by Lauren Esker
"I don't know how!"
"Here. Look." He cupped his hands again, rolling them as if shaping a large snowball. This time the light was aqua, coalescing and intensifying between his palms. "Go on, make one of your own."
Claudia copied him. The mental "push" was easier this time. She imagined light, and light bloomed between her hands. She made it red, then green, then settled to a deep copper color, like the gold of late evening.
"That's it." Skara banished his own and held out his hands. "Throw it to me."
She tried, but it vanished immediately as soon as she started to wind up for the throwing motion. "Damn it!"
"Try again." Skara grinned and shook his head. "You know, I never realized what good practice this is. No wonder our trainers never discouraged us from doing it."
Our trainers sank into the back of her brain to be dissected later, but for now she was focused on getting the light-ball to stick around. She moved her hands back and forth, experimenting with how to keep it floating and glowing in front of her. When she thought she had it, she tried a gentle toss. It bounced into the air, flickered, blinked out, and rematerialized in Skara's hands.
"Okay, so, here's what you're trying to do," Skara said, bouncing the light-ball in his palm as he spoke. "It's going to disappear when it leaves you. It won't last long. So you 'catch' it by matching velocity and color, and manifesting your own to match, so yours replaces mine just as mine disappears. From the outside, it looks like it's all one throw, but really it's two different balls. Ready?"
"No," Claudia said, but she crouched and held out her hands in preparation for a catch.
"I'll send it slow," Skara promised. He tossed it gently, as one might throw to a toddler.
Claudia stared at it so hard her eyes watered. Skara had slowed it down somehow, so it floated toward her in a slow-motion arc. She tried to manifest her own light-ball over the top of it. There was a flickering double-vision effect, and in the middle of it somewhere, Skara's ball vanished and she was holding her own between her hands.
"Nicely done. Does slowing it down help?" Skara asked.
"It does, yeah." She rolled the light around in her hands the way Skara had. It was a strange feeling, because there was no feeling—the ball of light had no weight, no mass, no friction against her palms. But she could also, somehow, sense that it was there. The cuffs, warm against her skin, told her so.
Skara was right. This simple child's game was a good way of learning to interact with the cuffs, the same way that children played games of catch to learn hand-eye coordination.
She tossed it and pretended to catch it, then threw it back to Skara, who caught it effortlessly—or at least gave an impression that he'd done so. As hard as she was watching, she couldn't see the moment when it changed over from her cuffs to his—though she thought she could feel it, like a soap bubble popping.
"See? Necessary training, not goofing off. The more in tune you are with your cuffs, the better you'll be able to handle yourself out there. Here."
He tossed the ball to her, but as she reached out, it suddenly split into two balls that puffed out into nothingness on either side of her hands, leaving her holding only the one ball she'd just generated and the afterimage of the two vanishing balls on her retinas.
"Hey! That's not fair!"
Skara's eyes were dancing again. "You gotta watch for the changes."
"Is that right," she muttered. She threw the ball back, sending a mental command. As it arced toward him, it split into four.
But without even a visible flicker, the four balls appeared to angle toward Skara's hands, where he caught them one at a time and molded them back into one ball with showy little flourishes.
"Show-off," she accused, laughing.
"You're predictable, that's all. I do two, you do four—it's the logical next step."
"Predictable, am I?" She molded a glowing pink ball and threw it at him. This time, she had something very specific in mind. The ball morphed, for just an instant, into a clumsily shaped, pink cartoon unicorn with its horn pointed at Skara before it was engulfed by his unadorned pink ball and dropped into his hands.
"Nice one," Skara said, grinning. "Didn't see that coming."
He conjured another ball of light, but let it evaporate as something on the console beeped. Skara's bright grin faded to an expression that was suddenly all business.
"What was that?" Claudia asked as he dropped into the pilot's seat, her heart hammering. "Problems?"
"No. The jump drive's charged." He glanced up at her. "How do you feel? Ready for showtime?"
"... Now?"
"Why not now?"
