Symbiosis

by Nicky Drayden

“Adalla,” Tirtha says, walking in from the back entrance. I turn and see Maki is with her, and behind them Baradonna.

  “You had no right to keep this from me!” Adalla screams at Tirtha. “You were like a mother to me.”

  Tirtha shakes her head. “I’m sorry, Adalla. I didn’t want to implicate you. And while I understand your pain, I’m afraid we have bigger problems now.”

  The room begins shaking, something like the tremors our Zenzee used to suffer from years ago, but we’d stabilized the hormones that were causing them and hadn’t had a tremor since. This had to be something different.

  “What is that?” I ask.

  Baradonna steps forward. “It’s bad, Seske. The clans have turned on one another. They’re fighting each other. Hung myself halfway out the third ass, just to see it myself. Weapons firing, tearing through Zenzee flesh. Tentacles entangled. It’s a mess, but I’m afraid the conflict doesn’t end there.” Baradonna hands me her stolen accountancy guard tablet, displaying the log screen they use for collecting data. There’s a transcription of a conversation between two people designated as Senator 1 and Senator 2. I scroll through the lengthy conversation until Doka’s name jumps out at me:

  Staging Doka’s assassination aboard another ship was a mistake. There were too many variables we couldn’t control. If we can’t find allies, we’ll be terribly outmatched in this war.

  Doka suspected it was Tesaryn Wen who’d staged the assassination, but he never had proof. But now, here it was. “How did you get this?” I ask Baradonna.

  “You know, I was in the third ass, minding my own business, making a quiet life for myself. No one ever comes to the third ass, except for the occasional criminal going to meet her demise. I was filing down my toenails when I heard something. I hid and saw a fissure open. Now, I thought I knew every single fissure in that ass, but this one comes out of nowhere. Real covert-type ass polyp, clean as a whistle too, because two women come out of it, not a lick of shit anywhere on them. They talked freely. I heard them conspiring and saying that a war was about to start. Talked about finding allies on different ships, reaching out with a form of communication that couldn’t be traced. Said they’d used it to plot Doka’s assassination.”

  “Tesaryn Wen,” I say. “She was one of the women.”

  Baradonna shakes her head.

  “That can’t be. It had to be her!”

  Baradonna just shakes her head again.

  “Then who was it?”

  “Bella Roshaad and one of her supporters.”

  This time I shake my head. She was practically Doka’s mentor. “Are you sure? Couldn’t you be mistaken?”

  Baradonna raises a brow. Accountancy guards aren’t exactly known to make mistakes.

  “Who cares who it was right now?” says Karin. “We can’t allow the Zenzee to war for us. In Adhosh’s name, we must do whatever is in our power to prevent it.”

  “What can we do, trapped here in the camps?” I ask. “We barely have resources to live, much less to stop a war!”

  Tirtha and Maki exchange looks.

  “We should tell her,” Maki says. “She’s one of us now.”

  Tirtha nods. “Come.”

  Confused, I follow.

  Doka

  Of Delicious Recipes and Distasteful Plans

  “One hundred!” I yell out, slamming the perfectly formed ball of rice dough onto a bed of leaves. I raise my hands up in victory. I’ve got rice flour beneath my nailbeds. Up my forearms. And there’s a little wad of it sitting at the tip of my nose. I brush it off, leaving more flour smeared across my face, but I don’t care. I’ve done it. I’ve beaten Macario at his own game. He’s still on his eighty-sixth dough ball.

  Macario inspects each line of dough, poking at a few to make sure they’re all the right consistency and not damp from mixing in too much beetle milk. It’d been tough going through a couple of weird tremors, and I’d lost almost an entire row of rice balls to the floor, but I narrowed my focus and staged an amazing comeback.

  “They’re all to your liking?” I ask with a grin.

  Macario nods in approval. “Very good, Rico. We may beat the morning bibingka rush yet.”

  “Well, I have a good teacher,” I say. “And a foolproof recipe.”

