Ulysses

“Walk with me,” Ulysses said.

“You knew I’d be here?” I narrowed my eyes. “Or was I followed?”

“Would you believe me if I said I knew you would be here?” he asked.

“This waystation is the size of an imperial titan, so no.”

“Walk with me,” Ulysses repeated.

The Pirate King wasn’t alone. Lucia leaned against the railing behind him wearing an old Ligotti robe and a caramel scarf. Classic Hadrian style. She didn’t pay attention to our conversation, but she lurked in the rear as we sauntered around the docks, her hands never resting close to her concealed weapons.

“You know, Lucia attempted a similar escape when she first joined the fleet,” Ulysses said. “She had second thoughts.”

“I haven’t even entertained a first thought about joining you,” I replied.

“If you think being adversarial is going to get you on that frigate over there,” Ulysses nodded towards it, “then I’m afraid you’re sorely mistaken. It doesn’t have to be like this, Miss Greymoor.”

“Then let’s square with each other,” I demanded. “What’s your angle, Ulysses? I’ve been wondering this since the moment you’ve arrived. What benefit do you have holding me hostage?”

“You’re underestimating your own worth, Miss Greymoor,” Ulysses laughed. “I have high aspirations, unfinished business in the imperium. You are the key to achieving them. Do you need to know anything else?”

“Yes! You’ve completely ignored any specifics.”

“And you shall have none of them until the time is right.”

Ulysses touched the nearby railing and leaned over it. He left himself vulnerable to me; I could have just pushed him off, even before Lucia drew her weapon and cut me down. But Ulysses didn’t care that I was there. He enjoyed the breeze, the dangerous angle at which he dangled over the edge, like a stunt man ready to perform his greatest trick.

“My people,” he said. “You call them pirates. I call them my people. My people are lost, Miss Greymoor. We traverse the stars looking for our homes. Some of us have looked for so long the fleet is our home now. But that’s just an illusion. My people can’t live in an illusion. The Sunless Fleet won’t last forever.”

“What are you talking about?”

“My people look to me for answers,” Ulysses sighed. “I can’t provide all the answers. Sometimes, I can provide none at all. And yet they still follow me. To their deaths, they will. All they demand is that I tirelessly work to bring them home.”

Ulysses leaned back from the brink. He stared at me.

“Have you felt that weight, Miss Greymoor?” he asked. “The weight of millions of homeless souls, who think this voyage will mean something in the end? That it will take them or their families to some promised land, some paradise?”

“No. No, I haven’t,” I replied. “Why are you telling me this?”

“You asked me to square with you, and so I have,” Ulysses answered. “My intentions are to bring my people home. The why and the how, you may never find out, but that is my ultimate goal. And for that, I will need you, Miss Greymoor.”

“That’s a lot of faith common pirates have put in a king.”

“Back in the old days, the very old days, it was said that kings derived their power from the common man, the belief in a righteous claim to the throne. We are not so different from those times.”

“Do you have a home to return to then?” I asked. “When you take your people home, where does the king go?”

Ulysses blinked. He looked at me as if no one had asked him that question before.

“I do have a home,” he said. “A very different home than what you can imagine. But also similar. A wife. A son. A good home.”

That was an unexpected admission. I couldn’t tell if he was lying, but Ulysses could not maintain eye contact with me when he mentioned his wife and son. I hated that I could not avoid being sentimental.

“And to get home, you absolutely need me.”

“That’s right,” he said. “If you want to leave, I won’t stop you. There’s a command console to the frigate that you saw earlier. The passcode to the airlock is nine seven eight one. You’re lucky I was here to intercept you.”

“There are thousands of ships just at this parking terminal,” I scoffed. “You expect me to believe that you knew exactly which one I would take?”

Ulysses remained cryptic. He bowed.

“The king of kings knows every subject.”

I gazed back at the frigate parked just a few levels above me. Nine seven eight one. Four numbers, ostensibly, separated me from leaving this waystation and its people behind. I thought about everything, about Nightwing, its crew, about Friede’s sense of fashion, about Alexis’s obsession with an intergalactic popstar, and about Ulysses, whose home, I imagined, lay more distant and out of reach than anyone else’s in the Sunless Fleet.

Fuck.

“Look,” I sighed. “I’m not gonna pretend I bought all that bullshit you just told me, but you probably have tripwires and booby traps waiting for me on that frigate if I were to make my escape anyway. I wouldn’t make half a parsec before the engines failed. So I’m stuck here, waiting for you to use me as you see fit.”

“You clearly ate it all up,” Ulysses reached into his coat pocket. “And Diane wanted me to hand this over to you.”

He handed me a slip of paper. Written in indelible black ink was a single message and an address.

“Come see me now.”