by Cally Black
Tootoopne visits the squad and talks to them about going to a ship. I get half of every sentence. I jump when Tootoopne turns to me. ‘Weku, understand?’ he asks.
‘Yes, Tootoopne,’ I say, never mind I don’t really, me just being too scared to look stupid.
‘Tell me,’ he says.
‘Go ship. Go fast,’ I whistle cos that’s all I got. I have no idea what it has to do with me.
Tootoopne nods. ‘Before here, what was your work?’
Thief and stowaway are not jobs I should say about even if I knew the whistles, so I say, ‘Make food,’ cos I know my way around a kitchen and storerooms.
‘Now you work for me?’ Tootoopne asks.
‘Yes, Tootoopne,’ I say, cos what the hell else do you say when a giant Garuwa asks you that?
Tootoopne stares. ‘Why?’
I don’t know what he wants me to say. He is way smarter than me. I think any answer will be wrong. I hold up two fingers. ‘No Tootoopne, no Weku,’ I say and drop both fingers. So at least he knows I think my survival depends on his.
He nods. ‘Learn more. We will talk again. Now we go. For the hive.’
I bob my head the way I’ve seen the Garuwa do and repeat, ‘Swa tu Tzaar.’ For the hive. Never mind my head is screaming at me, if you’re on a freighter you can hide, wait for the salvage, get back to Gub.
Helping Wooloo get ready, I ask him about when Tootoopne threw me off the landing. ‘Did you save me? Did you make air go big?’ I say.
He laughs, sha, sha, sha! Then he says, ‘You’ve asked before. I did not save you. You passed the test.’ Wooloo nudges me like I’m being silly, goes back to polishing his boots like he’s told me something I understand.
‘Old Garuwa not like me,’ I say, cos if it was a vote, my squad would be outnumbered, for sure.
‘The leaders want you dead. They think all humans are dangerous. But the hive saved you and they can’t argue with the hive.’ Wooloo stops and scratches his broad nose. He twists his head and stares at me, like maybe he’s looking to see something he didn’t see before. ‘I don’t know how Tootoopne knew the hive would save you.’
I frown. ‘Who is hive?’
He puts down his boot. ‘The hive is the hive.’ He waves a claw around the room. ‘The hive is she.’
‘The hive? Walls and floor and air?’ I ask.
‘The hive knows what’s good, and she likes you, little short-nose.’ He bats me across the back of the head with a wing. ‘I was surprised the hive didn’t cut you down the first time you entered.’
‘The hive is alive?’ I ask, and it’s obvious as, the warbling, the warmth, the love. I’m stupid for not seeing it sooner.
‘How else does she do such a fine job taking care of us all?’ Wooloo asks. ‘She has to think and feel.’ He snorts. ‘Tsa! I thought you knew. You hugged the floor like you knew. Your stinky human ships do not even self-repair. I have no idea how humans keep alive in those cold things.’
‘Sha!’ I say and bob my head. ‘Hard for human.’ When I slide my hand up the wall, it warms and gets spongy under my touch, tingles my hand with messages of love. If I had my own little hive for just me and Gub, that would be a perfect world.
Wooloo tells me they feed the hive with the humans’ white powder and space rocks, and she feeds them things like the green food and builds all this. He waves his claws at the lounge room.
‘Little Garuwa, live in this hive?’ I ask.
He flicks his head down and away, the Garuwa action for ‘no’. ‘Mostly in another hive, for families, not squads.’
I mime a baby in my arms. ‘What is little Garuwa called?’ I ask.
He gives me the whistle for baby or child.
‘Wooloo?’ I whistle and study his pale grey-blue eyes. His funny fat nose. I think back to Gub, little chunky feet together, pasta bits and crackers in his lap, and I can’t see his face. I can see his big dark eyes, I can see his button nose, flat on the end, but I can’t put them together in a face no more. And it’s giving me a sick-cold panic that it means he’s dead. That’s why I gotta ask, and keep asking till I know.
‘Did you find, on ship of Weku, human baby in kitchen?’
He looks down and away. ‘I never sweep the kitchens. The younger Garuwa do the kitchens. Ask Teeka.’
I bob my head.
