Nest was long dead. Her heart had stopped beating over a century earlier. Yet the dead leviathan was teeming with life. On her last legs, the behemoth ship had somehow managed to come to rest within orbital range of a white dwarf. Hundreds of thousands remained even after her passing. Residing in her bones. Sailing her mighty seas.
What Sumida, Bex, and Klang found waiting for them at Nest’s grave was not the rotting husk of a leviathan they expected. What greeted them was a sprawling spaceport-city bustling and bursting at the seams with a myriad of lights and vast abundance of life.
With Sumida’s guidance, Klang steered the Rath toward the leviathan’s heart. They descended upon the summit of a massive beehive-like structure from which there was a constant stream of spaceships coming and going. The terminal’s automatic tractor beam was quite sophisticated and not a sight one might expect to see outfitted on a behemoth’s corpse. The Rath’s engines entered shutdown mode to prevent electronic interference and Tirr, noting that his services wouldn’t be needed again for a while, sank down to the bottom of his containment cylinder and promptly went to sleep.
The beam pulled the Rath down to the ground and into an empty cubicle while the intrepid trio geared up, preparing to disembark. Each terminus was managed by a free agent offering fuel and maintenance services, recommendations for lodgings, and a generous discount if they paid for their docking space using intergalactic credits instead of the local currency.
The free agent, an amicable enough humanoid fellow with glistening bronze skin, pale green eyes, and a conical hair-do that stood as tall as a Lloran priestess’ tophat, added, “you may address me as Llyago.”
Klang was only too glad to pay–apparently he was the type who tended to be rolling in intergalactic credits and therefore never quibbled about prices–to get the offered deal along with some questions answered. Bex, on the other hand, huffed for a minute or two about the whole deal being a huge rip-off if they took the exchange rate into consideration. Sumida was noticeably disinterested in the entire exchange.
Of course, having been raised as royalty by acolytes of the Koros supercult, she’d never had to pay directly for anything until they’d stopped to refuel in the Tryptic system. Bex suspected the girl still had pitifully little clue about the actual value of money, but that was a problem for another time. They had bigger fish to fry, at the moment.
Money changed hands, so to speak. Klang used his communicator to transfer the funds agreed-upon. The free agent acknowledged receipt and Sumida immediately started eagerly rattling off her own parade of questions before Bex or Klang could even open their mouths.
“Why are there so many people living on a dead ship? Shouldn’t it have been abandoned ages ago? Who’s in charge here? I mean, who makes sure this leviathan’s corpse is even livable? And don’t you think it’s sort of sacrilegious to be living in the bones of a dead leviathan?”
Llyago eyed the young starchaser quizzically. His ruby irises glittered with mild annoyance.
“I’m aware this metropolis was built on a derelict ship but no one who belongs here is complaining. What is it to you? You just got here.”
Bex rolled her eyes at Sumida.
It wasn’t the first time she’d noticed the young starchaser’s unfortunate tendency to brainlessly rattle off the first inane thoughts to pop into her head at times. Usually, this happened when she was running on high emotion. She’d seemed perfectly unaffected by the current state of the leviathan, but all things considered, it was likely deeply disturbing for a starchaser to see a behemoth’s corpse in Nest’s condition.
“Sumida,” she gently nudged her younger compatriot and offered a telling suggestion. “Mouth. Brain. Filter. Why don’t you try again?”
Sumida drew in a sharp breath, her face reddening under the glare of the terminal’s neon lights.
“Sorry,” she muttered. “Does this necropolis” grimacing as she mouthed the n-word, “have a governing body?”
The free agent blinked, “not in the sense I suspect you mean. There are hundreds of enclaves and districts, each with their own governors…”
“You’re right. That’s not what I meant.” Sumida shook her head. “What about a central caretaker? Something along the lines of a… sacristan?”
Llyago frowned slightly. A few seconds passed as he mentally flipped through his transgalactic translator for the exact meaning of the unfamiliar word. Apparently, his communicator was melded to his headpiece because the tip of his conical do lit up as soon as he came across the meaning of the arcane term.
Bex chuckled. Sumida choked down a giggle. Klang seemed remarkably unaffected.
The free agent’s head bobbed as he offered up one final option. “You’d be needing to speak with the Fawn then.”
“Fawn?” Bex had never heard of this species before.
“Yup,” said the free agent. “They’ve been around since Nest was alive. If they’re not who you’re looking for, they can probably point you in the right direction.”
“Where can we find this Fawn?” asked Sumida impatiently.
Irritation briefly stirred once again in the free agent’s tourmaline eyes but he didn’t offer a retort. Instead, his mouth curved into a polite facsimile of a smile and he tipped his head forward slightly.
“Please,” he extended a courteous arm at the spacefaring trio. “Wait right here.”
They watched his retreating back until he vanished into the dark doorway of the large building adjacent to the terminal.
When Llaygo returned, he was accompanied by a humanoid alien that stood ten feet tall, wearing a utilitarian gray tunic. The Fawn had short, polished antlers jutting out from their temples and their cloven hooves were unshod. Their skin was dark green brownish like polished tree bark. Their eyes were remarkably like Laila’s, red-rimmed with dark sclerae. They were aged. Bex could tell. Not so much by their appearance but by their very presence. They gave off a sagaciously hoary kind of energy; unlike anything she’d ever sensed before.
The Fawn’s gaze fell upon Sumida. They regarded her in silence for the longest while. Sumida boldly met their gaze and held it, but Bex could tell. She was thoroughly discomfited and making every effort not to squirm under the Fawn’s searching gaze.
Finally, in a deep, grating voice the Fawn uttered the words, “So, you’ve come.”
Sumida drew closer to Nest’s sexton. “You know who I am?”
Their head tilted downward, “I know what you are,” they answered. “That should suffice.”
Sumida’s head bobbed in agreement. “Then you know why I’m here?”
“No,” the Fawn’s gaze hardened somewhat. “I do not.”
Sumida gaped at them, nonplused.
Bex stepped forward. “What does that mean?”
The Fawn glared down at Sumida. “You are not the one I was expecting. Why are you the one who came?” They demanded, deep voice rumbling. “What have you done with the child of this ship?”