by J. S. Fields
“I’ve done it,” she whispered to herself. Neek brought the fabric to her mouth and spoke into it. “It’s finally done.”
The gatoi moved behind her and began to unfasten the tiny metal hooks that ran the length of her silver robe. One by one, she felt the freed hooks loosen the fabric. She held the gold robe out in front of her. Smoothed the wrinkles away. Waited for the silver to pool at her feet so she could slide the cooling cotton over her head.
“End the tyranny of Ardulum!” a voice called from the crowd.
A rush of gasps sounded as Neek jerked her head up to scan the audience. The seats were mostly filled with family members, but at the sides and in the back, Neek were standing up. They wore simple clothes, not ceremonial ones or even formal dress gowns like the families. Neek saw clenched fists. She saw bruised faces and eyes looking at her with determination, hope, and anger.
“The Heaven Guard is a lie!” a man shouted from too-near the stage. “Ardulum is a lie! The president is a lie!”
Not here! Neek thought desperately. She tried to catch her brother’s eyes, but he wouldn’t look at her. In fact, he was looking at everything but her—at the families, the protestors, her parents. He almost looked…guilty.
Brother! she thought wildly. Did you do this? She couldn’t imagine it, and the possibility shredded her heart. He was the one who had been so adamant that she join the Guard. They both had plans for what they could accomplish once she was beyond the president’s reach. This was counter to all of their goals.
The gatoi’s hands had stilled near her waist. “Oh,” zie whispered.
A golden skiff flashed in Neek’s peripheral vision. She turned towards it, and whatever remnants of joy that had swelled inside her only moments before burst and leaked from her with her thinning stuk. A hundred or so protestors could be dealt with. This…
“No,” she whispered to herself. Because it couldn’t be. The president of Neek had no business at a Heaven Guard ceremony. There were other gold skiffs on her planet. Perhaps it was someone’s parents, arriving late. Perhaps a dignitary from another planet had made an unexpected visit. Perhaps one of the Cell-Tal board members, a Risalian cellulose engineer, was on-planet and wanted to see the ceremony. Either way, there were other possibilities. It wasn’t going to be the president. He had no right to be here, protestors or no! The Guard belonged to the high priest. The Guard belonged to the Ardulan religion. On her world, Ardulum was greater than the president.
He has no right to be here!
The skiff landed just beside the stage, its repulsors burning the sedge. Its engine whine faded. The skiff’s door opened, and Neek stopped breathing. Her heartbeat turned erratic. The President of Neek stepped from the ship. No stuk dripped from his fingers, which might have given Neek a hint to his mood. His curls were slicked back, and his face was so impassive that Neek wanted to slap him.
The protestors sat down. The families quieted. The president seldom left his governmental offices, and for all their rallies, Neek doubted that any of the people out in the crowd would dare insult the president to his face. He had bribed and manipulated his way into almost every aspect of society, had too much power over their world. Even the Heaven Guard trainees kept rigidly still. They’d not yet graduated. To leave the stage now would be to leave the Guard.
After him came four Old Family guards, dressed in what looked like riot gear. Neek had only seen pictures of such outfits. There was no call for that kind of clothing, not with the Charted Systems’ omnipresent peace. Not even to deal with protestors who might have also been involved in some property destruction last night. No one got hurt, after all.
Neek stepped to the very edge of the stage and held her hands out. “Don’t,” she said. Her hands shook. This wasn’t the time. This wasn’t the place. He could be angry at her for the rallies and protests, or the editorial she’d gotten published in the Neek Journal of Science & Technology just a few days ago, but they could sort that later. That was for behind closed doors—a visit to her parents’ house or an ambush at the temple. Not here.
But they didn’t stop. Two guards grabbed her arms while a third grabbed fistfuls of her robe and ripped the silver fabric from her body. Dozens of protestors and no one said a thing. She let go of her gold robe, and it fell to her feet.
The president approached her, eyes hard.