‘What was this human baby to you?’ Wooloo asks as he stands me up, checks my jacket is done up, and hands me my helmet.
‘All things,’ I whistle. ‘My heart.’
WOUL TOOR
(COME OUT)
I’m bundled in the back of a dark, round flyer like maybe they expect me to do something useful, never mind I’m all rubber-leg shaking, as we approach a freighter that’s identical to the one I was on.
On screen, the weapons slam open a hole in the landing bay doors of Starweaver Janie’s Got a Gun. Garuwa flyers are left bunched in the airlock, waiting for the emergency seal, then we burst into the landing bay, all blams and slams against the humans waiting there.
We leave our mini-flyers and squad up, and scenes from the Layla punch at my memory. McVeigh’s rag-bag face crumpling, doors shattering, Gub’s round eyes looking up at me like I’m his whole world, my Lazella on the floor, her face a mask. I squash my helmet on, grip the plastic dinosaur. Tears roll down my face, but I stay behind Tootoopne as he rides his tall black wave of death through the freighter towards the flight deck, and even as I’m looking around for vents, for grates, for a chance to slip away, I do what the rear Garuwa say.
And I jump at every blam and shrink at every scream.
This is not just about getting minerals and food, or they would’ve just taken Levels Two and Three. We’re heading out, sweeping every level. Killing every level. Heading for Six.
On Four, I spot the door to the toilets and see Teeka is looking the other way. I take off, slam the door against the wall behind it. Teeka’s whistling behind me, but I don’t stop. I’m into a stall, locking the door, then hauling at the wet-wall panel. It’s done up tight. Up on the toilet, leaping to grab the edge of the vent grate, balancing on the top of the stall wall, struggling to haul the grate loose. Below me, Teeka is smacking the toilet door open with the butt of her weapon. She hauls me down, whistling, ‘No, Weku!’ and shoves me back out of the cubicle, into a man wearing engineering grey making a break from the stall next door.
‘Run!’ I scream. I’ve led Teeka to him!
Teeka slams my back and her weapon blams in my ear as I fall, right on the man’s boots. My helmet knocks into the wall, twisting, so I can’t see, but Teeka has my collar, hauling me up again, shoving me forwards. Me, blindly stepping on the man’s body, boots slipping on the floor beside him, the stench of meat. I hit the door frame, grabbing at my helmet as Teeka shoves me up the corridor after the squad.
‘Swa tu Tzaar!’ she whistles, negging bad as. No way she’ll take her eyes off me again.
A Garuwa lies dead on the floor ahead. A burn line up his throat and across his helmet, smoking. The stench of burning. I gag.
My eyes are squeezed shut more than open, and dread sets in heavy, like the gravity of the outer levels. When the flight deck door falls and Tootoopne calls me, I stumble to him and salute.
He’s hunched, dragging his feet. Garuwa are space-creatures, not built for the gravity that comes with planets and Level Six.
‘Tell them to come out,’ he whistles between breaths heavy as. So this is what he wants me for. To tell the flight deck crew what to do. To negotiate with them, maybe.
I salute again and turn towards the flight deck. ‘Hold your fire!’ I yell.
The shooting stops. ‘Who are you?’ a male voice asks.
‘The whole ship has been taken. Throw down your weapons and come out,’ I say, lines straight from a movie.
‘What assurances can you give for our safety?’ the man asks.
I don’t have a clue what Tootoopne wants. I hope his deal is simple enough for me to tell the captain. ‘Throw o
ut your weapons and come out. The Garuwa want to negotiate.’
Four weapons clatter in the doorway and the noise of it sends me fast-skittering back down the corridor.
A middle-aged man comes out. Behind him are two female pilots in uniform, and a young man probably not twenty yet. They line up across the flight deck doorway, hands in the air. ‘Lower your weapons, we want to negotiate!’ the middle-aged man yells and I guess he’s the captain.
‘Weku!’ Tootoopne whistles. I run forward and salute. ‘Who is the boss one?’ he whistles.
‘Are you its little bitch?’ the young man whispers, making me twist to look. He scowls like he wants to get me, like I’m doing something to him. And it stalls me, cos he’s only a bit older than me and he’s angry as, and whispering like he knows I whisper. I wanna tell him that I’m in the shit too, just doing what I’m told to stay alive, cos of Gub.
