“BIRTH OF PHARAOH” CHAPTER 8

“sailing on the bonne valle quatra”

COPYRIGHT 2023. CORINNE DEVIN SULLIVAN. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

I was feeling downhearted on the day I was saved by the ship called Bonne Valle Quatra. This ship belonged once to the White Queen’s Fleet. It had been lost years ago. Possibly, it was lost by treachery for at the same time a large amount of the Queen’s personal resources had also disappeared.

The captain and his crew thought I had been one of their own who had been cast adrift due to some accident. When they brought me inside, when I was marooned and drifting through space, after narrowly escaping from the lair of a hungry Macrabre Illie Bo, they could get close enough to see my face and realized I wasn’t theirs. With this, they commented often how we all look the same as each other, from a distance.

The people here on-board the Bonne Valle Quatra do not read minds. They can’t. They aren’t built to do that. They don’t temper their bodies like I do, either, with strict techniques. However, I can most definitely see everything on a telepathic level they think about sharing with me.

Through this ability of mine, I realized that most of the people on board instantly remembered me, Whittne Fax, who led the training of the Na’ Halien, for so many years. But, instantly, they couldn’t believe who I was. For this gang, I was “that big deal pirate” their families had heard about.

I think they like a rebel.

I have been working on my own things without or with my Lord Fior. And, perhaps, I am a sky-pirate now. I don’t look, that’s for certain.

This sky ship, the Bonne Valle Quatra, looks like it is about twelve hundred years gone. Inside, it is still all gilded up. Very pretty inside, really.

Strange thing to be saved by a vessel flown by the White Queen’s living entourage, but I couldn’t make a joke when they stared me in the face. Their machinery carried me quickly into safety and I’m happy. Just thought the Entourage were all murdered off, that’s all.

I make a point of being salutary.

We are sailing in the direction of the Planet Po. I think they are heading that way only to satisfy my ends. In the engine room, they say to me in simple terms that it’s estimated it’s going to take some time before we arrive.

Every few hours I get a tour from another enthusiastic person. The ship is gigantic, of course. Each story about why they are alone in space varies. It takes hours, if not days, to complete each one.

One of the ship’s masters explains in detail how they took a wrong turn, and how they also had a bad flight. All of this justifies how they have never, in all this time, made it back to the White Queen’s port. I’ve known a lot of lying. Sounds like another lie to me.

Why didn’t they return to help her, when the White Queen was captured? There’s no response.

They aren’t bona fide as champions yet.

How did they sustain themselves outward bound, for that long?

The entourage are very quirky. They never answer in a fair way. They get into their heads to turn the questioning around, a lot. They ask about how I get around to all these places, so often as I seem to tell them about. I allow that I had sold every trappable bondage I could get into my hold, on a route entwining four galaxies but only sixteen planets.

They want to appear bright and helpful at all times. So, I acquiesce to yet another tour. Still, their answers are terribly vague.

Instead of showing them my hand, I could make off with the entire ship, leave everyone in the hold. I could sneak them around the hell hole that was once Everbliss—a land lost to the outer spaces when the Great Universe truncated Eartha Tetus—but it is now so outbound no one will go there without some long reason. Still, I could talk them into getting a glimpse, so they know it really is gone.

I could tell everyone, “They are my prisoners,” but then let them go on their way, once I brought their ship to a safe zone for me to offload them all.

My mind starts to reel with the possibilities.

I get a look around the places they want me to be knowledgeable about. Met the captain. Tall dancer in appearance with fluffing white hair and crimson eyes that sparked with blue in the middle. Suddenly, out of nowhere, he informs me his creation is The Holy Black.

I was starting to see myself owning the entire vessel and making these people my best friends and family. I nearly forgot that I am on a mission.

The Captain outguesses me and warns me that, “Now I know,” and he won’t catch sight of me again, soon, with those eyes, unless he wants to warn me of the time to come. Home is something we both perceive. I say, “Good,” and walk off the way I entered his Bridge but not before he is introduced to me as Governor Flakson Kackriff Myer Flurn.

They have been giving me a lot of orders, in this first week, now that I have gotten completely out of the medic’s tube and his hands, because they have a long list of everything they need to acquire in order to stay safe and hidden.

I took a few steps away. They started to understand.

I am free to wander the endless halls of empty berths on my own. I haven’t tried to go anywhere else. When I do, I won’t ask permission, that’s for certain.