“Stop!” she screamed, jerking her arms against the guards’ hold. “You have no right to be here! Coward! You’re as inept at timing as you are at leading!” Tears stung her eyes. Everyone was so silent. Her roommate. Her parents. Her brother, watching her with infuriating calmness. Even the damned people that were brave enough to damage an innocent person’s stall but apparently couldn’t be bothered to even speak up against actual physical violence.
“You wanted my attention.” The president’s voice was cool and calm. He stroked her cheek with dry fingers. “You have it. Unfortunately, you no longer have a place here. No place among us.” He pointed to the crowd. “Look at what you cause, what you bring to a holy ceremony.”
“Bastard!” she hissed at him. He wasn’t special, was just as soft and sticky as any Neek. There was no reason to be afraid of him, strong-arm tactics notwithstanding. “This wasn’t me. And you coming here, it will be all over the feeds. It will only boost our message further!”
The president’s hand fell away. Again, Neek pulled at her captors, but their grips were firm and their stuk gelled, holding her even more tightly. They dragged Neek off the stage, her boots tearing at the sedge.
“My robe!” As they pulled her forward, Neek looked over her shoulder at the torn silver and trampled gold. “My robe!”
“Exiles don’t wear robes,” the president said in his syrupy voice. “Put her inside.”
Neek’s parents did scream, then, as the guards picked her up and threw her inside the skiff. Her palms tore as she fell onto the coarse biometal floor. She cursed—cursed Ardulum, the president, her uncle, the silent crowd, the failing andal plantations, and the old religion that would destroy her planet in another generation.
“She’s our daughter!” Neek heard her father plea.
“She’s the niece of the high priest!” That was her talther. Neek heard coughing, too. That was her mother. Neek’s stomach twisted, and she scrambled to her feet.
“She is nothing, anymore,” the president responded. “She is Exile.”
“You can’t!” Neek burst towards the door just as it slammed closed. She rebounded and fell back to the floor, her tailbone taking the brunt of the fall. The ship’s engines began to whine, and the floor jostled as the craft left the surface.
Neek ran to the controls and slammed her hands on the stuk interface. Through the viewscreen, she saw capital buildings, the Ardulan Temple, and then treetops as the skiff left the city and moved to the suburbs. She tapped command after command into the computer, but each try brought an angry beep and no change in course. The ship was on autopilot and password locked. She had no control.
Neek swallowed, trying to ease the ache in her throat. Wherever they stashed her, she would find a comm. She would smuggle out handwritten messages if she had to. She wasn’t going to give up. That she had lost the robes, lost the Guard…she could mourn that in time. Saving the forests, that was her job. Helping her people move beyond Ardulum so they could truly participate in the Charted Systems, that was why she did all this, right? That she loved piloting was just a bonus.
Right?
A low tremble went through the ship. Neek had never felt a skiff do that before. Had she lucked out? Was it malfunctioning? Neek sent another query to the computer. The ship was…
Neek blinked. It couldn’t be.
The ship was going up.
Neek frantically queried the computer. The viewscreen still showed treetops, but that silo in the distance…that had been there the first time she’d looked. It had seemed closer for a while, but now, she realized as she squinted, it was far away again. She was watching a prerecorded
loop!
“No!” The skiff was clearly going up. Neek’s ears were popping, and there was a funny feeling in her gut. Her planet’s skiffs were not designed to leave even the lower atmosphere. Only settees could do that, and this was no settee. Whatever the president’s engineers had done to make it spaceworthy, it hadn’t been nearly enough.
Neek threw commands at the computer. Land. Coast. Glide. STOP. Each returned with a ping and the perpetual image of treetops. He couldn’t do this. He had no right to do this! What in Ardulum’s name was the president thinking? Neek pounded at the controls, and the recorded loop fuzzed out to reveal space. Endless space.
