Ryz wouldn’t ask her any more about that. He didn’t need to—he could hear her pain. He started to ask what she was, then hesitated and changed his mind. “Can you see me?” he asked instead.
“A little. There’s just little slits between us. But I can see a bit of you.”
This cheered Ryz. He wondered if he should take off his bandages. How badly burned was he? He already felt the cooling sensation of his body’s natural healing secretion sliding over the wound on his shoulder. His eyes should be repairing soon as well.
“I have to get out of here,” he said. “I have to get back to my planet.” He tried not to think about the fact that it was left completely vulnerable now.
“What are you?” the other inmate asked. “I … I’ve never seen hands like these.”
He felt her fingers on his and realized that he had unconsciously reached toward her. His slim secondary hand was through the slats and surrounded by her own warm hands.
And, in that moment of vulnerability, blind and imprisoned, Ryz told the truth he had never spoken aloud before. “I don’t know what I am.”
She didn’t gasp, as he’d expected. Didn’t question. Just continued stroking his fingers in silence as more words poured out of him, “My mother was the queen of the Ritel. She was a perfect example of her race. But she abdicated her throne, abruptly, and married my father.” A long pause hung between them. Into the gap tumbled all of Ryz’s memories, the brief glimpses of his father, the torment he endured at school when they talked about what he could possibly be. The words trickled out, every breath painful as he went on.
“They called my father ‘The Broken One,’” he said, listening to the echo of it through the translator. It sounded no better in her language. “He was weak, could barely stand, couldn’t breathe properly. His body was strange and lacking. His face was misshapen. The Ritel couldn’t believe that their beautiful queen could love him.”
Though Ryz had never admitted it, he couldn’t believe that his mother had loved his father either. As he admitted this to himself, the old shame rose again in his throat. He knew, better than any of them, what weaknesses his father had passed on to him.
She mumbled. The translator said, in his language, “The Broken One.”
He started to pull back his hand, but she held fast, stopping him, holding tight to his three fingers. “Everybody’s broken,” she said softly, “somehow.”
* * *
If he hadn’t heard the scrape of the door, if he hadn’t felt the shift in the pressure of the ship, he would never have awoken. But Ryz had spent his youth sleeping lightly, waiting for someone to pull him out of bed or throw something at him as he slept. He was used to waking quickly.
He heard rough breathing and something falling. It sounded like a struggle. “Delta?” he whispered. “Are you there? I need your eyes.”
Only silence answered him. The realization took his breath away: it was her he could hear struggling. Ryz pulled himself onto his knees, tearing the bandages from his eyes. There was pain, but it was lost in his panic as he blinked, trying to see through the slats.
He was in a lab. Data readouts and glass beakers stood on stark black counters. Empty cages like his own lined the walls.
The struggle was over. Delta’s cage was open, the slats of its door limiting his view of the right side of the room.
A hulking creature stood at a counter just on the edge of Ryz’s line of vision. It was hairless, with smooth skin pinched into ridges all over its head and exposed hands. It was wearing a white lab coat, and its skin shone silvery-green in the artificial light. Delta was there. Ryz couldn’t see her, but he could hear the pained noises she was making. The creature was reaching inside a glass cabinet, extracting vials.
Ryz didn’t know what the creature would do with them, but he had to get out. He had to help her. Ignoring his burning eyes, he thrust his secondary hand through the slats again, running his slim fingers along the outside of the cell until he felt the locking mechanism. He found it easy to manipulate, and the cage door swung open. Ryz tumbled out, dropping to the floor and springing up just as the creature turned toward him. Its eyes were flat and rimmed like two wheels sunken into its face. Its mouth was small and active, accounting for the range of sounds he’d heard earlier.
Ryz was ready to strike, but as the creature turned, Ryz’s body involuntarily slowed. It was as if a sopping blanket had been draped around him. The creature’s face, wide and ridged, stared at him a moment. Defense mechanism, Ryz thought. It’s emitting a tone that’s disrupting the signals in my nervous system. He’d learned about many defenses, natural and artificial, at the Academy. Only now he couldn’t think what to do about it.
