by TJ Berry
“We need to survive,” he retorted, gruffly. “There are thousands of Bala to support and we need to get above bare subsistence rations if we have any hope of thriving here. Even at harvests every six days, we’re so close to the edge that one spoiled crop means that Bala will go hungry.”
“I agree that we should look for ways to improve our production, but also take care that we are stewards of this new planet,” said Gary. “We don’t want to make the same mistake as the humans.”
The satyr raised himself to his full height. He was similar in shape to Gary, with hooves and an equine lower half, but they also had a tail as well as curled double horns growing out of their heads. This one dwarfed Gary, standing at least two heads taller than him.
“Are you calling me a human?” asked the satyr. Other Bala stopped their work to watch the rapidly-escalating altercation.
“No, of course not,” said Gary. “I just want to ensure that we’re living in harmony with the native species. We didn’t take kindly to forced colonization. I think we can do a better job than what was done to us.”
“I am no murderer,” snarled the satyr. He clenched his fist, ready to swing. Gary attempted to clam him.
“I meant no offense. I only want us to avoid the problems that come with stripping a planet for resources without regard for consequences.”
The satyr didn’t back down. “I won’t favor a handful of lizards at the expense of Bala lives,” he said, lifting one massive hoof and bringing it down on a lizard sunning itself on a nearby rock. Gary heard the crunch of bones and a tiny pained meep. The satyr lifted his hoof to reveal a lifeless bloodied lizard body underneath. He dragged his hoof through the grass to wipe the blue goo off his hoof. He put a hand on his hip, daring Gary to say a single word.
“That was unnecessary,” said Gary, vacillating between anger and resignation. He knew he should simply walk away; his father’s comments this morning already had his nerves jangling. But he would never strike first. “You’re a murderer,” he said, stepping up to the satyr.
A murmur went through workers around the edge of the marsh. All work ceased and no one moved.
The satyr’s fist came from below – opposite the one that had been clenched – Gary was caught unaware. It hit him under his jaw. He stumbled toward the marsh. One of the workers reached out to him, but he tumbled sideways and hit the ground, his arm landing in the water.
It ate his skin away immediately. Searing pain crept up toward his shoulder. He flailed and managed to get his other hand wet as well. The skin flaked off in layers as the acid crept under the dermis.
Strong hands grabbed his ankles and dragged him out of the water. The top layers of flesh on his right arm were gone.
“I’ve got you,” said the satyr, sitting Gary upright and pulling off the remains of his shirt. “You weren’t supposed to fall in.” His anger had all but evaporated.
Gary grunted and lifted himself on his good elbow. The skin was already growing back, forming a shiny pink layer over the muscle.
“Gods that’s incredible,” said a faun near him, watching the tissue grow back.
“I’ll be fine,” he said flexing his fingers. The skin was tight, but the pain had already dissipated. “Look. Nearly healed.”
The satyr sat next to Gary on the banks of the marsh as the others went back to their tasks.
“Most aren’t so lucky as you,” said the satyr, picking at the grass. He pointed over to the far banks where five living archways had been planted and shaped out of cryberry bushes, the crop that had become the workhorse of the new settlement. The berries were too sour to eat but the flexible branches made excellent building materials. They represented the five souls who had perished in this water. Their deaths had to have been agonizing.
“I’m sorry that I intruded on your process here,” said Gary. “Life with the humans was–”
“Horrific,” said the satyr.
“Yes. We’ve all seen things and experienced events that changed us forever. I know we can’t put it behind us, but we can use that knowledge to ensure that it never happens again.”
“I shouldn’t have stomped the lizard,” said the satyr. “It’s just terrible work here at the swamp. Friends get hurt all the time. But people have to eat.”
“It’s not right that you’re all in danger,” said Gary. “We can enact safeguards. Switch jobs so that those who are not as affected by the acid are closest to the water. And we can find other food sources.”
