by JA Huss
But I dig in anyway, far too hungry to be able to resist. And I’m just about to take a bite of the spicy Centurian protein wrap when the airlock chimes and blinks green and the door slides open.
It’s only then that I realize… I was locked in here. Like a fucking prisoner.
Nyleena walks in, looking sexy as all hell in her black tactical bodysuit and knee-high silver boots. She has no fewer than four weapons strapped to her body—pistols hanging off each thigh, plasma rifle strapped to her back, and what looks to be a SEAR knife (since when are those legal here?) in a pocket of her right boot.
I sigh and put the protein wrap back on my plate, then stand up to greet her when I notice… “Shit,” I say, staring at her belly.
She forces a smile. “I guess you’re going to be an uncle.”
“Fuck,” I say.
“You knew though, right?”
“I mean… sorta. Kinda figured it out about the flowers. But this?” I point to the very apparent baby bump protruding from her middle. “I wasn’t expecting this.”
“Yeah, well.” She waves a hand in the air, a gesture that reminds me a lot of Veila right about now. “Shit happens, right? And never goes to plan.”
“You can say that again.”
She juts her chin towards my plate. “Don’t let me stop you. I’m just here as a courtesy.”
“Courtesy for what?”
“For whom, you mean. For Luck. He’s… angry. You understand that, right?”
“Not really,” I say. “I don’t know what I did, but it’s not what you guys think. I just woke up a few hours ago, Nyleena. I wasn’t upstairs with Veila this whole time.”
Nyleena sighs and walks over to the booth, sliding in opposite of me. She reaches out to grab a piece of cheese bread off my plate like we’re old friends, or lovers, or hell, like we know each other at all. Which we don’t.
She takes a big bite and talks as she chews. “Luck is pissed. No word,” she says, swallowing, then taking another bite like she hasn’t eaten in weeks. “No updates. No nothing. Things…” She swallows again and this time pauses with the bread in front of her pink pouty lips like she’s thinking. “Things got a little serious here,” she finishes, tipping up her chin a little like she’s being defiant. “I mean… what started as a ruse to cover for you guys leaving turned into out-and-out war. My little princess army? It’s not so little and these girls are fuckin’ serious.”
“What do you mean, not so little? How many princesses did we have on the station when I left? Maybe three dozen total including the free ones?”
“Well, yeah. But word got out and they came in droves, Valor.”
“Define droves,” I say, pushing my plate of food away.
“Two hundred and twenty-seven to be exact.”
“What the fuck? Where the hell did they all come from?”
“Everyone Serpint ever caught or Crux ever bought—be they free, living here, or elsewhere—showed up for the war.”
“OK,” I say, trying to parse all that. “So they’re on our side, though, right?”
“Define ‘our side.’”
“Me, Luck, Tray, Crux, Serpint, Jimmy, Booty, Lady, Asshole? Ringing any bells here, Nyleena?”
“Hmm. That’s interesting.”
“What is?”
“Well, you left out me. And Lyra. And Corla. And Delphi.”
“You guys too,” I say. “You’re with us.”
“Are we?”
“Aren’t you?”
“Well, I’m with Luck. And Delphi is with Jimmy. I’m pretty sure that Lyra is still with Serpint and no one really knows where Corla stands, do we? Since she’s been frozen in that cryopod for over a year now. And…” She shrugs. “Well, let’s just lay it all out on the table, shall we? You’re with Veila.”
I pause for a minute. Not about the Veila part. But about the Corla part. So they don’t know. They don’t know about Crux or the messages, or that Corla is awake. According to Crux, at least.
“I am not with Veila,” I say with emphasis.
“You literally have physically been with Veila for almost six weeks.”
“I was a prisoner in a cryopod, Nyleena.”
“So you say.”
“Ask Lady. She accessed my health data.”
“It’s true,” Lady says. “He did just wake up a few hours ago.”
“You’re sure?” Nyleena asks, side-eyeing me with suspicion.