The creature was injecting Delta. Ryz could see the tips of her boots, twitching on the table. He tried harder to reach her, to make his limbs move. Her translation wedge sprung to life, and he heard her voice, soft, and its artificial one, much louder. “Let me go!”
The creature was wearing a wedge, too, and its voice, which sounded like grinding rocks, came through as, “I told you, I’m here to help. Just try to relax.”
Ryz recognized the voice. Cataris.
“Leave me alone!” Her voice was weak. “They already injected me today.”
“I know. That’s why I’m here. This will reverse the effects of the earlier injections.”
“Why would you do that?” Her voice dripped bitterness. “So you can begin a new series of experiments?”
Ryz saw, but couldn’t believe, a slump in the doctor’s shoulders. He read it as remorse. “You’ll go through no more experiments if I can help it.”
“So you’re here to kill me?” Ryz saw that her twitching had slowed. Was she dying? He pushed harder against the weight on him, yet still he couldn’t move.
Cataris shook his head, “I’m not a part of the COS. Not really. I work for another agency that has long suspected the COS is crossing lines that it shouldn’t. I’ve been embedded here for years, gathering intel on their activities.”
“You’re a spy?”
“More or less.”
“Who do you work for?” Delta asked.
“That’s not something I can say right now.”
“Why tell me at all then?”
“Because I’m leaving. I’m leaving and I want to free you before I go. You’ve suffered enough. And you”—he glanced over at Ryz—“you will too, if I leave you here.”
Cataris turned back to Delta. Ryz wished he could see more of her, to confirm that she was alright.
“You should start feeling stronger any time now,” Cataris said.
Ryz heard more strength in Delta’s voice as she spoke. “I—I am.” She sounded surprised.
“Listen, I know it’s going to be hard to trust me, but if you don’t, and we get caught, the COS will kill us all very quickly.” The tone in the doctor’s voice, the grave concern, implied he’d just spoken an absolute truth.
“Why…” she stopped. “Why would you help us?”
Cataris didn’t speak immediately. Instead, he slowly screwed the top back on the vial, slowly put it back in the cabinet, and slowly disposed of the syringe. Then he spoke, and his grinding voice was weary. “I’ve been on this vessel a long time. Years. I’ve seen so much—done so much. It’s time I start making amends for everything I’ve been involved in. I’m starting with you two.”
Delta seemed to accept that. “Let me sit up,” she said.
“Not until you’re steady.”
“I am.” her voice was stronger. “I am now. Your … antidote, or whatever it was … worked fine. I’m steady.” She held up a hand, and Ryz saw it reach triumphantly into the air, appearing over the beast’s left shoulder.
Later, he would remember that moment in time as if he were frozen inside a glacier. He still couldn’t move properly, and the sight of that hand—her hand—took away his energy to fight whatever it was that weighed him down.
Five fingers—a little strange extra one on ea
ch hand. Just like his own primary hands. And as she sat up, her eyes, her face, they were so familiar. Only, her secondary arms were missing, and her knees lacked the pivots his had. They seemed only to bend in a single direction.
Could she be a mutant Ritel, too? Broken like him and his father?
But there was no time to ask. Doctor Cataris turned to him again and spoke. “I’m sorry I had to sedate you, but we haven’t any time. We’ve arrived at Maro, and if we’re getting off this ship, we need to do it now.”
Ryz blinked. One word was echoing in his mind: “Maro? Why are we at Maro?”
“The COS has been updating them with the results of their experiments for some time now. I suspect they’re here to reveal the secrets of more species.”
The COS? Feeding information to the Maro? That must have been how they’d gotten so much knowledge of the Ritel. It made a disgusting sort of sense. “But why?”
“Because the COS has big plans,” Cataris said. They’re angling to destroy the monarchies and unite the different races under their own rule. I’ve been working with these monsters for a long time. I can see they’re planning on making a move soon. They’ve been using the Maro to fight their battles, and the Maro are nearly used up; so the time is coming for the COS to try to take power.”
