Ascending (The Vardeshi Saga Book 1)

by Meg Pechenick

  I missed Zey and Sohra desperately. I caught intermittent glimpses of them in the mess hall or the residential corridor. I never looked directly at either of their faces. I was terrified that I would read kindness there. Any hint of sympathy would undo me. I worried, too, that their friendship with me had already done irreparable damage to their professional reputations. While I knew myself to be completely innocent of wrongdoing, I also knew that that fact had yet to be proven. I protected them the only way I could: by ignoring them. At mealtimes I kept my eyes fixed on my tray, but I listened eagerly for the rise and fall of their voices at the next table. They were only a few yards away, yet it felt as if an ocean lay between us.

  I was released from my quarters for three one-hour meal periods, a forty-five-minute workout, and a fifteen-minute shower slot. In contrast to mealtimes, my daily trips to the fitness center and the showers were highlights of my day. I wondered if there was a subtle insult in the fact that my access to the showers had been doubled, as if I required twice as much time as anyone else to wash off the stains of my transgressions. Whatever the rationale, those fifteen minutes were the closest I came to feeling happy. Sitting under the curtain of warm water with my eyes closed and the lights dimmed, I didn’t have to think about anything. I didn’t have to be Eyvri or Avery, the novi or the outcast. I could just breathe.

  The hours in my quarters in between excursions were interminable. When I could find the motivation, I worked. My notes on language and culture and shipboard life had accumulated faster than I could keep pace with them. I collated and annotated and cross-referenced and reworded. I hated to think all my effort had been for nothing. And work, however pointless, was still better than sitting idle.

  When I couldn’t muster the energy for work, I lay on my bed and counted the days of my imprisonment. By my reckoning, we had been two Vardeshi weeks from Arkhati Starhaven when the communications network went down. The longest my isolation could possibly last was sixteen days. One of two things was bound to happen: either Saresh would restore the network, or the Pinion would arrive at Arkhati. Even if Saresh succeeded in repairing the network before we reached the starhaven, however, my tenure on the Pinion would end when we docked. It might be possible to prove I had been framed for the activation of the signal disruptor, but it would take time. There would be delays, both diplomatic and logistical. When I left Arkhati it would be on a different ship. If my name was cleared before the end of the exchange, I might be offered a place on an orbit crawler, a consolation prize of sorts. If not, I had to believe, a transport vessel would eventually take me home. However events unfolded, I would never return to the ship that had been my home for three months, and unless a second tribunal was convened, I would never see my crewmates again.

  Sometimes I speculated about the identity of the real saboteur, but I knew too little to hazard more than a guess as to whom it might be. I didn’t know how difficult it would be to break into a crewmate’s quarters. For all I knew, everyone on the Pinion possessed the technical skills to hack my door panel. Maybe they had all been given my access code for security reasons. I tried to think strategically. If the target hadn’t been the communications network, but rather my reputation and by extension that of my species, then the obvious suspects were those who had shown me the most antipathy: Vekesh, Vethna, sometimes Ziral, sometimes Khiva. But what did I really know about the thoughts or motivations of anyone on board? Maybe Daskar had a reason to despise humanity. Maybe Ahnir did. I couldn’t bring myself to consider Sohra or any of the Takheris. Try as I might, I couldn’t envision any of those four as a closeted anti-alliance criminal. I liked them all too much. If that was naïve, then so be it. Even Hathan, however distasteful he might find me personally, was still the son of Novak Takheri, and I didn’t believe he could extend a personal aversion into a planet-sized vendetta. But eliminating four members of the Pinion’s crew still left six possibilities. For the first time, I wished my taste in entertainment had run less toward Vardramas and more toward mysteries. Presented with a real-life conundrum, I had not the slightest idea how to begin solving it. Not that there was much I could do to unmask the real traitor from my quarters in any case.

  Late at night, when sleep was unattainable, I found myself thinking about what Saresh had offered. Had I been wrong to dismiss his invitation to try a Listening? If there was a chance, however remote, that he might be able to prove to the satisfaction of everyone on board that I wasn’t responsible for the destruction of the comm network, did I owe it to the others, not to mention myself, to take that chance? After all, while I sat waiting for the intercession of higher powers, the real antagonist continued to move freely about the ship. I had no idea what, if anything, he or she might be planning next. But the failure of the comm network hadn’t actually endangered anyone. It was inconvenient, to me in particular, but it wasn’t technically violent.

