by Rose, Renee
My senses are on high, adrenaline surging.
The temporary code for my craft still works, and I’ve paid close attention over the lunar cycles I’ve lived here. I know exactly how to get out of this hangar and onto the takeover zone. And I know that there’s only one Zandian on tower duty at night.
Sitting in the flight seat, I push back the regret, the heaviness of leaving. Zandia was never my home. And while I care for my mates, I have to get back to Jesel. It’s an itch that’s gotten so strong that I would scratch my skin to the bone to quench it, and this is the only way. Anyway, with Domm and Lanz willing to dissolve our bond, there’s no other option anyway.
Touching the controls is like a drug to my veins and I sigh, feeling alive, my worries slipping away as I focus and guide the craft up. There’s a message from the tower, a warning, and then I’m gone, into space.
I don’t think they’ll come after me, at least not right away. Domm and Lanz wouldn’t tell me, but Kianna said they’re on an all-hands-on-deck kind of mission to obtain an Ocretion ship right now. They need to reverse engineer it and figure out the Ocretion’s new cloaking system, or else Zandian ships will be jeopardized when in Ocretion airspace. Zandia used to have excellent diplomatic relations with the Ocretions, but since they won their planet back, the Ocretions are more threatened by them. And the pirate subculture is always alive and well in the galaxy.
The king won’t waste efforts chasing me. I think. I hope. Not now, not when his warships are taken up with this other critical mission.
As time passes and no warnings flash on my screen, I lose some of my tension. My craft can’t see their cloaked craft, so they could be on top of me this second. But more time passes, without intervention. I’m free.
It’s exhilarating.
And lonely.
I’ve been used to working as a team. Not just at home, with Lanz and Domm, but at work, too—with Kianna and Amber. Being alone again, although it’s good to be the sole person in charge of my destiny, feels sort of sad.
But there isn’t time to ponder this, because I need all my senses to navigate the asteroid clusters that will be coming up, and to dodge and flip my course to avoid the areas where pirates lurk. I used to be so good at this. Mother Earth, I hope I haven’t lost my touch.
* * *
My eyes are gritty and my body aches, but there she is—Jesel looms in my screen, brown and green. I catch my breath as I play the controls, setting the landing coordinates from memory, selecting the baked earth spot near my father’s camp.
This time the asteroids surrounding the planet are thicker than usual; it must be the cosmic flux currents that brought more debris, and it’s nearly beyond the capabilities of my equipment to keep up.
I told Domm and Lanz how I can feel the obstacles, and I can, but there are too many, and not enough spaces for my craft to fit in between them as they whirl and fly in their intricate orbits.
“Veck,” I breathe to myself. I’ve picked up a few things on Zandia, and cursing is one of them. I have not, however, acquired the ability to be in two places at once, and my craft is battered by a fierce swarm of rocks.
I hear the insidious hiss of the hull breach.
“Veck, veck, veck,” I whisper, but it’s more like a chant, as my fingers fly over the controls. I have just enough time to get to Jesel before my air runs out. Even with that enhanced hull, it wasn’t enough to avoid these piercing jagged space stones.
To my horror, another crash. My craft shutters—that was the landing gear. I barely make it down, and the ship crashes hard into the earth, alarms sounding like voices, a symphony of broken parts, and then the lights flash out on my console just as the steps sigh down.
* * *
My legs are cramped as I stand, but when I open the door and stand at the top of the stairs, the scent of the scorched earth and the Pakka bushes flows at me, mixed with exhaust and fuel and hot metal from my craft, and I tear up. I’m so eager to get to my father’s house that I nearly sob, but I take the time to survey my surroundings for danger. Make sure there’s no humans lurking from Kaffa’s camp. No threats of any kind.
My craft creaks and smokes, groans as crushed metal gives way and settles in agonized screams of torn steel and titanium. My heart rips with it, but my mind is focused on the humans here. Because after all of this, after all of it—I’m back.
