarika asked.
"That's Jess, yeah," Taylor confirmed, secretly pleased that Sarika had remembered his sister's name. "She's in college, studying archaeology."
"How old is she?"
"She's twenty-three. Isaac's just turned thirty-one, a couple of months ago, I'm twenty-eight, and Zac's twenty-six. I'll be twenty-nine in two months, though."
The two of them continued looking through Taylor's photographs until the battery in his laptop had completely worn down, and he was forced to turn it off and stow it back on its shelf. "How are you in the kitchen?" Sarika asked as they walked out into the corridor.
"I'm not bad. Why do you ask?"
"I figure you'll want something to keep your mind busy while you're healing up. So how would you like to give me a hand in cooking? You help me out and maybe teach me a few recipes I don't know, and in return I'll split my earnings with you. It'll give you a bit of coin to spend on sundries and essentials." She extended a hand. "Do we have a deal?"
Taylor took Sarika's hand in his, and they shook on it. "It's a deal."
Sarika grinned. "Shiny. First order of business, though, is getting you wearing something different." She looked him up and down with a critical eye. "Come on. We'll have a look at what we bought today, see what will be most comfortable for you while your ribs are healing."
Taylor couldn't help but smile as he followed Sarika through to her bunk. He was quite sure that he had made his first friend in this new world – and much to his surprise, that she reminded him of Caroline didn't hurt as much as he thought it would. Quite suddenly, he didn't feel so alone anymore.
The Jade Serpent in Shanxi was just like any other tavern on Jiangyin. Constructed out of wood, terracotta tile and stone, it had a number of horses tethered up in front of its doors. Colourful pennants proclaiming the tavern's name in Mandarin hung from the balcony that shielded its weather-beaten front porch.
What made it different from the rest, though, was at that very instant inside it were the members of the Tangye Tigers – and none of them knew that their time on the run was about to come to an abrupt end.
"Right, what's the situation here?"
The Tracer that Jared and Shannon had hired pulled up a file on his datapad, brushing his black dreadlocks out of his face as he scanned the onscreen text. "The four of them will do just about anything not to be bound by law again," he said. "And all four are armed and very dangerous. From what I have been able to gather during my traces, Leopold favours an old-fashioned Springfield Model 1861 Minié rifle, Chester carries your average Remington 1100 12-gauge semi-automatic shotgun, Branston has been known to use a .36 calibre LeMat revolver, and Cerise keeps a number of very sharp and extremely lethal throwing knives about her person." He looked up at the brothers. "Were my opinion to be asked, you're both insane."
"Not the first time we've been called that," Jared replied. He propped himself up on his elbows and peered down over the side of the building that he, Shannon and the Tracer had set themselves up on, across the way from the Jade Serpent. "And before you ask, yes it's worth the payoff. It'll keep us up in the air for a few more weeks."
The Tracer shrugged. "Never said it wasn't worth the payoff. It's just bùtài zhèngcháng de, is all."
Shannon was the first to spot movement down on the street. He was straight up on his feet, taking a quick moment to make sure his pistols were still in their holsters and his boots were buckled before racing across to the fire escape on the outside of the building. Jared followed close behind, gathering his knives as he ran, skidding a little on the roof before reaching the fire escape. He doubted very much that he would need to use his weapons, but it never hurt to be prepared.
The gang was saddling up their horses when Jared and Shannon jumped down to the street. "Leopold Roxburgh, you and your gang are bound by law to stand down," Shannon called out.
"Jiàn ta de gui!" the gang leader shouted. He unholstered his rifle and raised it to his shoulder. Behind him, his accomplices readied their own weapons.
"Jared, what's our authority?" Shannon asked in a low voice.
"Fire at will," Jared replied.
"Thought so." And with those words, Shannon unholstered his pistols and Jared unsheathed two of his knives. "We are just as armed as you are," Shannon informed the gang. "The only difference being that if you fire, you'll have a further charge of resisting arrest added to your warrants." He slowly raised his pistols, keeping his eye on Leopold and mentally calculating the best place to incapacitate him should it become necessary. "My partner and I, on the other hand, are quite within our rights and our job description to shoot you should we feel it's warranted." Out of the corner of his eye he watched Jared tracing the blade of one of his knives along his jaw. "We'll still get paid if you kick it in the process, but it won't be as much and I'd rather not waste my bullets on you unless it's strictly necessary. And I know Jared hates to have his knives bled on. So if you all know what's best for you, you'll drop those weapons of yours and come along quietly."
"Or what?" one of the other two males called out.
"Or you'll find yourself on the pointy end of my blade," Jared replied.
The gang leader said nothing in reply, merely cocked his weapon. Jared acted on nothing more than instinct and hurled one of his knives at the ground, stopping short of piercing the leader's right boot with it. "That's your first and your last warning right there," Shannon said almost conversationally, watching Jared unsheathe a third knife to replace the one he had thrown. "Next time he won't miss."
"You're all talk," the sole female of the gang taunted.
Shannon cocked his pistols. "Am I?" he asked almost conversationally. "I'm thinking, xiao jie, that ni yào wo kaiqiang." He gestured with the barrel of the pistol in his left hand at the gang leader. "Now why don't you tell your boyfriend here that it's time to give it up?"
Much to both Jared and Shannon's surprise, she sheathed her knives and stepped forward, speaking softly into the leader's ear. He nodded and held up a hand. "We surrender," he said, dropping his rifle on the dusty ground. The other three members of the gang followed suit with their own weapons.
Twenty minutes later the gang was in custody, held in separate sturdy cells, Derrick had his handheld back, and their Tracer had been paid his fee. "Well, that was interesting," Shannon commented as they left the lockup, heading back to the Sisyphus.
"Interesting and profitable," Jared agreed. "What d'you say to blocking off our schedule for a few weeks? That payoff should keep us flying for about that long if we're careful with it."
"No complaints here," Shannon replied. "And how about we have a chat with our Traveller when we get back? You did promise Rika, after all." In a low voice, he added, "Maybe start thinking about training him, as well? He looks like he could handle a staff."
"I'll clear my calendar," Jared said, completely deadpan.
Sarika and Taylor were in the kitchen when Jared and Shannon arrived back at the ship. "They're getting along well," Shannon commented as he watched the two new friends cooking up a storm.
"Let's hope they still get along when we've had our chat," Jared said, before letting out a loud whistle. Both Taylor and Sarika paused in their cooking and looked up. "Leave that for a little bit, you two. It's time we talked."
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Translations
Mandarin:
bìzui: shut up
dong ma?: understand?
hao: okay
bùtài zhèngcháng de: not entirely sane
jiàn ta de gui!: like hell!
xiao jie: miss
ni yào wo kaiqiang: you want a bullet right through your throat
Slang:
bound by law: arrested
kick it: die