  And my crewmates had been awfully quick to dismiss my protestations of innocence. With the exceptions of Zey and Sohra, who as the crew members with the least seniority had been more or less powerless to affect the outcome of the tribunal, I didn’t really feel that I owed them anything. Especially not when the integrity of my own mind was at stake. For now, my penance was unpleasant, but it was endurable. The Vardeshi hadn’t cut off my oxygen supply. They weren’t denying me access to water, food, sanitation facilities, or sleep. They had simply elided me from their lives. I could outlast two weeks of cold silence and scornful looks. I wasn’t so fragile that a little ostracism would break me.

  Or at least that was what I told myself. The tally of my days crept upward: first three, then six, then eight. My hours of wakefulness during the night grew longer. I spent fewer daytime hours working and more staring out through my tiny viewport. My appetite dwindled. If I ate less, I could escape the mess hall faster, and the mere thought of sitting there on display for a roomful of former acquaintances was beginning to turn my stomach. There was an intimacy to their disdain that the derision of strangers could never approach.

  Only once in those days did anyone attempt to break my isolation. One morning, when I went into the galley to wash my dishes, Zey happened to be already there, stacking trays in the cleansing machine. Khiva had followed me into the room to supervise my conduct, so there was no chance of even a whispered word between us. Zey stepped around me to retrieve a tray from the far end of the narrow work counter. He passed me more closely than he needed to; his shoulder brushed against mine. The contact was fleeting, but its warmth lingered. After Zey had started the machine on its cycle and left the galley, I stood over my basin with my head bowed and my hands stilled in the warm water. The Vardeshi were precise and controlled in their movements. The touch had been no accident. He was still on my side. The force of my relief was overpowering. But that momentary pressure against my arm had awakened a need for physical affection that was startling in its ferocity. I needed not a lover’s caress but a friend to lean against. Unthinkingly I wrapped my soapy hands around my elbows and hugged my arms tightly to my chest. It was a pathetic imitation of a real embrace, but it was all I had.

  On the ninth day I cut myself in the galley. I was using my folding knife to saw open a packet of dried noodles, as I had done countless times, and I allowed my mind to wander. The edge of the knife skipped over the slick material and bit deep into the flesh between my right thumb and forefinger. I breathed in sharply as I felt the skin part. The knife clattered to the floor. I stood transfixed as the blood welled up and began to trickle down over my hand and onto the floor. My chaperones had begun to relax their guard in the mess hall, but the sound of the knife falling must have drawn Vethna’s attention, because he hurried into the galley. He froze when he saw me. Then he stepped out into the mess again, shouting for Sohra to fetch Daskar. I continued to stand motionless, watching the pool of dark blood form on the floor, while people rushed around me. Sohra wrapped my hand in a towel. Daskar came in with one of my orange emergency medical kits and began to minister to the cut. Th
ey might have been speaking to me, but I couldn’t make any sense of their words. I didn’t even recognize the language. I was dimly aware of Vethna being sick into a serving bowl on the far side of the doorway. It’s because of the blood, I thought. It’s red. He’s never seen red blood before.

  That night I dreamed I was sitting again in Dr. Okoye’s office. I pleaded with her to tell me what to do. Dig deep, she said. Dig down and find the parts of yourself you’ve never seen because you’ve never needed them before. Trust me when I say that they are there, and you will find them. If you have to. The office dissolved, and I found myself alone on my hands and knees in the Pinion’s arboretum, digging with my bare hands in the shallow red soil of one of the plant beds. There was something buried there, something important, something I needed to find. I dug through a few inches of loose soil before my fingers struck something flat and solid. Frantically I brushed away the dirt, but what lay beneath it was only the metal of the Pinion’s hull, smooth and impervious. I scratched at it with my fingernails. It was then that I realized that the atmosphere in the room was growing thinner. The oxygen generators were failing, and I was going to suffocate, to smother in the hot fragrant air of the arboretum, without ever finding what I needed.

