by Nino Cipri
That’s exactly the problem, Jules would groan.
Much as “Ugh, capitalism” was a running joke between them, their system was too big to do anything but joke about it. It’s not like they had a plethora of options waiting for them out there.
But now there were options. Doorways into other worlds and other possibilities opened all the time, apparently. LitenVärld liked its worlds small, contained in their claustrophobic cubes, and under their control. No wonder they had gotten rid of the FINNA division. Ava wondered what they had found out there; what they’d brought back, what ideas they’d been infected with. Maybe some teams had chosen not to come back at all.
“Ah,” said Captain Nouresh, who’d continued to work while Ava was lost in thought. She set down her tools, wound the wires back into the FINNA’s shell, and flicked the switch again. There was a brief pop, and Ava flinched back, worried it would explode. But beyond a puff of briny-smelling vapor, the FINNA seemed fine. The bubble lit up purple again, and the console—despite some moisture under the glass screen—flashed and came back on. There was no arrow, though; instead, a bull’s-eye blinked.
“That’s amazing,” Ava said, taking it back from Nouresh.
Nouresh smiled wryly and put her tools away. “I’ve got a way with old and useless things, being one myself.”
Ava looked up at the captain. “You don’t seem useless to me.”
In fact, she was one of the most formidable women she’d ever met. Aside from Jules’s aunt, who Jules had lived with briefly, and who wasn’t formidable as much as she was actively horrible.
Nouresh shrugged. “I should have passed control of the Anahita to my first mate years ago. She’s still young, but plenty capable.”
“What would you do instead?” Ava asked. She wasn’t sure how she was going to convince Nouresh to come with them. More intel couldn’t hurt.
But Nouresh gave her a thin, brittle smile. “That’s the question, isn’t it? All the captains I admired retired to a seafloor grave.” Her smile shifted, became stronger, realer. “I would have happily gone down with my ship, but that would have meant losing a battle, and I was never very good at that. So here we are, the Anahita and I.”
After watching her put away her tools, Ava offered tentatively, “You could travel again? If you retired?”
“I could,” Nouresh agreed, though she didn’t sound excited by it.
“But you don’t want to,” said Ava.
Nouresh shrugged. “Getting lost for lack of a better option loses its appeal after a while. I’ve already got too much free time for comfort. How else do you think I was able to wine and dine you and your …” She looked at Jules for a moment, then back to Ava. “Partner?”
Ava swallowed thickly. “Not anymore,” she said. It was the first time she’d actually said it aloud to anyone. She’d texted her friends, emailed her brother, but hadn’t actually said it aloud until now. Three days, the words had been kept in her throat.
“Ah,” Nouresh said delicately.
“I think we could be friends, though?” Ava said. Now that she’d started to speak, she couldn’t seem to stop. “Like, we never really got to that stage. We went straight from coworkers to crush to codependent dating. Traveling with them has almost been easier, despite all the stuff that’s been trying to kill us.” Ava watched Jules showing off their soccer skills, kicking the ball up, catching it on their chest where it seemed to hang, defying gravity for a moment, before dropping it onto the ground again. The kids fell momentarily silent in amazement, then started yelling in excitement as they tried to get the ball back from Jules, and then each other. A couple of kids started fiercely arguing, and Jules held up their hands, trying to circumvent a fight.
“There are beautiful worlds out there, you know,” Captain Nouresh said. “You might want to take the long way back, once you find whatever it is you’re looking for. It might help you find your footing with each other.”
Ava looked from the bull’s-eye to Nouresh, who met her gaze calmly. She really did look a lot like the young woman at the customer service counter. Ava set the FINNA down. “Can I ask you something? Do you have a family?”
Nouresh’s face changed, falling a little. She looked older. “Not anymore,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” Ava said. Sorry for bringing it up, sorry for dragging that unnamed hurt out of the past. Appropriate replacement, she thought. What an awful way of thinking about it. Was that why the FINNA had led them to Nouresh? Some algorithm had matched her grief to the hole Ursula would leave in their world?