I am considering how, much later, after my business on the Planet Po is complete, I shall want to depart this free zone outside the gates. I plan to share the trick of my necklace with the captain only then, and only if the time is correct for me. A code such as mine is worth more than my neck to many. It’s a thing that could rule a spaceship or galaxy, if utilized adequately. It unlocks all electronic devices, both from within or without.

I crack the lock on a door and walk into an old suite. It’s lavish, to be sure. As I fiddle with a golden jewel box in the foyer, I don’t really appreciate that no one on-board believes in my Na’ Halien prestige. I think it’s saying something how devout they appear to my legend as a space-pirate.

I realize this is indeed the Queen’s palatial abode, intended only for her presence, if she was ever to take flight on this one particular vessel.

I gently shut the door, hurry back to my place to get myself ready for a meal.

I only know one place to get a new identity for this ship: the Factory. The Captain is going to need it, just to make it all the way back inside the Major Universe. He doesn’t know how I plan to help his overall ambitions by securing this code for him, from The Factory, once we are in orbit at the Planet Po.

The Factory might still have an access point installed that controls Pharaoh from way out in space, the same way any Pharaoh’s control box is installed inside the poor thing’s ear. There’s this constant wavelength I can tap into, if I try. Then, I can dial straight into Universe Major and get something going for the people here on the Bonne Valle Quatra.

“Why would we want to ever go back inside the Hidden Wall?” asks my guide who arrived unexpected at my cabin door. He wants to usher me to the main mealtime.

I don’t have a lie prepared, so I walk away, and it works. He picked that question from the very air inside my wavelength, I tell you.

It’s a lukewarm party, there at the evening’s meal.

Everyone dines in a fabulous mess hall, one with a never-ending portal to the world outside. One can eat and simply stare. However, there are some conversations in the room that night.

In truth, I’m hoping to find a friend here on this ship, or, perhaps, one I have abandoned who is wrapped up in the Factory death cycle. That’s not something to chat about over food.

In the center of my essence, I know there’s a friend to meet somewhere and soon. Perhaps he or she will be leading a small civilization inside the prime city, at the center of the Major Universe. However, I can’t say much about this ambition to anyone. It comes and goes inside of me.

I had a few other ideas about collecting my old friends, all much closer to my usual route, but they are iffy. The inhabitants of some sixteen planets I frequent regularly will definitely question the Entourage’s gilded and perfectly adorned craft, especially if it’s me commanding the whole thing.

At the prodding of a science team who are seated with me, I let a few things out to them. The Entourage immediately want to head towards The Factory the moment I mention it to them. At dinner, they are so happy about the potentials of the Factor that they want to own the thing, it seems. This is well for me because I need the lift there.

The Factory is an odd thing. It’s a gadget set way above a certain planet. Inside they have a Polar Box that can control everybody’s attitude (if they’re lazy, I tell you) and even can control the thinking across the Great Sky if there’s enough juice within.

No one objects to the Polar Box being around because, without it, Pharaoh start wars with everyone.

The Pharaoh are a collection of rebirthed, fractioned creatures from The Derelicts and The Not Wanteds. You can’t let them rebirth freely until they shape up a little bit. Someone had the idea to make these monsters become masters of itty-bitty space commands until they forget their dire some ways taken up when they were, say, a telepathic centipede a hundred yards wide that liked to steal spacemen from their crafts.

Our captain steals the show in the middle of the meal by announcing he is officially setting the ship’s course for Po and telling me I’m third in command beneath his wife. He orders everybody to knock themselves out for a while. He wants us to travel by stealth, undetected.

I go along with everything in theory, but I don’t need to spend the time sleeping.

Somehow, I need the Captain to share everything he needs to say about the origins of The Holy Black. He is whisked away for another duty so I hope to catch him later this evening.

The Entourage were conking out inside their chambers. They had a lot of Handlers on board, their slaves, who made them usher me out of the portion of the vessel they reside within. Drugs and vapor will keep them down for two years.

I want everyone to forget I am around, for a while, on our way to Po.

A terrifying thought crashes into my mind: I didn’t lock the door to the White Queen’s deck. All sorts of things can happen. Simply accessing it alone could trigger a revolt against me, and these things show up on video screens and as lights on dials, no question.

I walk along the passageways, keeping my cool. When I arrive, I find the door is double-bolted from inside. I’m sorry, but I’m certain that wasn’t done by me.