  On the eleventh day I broke the silence and asked Hathan for help. I knew Vekesh wouldn’t listen to me, and I was sure Saresh would be deemed too close to me as my former hadazi. I would never be permitted to meet with him. Hathan was my only choice. And he had always been evenhanded in his dealings with me. I couldn’t speak to him directly, but on the way back to my quarters from the shower room, I asked Ziral to relay a message. She waved me into my quarters without responding, and I spent the next hour veering between rage and despair. At length, however, the door opened again.

  “He’ll see you,” Ziral said. She led me to a corridor in helix two. Stopping outside a door, she jerked her chin at it, then ostentatiously directed her gaze at the opposite wall. Evidently we had arrived.

  I went in, uneasily recalling the last time I’d been in this room, when Khavi Vekesh had summoned me to be reprimanded in front of Vethna, Saresh, and Zey. Hathan was sitting at the table in precisely the seat Vekesh had occupied. There was a cup of tea at his elbow. Nearly half the table was lit up with diagrams I hazily supposed to have something to do with navigation.

  As I approached, he said without looking up, “You’ll have to be brief. I have several billion miles of space to check against our most recent records. If possible, I’d like to avoid punching us through an asteroid that wasn’t there a week ago. A navigator’s job is a little more complicated without a functional communications network.”

  As before, he spoke in English. The edge in his voice was unmistakable. He was already angry with me—or, more plausibly, still angry. I had been counting on his objectivity. “Suvi—” I began.

  He cut me off. “Avery, I don’t know why you asked to see me, but if you’re here to argue for your reinstatement as a novi, you’re wasting your time. I stand by the khavi’s decision.”

  “I’m not here to argue with you,” I said. “I’m here to ask for your help.”

  “My help,” he repeated. “What exactly does that mean?”

  “You seem like a reasonable man. All I’m asking you to do is consider, for one minute, that I might be innocent.”

  “That’s asking a bit much at this point, don’t you think?”

  The sharpness of his tone silenced me briefly. While I struggled to frame a response, he continued, “Let’s consider the evidence. There’s the direct order from Khavi Vekesh which you acknowledged and then repeatedly ignored. There’s the inflammatory material you shared in secret with at least one crewman. There’s the fact that you deliberately antagonized Vekesh, Rhevi Vethna, and possibly others I’m not aware of. And, of course, there’s the terrorist device you smuggled aboard and used to cripple the Pinion’s communications network—from the convenience of your own quarters. Given all that, what, exactly, are you claiming to be innocent of?”

  “I—”

  He held up a hand to forestall my objections. “Even if I were willing to listen to you—to take your word over that of Khavi Vekesh, who, by the way, I’ve known and respected for years—I can’t overlook what you’ve done to my brother.”

  I had been prepared for the other accusations, but this one took me by surprise. “What I’ve done? To Zey? What are you talking about?”

  “As soon as you arrived on the ship, you started trying to isolate Zey from the rest of the crew. You must have seen from the start how simple it would be. He’s young, he’s inexperienced, he’s the only Blank . . . He was an easy mark. You drew him into an activity you knew contravened your orders and his. You’ve been encouraging him to think that Blanks are mistreated and that Earth has something better to offer them. Everything I’ve seen suggests that you’re grooming him; for what, I’m not sure—to serve as an agent of disinformation among other Blanks, maybe. I don’t know what your orders are. But I do know that you’re using my brother.”

  “I am not . . . using . . . him.” The word was so repellent I could barely get it out.

  “No? What would you call it?”

  “How about being his friend?”

  “His friend? Really? Zey has spent years training for a career in the Fleet, a career you’ve managed to jeopardize in under three months. You’ve tarnished both his record and his reputation with Khavi Vekesh. He may already be irrevocably tainted by his association with you. I don’t know what friendship means in your world, but after what I’ve seen, I hope I’ll be spared the friendship of humans. And I pray that Zey can recover from yours with his future intact.”

  “Suvi,” I said again, helplessly.

  He nodded to the door. “I think we’re done here.”