“That would be good,” said the satyr. He reached over and squeezed Gary’s shoulder, an uncharacteristically tender gesture from such a volatile being. It gave Gary the slightest bit of hope.
“Sometimes it feels like this is all a dream. Any minute now the Reason is going to appear in the sky and take us all back there,” said the satyr.
Gary wanted very much to assure them it would never happen, but he couldn’t bring himself to utter such a pointed lie. “I think it will take a long time for us to really feel that we’re safe again. Perhaps a generation or two,” he said.
“Too long for me,” said the satyr. “But you will live to see it.” Once again, his immortality had reared its ugly head.
“I’d like to get across the marsh,” said Gary. “I have business in the forest.”
“Bala die in there,” said the satyr.
“No, they disappear in there,” said a woman standing on a log raft near the shore. “I’m the ferryman. I can take you across.”
“You have work to do,” said the satyr.
“You’re right. And this is it,” said the woman, extending a hand to Gary to help him up. He hesitated.
“This is the only way across. The only other option is to take the long way round the marsh – a day’s hike,” she said. Gary let her help him onto the raft. Her hands were wide and strong. His new skin looked pinkish and shiny against her hard brown calluses. His hand still felt raw, but no one seeing it now would have guessed it was down to the muscle just a few moments ago.
Gary’s hooves slipped on the rounded logs, sloshing the raft back and forth in the water.
“Careful,” warned the woman, backing into a dry corner. “I can’t grow back like you.” She held up a three-fingered hand and smiled. Her brown cheek was dotted with pink scars in a splash pattern. She had pulled her golden hair back into a ponytail – the name for which Gary disliked viscerally.
“Push off the post if you can do it without sinking us,” she added. Gary put one hoof onto the raft and braced the other against a post set in the grass. He pushed until they were completely in the water.
“I’ll be back in a few hours,” she called out to the satyr on the banks. He started to yell back in protest, and then thought better of it, making a defeated gesture as reply instead.
“All right. Go. But grab a bunch of cryberry saplings while you’re over there,” he replied. “Roots and all.”
“Will do,” she said.
Her speech had the casual cadence of a human. She certainly didn’t look Bala in any way, but Gary knew better than to assume anything based on outer appearances.
The woman pushed them down a path between the grain stalks, taking care not to break any of them. She knew just where to place her pole, which, like the logs, was unaffected by the acid in the marsh.
“You’re good at this,” said Gary.
“I used to work on the fatbergs of the Mississippi River,” she said.
“Delightful,” said Gary.
“It was paying work. I pass for human, so I was able to get a real job.”
“A true blessing,” said Gary, with as much enthusiasm as he could muster, which wasn’t much. The woman laughed at his flat affect.
“I get it. I was always aware of how I betrayed Balakind by pretending to be human. And once they started hunting down my family I was sure they were going to find me out and end up in prison.”
“You were right to fear that,” said Gary. “You did what you had to do to survive.”
She pushed them slowly and deliberately, making sure to disturb the water as little as possible.
“Yeah, but now that we’re here, I feel like I should be doing more, you know? Now that I can be anything I want to be, I should devote my life to avenging my kin, or protecting our survivors. Instead, I’m back here navigating another tainted waterway, trying not to fall in and die. It feels so cowardly when Bala like you were out there putting their lives on the line for our freedom.”
“I did the same as you. Just survived,” Gary said grimly.
“And what about now?” she asked. “Are you still just surviving?” Gary was quiet for long enough that the biting insects came out and began assaulting them. They slapped at their arms whenever they felt a pinch. Raised welts appeared on both of them, though Gary’s disappeared immediately. The silence was broken only by the sound of water lapping at the edges of the raft. Gary’s eyelids started to droop.
“Hey, I don’t care if you take a nap, but at least sit down. If you fall over, you’re going straight into the water and I can’t fish you out alone. Unicorns are… dense.” He couldn’t see her face, but she seemed to say the last word with a tiny laugh, as if she was making fun of him. “Sit over there. Far from the edge.”