‘Weku!’ Tootoopne whistles.
‘What is your name, Captain?’ I ask, looking at the older man. He has a square forehead and swept-back hair like a movie star.
‘Captain Remy Tau of Starweaver Shipping,’ the middle-aged man responds.
I nod my head at him, turn back to Tootoopne and salute. ‘Tau is leader,’ I whistle. ‘What do you say to him?’
Tootoopne whistles and weapons blam and when I turn, only the captain is standing.
TSO DEE
(DID GOOD)
The young man and the two women are folded around holes in their chests, sliding back into blood spray, into the flight deck. Him, head twisted up, looking back, eyes squinting right at me, like I did it. Like I fired the weapon!
I stagger back, pull off my helmet. Hanging onto the wall, I vomit and choke.
Why! Why have me call them out?
The captain wails, then screams.
Someone whistles, ‘Tootoopne!’ And the captain’s hand passes by me.
I vomit again and gasp for air, but it tastes of burning and blood and death. Hits me in the guts. I spit the air back out.
Tootoopne turns and strides back down the corridor. ‘Weku!’ he whistles as he passes. ‘You did good.’ Teeka grabs me and shoves me after him.
Good? What the hell did I do?
I pull my helmet on and stumble. I’m dragged along, tucked in the back of the mini-flyer and heading back to the hive, before I even know it.
Tears run down my face. My body jerks and shakes like it’s shutting down. I’m struggling to breathe. Just breathe. In. Out. The loudest sound I’ve ever heard.
I didn’t know. I thought Tootoopne was getting me to call out the Sixers so it would be different. That he had a plan for me to talk to them. But the arse just has me here to help him cut off captains’ hands!
Back at the squad rooms, I crawl onto a couch and curl in a ball. I pull out the headless dinosaur and hold it against my lips. I didn’t know they’d kill everyone. Me, just going along with it. Just calling them out.
If they’d found Gub, he’d be dead. I was stupid to think they would’ve left him alone. But he can’t be dead. He’s my one thing. My one thing in all the universe. My rainbow and my star.
When the squad has finished whistling about the raid, Tweetoo comes and picks me up. I push her off, but she don’t let go, she holds me tighter, crooning softly like she knows I’m hurting. She takes me to the washroom, pulls off my boots and helmet and pushes me under the shower. She peels off my jacket and shirt, me snatching Headless from the floor and squeezing him tight, as she takes off my trousers and socks. She wraps me up in a large sheet, carries me to her bed, pulls the cover over me and leaves me there.
When I wake in the night, she’s sleeping next to me, her breathing slow and regular. I squirm my head closer until a dull ‘bud-bud, bud-bud’ reaches my ears. Her heart’s like mine. Just like my Lazella’s. Our hearts side by side, so alive in the darkness. Why does she kill?
TOOTOOPNE KWEE SWAL
(TOOTOOPNE KNOWS EVERYTHING)
The next morning, my uniform sits clean and folded on the warm floor. I pull it on and pace circles in the lounge as squad members wake up and stretch and get food. I’m trying to figure out a way out of this. My guts are twisted to shit from what went down on the freighter, my body still shaking. If Tootoopne’s just gonna be dragging me along to get the Sixers out to die, if this is my life with no hope for getting back to Gub, then better to line me up and kill me too.
Tweetoo says there is an after-battle meeting but I whistle, ‘No!’ She drags me off the landing anyway.
At the meeting I stand, jiggling, as Tootoopne talks to the squad about how the food and minerals will help the hive. He talks about the Garuwa who got shot by a human. Wanoo. She was kind to me at the start, and young, a friend of Teeka. Tāmāde.
Tootoopne talks about how more and more human ships come into their space, and how they worry for their hives if more come. He talks about how humans fire on anything in their path. How humans take the minerals the hives need to grow. He talks about how much good we do protecting all the hives of their children.
I never thought space could belong to anyone. Space is just there. Land, planets, minerals, that’s what humans want, but space is empty. It’s what you travel through to get someplace else, unless your people live in hives that float in space, I suppose.