“Hold on a second,” I say, putting up a hand. “Why the fuck are you here and not Luck?”
“What’s that mean?”
“You’re pregnant, Nyleena. You should be somewhere safe.”
“Am I in danger?” she asks, looking around innocently.
“From me? No. But… you know, you should be careful.”
“We’re in the docking bay, Valor. Lady Luck is literally our headquarters. I’m as safe as I can be. But I do appreciate your concern.” She squints her eyes. “If that’s what it was.”
“What else would it be?”
“I dunno. Fishing for information?”
“For who?”
“Veila? You know. Your soulmate?”
“Look, she’s moved on, OK? She’s not even interested in me. She’s fucking pregnant too, did you guys know that?”
Nyleena frowns. “That’s not possible. She’s not even silver.”
“Well, she is. She put herself inside a medial scanner and showed me a live feed of the babies under the guidance of the Cyborg Master. So… I don’t know what to tell you.”
“Why are you down here?”
“To see Luck. Why else? For fuck’s sake. He’s my partner. He’s been my partner for as long as I can remember.”
She squints her eyes at me. “Hmm. Well, he wasn’t your partner when you left. That was Tray. See, this is why we’re confused.”
“Tray is…” But I don’t have a good response to that. Because Tray and I have lived lifetimes together in the virtual. We spent more time together than I ever did with Luck. Why did I ever ask to go inside that stupid virtual? It fucked everything up. “Tray is different.”
“Different how?”
“I’m not discussing it with you, Nyleena. It’s fucking personal, OK? If Luck wants to know the whole story, he can come hear it from me himself.”
“Well, I have a problem with that.”
“Why?” I say, pressing two fingers up to my temple. In addition to my tight chest and painful breathing, my head is now pounding.
“Because he trusted Crux and Serpint and they turned on him.”
For several seconds that sentence makes absolutely no sense. I cannot even fathom a scenario where what Nyleena just said is possible. “What do you mean, turned on him?”
“You saw the station on your way down.”
“OK. Yeah. It was dark and shit’s fucked up. People are fighting more than usual. But that was part of the plan.”
“You know what wasn’t part of the plan, Valor?”
“I have a feeling you’re going to tell me.”
“Being gone six weeks. Six. Fucking. Weeks. This isn’t our plan anymore. Do you understand that? Those people out there? This is all real to them. Ninety-five hundred deaths in the past two weeks alone.”
“What? Veila did this?”
“Veila?” Nyleena huffs. “Veila isn’t in charge of this war. We are. Me, and Luck, and Crux, and Jimmy, and Serpint, and Lyra, and Delphi. We did this, Valor.”
She is very obviously pissed off at this point. Her face is flushed red. Her little ferocious fists are balled up, and her spine is straight and rigid.
“It was part of the plan.”
“Like I said,” she hisses. “Six weeks was not in the plan. This war is real to them. Every one of those people out there have chosen a side. And seventy-five percent of them aren’t with Luck. They want to kill him.”
“Oh,” I say.
“Oh,” she mimics. “Yeah. So what we have here is a total breakdown of society. I
feel like I’m living on some mythical badlands moon where everyone makes the rules up as they go. They hate him. But that’s not all. Our people down here? All those sticky-sweet princesses who used to be sex slaves in the Harem? Well, they hate Crux and Serpint just as much. All they do all day long is plot insane schemes to take them out. The entire situation is completely out of control. Veila doesn’t even live on the station. She stays on her ship. Who the hell in their right mind would want to be on Harem Station right now? I’ll tell you who. No one. They all want to leave. The Uppers stormed us Lowers four weeks ago, demanding access to their ships so they could get the hell out of here. So we started letting them through and that’s when we found out that the fucking gates are locked and no one can leave. They killed three hundred people down here, including seven young princesses. As you can imagine, that didn’t go over well with Captain Red out there.”
“Fuck,” I say. “I didn’t realize.”
“She led a raiding party up some secret set of back stairs and ended up killing another four dozen people before she came back.”