“It’s an old sadness,” Nouresh said. “Doesn’t heal, but you get used to bearing it.”
Ava nodded, thinking again of Ursula’s granddaughter. Ava had never been particularly close to her own grandparents, not like the girl—whose name she didn’t even know, she realized. All Ava could think of was the way the young woman had stared at the selfie, the way her worry seemed to diminish her in size and age, make her a child again.
The captain’s eyes suddenly cut away from Ava, narrowing as something else caught her attention. Ava turned to look as well, at Jules. They had managed to distract the kids with a story about their recent misadventures in the so-called hive. The kids watched, entranced as Jules acted it out with their whole body. They’d drawn a sizable crowd, some of whom surely couldn’t understand the words Jules spoke. But Jules had always been a dynamic storyteller, and the past few hours had given them even more fodder.
“And then, they look at each other and say, let’s take them to Mother. Mother wants to meet you. Mother wants you to answer some questions. And we’re like—” Jules made a comically fearful face, but nobody seemed to laugh. Instead, they all looked nervous.
There was a fierce grip on her arm, and Ava turned back to find Captain Nouresh looking at her intently.
“You came here through a hive?”
Disquiet squirmed in Ava’s chest. “That’s what they called it.”
Nouresh cursed under her breath, then squeezed Ava’s arm in a tighter grip. “Answer me truthfully. Did they see you come through the marejii?”
Ava hesitated, suddenly afraid—not just of the weird LitenVärld murder clones, but selfishly, of angering the woman in front of her. “Yes? I mean, I don’t know. We were running from them, they chased us to a pit, and the maskhål was below us, so Jules threw us both into it.”
Nouresh stood, yanking Ava to her feet as well. She pulled her along toward Jules, and snapped, “You! With me!”
Jules flinched at the shout, but then leapt to their feet, looking to Ava for explanation. Before she could offer it, Captain Nouresh—and Ava realized that she was definitely looking at the captain now, a woman who had run an enormous ship for years, with such efficiency that she’d made herself redundant—pulled Ava along through the market. Jules darted along behind them.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“What happened? What’s going on?” Jules asked, trying to keep up with Nouresh’s ruthless pace.
“The hive,” Ava said breathlessly. “I don’t know, she just—”
“Quiet!” Nouresh snapped. She’d led them out of the labyrinthine market, over to one of the round, curved walls, lit with those strips of glowing plankton. She dashed along it, finally letting go of Ava in her haste. Ava chased after her.
Captain Nouresh reached a metal cabinet set into the wall that was painted a bright red, the same color as the captain’s jacket, unlike the calm, muted colors the Anahita had shown them so far. There was writing above it, but of course Ava couldn’t read it. It reminded her of the fancy Arabic calligraphy she’d seen at an exhibit at the Art Institute.
“The hives swarm when they’re threatened. They’ve followed travelers through the marejii before,” Captain Nouresh said as she flung open the cabinet doors. There were complicated brass instruments in it, and a black square of glass. A phone? Nouresh twisted the instruments in a complicated pattern, then yanked a cylinder toward her face.
With a flash o
f light across the black glass panel, Ava realized that it was actually a steampunk video chat. The face on the screen wore a jacket nearly identical to the captain’s, and was older than Ava but younger than Nouresh. Nouresh spat orders in another language, but the woman interrupted her, holding a hand up, as if in reassurance.
An alarm blared, an incessant clanging that set everyone in the market bustling. Ava’s heart was hammering in her chest, but the merchants calmly began to fold up their tents and stow their wares. The group of children Jules had been playing with ran past, but even their faces didn’t betray much fear.
When Ava looked back at Captain Nouresh, she was still exchanging words with the woman on the screen. Her second-in-command? Ava wondered. The woman curled her hand into a loose fist and touched her knuckles to her chin, with a short bow. Captain Nouresh returned the odd salute, and the screen flickered off. Nouresh took a deep breath, then slammed the metal doors of the cabinet shut.