"I—I guess I—" Thought I'd have more time. But Skara didn't have much time at all. She buckled herself into the copilot seat. "You know I don't have a space passport, right, Skara? Are they going to send us back if I don't have the right, um, credentials?"
"If it goes how it did the last time, they'll scan us when we come in to make sure we aren't carrying a giant bomb or something, and then we'll dock and check in with the local authorities and get station passes. Normally we wouldn't be allowed off the station." His grin flashed briefly. She was positive he'd taken another hit of stimulants and who knew what else; he had that vibrating, manic look to him. "You ready?"
"No."
"Great! Brace for jump."
Hyperspace was impossible to truly brace for, but at least she was getting used to it. When the blurred disorientation cleared and stabilized, they were cruising toward a pair of stars, one reddish and the other sharp and white. Other lights winked around them, too bright to be stars. Spaceships? Stations? It was an inhabited star system, she thought, and her heart tightened in a clutch of pure delight. She was about to visit an entire alien city.
Skara blew out a breath. Her delight vanished and she gave him a quick, worried look. "You okay?"
"Fine," he said through clenched teeth, head bowed. He raised it after a moment. Sweat glistened on his forehead, but he gave her a shaky smile. "Let's get in line for scanning. So far, so good. Our ship is broadcasting a signal that identifies it as a merchant vessel registered to a small trading planet called Efri, coming in with a cargo of designer clothing."
"That'll work great, up until they find out our cargo hold is empty."
"We won't be here long enough for them to find out. Hopefully. Better than knowing we're pirates, eh?"
"We're not pirates!"
His grin, this time, showed a flash of teeth. "We're traveling in a stolen ship broadcasting a faked registration, with two prisoners on board, to pull off a heist. What would you call it?"
She didn't have a good answer for that. Also, she'd temporarily forgotten the prisoners. "Are they going to search the ship?"
"Hopefully not."
"Hopefully?"
"We can refuse a search," Skara said. As he talked to her, he was also piloting the ship, and they had now drawn near enough to one of the light sources that she could see it was a cluster of multiple lights, winking and glimmering. The planet itself came into view in the upper edge of the screen. It was a swirled blue-and-white marble, not too different from Earth. "Maybe not if we plan to stay for days, but for the length of time I expect to be down there, it shouldn't be a problem."
"What if they do?"
"Worst case, if they force the issue, we can cut and run. That's one reason I wanted to make sure we went in with a charged jump drive. Or else we steal a ship to escape in."
"Skara!"
"What? It's called improvisation."
"You're nuts."
"I told you not to bring your stuff on the ship."
She poked him in the shin with her toe, not hard enough to hurt. "Yeah, but I bet you're glad I did, aren't you? Considering that your whole plan turned out to hinge on it. What would you have done if I'd left my bag behind?"
"I would have improvised."
"Uh-huh."
The space station continued to grow in their viewscreen. It reminded Claudia
of a complex origami structure made of silver paper, all planes and angles, winking with lights. There was other traffic around it, ships of various shapes and sizes, all on their own flight paths like planes around an airport.
"We're being scanned now," Skara said.
"Should I do anything?" She found herself whispering, though she wasn't sure if it made a difference.
"No. They're just checking for certain kinds of contraband or weapons. I have the ship's guns powered down and locked, because they're checking for that too."
"We have guns?"
"Not very good ones," Skara said absently. His eyes flicked back and forth, but there was nothing in front of him that she could see; the readouts were visible only to him. "Okay, we're cleared to dock."
The station grew in the screen until it was all she could see, endlessly complex with its folds and angles and balconies and exhaust ports. She even glimpsed a small group of people on a glassed-in balcony looking down at them, with a little kid vigorously waving. It was such a very human scene that she caught herself waving back, even though they couldn't see her, before Skara maneuvered the ship into an open port in the side of the station.
Darkness closed around them, lit with rows of white and red running lights. The lights led them out into a vast docking bay, where their ship touched down. Clunks and shudders ran through the ship; Claudia could feel them under her feet.