“Why didn’t you stop her?”
“Do I look like I’m in charge?”
“She told me—”
“She told you what? That she’s my guard captain?” Nyleena does air quotes around that last part. “She says that but she doesn’t mean it. She’s out for blood. Crux’s blood. Serpint’s blood. And Lyra’s blood too.”
“So fucking kill her,” I say. “Simple.”
“Kill her? Please. She has over two thousand supporters down here. I could kill her and all two thousand of those supporters—which includes all of the princesses, by the way—but then I’d be guilty of war crimes. And call me crazy, but raising twins on a Prime Prison planet isn’t what I’d call ‘living the dream.’”
I can see her point. “But you’re way more powerful than Red out there, right? You’re a true silver, Nyleena.”
“What do you want me to do, Valor? Blow the fucking place up? My twins, and me, and Luck along with them?”
“Right,” I sigh. “Yeah. OK. I get it.”
“Do you?” She sneers at me.
“Look, I haven’t had the best time either. I was…” But I stop. Because actually, before Veila caught up with us, I lived thousands of years that felt a whole lot like happily ever after inside a totally safe and protected virtual reality. Still, there was more to it than that. “I was tortured by Veila. Tray was… fuck. I have no idea what happened to Tray or where he is now. And there’s this girl—”
“A girl?” Nyleena guffaws. “Do not tell me about some girl, OK?”
“Listen, I need to talk to Luck. Things have gone off track out there too. And if this plan is falling apart, then we need a new one.”
“Don’t you think Delphi and I have been trying to scheme up a new fucking plan?” She taps an impatient boot toe on the floor and plants her hands on her hips. “Nothing has worked. Our only viable option at this point is to try to leave on Dicker and Lady before things get any worse.”
“OK.” I sigh. “So… we should do that.”
“We can’t do that!” she exclaims. “Veila has a Cygnian warship out there, the security beacons are all offline, and we can’t even get through the gates. So where the hell are we going to go? There are no planets around the sun. No moons. Hell, there’s not even a stray asteroid to hide behind.”
“So what the fuck do you want me to do? Huh? Because I have no clue. I don’t even know what’s going on. I have no idea where Tray is, or even if he’s alive at this point.”
“What did Veila tell you?”
“Veila?” I squint my eyes at Nyleena, kinda shaking my head. “She talked a lot about being pregnant and told me some stupid stories about comic books and Akeelian superheroes.”
Nyleena blinks at me. “What?”
“I don’t know,” I say, throwing up my hands. “I don’t know. We didn’t really talk. She told me she was pregnant. She told me it wasn’t mine. She told me about some Akeelian comic books back in Cygnian System, and then she told her cyborgs to bring me down to level ninety-six and leave me there. That was pretty much the extent of our conversation.”
I leave out the part about Earth and flowers and all that other shit. Because that’s not a conversation I’m going to have with Nyleena before I have it with Luck and Jimmy.
“Well, that’s stupid.”
“Tell me about it. And where’s Jimmy? I need to see my brothers. Right now.”
“He’s on Dicker with Luck and Delphi, hiding from our… supporters.” She does air quotes for that last word.
“Great. Can you take me there?”
Nyleena gets up from the booth and turns her back to me. Pauses. There’s several long seconds of silence before she turns around again. “Fine. But if you try anything—”
“What the hell am I going to try? They’re my brothers!”
“Well, Crux and Serpint are Luck’s brothers too. Didn’t stop them from trying to kill him.”
“What are you talking about?”
She shakes her head and clenches her jaw. “I’ll let Luck tell you that part. Because I might explode if I tell that story.” And then she says, “Let’s go,” and starts walking towards Lady’s airlock.
God, none of this makes any sense. I suddenly have this sick feeling that I’m still inside a virtual and reality is somewhere out there. Unreachable.
I push that thought away real quick. Because that… that will fuck with my head big time and I can’t afford any more distractions.
