The BloodStar Sagas
REVERIE STATION:
I slid out of the drift at the edge of Highgate System, and settled in for the long orbit to Reverie Station. I was impatient to arrive, but it’s a dusty system, and gets worse the farther in you go. Even out of the ecliptic, it can be risky. This wasn’t my first trip to Highgate.
Fortunately, Highgate was on my side of the primary, and I docked more or less without incident. A little carbon scoring on the hull from orbital dust, but nothing TANS wasn’t used to.
Highgate is a toxic hell. The original inhabitants poisoned their entire atmosphere in one giant fuck-up. It’s still a mystery what they were trying to do: climate control, an experimental weapon, a new kind of space drive – it’s still being debated by those who debate such things.
Whatever it was, it laid waste to their world virtually overnight. Corrosive winds now scour the desiccated landscape and exploration is difficult and dangerous. While technically Precursors, the Highgaters weren’t particularly advanced, their tech not being much better, on the average, than ours. So tomb-raiding and grubbing are dangerous and largely unprofitable. A few wealthy collectors in the Forge still pay for unusual artifacts, but only as morbid curiosities.
For Reverie Station, that’s a blessing and a curse. The population of grubs and black marketers is minimal, but they are the most desperate and dangerous of that breed.
The true purpose of Reverie, and its halo of orbital factories and labs, is the development and production of extreme survival gear. The surface of Highgate is the perfect test environment – if it can survive there, it can survive anywhere.
The air on Reverie always seems to have an odd chemical taint, an often nose-stinging astringency that is likely a combination of incidental contamination from Highgate, and whatever they use to try to counteract its worst effects.
I prefer to keep my visits to Reverie as brief as possible.
I was here to meet one Ayako Thorn, a reputed priestess and madwoman. She possessed, I was told, both hard data and mystic insights into what was happening at Bulwark. Whatever was unfolding there, the local authorities were keeping a tight lid on useful details. I had to pass near Reverie on my way to Bulwark, so I judged a brief stopover might be worth the trouble.
It took me a while to unearth word of Ayako, but I know the pressure points on Reverie. The news, however, was not auspicious. Only a day before I arrived, Ayako apparently stole an acquaintance’s runabout, and flew down to the planet’s surface, landing somewhere near a towering block of ruins known as the Shard. When others arrived, she was nowhere to be found, and the would-be rescuers were not properly equipped for an extended search in the noxious atmosphere. The station authorities, such as they were, were not remotely interested in Ayako’s fate, and no one else seemed willing to risk a second trip.
I pondered this over a pipe and a pint at the local speakeasy. On the one hand, I had been told that Ayako “might” have information bearing on the situation at Bulwark – there had been no guarantee nor specific instructions to meet with her. I could put time into an attempt to locate and rescue Ayako, only to put myself, my ship and my mission at risk for nothing. She was most likely dead, after all.
On the other hand, it galled me that the woman had simply been abandoned to her fate. Rumor had it that she had assembled a piecemeal environment suit over a period of months, and it was barely possible that she was still alive. There were places in the Highgater ruins where one might find shelter from the worst of the acidic winds, and even a ramshackle suit would have air for at least 72 hours.
And the coiling pipe smoke seemed to whisper that her knowledge – and her rescue – were urgent.
I sighed. Trust me, I’m more villain than hero, but there are still some things I won’t let pass.
I stowed my pipe, settled the bill, and made for the docks and the TANSTAAFL.
A few words about Typhon BloodStar.
Because his name is a bit overblown, I want to touch on a few of the inspirations for Typhon.
This fine fellow shares DNA with such worthies as Adam Reith, Earl Dumarest, Conway Costigan, Harcourt Fenton Mudd, Slippery Jim DiGriz and even Indian Jones and Han Solo. And many another space opera anti/hero, famous and infamous alike.
“Typhon” is a nod to the character in Zelazny’s Creatures of Light and Darkness.
“BloodStar” is inspired by the names of the “Beasts” in Brian Stableford’s epic sci-fi/fantasy trilogy Dies Irae. Characters therein boast memorable names such as Hellwind, Fireshadow, Starfury, etc. (And yes, I think those books inspired the name Skywalker, too.)
Typhon’s origin is similar to the protagonist in William Rotsler’s The Raven and the Hawk (Analog, Sep 74). He was just another mook scratching out a living as an asteroid miner when he discovered a dormant Precusor gunship. The telepathic AI, desperately lonely after thousands of purposeless years, immediately bonded with Typhon, and the two of them soon found themselves embroiled in all sorts of tomfoolery.
(Why the ship is now called the TANSTAAFL is a story yet to be told…)
Typhon – with the assistance of TANS – made a good living for a couple of decades as a secure courier and “extractionist”, willing to get people out of situations most others wouldn’t attempt, the superior tech of TANS giving him a massive advantage.
But, in his time, Typhon has seen more than enough of the ancient, non-human evil that haunts the Forge. When you actually see the risen dead, they cease to be myth, rumor or superstition. There is something in the Forge that is alien even to our reality, something not dissimilar, perhaps, to the Otherlords.
Now he does a lot of “pro bono” work, traveling to the edges of human habitation in the Forge to help those who are afflicted by darkness and death.
Although not mentioned above with the other inspirational characters, Typhon is probably closest in demeanor to Paladin, from Have Gun, Will Travel. He seems easy-going, even pleasant and garrulous. But he’ll put a blaster bolt through your left eye in a cold heartbeat, if you absolutely insist. He lucked into a situation and got wealthy from it, but now feels compelled to honor that good fortune by helping others.