He sat in the center of the raft, leaned his head on his knees, and closed his eyes. The sound of the water lulled him to sleep.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Ghosts of Openspace
Jenny sat for a few minutes, watching the Well Actually veer off toward the dwarf planet that they intended to scoot behind in a fruitless attempt at hiding.
“Not to interrupt your reverie, but the raiders who are on their way to the Well Actually are also going to see us,” said Mary, accelerating quickly, but not fast enough to give Jenny whiplash.
Jenny sighed and unclipped her harness.
“This day has been about ten years too long,” she said, pushing off the chair. A layer of moist skin came away from her legs. She shrieked at both the sensation and the transparent layer of skin left on the leather where her thighs had been.
“Fuck me,” she whined, twisting around in zero G to see the raw, red patches. It burned like the worst sunburn she’d ever gotten, back on Oreti Beach when she was a little sprog.
She put her hands to her lips and breathed through her fingers a few times, trying to refocus. Now she’d stopped running, every muscle in her body was cramping up. And her heart still felt fluttery. She wanted to be floating in a warm bath or tucked under her covers. Either of which would probably sear off a new layer of skin.
She sucked down a breath of Mary’s freshly scrubbed air and pushed herself down the hallway.
“We can try to hide behind that moon as well,” said Mary. “Or race to the asteroid we passed three days ago. I might be able to make it in eight to ten hours. The raiders might be so preoccupied with the Well Actually that they don’t notice us.”
Jenny didn’t answer. Every pull on the handles sent a wave of nausea through her. The burnt areas of her body were tightening up. She felt like a sausage stuffed too tight. She started making little grunts at each movement of her joints.
“You don’t like that idea,” continued Mary. “You think hiding is a death sentence. We have to run. What if we tried to blend in with the other pirates? Paint a Cascadian flag on the outside and start heading toward the Well Actually. They’ll think we’re one of them and we can slip away during the firefight.”
Jenny slapped the pad to open the cargo bay doors. The bay looked like a massacre. Inside was a stinking mess of wet bodies. Thawed fluids coated every surface and the whole place reeked of innards and waste. She put a hand over her mouth to keep from retching again.
“Or we could try to fight. You have some very unusual tactics that aren’t in any of the strategic manuals,” said Mary.
Kamis was still strapped in place, his lips pulled back in a painful grimace. He had the pearly white teeth that humans paid big money for back on the Reason-occupied planets, but his clothes were loose and flowing in the elfin style. She moved his hair to check his ears. Yep, definitely an elf.
“Can we just put his whole body into the FTL drive?” asked Jenny. “I can probably saw it into pieces.”
“I have a record of the RMF Armistead putting a unicorn horn fragment embedded in a piece of centaur skull into their FTL drive. They were able to travel successfully to their destination, but everyone on board experienced intermittent periods of uncontrollable aggression.”
“So that’s a no?” Jenny asked. She hovered in front of Kamis for a long moment, dreading what had to come next.
“I don’t know what putting elf bones into the drive would do,” replied Mary. “Just find the horn. If it even is horn. Can you imagine if you did all of this for nothing?”
Jenny ignored Mary’s dry laugh. She didn’t even want to contemplate the thought that the white glow wasn’t horn at all.
“The first place I’d look is where most smugglers hide things inside their body–” began Mary.
“No,” interrupted Jenny. “I mean yes. I agree, but also… so much no.”
“Well, that’s where I’d put it,” said Mary primly. “Just be glad it’s not a winsok with eight separate orifices to check.”
Jenny slid her fingers along the waistband of Kamis’ pants, looking up into his face to give him some measure of dignity in death. He grimaced back at her with a row of those squared-off sparkling teeth. She stopped and shook the shivers out of her hands.
“This is so awful,” she whined.
“You’re not going to have the right angle like that,” said Mary.