“The Maro are nearly used up?” Ryz said, trying to understand what that meant.
“They’ve battled so many species, and come out victorious, though sometimes by very narrow margins. They have very few defenses left, few ships, few soldiers. There’s not even a defensive contingent on the planet today.” The doctor nodded. “That’s why I’m getting off here. An escape from Maro is much less complicated than one from other ports.” He put an arm out to support Delta as she sat on the edge of the counter.
Cataris was still talking, his translator grumbling along behind his own voice. “Destroying the Maro was all part of the COS plan, of course. The Maro themselves were far too powerful for the COS to challenge when they started this. The COS have promised the Maro special leadership once the new rule is established and paid them well for each monarchy they toppled. The COS let the Maro wear themselves out conquering everyone else. Victory always comes at a price, you know.”
A shudder shook the ship. They had landed. The thought that he was on the planet that had pushed the Ritel to the brink of extinction turned like a snake in Ryz’s stomach.
“Well, come on,” Cataris said, “if you’re coming. Here, help her. We need to go quickly.”
Just like that, Ryz could move again. Cataris had stopped the tone that interrupted his abilities, and he felt lighter now that the impeding waves were gone. The blanket had been lifted free. Delta seemed to share his newfound freedom, and he realized the doctor had been repressing her struggles with the same mechanism. Ryz felt shy as he slid an armset around her for support and followed the doctor out of the lab.
The hallways were darkened, and whatever terrors Ryz had imagined were absent for the time being. The air outside the lab was slightly different, heavier somehow, and Ryz felt more confident as his lungs increased their effort. This is how he was accustomed to breathing.
But Delta had begun to gasp. Without a word, Cataris reached into his pocket and held out two small devices on the open palm of a hand more delicate than Ryz expected. Delta took one and expertly adjusted it around her nose. Immediately, she began to breathe easier. Cataris offered the other to Ryz, but he shook his head. “I’m fine,” he said.
“Take it anyway,” Cataris shrugged. “I’m not likely to need it.” He tapped two gills on his neck as Ryz slipped the device into his pocket.
“Follow me.” The doctor gestured forward, and they made their way deeper into the ship.
As they walked, Ryz realized he still had a bit of gauze clinging to his right temple. Delta noticed it, too. She reached up and removed it with ease. Her misshapen hand was warm against his skin, and he smiled his thanks to her.
Cataris led them into a small anteroom with a door at the other end. Though the symbols on the door were unreadable to Ryz, the stench told him exactly where it led. He wasn’t surprised when it opened onto a garbage bay, piled with the detritus of the ship’s long weeks in space.
Automated scoops were pulling through the room in predictable patterns. They pushed the piles out of garbage ports in the side of the ship, dropping their loads into carts on the hangar floor. The carts took the loads and dumped them into an incinerator, which filled the hangar with a thick, rancid smell.
They watched a moment until they could gauge the timing of the next scoop, then slipped out through the port. Delta would sometimes stumble, and Ryz would catch her and carry her a few steps until she recovered her strength. The flight of stairs beside the garbage port was steep and narrow, and Ryz pulled Delta into his armsets and carried her easily to the bottom. They left the big hangar and emerged into the sharp light of Maro’s sun. Ryz wondered briefly what its name was.
“Where are we going?” he asked, setting Delta down and trying to keep up as Cataris took another in a long, complicated series of turns through what appeared to be an abandoned industrial complex.
“There’s an impound yard, where a variety of captured ships are kept,” the doctor explained. “I’ve seen it on previous visits, when the COS was collecting specimens. The ships are captured by the Maro, their drives are disabled, and they’re parked out here—usually still populated. They just sit here waiting to be collected. It’s like purgatory. They can’t go home, can’t escape. Conditions are usually awful. I’ve got the restoration key that will reactivate the drives.” Cataris held up a pale, green cube, which hung on a chain around his neck. “I think we can convince someone to fly us out of here in exchange for getting their drive back online. They’re usually pretty desperate.” Ryz followed him with more confidence. It didn’t sound like a bad plan.
