by Loren Rhoads
“You nearly lost an eye,” Fiana said. “You’re lucky.” She forced the edges of the wound apart to clean them. Raena caught a queasy glimpse of something that made her think of cheese, yellowy white in the light of her mother’s headlamp.
“That’s what you are,” Fiana said. “Just bones. You are dead. We all are. We’re all dead and we don’t have the sense to lie down and stop moving. That’s what they’d like us to do. They’d like all humans to lie down and be dead. They’d like to grind us up and feed us to their young.”
Fiana pinched the edges of the wound back together and jammed the needle through them. Raena winced, more from the sight of it than because it hurt. Whatever the numbing spray was, it worked well.
Fiana slapped her. “Don’t you move,” she whispered. “This is hard enough to do as it is. You watch what I’m doing so you can do it yourself next time and you won’t have to wake me up.”
So Raena lay perfectly still and watched her mother’s hands. She disassociated herself from the sight and did not make a sound.
It wasn’t the last wound Fiana gave her, but it was the last her mother patched for her.
Raena focused her thoughts outward again with a shuddering breath. The medical robot tilted a mirror for her. “What do you think? Good as new?”
Raena gazed at her reflection and saw someone she had never seen before. Her forehead was smoothed now. They’d replanted her eyebrow to cover the new skin. Above the cheekbones, her face was now symmetrical and even. She looked, she thought, more like Eilif than herself.
“It’s perfect,” Coni said from where she stood against the wall. “Are you happy?”
Raena smiled at her, grateful that the blue girl had stood vigil through the procedure. “It’s exactly what I wanted. Thank you.”
The tentacled nurse unfastened the restraints and helped Raena to her feet. “Since you paid in advance, you’re all set.”
Raena nodded. She wondered if the new flesh would begin to hurt once the anesthetic wore off. She wondered if she would have anything left to remind her of her mother, since she’d given the hologram medallion to Ariel.
She wasn’t sure if her reflexes would be shaky after being knocked out, but everyone seemed to be busy resetting the surgery suite or chatting with Coni. She pulled her bulky coat on with a flourish, slipping the pouch of anesthetic into a pocket set inside her left sleeve.
Coni waited until they’d gotten several blocks away before she asked, “Why did you have to steal something from them?”
Raena gave her a slight smile. “Lots of reasons. Primarily because if we buy anything like this, there will be a paper trail. And questions. I don’t know if it will be safe for Mellix, but we know it’s safe for humans. If he can’t use it, it may help me rest when I can’t sleep. But mostly because I wanted to see if I still could. I survived for a lot of years by taking opportunities when I saw them.”
Coni stared at her. “What if you’d been caught?”
“I’ve seen you break into office buildings on Kai to disrupt a corporate treasure hunt simply because you were bored. I know you can improvise an escape.”
“I’m serious, Raena. It was a stupid risk to take. You’ve seen how they feel about humans here.”
Perspective shifted for Raena and she understood that Coni was not upset by the illegality of the theft, but about the way it would reflect on all humans.
“I don’t represent my whole species,” Raena promised. “Most humans can’t do what I do.”
“Mykah would be the first to tell you that you can’t afford to think like that.” Coni didn’t glance in Raena’s direction as she said it. “No one here sees you as an individual. They only see you as a representative. That’s why the galaxy is so obsessed with Thallian. His crimes weren’t his alone. They reflect on all humanity.”
“All right,” Raena conceded. “I will be cautious. But you didn’t bring me along on this adventure to behave. I’m here because I have a skill set none of the rest of you possesses. Still, I promise to do my best to see that none of us are shamed in the process.”
Coni watched Raena surreptitiously reach into the collar of her sweater. What was she doing now? Coni watched Raena’s shoulders relax for a moment. Then they reset, her posture straightening like a soldier’s once more. What had she done?
Ah. Coni remembered when they’d landed on the Thallian homeworld and found Raena bleeding heavily from the wound in her shoulder. Thallian had apparently shot her with a shock capsule. Now Raena was touching her scarred shoulder superstitiously, reaffirming her own identity. Coni realized that Raena had checked to make sure her other scars were still in place.
Coni had known about humans since her childhood. She remembered learning about the trials and the containment camps on the news. Most of all, she remembered the dirty, ragged refugee children, who had taken no part in the Empire but still suffered for its crimes. She had wanted to help humans since those images had burned themselves into her eyes.
But, she realized at last, she didn’t know how to help Raena at all. She could give her a new life. She could give her a new identity. But she couldn’t erase her past and heal the places where she was broken. Watching Raena touch her scars to comfort herself, Coni realized finally that the past, however painful it might have been, was as hard for humans to let go of as it was for everyone else.