“You two!” she barked. “Follow me.”
Ava shot Jules a look, and they shrugged at each other before jogging to catch up with Nouresh, who moved calmly and quickly through the narrow passageways of the Anahita. “The two of you were searching for someone, correct? That’s why you were sent?”
Jules shot Ava a worried look. “Yeah,” they said. “How did you know?”
“Your toy there,” she said, and Ava realized she meant the FINNA. “I’ve seen them before. The people carrying them were always traveling to bring someone back to their original world.”
“Yeah,” Ava said. “Yeah, we were sent to find someone.”
“It would be a good time to find another marejii and continue your search,” Nouresh said. “The hive followed you here. The crew spotted them right before you told me.”
“That was the alarm?” Jules asked. They seemed calm. Why did they seem so calm about this?
“Yes. The bridge crew have it under control. My first mate …” Nouresh clenched her jaw. “It shouldn’t be a problem for her, but in case this battle doesn’t go the way we think it will, you should leave now.”
Jules raised their eyebrows at Ava, as if to say, That’s your cue. Ava took a deep breath, trying to work around the panic that was pressing against her skull, and said, “We found who we were looking for. It’s you.”
The captain stopped in her tracks, looking over her shoulder at the two of them. “What did you say?”
“A version of you, anyway,” Ava corrected. She fumbled out the pocketbook in Ursula’s purse, holding up the driver’s license. Nouresh took it gingerly. “This is who we were sent to find, but she …”
“Got eaten. We think,” Jules said.
“I always knew other versions of me existed,” Nouresh said, staring at the license. “It’s strange to be confronted with evidence.” She looked at Ava. “If she’s dead, why did you keep looking?”
Ava lifted the flap on the pocketbook that held the driver’s license. On the other side was the photo of Ursula and her emo-phase granddaughter. There weren’t any other photos in the pocketbook—no children, no other family members, no pets. This had been the most important person in Ursula’s life, the only one whose picture was worthy of being kept on her at all times.
“Her granddaughter. She’s older now, and I only met her for a minute,” Ava said. “But she seemed nice. Scared. And alone.”
“The FINNA looks for the most, uh, appropriate replacement if the original person is gone. It decided that meant you,” added Jules.
“Did it now,” Captain Nouresh said softly. She swallowed, then tossed the pocketbook back to Ava. “Doesn’t matter. A captain never abandons her ship during a battle.”
Ava fumbled to catch the pocketbook, and by the time she’d shoved it back into the purse, Nouresh had resumed walking at her fast clip. Ava hurried to keep pace.
Nouresh stopped in front of a door, painted that same bloody red. This one had a complicated brass locking mechanism. She took a breath, leaned into something that looked like a shallow satellite dish, and said softly, “Uzmala Nouresh.”
There was a soft, metallic tinkling sound, and then a clank, components moving and shifting until the door swung inward.
“This place is so cool,” Jules whispered.
“Agreed,” Ava replied.
The two of them followed Captain Nouresh into a circular room about the size of Ava’s bedroom. It was dominated by a large table with a high lip around the edge, like an enormous ashtray. Its top was covered with a thick layer of sand. After shutting the door behind them, Nouresh shouldered Ava and Jules aside to stand beside the table. She spoke, again in that soft voice of command, then plunged her hands beneath the surface, sending ripples through the sand as if it were water. A large bubble bulged out from the center. It grew eyes, claws, and a mouth pulled from a thousand insects that had devoured Ava in a thousand nightmares. (She had extremely specific phobias, she could admit.) “That’s the mother?” Jules asked, quicker on the uptake than Ava.
“Oh, god!” Ava said. That eldritch nightmare had lived in the pit below the clone LitenVärld. “That’s the thing that almost ate us?”
The sand floated up above the table, joined by numerous smaller blobs that slowly formed into small, human shapes, so many of them that they formed a cloud of satellites, blurring as they swam in darting orbits. The Marks and Danas of the hive, Ava assumed.