  “There’s no such thing as a foolproof recipe. Baking is part science, part art. A good baker knows when to stoke the oven. When to leave a bread in for an extra minute. How to improvise when needed.” Yet Macario beams like a proud father. He has no children of his own. Married to his job, he always tells me, no time for distractions. No thoughts to spare for shaping the formless goop that is an infant’s mind. But having a fully formed adult child, who is quite frankly a genius with handling dough, suits him nicely.

  “Noted,” I tell him. “What’s next?”

  “Well, let’s get these up front to the display. You’ve got all the toppings prepped?”

  I nod. “Diced the peppers this morning, shredded the shrimp last night. Everything else we’ve still got as leftovers from yesterday.” I start packing up the raw rice cakes into a tray when there’s a knock at the back door.

  “That’s Hada with the rice delivery,” I say, dusting my hands on my apron. “I’ll let her in.”

  I run to the door, but when I open it, Tirtha is standing there, with Seske and her sponsor, along with three of Seske’s new siblings. And Baradonna is here, too. She grins at me. It’s been months and months since I’d last seen her, and I’m ashamed that I’d forgotten how much I missed having her at my side. I’m all caught up in my feelings, and after I blink away my tears, I notice one of the siblings is not a sibling at all, but Adalla.

  “Is Macario here?” Tirtha asks.

  “Yes, of course. Come in,” I say, nearly choking on my words. Adalla knows we’re alive. Who else does? Kallum too? My heart flutters as their entire motley crew files into our cramped kitchen.

  “We’re in need of one of your secret recipes,” Tirtha says to Macario.

  Macario’s eyes go wide, looking at all the people suddenly in his kitchen. “All of you?” he asks, his normally relaxed body suddenly rigid. “Seems like secret recipes can’t stay secret if everybody knows about them.”

  “You can trust everyone here. We’re all in need of knowing.” Tirtha looks at me. “We can trust you, right?”

  “Yes, of course. Macario has entrusted me with all of his recipes.”

  “Not this one,” he says. Then he slides the wall-mounted spice rack to one side. It clicks, and a door appears—one I’ve never seen before. He pushes forward, and the door opens into a dark room. “Quickly, inside,” he says. We file into the new room, twice as large as the kitchen, though it looks much the same with a countertop and ovens, and the technology here is much more advanced. Violet lights circle and buzz around inside them. Rows and rows of glass bottles containing various substances line the walls: some oozing, some glowing, some moving.

  “I get the feeling these recipes call for more science than art,” I say to Macario.

  “You’d be surprised,” he says. “There’s quite a bit of overlap between being a baker and a quantum scientist.”

  I knew he had been a scientist, but I’d never known what kind. “Kallum never mentioned meeting any quantum scientists during his visits.”

  “It’s something we held back. We couldn’t trust your people with all our secrets. We knew that in the event of evacuation, it would be better if you weren’t intimidated by our technology. Especially given how dangerous it was. You’d start sniffing around and find out that it was the reason—”

  “Macario!” Tirtha calls out. She gives him a stern scold.

  “What? You say we can trust them. If so, they deserve to know.” Macario clears his throat, forces his head up. He gathers his nerves, fortifying himself against deep-seated guilt. “It was my fault Adhosh suffered a cascade failure. One of my discoveries broke through its containment, tunneled right through Adhosh, hitting her heart through and through. The
breech lasted less than a minute, but the damage was done. We repaired what we could the best we could, but apparently, we underestimated the damage. The failures started soon after that. Everything else we told you was true. The starvation. The polluted water. The venting air. All because of this.”

  Macario walks up next to an orb the size of a bog melon, a bright pink line of fire winding its way around and around.

  I look in awe, but Adalla pushes her way in. “The heart? You trashed your own heart with this weapon, and now you’ve brought it here? You could have ended us!”

  “It is not a weapon,” Macario says, getting defensive. “And it’s fine now. There is no threat to you or your Zenzee. We had to bring it. Even with the destruction it caused. It represents four generations of research.”

  “How did you get all of this equipment aboard Parados I?” I ask. Personal belongings were limited and thoroughly checked. There’s no way he could have snuck aboard with it. And yet, here it is.