Cataris was a useful companion, Ryz realized, as they reached the gate to the impound yard. A few dozy guards met them, and the doctor gave a passable excuse. Ryz assumed he explained the presence of the two multi-limbed aliens at his side. The guards’ lack of interest in Cataris, the fact that their weapons remained holstered, told Ryz they must be used to seeing the doctor on his errands. Ryz wondered how many specimens he had collected from this yard. The guards waved them through as the gate opened.
As the holding bay opened before them, Ryz gasped. There, in the center of the impound yard, stood the Travae.”
* * *
Ryz ran, pulling Delta along with him. If Cataris was surprised at their sudden increase in speed, at the ship Ryz picked to approach, or at the efficiency and familiarity with which Ryz opened the port and climbed the ramp, he didn’t show it.
The Travae, though, was no longer a royal transport. It was an empty gourd: hollow and dead inside. Where there had been royal parties and meetings for the heads of state, now there were blackened holes and rooms echoing with their own emptiness. Ryz made his way to the bridge.
Delta finally spoke. “You’ve been here?”
Ryz nodded. “This was my mother’s ship. After her abdication, it passed to my uncle; then on his death to his son, my cousin. I’ve been here for official ceremonies. The king bestows titles on all Academy graduates. He should be here somewhere.”
Ryz searched desperately, his extra eyes scanning.
The control room door was closed. Ryz heard voices—familiar and clear—speaking his own language inside. He laid both his trembling left hands against the identification panel and the door disappeared into the floor. They stepped through.
Inside, a ragged group of Ritel stood swiftly, ready to defend themselves. But recognition dawned on their faces as he approached.
The king’s advisers, three old Ritel whose faces were rugged as maps of the homeworld, took quick, reaching steps toward him. Karnat, the adviser who had given him his father’s letter, was first. That moment when Ryz had received the letter seemed, now, like a lifetime ago.
Without
warning, moving as one, the advisers knelt. Ryz didn’t understand what was happening. They had raised their armsets, clasping both their primary and secondary hands above their bowed heads.
One by one, the others knelt, too. Ryz heard them murmuring two words: “Your Majesty.”
Ryz stepped back. “Wait. Where is Uom? His sons? Where is the king?”
Karnat, the chief adviser, looked up and shook his head.
“Gone?” Ryz gulped. He felt Delta’s hand on his shoulder. Her translator was gurgling in the background. “All of them?”
“All of them,” the adviser said. “We had no hope of a rescue, no hope that any of the royal family had survived.”
Ryz shook his head. He had never even been considered part of the royal family.
“You are the rightful heir to the throne,” Karnat said. “And you have returned to lead us.”
In the back, on his knees, an engineer gave Ryz a look filled with despair. “If I may, we are stuck here. The Travae’s drive is disabled.”
Ryz waved a hand toward Doctor Cataris. “My friend can help with that.” He nodded, and the two left for the engineering deck. A little thrill went through Ryz. No one had ever even listened to what he had to say before, and now, apparently, he had the power to command them—his own people.
“Prepare the ship for launch,” he said, stepping into the command role easily. It was not so different than what he had done in countless Academy training exercises, from what he had done on the Luma. Ryz considered what he must now do. He saw the next maneuvers as clearly as if they were laid out on a screen before him. He must launch and use this ship to return to Ritel. He must fortify the defenses on his planet, train caregivers as soldiers, and he must keep the Maro—and, he now knew, the COS—from returning.
There was a new, sharp edge of hope inside him. The advisers and the scattered remnants of the Travae’s crew, hunched with defeat when he’d entered, now moved with purpose, manning their stations.
The navigation console stood empty. Ryz turned, but Delta was already moving toward it.
Bridge Across the Stars: A Sci-Fi Bridge Original Anthology Page 18