CHAPTER SEVEN - VALOR
The walk over to Dicker in the next bay feels like it flashes by too fast, yet takes an eternity at the same time. And the next thing I know the airlock to Dicker is sliding open.
The first thing I see is Luck sitting at the navigation table, pieces of a plasma rifle spread out before him. I walk towards him, glancing to my left at Delphi, then focusing back on Luck.
But he doesn’t lift his head and he doesn’t speak to me. No greeting at all.
“About fucking time.” That comes from Jimmy behind me.
I turn and find him lying in a hammock, hands behind his head like he hasn’t got a care in the world. “Jimmy,” I say, smiling. “Fuck, it’s good to see you guys.”
Jimmy swings his legs out, hops down to the floor, then grabs Delphi’s hand and says, “We’ll be over on Lady if you need us.”
I assume he’s talking to Luck. But Luck says nothing in return. Then the airlock closes and when I turn, I see that Nyleena has left as well. Which makes me feel a little better. Because those fucking princesses are all crazy and dangerous and I need to figure out what’s going through Luck’s head without their interference.
There’s a stool on the opposite side of the navigation table from Luck, so I take a seat and say, “I… I’m sorry.”
He still doesn’t look up. Just says, “About which part?” as he starts screwing a piece of the rifle barrel back together.
“W-well,” I stammer, then take a deep breath and continue. “All of it, I guess. Ignoring you after you came back with Jimmy. Hooking up with Tray.”
Now he looks at me.
His eyes are ringed with dark circles, his violet irises simmering with heat and anger like there’s a storm brewing inside him. His hair is too long, and messy, and there’s dirt or maybe a scorch mark from a plasma rifle marking an ugly line across his throat.
“Huh,” he huffs. “Hooking up with him?”
And I know what Luck’s asking. Did I hook up with him or did I hook up with him? I don’t know what to say, so I decide on nothing.
“Is that what you did, then?” Luck asks. “You just chose him over me?”
And this kinda pisses me off. “Why not?” I say. “You had Nyleena. Right? You were all set, Luck.”
“That was after, and you know it.”
“But it was coming. We all know there’s no way to fight that bond.”
“So you just quit? Just bowed out
early like a fucking pussy? Left me wondering what the fuck I did to make you hate me?”
“Don’t be dumb. I don’t hate you.”
“No,” he says, narrowing his eyes at me. “You just left me. Where the fuck have you been?”
I run my fingers through my hair. Which is also too long and probably a mess. I want to say all kinds of things. Things like… I didn’t leave you. It was the plan. And even though I did leave you in another way, that was self-preservation.
But I don’t feel ready to have that conversation. So instead I say, “It’s a very long story.”
“Start at the beginning,” Luck growls. “And don’t leave a single fucking thing out.”
So I do.
Kind of.
I start at the point where Luck and Nyleena walked Tray and I through the spin node on level one twenty-two. “We came out on that station. And there were ships in the docking bays. And the whole thing kinda reminded me of Harem, you know. When we first got here. All dark and empty, but still you had this feeling that people had been there. Maybe just a few minutes ago. Does that makes sense?”
Luck is staring at me. And he doesn’t blink. Just gives me one nod as encouragement to go on.
“Well, anyway. Tray left some very crucial details out of that plan.”
“What kind of details?”
“He was after a girl,” I say. “Brigit is her name.”
“A princess?” Luck asks.
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “An Akeelian girl, Luck.”
He makes a face.
“I know,” I say. “There’s no such thing. But… there is. And she’s one of them.”
I stop then. Trying to figure out if I should tell Luck now or later who the girls are. What they are.
“What was that place?” Luck asks. “The station. What was it called?”
“OK, so here’s where it all goes sideways. So bear with me.”
“I’m listening.”
“The station was Angel Station.” Luck opens his mouth to protest, but I put up a hand. “Just let me talk. Let me tell the story and then you can ask questions. OK? Because there’s a lot to unpack here.”
He leans back against the wall behind him, folds his arms across his chest, and shrugs. “Fine. Talk.”