  “With this,” he says, pointing to the orb.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Maybe it’s easiest if I show you.” Macario engages the orb, and a pool of black space stands in front of it. It resolves, looking like a clear image. A mirror, showing this lab. It takes me a moment to notice that what I’m seeing is the back of my own head. Macario plucks a wad of rice dough off my shoulder and throws it through the mirror. Not half a second later, something hits me in the back. I look behind me and see another mirror. On the floor, the dough ball is sitting at my feet. “I stayed behind after everyone was on board and getting settled, then dismantled my lab and sent it through to here, piece by piece. Some of it, anyway. My old lab . . .” He looks off wistfully. “Well, I make do with what I’ve got now.”

  “Sure seems like it could be used as a weapon,” I say, regaining my composure. “What if you’d fired a gun through it and not a wad of dough?”

  Macario looks genuinely hurt. “I would never do something so dishonorable! We owe our lives to your generosity. Yes, we are not in ideal conditions, but things are changing. We have several dozen people doing work assignments outside of the camp. We have hope.”

  “What we have is war,” Seske says. “It’s raging as we speak.”

  “Those tremors from before?” I ask.

  Seske nods.

  I gather my thoughts. If war has started, the Senate will have called a special session to deal with all the fallout. I look at Macario. “Can this mirror of yours be cast anywhere?”

  “Anywhere in the vicinity. The farther the distance, the more accurate you have to be with the calibrations. Same for the size of the mirror. Best to keep things small and local.”

  “Could you direct it to our Senate chambers?” I ask Macario.

  He nods, then works the orb again. The mirror disappears from the room. Smaller mirrors appear for half a second at a time, his fingers tapping against their shimmering surfaces until he finds a good spot in the Senate chambers where it won’t be noticed, high up and behind one of the pillars. We gather close to the opening, no bigger than my fist, listening.

  “—and if the other clans insist on this aggression, we must react by laying claim to the Zenzee we need, right now and in the future,” says Tesaryn Wen. “We should pick the best of the lot, strongest and most agile. If anyone has a problem with that, then we’ll fight them for it.”

  “We should divide the herd among the clans evenly,” says Bella Roshaad, offering a voice of reason, though I am dismayed by the suggestion. “It is the only fair way.”

  “The Serrata and Ulaud remain staunch in their plans to leave the herd. They should forfeit their right to claim any Zenzee,” says Senator Gillis.

  “We’ll need at least ten Zenzee to start,” says one of our scientists. “We can expand quickly into each, growing our populations as rapidly as we can. We should lift all reproductive restrictions as of right now and reinstitute embryo harvesting.”

  “We keep talking about how we should take on new Zenzee, but we never discussed if we should.” I’m surprised.

  It’s Kallum’s voice.

  I push everyone else out of the way so I can see. There he is. My heart climbs into my throat. “Bella Roshaad got Kallum a Senate seat after all,” I whisper to the others. “I never imagined it’d be possible, not after the stain I’d left upon our Line. At least she’s always been in my corner.”

  “Oh, Doka . . . ,” says Seske.

  I turn to her. “‘Oh, Doka’ what?”

  “The attempt on your life, back on the Renmoor ship . . .” She pauses, lips pursed in distaste.

  “What about it?” I ask, my hackles raising at the mere mention.

  Seske thinks for a moment then says, “Never mind. The important thing is that they didn’t succeed. You’re here now, and if we all work together, we can stop this war from happening.”

  “Tell me, Seske. I need to know.”

  “He needs to know,” Baradonna says, echoing Tirtha from earlier and stepping up to me. “I’m sorry, I should have caught it sooner, but the control she practices is so much better than I’m used to dealing with. Pathological, nearly.”

  “Control?”

  “Over her body language. Over her microfeatures.” She places her hands on both of my shoulders. “Bella Roshaad ordered the operative to kill you during the Leaders’ Summit. I heard her admit it with my own two ears. I’m sorry.”

  “Bella Roshaad?” I go slack, but Baradonna catches me in her arms. “Why? I—”

  “Shhh . . . ,” says Tirtha, still poised with her ear next to the mirror. “They’re voting now.”

  We all rush back. A slight majority raises their hands.