“Perhaps if you take him down and put him over one of the crates. I can turn on the gravity for a minute if it helps.”
“Shhh,” hissed Jenny, gritting her teeth together. She should have brought a knife and sliced the fabric off. It was going to get all caught up in the harness. Maybe Mary was right, she needed to unclip him. It was so wrong to violate a dead body like this. She could sense the ancestors of this elf looking down at her in disgust.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, tucking her fingers into his waistband again. “I don’t know what else to do.”
“Your sentiments are kind, even though he cannot hear you,” said Mary. Kamis smiled that hideous smile down at her. A drop of thawed saliva squeezed out from between his tongue and his teeth. It gleamed in the cargo bay lights. Gleamed almost as much as his teeth… his teeth that were way too white and way to big for an elfin mouth. Teeth that practically glowed with layer upon layer of shimmering magic. She let go of Kamis’ pants with a snap.
“Don’t give up, Jenny,” cheered Mary. “Just dig in there and look around, because I just detected three raider vessels within scanning distance of us and though they are closing in on the Well Actually, they’ll also be able to see us clear as day.”
“I’m not giving up,” said Jenny.
She reached into Kamis’ mouth and hooked her finger behind his bottom teeth. She pried upward and a seal broke. The entire set of teeth, plastic gums and all, came free in her hand. She held it above her head.
“Got it!” she cried, wincing at the stale saliva dripping off her hand. She pried out the second set of teeth. Kamis gaped at her with an empty cavern of a mouth.
“Sorry buddy, but thanks,” she said, pushing off from his stomach and shooting down the hall toward the engine room.
Jenny opened the thick glass door to the FTL drive. It looked like a curio cabinet carved out of dark, rich wood. It showcased dwarven craftsmanship mixed with sparse unicorn design.
She placed both sets of teeth, plastic gums and all, into the drive and closed the door. The glass was wavy and bubbled in the way that you saw in old glass windows back on Earth. Windows that hadn’t been smashed, that is.
“Fire up the drive,” called Jenny. The cabinet crackled as if a trillion popcorn kernels had all exploded at once.
“Drive powered,” said Mary. “Course?�
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“Doesn’t matter,” said Jenny, grabbing the handhold in the room. “Someplace not here.” As far as she knew, it was safe to stand near the FTL drive when it activated. And she was intensely curious as to what it looked like up close.
The cabinet thrummed as the ship diverted power toward it. The teeth vibrated on the wooden shelf inside, making a clattering noise. The horn pieces began to shimmer with rainbow flecks of light, like looking through a kaleidoscope. It was both dizzying and compelling.
“FTL drive activating. Please secure all loose belongings,” chimed Mary in the chipper falsetto she used for shipwide announcements.
The inside of the cabinet suffused the room with the bluish glow of electricity. Jenny floated back away from it. As the rays touched her skin they felt slightly sour but warm and familiar. Like putting your face in a long-loved stuffed animal. She moved back toward the FTL drive without realizing it.
As the drive made the jump into nullspace, the ship became transparent for a single moment. This always happened. The ship jumped into nullspace and human consciousness caught up to the meat-sack body a moment later. It always led to that dizzying moment when you were a bodiless soul floating untethered in the universe. Jenny loved that moment, free from the constraints of burnt bodyparts and torn muscle-fibers and nerves communicating incorrect signals. She relaxed into that second where she could just exist, unencumbered by pain.
Then the engine room slid back into place around her and Jenny was back in her body, which was trying to both communicate every hurt which had been done to her on the Well Actually and shut down her consciousness for healing time.
She felt like Cowboy Jim had looked during FTL, like a rubber band that had been stretched too far to snap back into its original shape. Wobbly and overtaxed. She floated out of the engine room toward the medbay.
The ship was quiet and empty, just the way she liked it. Every few minutes they hit another little jump in nullspace where everything felt surreal for a moment, then settled back to normal. The lights in the medbay came on as she floated inside.