When I see it’s clear, I race across the field, where my father is already coming from his hut, a look of shock on his face. When he sees me, his eyes widen and he goes still. For a second I think he’s seen a ghost.
“Father.” My voice shakes and I run to his arms, grabbing him tightly. When did he get so small and wrinkled? He’s so old now.
“Mirelle.” There are tears in his eyes and his arms are strong around me, even if he looked frail. He smells the same, like home.
I rest my head on his shoulder, blinding myself in his shirt and squeeze him, unable to let go. “Father. I missed you so much.” I pull back to look at him, the wrinkles around his eyes. His skin looks papery on his hands, and brown age spots dot his forearms. I grab him again, as if trying to force vitality into his body, his soul, transfer some of my energy to him.
“I didn’t think I’d see you again in this lifetime.” He touches my face. “My daughter. You’re here.”
He glances to my craft. “It’s different! How?” A beat. “You took damage. Are you all right?” He touches my shoulders, my face. “Are you injured?”
I shake my head. “No. I’ll tell you everything. Are you all right?” I look around. Something feels off. I can’t stop saying it. “Are you all right?” I look at him with the same amazement he must feel, seeing me. “Father. You’re here. I’m here.” It’s insane, unbelievable, really, that the two of us are face to face. Across all the odds of the universe, the obstacles in the path, here we are. I don’t know if it’s real or a dream.
He squeezes my arm. “I’m here, child.” But his eyes are sad. “Where did you go?”
“I’ll tell you everything. It’s so long.”
I follow him into our home, my chest clenching at the way it smells, of burnt karka meat and dirt and unwashed clothes; the smell of my childhood. I can practically see Iselle bending over the rough wooden table, biting her lip, holding her pencil. Learning to cipher in some new language.
It’s so familiar, and yet so foreign. I’ve returned a different person.
The hut, the furnishings are so meager. I grew up in such abject poverty, and yet hadn’t realized it.
And just like that, time flattens out and I’m exhausted. I made it here. I escaped Zandia, made my way across a dangerous galaxy in a craft that’s like paper, and I’m here. And yet I no longer feel I belong.
He gives me water. He’s cooked a stew; the same stew we always eat. Time falls away and comes around me like a tide, enveloping me in my past, sending long-gone moments back in front of me in eddies and whirlpools. My mind can’t keep up and I blink, put a hand to my forehead.
Ever solicitous, my father frowns. “We can talk later. Do you want to rest? Your room is here, still.” He gestures to a curtained off partition. My bedding, my old things. My mind reels.
Every cell in my body wants to scream in protest. There’s something so wrong about coming back to my old room, my old bed, when I only recently graduated to having mates. A home as an adult. A family of my own, of sorts. Even if I knew I’d miss them, it’s only now that I feel it. And it hurts in my heart.
I’m overwhelmed. I smile at him. “It’s been so strange.”
He waits.
“I was rescuing two females when I was attacked, captured. Taken to Zandia.”
He sucks in a breath. Concern in his eyes.
I pick my words carefully. “I was given to two Zandians as a mate.” I hurry to add, “It was not bad.”
From the expression on his face, I can see that he’s unsure.
“They were not unkind. In fact, they were…quite…accommodating.” I
flush hard. Accommodating indeed.
But then tears prick my eyes, remembering how we parted—the last thing I said to them.
It was so untrue—I don’t hate them. I love them. But love isn’t enough, sometimes, when we have promises to keep. And when the others no longer love you.
“Life there is different than we thought,” I add rapidly. “They have an advanced society, and they rescue humans. Mostly human women.”
He frowns. “I have been learning about the Zandians. What I’ve found is very enlightening.”
“Father, the things humans create there, you would love it. Medicine. Weapons. Craft. The tools they have at their disposal! It’s like anything in the universe you can think of, you can create.” My fingers itch, remembering my tool shop there. “I was able to do things I’ve only dreamed of.