Rather than worry about who is following me around on this vessel, I force my mind under my control. For that, I am now wondering to myself for a moment how to make the Captain share his story for I must understand better my foe, The Holy Black.

Keeping my mind off the pranked door, I consider myself an aimless wanderer, deck after deck, in order to get some space for my thoughts.

I’m thankful I managed, in the end, to decease the female Macabre Illie Bo. She’d otherwise be searching me out. But, if she wasn’t, her ugly presence might have frightened the captain enough to say.

I never mention the Macrabre Illie Bo to people who can’t stand the thought because I don’t want to scare people.

I, myself, was sore when I first saw her the other day.

I was even scared, in a sense.

Two handlers appear from the walls. They scamper to “save” me from the disease of my own determined ways. Meanwhile, I am determined to remain awake. They show me to a pristine bunk, and I feign turning in for the long snooze while this monster of a vessel plods along for years. They forget to turn on the vapor or give me any shots.

Things are fresh and clean in the room I’ve been appointed to. Nothing to sit upon, but there is a window beside my bed. I could gaze at the changing colors and stars.

The bunk is encased in a film. I try to sleep for a few minutes on my own.

My thoughts are still upon the endless plight served by the Macrabre Illie Bo who fill up the fire-ways of the Outer-Realm. They are terrible things in that they often capture creatures and people and bring them in for a trade, rather than eat them. For that, they control a large, captive slice of this world.

The Macrabre Illie Bo are sentient and cleverly drawn together. I don’t know what end I’m dealing with anytime I encounter one of their regulars or their king. They have knives for mouths, razor ridges that bump up or retract down into their massively shaking and sooty bodies—that type. They are far worse than people can believe.

I’m just alone, now, these days, I used to have people and creatures everywhere. I became this exalted leader of space pirates, of sorts. Then, one afternoon, I told them all to find a better ride. Got tired of everyone’s voices screaming at me instead of my own mind calling dreamily.

When I am quiet, and when I’m alone, I recall interesting times when we were the verified First of the Na’ Halien. We were having the best time. That was when The Holy Black reigned.

I don’t think the Macrabre Illie Bo existed way back in those days. Hard to remember.

We, the First Na’ Halien, were the messengers for the Divine who is said to have built two distinct poles. These areas spanned both sides of the length of all of eternity. The idea was good for one and all.

The Left Pole and the Right Pole were built of gold and with certain swiftness only a God could devise or demise. And such a beautification of gold was not known before then.

With the poles complete, endless miles of golden wherewithal stretched north and south. And these sent a calling to the masses—an electronic thing.

I’m guessing The Left and The Right are still out there. Things were built fairly well, back then. Don’t think anyone could tarnish them.

The First of the Na’ Halien divided unto themselves two distinct categories: the beautiful and the strong. With the help of the Divine, The Beautiful were placed upon The Left Pole, and the strong were set upon The Right Pole. The First aligned themselves, spaced evenly so that all that Great Sky would be, eventually, spanned by their heroic work.

Sad to admit how, with the passage of time, the First Na’ Halien ourselves, were done in. Later, we were ourselves villains of every story.

I look at my forearm. I still have a scene there in deep green burned into my flesh by a close friend.

We had spent thirty days together on my ship, but it was built like a piece of garbage. I thought he might slaughter me. He could have gotten to me. Instead, he said things. He thought he could make me a friend. He convinced me to find certain things and, with them, gave me a symbol of a splintered star that is criss-crossed with wavy lines between two towers. It is still detailed upon my forearm, after all the time has passed.

The night is pure.

Outside, in the vast panorama, shifting shapes and clouds dance around.

The things inside endless space are wondrous and terrible, both. The sight of such depth before one is enough to make a planet-bound person upset because he might be nothing compared to boundless night. Plus, there is so much catastrophe at risk in every turn any ship will make.

I like it, myself.

The First Na’ Halien, alone, bravely ventured outwards, each one on their own, to cross the endless reaches. The claim was that, one day, the strong and the beautiful would meet. They would rejoice. Then, continuing, they would complete the opposite half of the work each had done.

I like that vision.

Eventually, I wake. I wander back to the main corridor, find one of the cooks on the way to the kitchen.

She tells me, “I’m the reason you’re on time,” and wants to talk.

“Do you like our ship?” she asks.