"We're being grappled down," Skara explained. "And ... done. We're in." He pulled his hands out of the piloting holds and leaned back in his seat, closing his eyes.
"Time to turn off the fasten-seatbelt sign?" He didn't react. She undid her safety harness and swiveled around so she could put a hand on his arm. "Skara?"
"I'm fine," he said without opening his eyes.
He didn't look fine; he looked, as was usual for him these days, pasty and grayish and unslept. But when he opened his eyes, the familiar spark of mischief danced there. "Ready to go?"
"I think so." She stood up and gave her hair one final, nervous tug, then brushed her hands down the clothes Skara had helped her pick out from the ship's stores—a loose, flowing shirt and pants in neutral colors, and a pair of boots that had adjusted, rather alarmingly, to fit her feet. "Is this what they wear in Rhuad?"
"It won't be highly stylish, but it's generic enough that you shouldn't stand out. What else ... oh. Ha." The laugh was devoid of humor. "Almost forgot the most important thing. Give me a minute."
Claudia started to ask what, but she didn't have to. A brown flush spread over his purple skin, traveling slowly and leaving changes in its wake. His swirling tattoo-like patterns disappeared; his features began to change, cheekbones lifting, jaw narrowing. A similar flush, this time of green, spread through his hair.
The gradual, subtle change was, in its way, more fascinating than watching him sprout wings. She stared, fascinated, as his limbs grew more slender, his body slightly taller. When he opened his eyes, it was startling to find that they were exactly the same color, as green as they had been before. She was too captivated by all of it to realize at first that he'd changed something else about himself, even beyond the brown skin and green hair.
"Whew. That was harder than I—" He noticed her staring at him. "What?"
"You're a woman."
"I'm Selinn. It's much easier for me to shift and hold the shape if I'm emulating a specific person."
"What if we meet someone there who knew her?"
"She left when she was a child. It's not likely."
"Yes—but—" She didn't have any good objections for why he couldn't do it. It was just ... strange.
"Does this bother you?" he asked. He sounded genuinely curious.
"Yes," she admitted. "Yes, it does. A little."
Skara touched the side of her face lightly. "It's still me underneath it all. No matter what I look like."
"I know. It just takes some getting used to."
"Here. Give me a minute." He closed his eyes again. There was some slight rearranging of his face, of his body, before he opened his eyes. "There. Now I'm Selinn's male twin. Better?"
"Er ... it's still weird. Sorry. I'll adjust, I know I will. I just got used to having you be you."
He gave her one of his complex looks, quizzical and fascinated and a little bit soft, made all the more complicated because it was on features that weren't his. "You're one of the few people who's ever seen my real face enough to recognize it since I was a child. The only one outside my old training group, I think. That's ... weird."
"That's sad."
"It's life," he said, and then she could see him gathering himself, putting his game face on. "Okay. Cover stories. You can be—hmm—Claadi. That's close enough to a Rhuadhi name that it shouldn't sound too odd to them. Symbionts are called riders, and the process of getting one is called Synergy. Yellow is the color of officialdom on most of Rhuad. Yellow uniforms and yellow buildings means cops. Purple is the color of the sanctuaries. Got all that?"
"Riders. Yellow. Purple. Claadi." Her head whirled; her voice seemed to be coming to her from a long ways away. I'm pulling off a heist. Me.
She forced herself to tune back in, to find Skara still talking. "As for why we've been offworld, if anyone asks, we can be ... hmm ... okay, we belong to a trading family from the West Isles—that's the same backwater part of the planet where Selinn came from. The odds you're going to meet someone else from there are pretty low. All you really need to know about it is that it's barren and rocky and the main industry is algae farming."
"Algae farming?"
"Yeah, they supply industrial protein to the big cities. Trust me, no one's going to ask you questions about life on an algae farm, let alone wonder why you left."
"And you just came up with all this off the top of your head."