“But I’m back now.” I take a breath. “I can continue our work, Father. The rescues. Our plans for the future.” Strangely, I feel no great enthusiasm for the task. Instead, I feel an existential dread, and something I never once felt: Fear.
“Our plans.” His voice is pensive. “Yes.”
“What have you been doing?” I look around. Nothing’s changed here, it seems. Except it’s quieter. “Where are the others?” I’m used to seeing at least three or four other humans around. It’s eerily silent. “Usually everyone gathers in your hut to talk and make plans at this time.” Unease pricks me. “Right?”
He shakes his head.
Cold trickles along my spine. “Father? Tell me.”
He sighs. “We were attacked again by the North crew.”
“Mandy? Tess? Are they all right?” I lean forward. “Father!”
He avoids my eyes. “Mirelle, we did the best we could. I’m so sorry.”
“Father, are they—what happened?” I grab his arm. “Tell me.”
“Mirelle, they were taken.” He takes my hand.
“No!” I stand up, scanning the room. “We need to rescue them.”
“We cannot. They destroyed our fortifications. Took our weapons. It will take time to rebuild, if we even can. I have no remaining craft that are operational.”
“I can fix—” But no, I can’t. My tools are on Zandia. My stomach churns. “I did it before. I can do it again.”
But I’m weary. Just thinking about the massive effort it will take to plan an attack on the North crew leaves me ill and despondent. The dangerous missions I’ll have to make in whatever ill-designed, ramshackle craft we have, each journey a toss-up with fate as to whether I survive or do not.
“Why do humans have to fight? Don’t they understand that we only weaken ourselves this way?” I sit back down, sink my head onto my folded arms.
I asked to come back here. Demanded it. Forced it. Now that I’m back, it feels like a big mistake.
I miss Zandia, my mates, with every fiber of my being. How ironic: When I was there, all I wanted was to come back here. Now that I’m here, I want to be back there.
“Garrett has never been a reasonable man.” My father’s voice is firm. “And he never will be. Desperation and weakness twists beings into sick facsimiles of what they once were. He will never change.”
“I don’t want to have to kill him.” Bile rises in my throat. “But I will. What are they doing to them?” Despite my fatigue, necessity calls.
I mean Tess and Mandy, of course.
“I’m sure you know.”
I do know what Garrett and his men do to the women they capture, and I have to vomit. I run outside the hut and spew my stomach into the rough, sunburnt leaves of the scratchy Cattish shrubs that grow here.
“Are they still alive?” I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand.
He shakes his head. “Probably, but…”
“Well, you and Daniel and I, and the rest, we can—”
“Daniel is dead. Garrett killed him.”
I sit down in the rough chair and put my head in my hands. “Mother Earth.”
“And the other men? The good ones, from our camp? I sent them away to Fi. In our last space-worthy craft.”
“Away? Where?” I laugh in disbelief. “What is Fi?” I shake my head. “Why?”
“Fi is a place for human males to have a new life.”
“But not females? I don’t understand.” My head swims.
“Let me tell you something.” My father clears his throat. “It will take time, but I need you to listen. Yes.”
I nod, my head aching. “I will try.” I don’t know if I can process anything right now.
“Every planet rotation you were away, I grieved your loss.” His voice is low. “But I also celebrated, Mirelle. Because I needed to believe you were safe, doing something miraculous. In a place better than this one. With a real future ahead of you.”
I can’t speak.
“For years, I believed that this place”—he gestures around us—“was the way to help humans. To persevere. Protect. Build a new future. But now…”
“Now?” My voice is scratchy with emotion.
“This isn’t working.”
“I want humans to be free.” My voice shakes. “Our species deserves it.” I make a fist.
“When your mother and I came here to Jesel, escaped from slavery to the Ocretions, we dreamed of a place where we could bring humans. Start our own planet up with humans. Repopulate. Build a society.”
I nod. “You told me. Because human history is strong and beautiful. We need to preserve it for the future of the universe.”