  I had to stand there for a long time before I could find the composure to speak, and I had to do it in the full glare of his barely contained irritation. I knew he was deliberately allowing me to see it, which made me feel even worse. At last I pulled myself together enough to say, “You’re getting it wrong. All of you. You’re wrong about me. You’re wrong about everything. And I don’t know how to make you see that.”

  Hathan bent over his star charts again. Without looking up, he said, slowly and deliberately, “Try not to damage any other major systems on the way back to your quarters.”

  I held the tears in for as long as I could. I didn’t quite make it. By the time we were passing the axis chamber again, they had begun to fall. Ziral must have seen, but she didn’t say anything. Fortunately for my shattered pride, we encountered no one else on our way to helix four. When the door to my quarters slid open, I walked in, flung myself down on the bed, and cried until I had no tears left. I was bitterly disappointed in both of us: in myself for failing to make my case, and in Hathan for failing to rise to my expectations. I hadn’t known he could be so effortlessly cruel. Spent at last, I fell asleep for a little while.

  The hiss of the door opening jarred me awake. Someone had come to collect me for dinner. Without lifting my head from my damp pillow, I told whoever it was to leave me alone. My putative escort said nothing. I turned my face away from the door. A moment later I heard it close again.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I hardly slept that night. When the door opened at seven o’clock the next morning to release me for breakfast, it was Saresh who stood in my doorway. His eyes widened as he took me in. I knew I looked terrible; I was still wearing the same rumpled clothes from the night before, and a cursory glance in the mirror had revealed a troubling pallor and charcoal smudges beneath my eyes. Saresh stepped back to allow me access to the corridor. The walk to the mess hall was as silent as it would have been with any other escort, but there was something comforting about his presence. Silence from him wasn’t the condemnation it was from the others.

  We arrived at the mess hall, and I went through to the galley and began to assemble my breakfast. The bandage on my right hand made me clumsier t
han before, but even so, it was only a few minutes before I was ready to go. I stacked my items on a tray and went out into the mess.

  Saresh had seated himself at the higher-ranking table and was talking to Ziral, the table’s only other occupant. His back was to the galley, and because I’d been quicker than usual in my preparations, he hadn’t troubled to lower his voice. “When the network comes online tomorrow—” he was saying.

  Ziral saw me emerge from the galley. She made a quick gesture of warning. Saresh turned around. “Avery? Is something wrong?”

  “I’m ready to go,” I said.

  His eyebrows lifted. “You haven’t eaten anything.”

  “I’ll eat in my quarters. I’m not doing this anymore.”

  Saresh and Ziral exchanged a doubtful look. I waited, my fingers tightening on the edges of my tray. I’d spoken with confidence, hoping no one would think to question my statement. I was fervently glad both Vekesh and Hathan were absent; one of them would undoubtedly have challenged my assertion, and short of a hunger strike, I had no real recourse. Ziral tilted her head slightly, signaling her indifference. I gave an inward sigh of relief as Saresh got to his feet. I marched out of the mess hall and back to the residential corridor before he could delay or seek confirmation.

  In my quarters I set my tray down on the bed and went to study the handful of stars visible through my tiny viewport. I was too restless to sit. At last, after twelve stifling days in a vacuum of information, I had learned something useful. The comm network would be restored tomorrow. If my estimate of our position was correct, that meant there was just time for a message to reach Earth and for a reply to be received before we docked. I knew better than to think that a single transmission could exonerate me, but even if I still found myself in a holding cell four days from now, I wanted Vekesh and the others to feel the Council’s outrage on my behalf. Whatever might pass for justice among the Vardeshi, humanity had very clear ideas about due process, and the treatment I had received at the hands of my crewmates failed to meet even our most minimal standards. What would Seidel’s immediate response be? To suspend the entire exchange? To dispatch a team of lawyers to Arkhati for the first cross-species retrial in history? Whatever happened, I knew the news of my imprisonment would infuriate my fellow humans. The thought filled me with a fierce glow of satisfaction. For now, Vekesh might be able to shout me down, but soon my voice would be only one among many. I wanted the full weight of Earth’s indignation added to my own.