by Kate MacLeod
Liam touched a spot on the wall, and just as he had made the sink appear out of nowhere, now he summoned the outlines of a door. The door rolled partway up but he didn’t wait for it to finish, just ducked under it and stepped down the still-lowering ramp. He must have touched a control on the other side because the ramp and door both reversed course, closing up again before Scout’s eyes.
That was probably wise. The last thing they needed was a couple of loose dogs roaming the platform.
Scout got up and refilled the dogs’ water bowl; then, not knowing what else to do, she went back to her seat. She wanted to see what was going on outside, but she wasn’t sure she wanted the people outside to see her.
Bureaucracy meant documents: identity cards and permissions to travel, things like that. Scout had a chip in her wristbone that identified her in the domed cities. She supposed it would still work here; the Space Farers had all the technology the Planet Dwellers had and then some.
But she didn’t have permission to be here in orbit. Not for herself, certainly not for her dogs.
Liam was probably being honest with the officials, but just in case he was fudging some facts, Scout decided it was safer to stay out of sight.
It might be safer, but it was maddening not knowing what was going on as the seconds ticked into minutes and the minutes began to accumulate.
Scout chewed at her lip, straining to hear through the hull of the ship. She was certain it was impossible for most sounds to travel through it. There might have been a soft murmur of voices but Scout could never quite be sure, not with the dogs sniffing madly at every centimeter of the ship’s interior, occasionally whuffing out sharp breaths when they located a particularly interesting scent.
Focusing on trying to hear the nearly inaudible was tiring. Her eyelids were getting heavy again.
She snapped awake, heart pounding. Her brain was in the foggy place of not being able to separate dream from reality, especially as she hadn’t even realized she had been sleeping. But even if she hadn’t just dreamt it, surely that softest of sounds she thought she had heard wasn’t enough to warrant such a rush of adrenaline. She wasn’t even certain what she had heard or if she had imagined it. She looked to the back of the ship. Had one of the dogs made that squeak?
But the dogs were both listening intently themselves, heads tipped and ears cocked crookedly.
Scout bit her lip. Had it been a yelp, abruptly cut off?
She needed to see outside, but she still didn’t want to be seen. She leaned forward towards the windscreen, keeping her eyes level with the top of the control console. Someone might see the top of her head, but she had to risk it.
The landing platform was much busier than when they had landed. Two larger ships were sitting on either side of them now and people were disembarking. Most wore the gray jumpsuits of the Space Farers she had encountered down on Amatheon, but a few were decked out in suits of brighter colors.
Then she saw them. The four figures in black were hustling away from the ship, back the way they’d come. But there was now a fifth person between them. At first Scout thought this one was also all in black, but when the figure stumbled, she realized what she had taken as a hat was actually a black hood pulled down over their head to spill around their shoulders, covering the top of their khaki jumpsuit.
Scout’s fingertips gripped the edge of the console so tightly they quickly went cold and white. They were taking Liam away. They had put a sack over his head and were dragging him away.
Whatever was going on, it was far more sinister than mere bureaucracy. And with Liam gone, Scout was left to face it alone.
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About the Author
Photograph © 2016 Jonathan Conklin
Kate MacLeod lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota with her husband and two sons. Her short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Persistent Visions, Mythic Delirium and Abyss and Apex among others.
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Find out more about the author at www.katemacleod.net. To stay up to date on all her new releases sign up for her newsletter.
Also by Kate MacLeod
Novels
Mitwa
The Mars of Malcontents
The Whole World for Each
Under Falling Skies
In Quaking Hills
Among Treacherous Stars
Against Impassable Barriers (coming April 2018)
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Novellas
The Intergenerational Tree
I Rise into a Daybreak
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Short Story Collections
Tales of Blood and Ink
Tales of Heian-Kyo and Others
Tales from the Edges and Ends
Tales from Forgotten Days
Copyright © 2018 by Kate MacLeod
Published by Ratatoskr Press.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover image by Benjamin P. Roque.
Ratatoskr Press logo by Aidan Vincent.
Copyediting by Sarah Kolb-Williams.
ISBN 978-1-946552-52-5
Created with Vellum