  “We will declare our intentions to claim Zenzee immediately,” Wen says. “Anyone who opposes the deal shall be fired upon.”

  “What do we do now?” Macario asks.

  We have little time and fewer resources, but we desperately shoot off ideas anyway.

  “We need to reach out to Admiral Erisson of the Tertian ship,” I say. “We built up a sort of trust with each other. They have a lot of firepower. If we get them on our side, then maybe we’ll have enough leverage to stop the war before it really gets started.”

  Macario nods. “I could try to patch a connection through to him, but it’ll be tricky with the distance between our ships. It could take twenty minutes to reach that far out.”

  “We have to try.”

  I watch carefully as Macario manipulates the orbs, just as I had watched him when I was first learning to bake. He peers into the small mirrors, and I can see that they are each tiny windows to other places. He selects the one closest to the Tertian’s Zenzee, then recalibrates, drawing up another set of mirrors. With each iteration, his concentration deepens and his movements become more exact. A bead of sweat meanders down his forehead. I realize I’m watching him so intently that I’ve stopped breathing. I keep holding it until he calls me over. “Is that him?”

  I peer into a mirror no bigger than my eye. It’s him.

  “Admiral Erisson!” I yell through the mirror. The admiral startles, his hand going to his weapon. He turns and sees the tiny mirror, probably my eye looking back at him.

  “What in the—” He leans closer. I pull back so he can see my whole face. “Doka?”

  “It’s me. I don’t have much time to explain. Our Senators have decided to go on the offensive so that they can have first selection from the new Zenzee herd.”

  “They’re late to the party. The Vaz and Renmoor have already laid claim to half the herd between them. It’s chaos out here.” I hear their Zenzee shudder as ours had, but much more violently. Admiral Erisson barks out a series of orders to his second in command. I can just make him out over the admiral’s shoulder.

  “I was hoping we could join forces,” I say when he’s done, but he looks so distracted. I suddenly feel like I’m imposing.

  “I wish we could assist you, but my hands are already full trying to keep things together
over here. Nearly half of my lieutenants broke rank this morning, and that was before all hell broke loose. I’m not sure how much longer I can—” A pulse flashes behind the admiral, then he falls to the ground with a thud. Behind him, his second in command holds a laser rifle. He kicks at Erisson’s unresponsive body, then fires again, the beam of light sailing right at us. Macario quickly disconnects.

  “Oh no,” I mutter.

  The others are already regrouping, moving on as if nothing had even happened. As if we hadn’t just witnessed another coup in a long line of coups. I suppose it was only a matter of time, but I’d distracted him. Caused him to let down his guard. But perhaps I’m most shaken at seeing the casual look on the new admiral’s face as he made sure Erisson was dead.

  “What do we do now?” Adalla asks.

  “I have an idea,” Seske says boldly. “It’s scary, but we don’t have much to lose. Adalla, I could use your help.”

  Adalla looks hesitant but leaves with Seske anyway.

  I don’t know what to do next. It’s taken all my energy not to fall apart right now. Admiral Erisson had been kind to me when no one else was. Sure, he was responsible for enabling an entire baby fighting ring, but he’s the main reason I’m still alive.

  “You okay?” Baradonna asks, tilting my chin up so I meet her gaze.

  I nod. “Yeah. I guess.”

  “Good. Because I’ve got an idea, too.” Baradonna raises a brow. “I wish I could say it’s a good one, but it absolutely most certainly is not.”

  Seske

  Of Bright Lights and Dull Echoes

  I paddle as fast as I can, Adalla doing the same behind me. I need no map. The route is like a scar I can trace across my own skin. Going back feels like the exact opposite of going home. It’s like voluntarily walking into a nightmare. And maybe that’s exactly what we’re doing, but we need Sisterkin’s help. She may be the only one in this world who can help.

  We reach the cavern in the bile ducts where Sisterkin is bound. I angle the boat closer to the wall, swatting away the fog lingering there, but I do not see her. At first, I think that I’ve gone off course somehow, but then I notice the woman-shaped divot and the severed tendrils that had once been attached to her.