Does not look faithful in fluttery clothing that conceals nothing and looks like an olden day garment. It is carefully hewn. Delicately strung together. Impeccably persevered, day by day. No strand dangling to tug, nor a spot or stain upon the shimmering clothing for me to make a wish come true upon.

She tells me her name is Palyo Lyle, and I laugh.

The name “Palyo” is the forerunner of any of the White Queen’s tricky ladies-in-waiting. Once, there were hundreds, each one brought up to behave like the White Queen herself. It all takes my attention back to an earlier time when the White Queen ran her show inside her now-broken kingdom. Things were stronger.

Lyle’s hair is swept upwards. There are pearl-like pins adorning it all, and pretty twirls and things that keep swinging when she shakes her head or turns her shoulders. Massive and shimmering, the hair is so golden I can’t resist feeling and take a fistful to see if it is real.

I could assume her long arms and legs swing only in the lithe manner of a dancer, but I see the stance of a street fighter. These people were once recommended to top gypsy training as entertainment queens aboard long-journey cruisers.

Like the ship, her clothes are dated but kept clean. Thought about my lost crew, and the lost ship, the Tantlantiatia. We were usually covered in grimy things we got tired of attempting to wash away.

“You’re Whittne Fax, are you not?”

I smile, telling her who I am is not her concern right now, or ever.

“You’re not friend, but you’re not foe. I have to tell you a secret, but for it I want you to pay me.”

Never turned an inch. I let her lead me to the door of an elevator.

All Lyle’s wallflowers peel themselves from the shadows. They pile in with us. It smells so good I have to stop myself from tearing up.

They chime in on Lyle’s story. Claim the ship and everyone in flight are an abandoned group of Entourage who never learned of the White Queen’s demise until, like myself, they couldn’t gain re-entry to Eartha Tetus anywhere. And they still can’t travel safely through the Hidden wall into the Major Universe.

“When I speak about these things, my heart races,” says Lyle to me. She and the other women all extend their wrists so I can feel their pulse. I politely raise my hands and gesture, “No.”

“Don’t touch anything,” I tell meself.

I still disbelieve them all, even though all of them are friendly. I continue to pry, but I flutter along mentally with her and the friends she has in tow so they won’t feel my true goal that lurks, hidden deep inside my mind.

After a while, we arrive.

The large doors are conveniently sealed with heavy material that is expensive space travel, plus electricity, and then all sorts of complicated bolts.

“I hide certain things.” She giggles uncontrollably while punching in her pin and doing other things to unlock the doors. They swing wide. Her ladies rush into a gilded walkway above Lyle’s pen.

Inside are four males. Filthy. Blood on the portal doors. Stationed by harpoons. Old bonds keep each in place plus a continuous feed device that issues morphine. It pinches them if they try to get some rest. They are tattooed and elderly. We walk above them. They do not seem to notice.

Lyle whispers angrily in my ear, “Na’ Halien.”

I say nothing.

She glances at her ladies. Everyone is pretty relaxed. They are all guilty of stating the word, Na’ Halien. It was illegal off and on, over many years. But, now, they are straying from their strict rules.

“I wanted to ask them questions, silly. But they won’t talk.”

I look away, no longer interested in the conversation.

“I want to see your captain again, up on the bridge. Will you take me there?” I ask.

“I wouldn’t dare.” She said it and is so worried I must hold her close, beside the skin of my heart. I rush her away from the girls who melt back into the walls. I need to keep her calm. But, then, as usual, the thing people do is read my mind if I let my guard down.

Like the people from the White Queen’s days, she hates the heart-to-heart approach.

“Well, why not?” I respond to her frantic complaint. “Things can break, and those bonds were built to hold something five times their strength.”

“They are… Well, they are Na’ Halien. If I ever asked about them, inside this ship, I could get approached. No one would believe me, if I say I don’t know who they are. I’m not a very good liar.”

“I believe you, Lyle,” I say, and I feel her mind settle.

She knows I’m a lucky card.

Lyle breaks away from my arms and runs down the hallway, calling me to join after her. From many feet away, her flight of women appears, magically, surrounding her.

My training turns me off from this, and I simply coo to them all a good night song. I walk back to my chambers alone. I feel the presence of Lyle and her friends, somehow, inside the ship’s walls, at every turn I make.

TO CONTINUE THE ADVENTURE CLICK ON CHAPTER NINE: “THE LAST TIME THE SLAVE WAS NEAR” FROM THE RENEYT HOMEPAGE!