Text scrolled across the computer screen:
Hours of air left: 233
Gallons of water remaining: 2
Food rations available: none
Communication systems: disabled
Destination: high orbit around planet Neek
Entertainment options: one video available of Heaven Guard airshow #4194, highlighting the double barrel rolls of Guard Four; all Neek holy texts available
Neek screamed. She kicked the console, her boot denting the cheap biometal. The Neek did not leave their planet. They did not live on space stations or strange worlds. They stayed put, to wait for Ardulum’s return. And she…she was meant to rot up here, in Neek space—rot while watching a planet she could see but never again touch. Rot while the Heaven Guard executed flawless formations in Neek’s upper atmosphere, ignoring her gold coffin spinning by. Rot while reading texts she’d had shoved down her throat since she was old enough to read—texts that were slowly destroying her planet.
And…and…
She would never get her settee.
She was only nineteen years old, and she was going to die, alone, in space.
And there was nothing she could do.
HER ROOM SMELLED like silage. It should have smelled like wood, because her mother had just installed a new andal wardrobe and hadn’t had time to varnish it, but this smelled…unattractive. Maybe something had curled up and died in the walls?
Hesitantly, she opened her eyes. She saw hock spurs. Brown hair. Cleft hooves.
She gasped in air, her chest too tight. She was surrounded by biometal and quadrupeds. She was no longer in her presidential coffin with the oxygen going so low that she couldn’t stay awake. She was dead, surely. She was dead, and her soul hadn’t made it to Ardulum because she was a heretical nonbeliever but apparently believed enough in the Minorans to end up in their afterlife instead.
That made complete sense.
“Do’ya have something to eat?” Neek croaked from her dry throat. Were you supposed to be hungry in the afterlife? Then again, what did she know? She hadn’t expected death to smell so much like plant decay, either.
“She’s awake.” A Minoran knelt down onto the soft cushion Neek was curled into and nudged her nose at Neek’s shoulder as she spoke in a clunky approximation of the Neek language. “Your uncle wishes you well, young Neek.”
Neek blinked. “Can comms pick up prayers or something? Am I dead?”
The Minoran’s ear twitched. “You’re not dead. You’re rescued. And your uncle asked us to give you this.”
Another Minoran dropped a biofilm on the ground next to Neek. A faulty one, apparently, since it rolled in on itself instead of lying flat in its plastic scaffold. Neek just stared at it, trying to wrap her mind around being alive in a stinky Minoran ship instead of being dead in a stinky Minoran afterlife.
“It’s a Neek-to-Common translation guide,” the first Minoran said. You’ll need it. We’ve almost arrived.”
A yawn overtook Neek as she pushed herself into a sitting position and crammed the crappy biofilm into her pocket. Alive. Huh. Everything around her still felt fuzzy, and she definitely sensed a headache coming on. Still, it did give her hope that at least someone in her family knew the president had tried to kill her. If her luck hadn’t run out, then this ship would be landing on her homeworld and she’d be able to address the whole situation in person. Loudly. Hopefully with a crowd.
The kneeling Minoran stood just as the ship shook. Neek rose on wobbly feet and followed the Minoran—at least she assumed that was what the tail swishing indicated she do—out a gate-like door to a very definitive ship hatch. Usually, this close to a hatch, the air filters started pulling in native air—assuming it was breathable—to prepare the crew for the temperature and smells that were about to hit them. Smells were definitely crawling towards Neek, but they were rich and salty, not…mossy, which was the best way she could describe the smell of her planet.
“Wait,” Neek said, putting her hand on the Minoran’s shoulder. Her stomach twisted. “Where are we?”
The hatch opened, and Neek’s headache hit. Everything was a blur of color and action. Pheromones and body odors assaulted her nose. There was screaming, screeching, the sound of metal on metal, as well as flesh—unwashed flesh—brushing and nudging and pounding into every surface.
She was led to the bottom of the ramp before she realized what had happened. The Minoran who had nudged her there clomped back up the biometal walkway—and the damn thing immediately began to retract.
“Wait!” Neek tried to jump to reach the receding edge of the walkway, missed by a hair, and fell onto her knees, ripping the thin fabric of her pants. Her mind spun. Her hands tingled. What was happening? Who were all these beings? How many languages was she hearing? Three? Ten?
“Where am I?” she yelled up, her voice squeaking.