Another quick grin. "Oh, trust me, if I really wanted to, I could tell you all about our fake life back on the algae farm, and this is coming from a guy who's never set foot on an algae farm in his life. I could tell the Rhuadhi about your six sisters who used to bully you growing up, and my big brother who died in an algae-skimming accident, leaving my poor father devastated after Mom left him for a portaling salesman. That's when the two of us got together and decided to get offworld to go join your cousins in Efri system before you found yourself married to an algae farmer with eleven babies. And don't even get me started on the girl my dad had picked out for me."
Now her head was spinning in earnest. Six sisters—or was it eleven? "How the heck am I supposed to remember all that?"
"Ha. You're not." Skara took her in his arms and brushed her lips with his. He was taller and more slender in his Rhuadhi guise, less compact and muscular than the Skara she was used to. "Actually, trying to remember all of that ahead of time is just going to get in your way."
"Oh, thanks." She frowned up at him. "So why confuse me with it?"
"It's an example. A good cover story is like—you have fiction on your planet, right? Books, holos?"
"Sure."
"Okay. It's like telling any good story. The person you're pretending to be has a history and a life and a family. For something like this, where personal details aren't likely to tip off anyone that you're you, the closer you stick to your actual life, the easier it'll be to remember. Do you have brothers and sisters? Parents at home? Were you an outdoorsy kid or a nerd growing up? That kind of thing."
"One sister. Older. I lived in a little town in Louisiana—wait, if this a sneaky way of trying to find out about me, you could just ask."
Skara kissed her nose. "You're cute when you're flustered."
Her playful mood faded. "Skara, I don't know if I can do this."
"Sure you can. You're gonna be good at this. Is there anything else you need to know about Rhuad before we get this started? Last chance to ask questions."
"Everything," she said plaintively.
"Hang on. I have an idea. Query your cuffs."
"... what?"
"Your cuffs. You can use them to
connect to this ship's computer, and possibly the station computer as well, even though it's not meant for it."
"How?" she asked blankly.
"Here." Skara curled his hand loosely around her wrist, just above the cuff, so their cuffs clicked together.
It was like a directory menu unfolded in her head. Claudia let out an involuntary squeak.
"Sorry, I didn't know you didn't know how to do that. I keep forgetting you've never used these before the last couple of days."
Now the menu started opening up options. She didn't see it as a visual representation so much as she just knew: here was file storage, here were images, here was—
"Aha," Skara murmured. "Okay, there's your connection to the Payout, all right? The ship's database is a little sparse because Rhuad is off the main galactic network, but the ship is also getting basic information from the station, so you should be able to answer most of your questions this way."
"Holy crap, it's brain-Google," she murmured. Or more like brain-Wikipedia. It was almost scary, the amount of information at her fingertips. She opened a random link and found herself confronted with list of prices of various commodities, a sort of interstellar stock ticker. Another link, and she was looking at a map of the station, with all the levels labeled and diagrammed in zoomable detail. Find us, she thought, with no idea if it would work, but it instantly zoomed in, and there they were in what she discovered was Berth 229-Blue.
"Skara to Claudia, hello."
"... right." She blinked, coming back. "That's ... wow. Everyone can do that all the time?"
"There'll be different tech on Rhuad. You'll see people using handheld devices for the most part, more like the ones on your world. Hopefully you can get one, but if you can't, just try to pretend the cuffs are jewelry, and maybe they'll let you keep them. They're not that familiar with Galatean tech here—oh, that reminds me."
He leaned down and fiddled with something underneath the ship's console, and came up with a pair of yellow chips. He handed one to her. Claudia took it curiously; it was like a triangular, poker-chip-sized piece of yellow plastic.
"Rhuadhi ID cards," Skara explained. "Found 'em when I was hotwiring the ship earlier. They had a whole stash underneath there. Apparently our bounty hunter friends weren't idle when they were here picking up our bounty. I wouldn't be surprised if they were thinking about a heist of their own; who wouldn't be? Well ..." He twirled the card. "Their loss is our gain. As for your cover story, just leave the details as vague as you can. If you tell them too much, it'll be too easy to check."