“Our minds have been strong over the centuries, but our bodies are weak, compared to the others in the galaxy. And our temperament, as a species, was…complicated.” My father coughs. “Humans got into trouble in the first place, lost their domination, because of greed and in-fighting.”
“But we’re resourceful and strong. Like glue. We fill in the cracks. We break things, but then we fix them. The good parts of us,” I insist. “We kept going, rising back up. That’s what you taught me.”
“That we did.” He raises a finger. “And that’s the path forward.”
“What do you mean?”
He coughs again, and this time he brings up a cloth to cover his mouth. It’s stained red when he removes it from his lips. I frown and try to look but he interrupts. “Humans, alone, fight each other. Humans mixed with another species, make it stronger.”
“So you’re saying that our goal is to intermix?”
“Maybe.” He shrugs. “I do. Look at what you accomplished on Zandia. They alone were too warlike, lacked emotion.”
“Wait. How do you know that?” I frown. “And what do you mean, I’ve accomplished?”
“You, meaning humans. Human females.”
“I don’t—how do you know what we’ve accomplished there? I just got back, and I haven’t told you much yet.” I’m confused.
“I’ve been spending all of my time trying to learn about the universe,” he says. He puts down his cloth and leans over to grab a piece of electronics from a shelf, but doesn’t let go of my hand. He holds up a battered scanner. “I can pick up basic information from the galaxy with this.”
“On Zandia, we have…” I start, about to tell him about the new sub-scanners, then break off. “Sorry. You were saying?”
“I’ve been learning.” He taps the device with a finger. “Soaking up everything I can. Schooling myself about the galaxies and the creatures that live in them. Trying to figure out what I need to do.”
“And?” I raise a brow.
“It turns out that I’ve learned about the changes in Zandia over the past solar cycles since they defeated the Finn. How they’re stronger, more resilient, more adaptable. I think that’s the result of the human influence.”
“I think you’re right.” Something in my heart starts to lift, spread its wings. “You have no idea! For example, when Domm…” I break off. My smile fades, my insides twisting. Domm’s not mine anymore; nor is Lanz. They never will be again. And I need to listen to my father, because he cle
arly wants to impart something critical.
“We alone, humans, were too self-absorbed and selfish. Too emotional in ways that were poorly guided. But together, the combination is a powerhouse. That new society is going to thrive and become a star of the universe.”
“I…” I’m not sure what to say. He’s right about humans improving Zandia. But I never thought about the reverse, that the Zandians could be helping humanity as well.
“And who knows where humans have spread in the universe apart from Zandia. It’s a great place, full of wonders. I have a suspicion that humans are doing the same thing in other societies. Filling in the gaps with our wisdom and skills. Providing the talents to make a strong species even stronger. Adapting.”
“But losing our identity,” I argue.
“Don’t you think every group will do that eventually?” He tilts his head. “Millions of years ahead, will there still be Ocretions, for example?”
“I hope not,” I joke.
“Aren’t the Zandians changing as they incorporate human DNA into their genome?”
“Well, of course. But the planet is still Zandia. It’s Zandian society.”
“For now. In the future, if they keep mating with humans, it will be something strange and new. Zandian and human both.”
“That’s true.” I rub my nose, eyes burning.
“And that way, both survive. Yes? Maybe both better for it. Stronger. Something new, that never before existed. Not replacing the old. Just…enhancing it.”
“Yes.” I like the idea. It makes my fear go away and replaces it with a warm feeling in my chest.
He smiles. “Who knows. But if humans take care to move around, our genetic material will carry into the future.”
“Like a virus.”
“Or the cure.” He raises a brow. “The stuff of life, Mirelle. The injection that keeps other species vital.”
“Vital.” I try out the word.
“Jesel is dead.” His eyes are wet. “The Northern raids have destroyed our community. There are no families, no children. The few remaining women of childbearing age have no partners and are in captivity as slaves to other humans. The men of the right age are aggressive and hostile, not amenable to rearing young.” He turns his head away. “We have poor technology. We just don’t have enough beings to start a new human society.”