“Callis Spaceport,” the Minoran said. Over the yelling and haggling and shouting, Neek thought she might have caught the faintest bit of sadness in the Minoran’s voice. Or, maybe she just wanted there to be some emotion in this exchange, for while she was glad she wasn’t dead, being abandoned in a spaceport where she didn’t speak the language wasn’t much better.
“My uncle!” she tried one last time. “Please, if I could just—”
The hatch closed. The warning lights in the bay flashed, indicating imminent departure. Someone with long claws pulled her back from the ship, behind a blue, painted line, as its repulsors engaged. Her head thumped along with the rhythm of the crowd. Her stuk burned with the heat from the thrusters. And finally, she watched the last connection she had to her home fly into silver-spotted darkness, leaving her alone.
Again.
NEEK STOOD IN the center of a five-way intersection at what felt like the middle of the spaceport, but was probably just a small artery, and gawked. She needed food, and she desperately wanted to find a comm to call home, but she had no idea where to start with either problem. Andal help her, she didn’t even know what half these beings were, much less how to talk to any of them.
What the hell was she supposed to do in a spaceport? Beg? Wander around until someone took pity on her and gave her a piloting job?
In the back of her mind, the childish part, Neek had hoped the Minorans would have given her a few diamond rounds to get by, or a tip about where to find a job, or even just a friendly parting smile. Rotting andal, they could have let her use their damn comm! She had nothing except her tattered clothes, the translating biofilm, and a bunch of emotions she wanted to bury. Thousands of beings swarmed around her, their arms brushing hers, their hair in her face, their hooves and claws clipping her boots, and all Neek could do was stand there and think about that stupid Heaven Guard video the president had uploaded to the skiff. Now, she didn’t even have that. All she wanted was to curl up in her mother’s arms and be told that everything was going to work out. At the very least, she wanted the chance to say goodbye.
Goodbyes meant finding a comm though, and chances were that comms took currency of some sort. Neek, of course, had none, nor did she speak much Common. She’d taken one course at the Heaven Guard Academy. It hadn’t been a required class, and why should it have been, given that no one ever left the planet? She spoke her planet’s primary dialect and the one from her province, but neither were going to be helpful out here, espe
cially not if she was trying to find a job.
So, she covered her nose against the utterly incomparable smell of thousands of beings and tried to make a decision. Turn right? Turn left? Head forward? Follow the green sign with some sort of aquatic animal on it and words she couldn’t read, or follow the yellow sign with a distinct image of fast-print cellulose perf?
Neek’s stomach growled. She had to choose. A plan would be best. It would mean that Neek wasn’t adrift in a tide of flesh, just that she was merely getting her bearings. Right? Who needed a settee or gold robes when one was in the biggest spaceport in the Charted Systems? She’d find some fast-print shop, grab leftovers from one of the tables, wash them down with her pride, and then go from there.
Neek took a step into the crowd towards the yellow perf sign, her Neek-to-Common biofilm tucked into the pocket of her pants. She had enough Common to get herself into trouble. Wonderful. Maybe someone would have an antique gun and just shoot her in the head.
A Risalian in a blue tunic walked into her.
Neek lost her balance.
The Risalian’s claws, perhaps grabbing her shirt to steady her, instead ripped the fabric and spun her a quarter turn before she hit the floor. She had tried to grab something on her way down but had managed only to glide off the bare arm of a gigantic Terran. Her elbow took the brunt of the impact, and Neek cursed Ardulum as her head was kicked by a pair of feet. No one except for her was wearing footwear. That didn’t make any sense at all. Was she finally full-on hallucinating from oxygen deprivation and the lack of food?
Beings chided her in languages she didn’t understand. The Terran she’d covered in stuk was staring at her with what looked like fascinated disgust. Neek frowned and made a shooing motion, like he was some gigantic, hairy insect. “You’re not so hot-looking yourself, you know,” Neek muttered. “Got enough arm hair to be mistaken for an Alusian, and it looks like a small animal has taken residence on your face.”
That was all in Neek, of course, but the Terran was studying her now, like he was contemplating her words.