My aunt and Gub and me, we weren’t invaders of Garuwa space. We just took a job on a passing ship so we wouldn’t starve, but maybe Starweaver Shipping are invaders. Maybe those captains know they’re pushing into Garuwa space.
Tootoopne’s eyes find mine and his large brown lids slide down over his glassy grey eyes, as if he’s pleased.
He thanks me for saving lives by drawing the humans out. I hang my head. How can he thank me for something that’s killing me? I can’t do this again.
Over the big meal waiting back at the squad lounge, the other squad members thank me, like I’d made it safer for them to go near the flight deck. Tootoopne joins us for the meal, and I move away. I think maybe he’s a puppet master, and I’m his little puppet. I stay with Teeka and the younger squad members, never mind they’re quiet as after losing Wanoo. Teeka chasing me through the toilet saved her from the ambush that killed Wanoo, and helped her find that engineer, so she’s not as mad as she should be. She tells the others that I was scared and trying to hide. Better they think that, than I was trying to escape.
Tootoopne gives me a side-eye look, like he knows I’m staying away from him. Like he knows I don’t wanna be his puppet, but I need him to wanna keep me around, otherwise I’m good as dead.
He knows everything.
SWA TU TZAAR
(FOR THE HIVE)
I’m not happy to go back to training but I use it to learn more whistles, and I get up early to cook breakfast for the squad. Anything to keep the squad talking, cos surviving, and not being Tootoopne’s little puppet, depends on me understanding what’s going on. And for as long as I can, I keep out of his way.
I talk to Teeka, who has lots of clean-up jobs. She likes me to help. I ask why the words for ‘she’ and ‘he’ are the same. I confuse her for a while acting like a perv, trying to mime out male and female. But cos she’s young maybe, she gets it and laughs. Turns out I was wrong about half of them. Everyone is female until they have children, then they get called mother. There’s no males in this hive. I ask Teeka why, but she don’t know.
‘They’re not so useful as females,’ Teeka says and laughs like she made a joke. She hands me another bowl to wipe and stack. ‘They are slower. Eat more,’ she says.
‘So Tootoopne is she?’ I ask.
Teeka bobs her head. ‘Tsa! Of course,’ she says, like maybe I’m stupid not to see it. ‘Tootoopne is mother. Mother to three!’ She says ‘mother’ like it’s something powerful.
Lazella was a mother. She took me in when my parents died and she kept me and Tamiki safe with a slow-burning power. That’s the thing that makes me sad the most when I think of her gone too soon. My aunt giving up for us, and her
never living to enjoy easier times. The three of us living off food meant for one. And my aunt never making friends cos of her preferring to eat meals in her cabin, and us both waiting till little Gub had eaten before we shared the rest between us.
Where might Tootoopne keep her children? Or maybe they’re already in a squad somewhere. Tootoopne would raise fighters for sure.
‘Teeka,’ I whistle quietly. I put a bowl on the stack and lean close. ‘Did you see a baby human on the ship where I was? In the kitchen?’
Teeka looks down and away. A little swing of her nose. ‘Those cold wrecks are no place for anything small,’ she says.
‘Tsa!’ I agree. ‘But did you?’
‘Never seen a human baby,’ she says, and that’s good. Cos if a human baby is something they’ve never seen, then it’s something they’ve never killed. So Gub stayed nice and quiet like I told him. But when the salvage ships came to haul the Layla back to Dios for repairs, did he stay quiet then too? Did anyone find him?
I catch Tweetoo with her ear to the hive wall, and I put my ear against it too, down the wall a bit under hers. She’s been way nicer to me since the raid. There’s a gurgling, like the hive’s belly is grumbling.
Tweetoo tells me Garuwa are miners. That’s why their weapons take things apart. They were made to work on rocks and minerals, not for pointing at meat.
She says there are lots of hives that are homes for lots of Garuwa and the hives all need minerals to stay alive. Space rocks, dust and local planets give them all they need. Sometimes the hives collect it right out of space by themselves, but mostly the squads bring it in, break it up for the hives. The first wars against another species taught them that armed hives, like this one, around the edges of their space were useful. I don’t ask what happened to the other species. I figure they didn’t have defences against big blasty mining guns.