Nouresh smiled grimly. “Hello, you old bitch. Thought you’d find a new hive, did you?”
“We’re gonna fight that?” Jules asked excitedly. Ava, feeling sick with fear, glared at them.
“My crew is going to fight that. It’s time to see if my first mate can actually—”
As she spoke, another bubble floated up from the sand, transforming into a manta-shaped vessel slightly larger than the mother. It twisted, turning in the air, and all three of them felt a tug of gravity as the ship shifted.
“Good,” Nouresh said. “Get them gunside. Now, let’s see if—”
There was a muted clap-clap, clap-clap, clap-clap somewhere in the bowels of the ship. The miniature above the table shot off tiny darts that carved through the air toward the mother and her swarm. Torpedos, Ava assumed. The small humans that swam next to the mother broke away, swimming to intercept them. They exploded in showers of sand that fell gently back onto the table. Others made it through the swarm and exploded on the mother itself, leaving hollow craters in her sides. The sand-mother opened her mouth wide, but the terrifying screech came from all around them, leaking through the metal walls. Ava clapped her hands over her ears and shrank away from the table. The muscles in her legs felt hot and heavy, barely able to keep her upright.
Ava took strength from looking at Captain Nouresh. The intent look hadn’t left her face, but she was smiling now. “Good opening gambit, Mirya. What next?”
As if in answer, the Anahita released its own swarm of tiny, darting objects.
“Minnows,” Nouresh said contemplatively. “Interesting play.”
“Are they like drones?” Jules asked, leaning in. Sections of the mother’s swarm broke off to chase the minnows, which flew gracefully but in unpredictable, zigzagging patterns. Nouresh glanced over her shoulder, distracted for a moment.
“I don’t know ‘drones,’” Nouresh said distractedly. “We send them out to collect information, samples. I’ve never thought to use them as a distraction. Mirya’s good.”
The praise sounded forced. “Well, she learned from you, right?” Jules said.
“She did,” Nouresh admitted. More than half the swarm had abandoned the mother to chase after the minnows. The Anahita shot off another series of torpedoes, which sank into the mother’s unprotected flank. The mother roared again, shaking the walls, reverberating through Ava’s bones.
“Not bad,” Nouresh said. She was smiling now. “Are you going to finish her off?”
Before she’d finished speaking, an even larger missile shot off toward the mother, aiming right for her open maw. There was
a half second of quiet, and then an enormous, muffled thump. The mother exploded, spraying grit into all of their faces.
“Eugh,” Ava said, spitting out grains. They were tasteless, but she couldn’t help but think of them as part of the mother. She froze as an eerie chorus of wails cut through the room, echoing off the walls.
“Her children,” Nouresh said. “I would have spent a few more missiles killing them off. They’re cunning little bastards, and they’ve got a bad tendency to sneak aboard ships. Should be impossible, but they always find a way.” She lifted her hands out of the semi-liquid sand, and the simulacra of the swarm and the Anahita fell back onto the table.
“Did we win?” Jules asked. “That was the battle?”
Nouresh nodded, wiping her hands off. “They used to be longer and bloodier, back when I was a fresh recruit. But we’ve evolved our tactics and they haven’t. They’ll keep doing the same thing until they go extinct.” She went over to a cabinet on the wall, similar to the one in the market. Nouresh opened the doors, twisting instruments until the black screen lit up again. The first mate’s face appeared; she looked sweaty, nervous and excited. She saluted, stumbling over the greeting—maybe she hadn’t expected to face the captain so soon after the battle. Captain Nouresh held up a hand to cut her off. “Mirya.”
Captain Nouresh spoke, her tone calm and professional, and more than a little proud.
If anything, the first mate looked even more nervous. She replied with confusion and concern. Nouresh’s smile grew, and her voice became cheerful. There was a hissed whisper behind Mirya, which she hushed. “Uzmala?” she said. The captain’s first name, Ava remembered. Mirya asked a question. Nouresh gave no answer, just a salute. Then she cut the connection and closed the cabinet doors.