CHAPTER 9
Raena followed Coni into a toy store, where the blue girl sent Haoun photos of different toys until they agreed on something his kids would like. Raena stuck close and kept her hands clasped conspicuously behind her back, where the sales clerk could see them.
Even so, the store’s cameras buzzed around her anyway. She considered waiting outside, but she wasn’t convinced that having a human loitering outside the shop would improve the clerk’s mood.
The toy search seemed to be winding down when Raena’s comm bracelet chirped. She did go outside then, to take Mykah’s call.
“The packing is almost finished,” he reported, “but there are a couple of pets we’ll need to bring with us.”
“Pets?” Raena echoed.
“He has a trio of kiisas. Harmless fuzz balls. I’m checking with the authorities to see if we can bring them as luggage or if they need to go up with the cargo.”
“Can Vezali adapt a crate for them?”
“That’s a good idea. Why don’t you meet her?” He sent over a string of coordinates. “She’s at one of the freight warehouses, inventorying the supplies we ordered.”
“Will do.”
Coni came out of the shop with a small shipping cube supported by a repulsor field. “Talking to Mykah?” she asked.
Raena held out her bracelet to display the warehouse address. “He wants us to meet Vezali here.”
Coni slid her handheld out of her jacket pocket and entered the address. “Got it. It’s out on the rim. We’ll need to figure out the transit system.”
Raena followed Vezali back into the warehouse. A small heap of shipping containers was stacked to one side.
“Mostly, they’re upgrades to the Veracity’s cameras. Coni ordered them as soon as we knew we were coming. I’ve got some extra filters and couplings for the engine, so we’ll have some spares. Then there are Haoun’s larva snacks and Mykah’s groceries. And the spacesuit you wanted. Didn’t we already have one in your size?”
Raena laughed. “It smells like teenaged boy.”
Vezali didn’t know how to respond to that, so Raena saved her by asking, “How do we get it all back to the ship?”
“Once we know what our boarding window is, I’ll arrange a delivery.”
“And they’re timely?”
“They’d better be. If we miss our exit, they pick up the fine. So it will be there when we’re ready to go.”
“Perfect. Can we pick up an extra packing crate? Mykah said we’ll be bringing along three kiisas.”
“Hope somebody remembered to order food and litter for them,” Vezali chirped.
“I’ll ask. I was hoping you could adapt a crate as a cage to get them onto the ship. Something large enough that they’ll have room to roam around inside. It will have to be pressurized, just in case, and have atmosphere.”
“I can do that. Let’s go talk to the warehouse manager and see what they’ve got for sale.”
Raena nodded. Pieces were falling into place. Now she just had to figure out how to get the package into the wrapping.
Mykah waited for them just outside an armed checkpoint. One of the soldiers compared Raena, then Coni, to images on his handheld, before waving them on.
“What’s that all about?” Raena asked.
“After the museum was bombed, they evacuated this whole segment of the station until they could get Mellix’s apartment emptied. So you were right: they were ready to pay what I asked to get the job done.”
“And it helped that you were human,” Coni guessed.
Mykah nodded.
“Why’s that?” Raena asked.
“Because they know life is cheap to us,” Mykah said. “We’re crazy enough to take a job like this, under fire.”
It was eerie walking through the vacated corridors. Raena had never been on a station that had been so quiet. “Where is everyone?”
“Temporary shelters.”
That wasn’t good. “How much packing is there left to do?” she asked.
“We’re getting it done,” he said. Raena wasn’t sure who he meant, since she had been with Coni and she knew where Vezali and Haoun were supposed to have been.
Mykah led her and Coni to the correct apartment door. He laid his hand in the lock. The door chimed happily and opened for him.
“It’s Mykah,” he called. “I’ve brought the girls.”
The room was a chaos of packing crates and stacks of books. Raena remembered books from her childhood, from when her mother worried that computers were coming to life and reading her thoughts and would try to erase all knowledge encoded electronically in order to protect themselves. Books were the only comfort she had then, since they would survive the information purge. Raena remembered books as being really heavy.
“Do we need to take all this stuff?” she asked.
“Will it all fit on the Veracity?” Coni wondered.
“It should fit,” Mykah answered. “Haoun ran the calculations.”
“How many trips up the elevator will it take?” Raena asked.
No one had an answer for that.
“You’ll need to talk to the authorities again,” Raena suggested. “Ask what the elevator’s capacity is and have them estimate how long it will take to get all this stuff up to the ship. Ask them how long we’ll have to wait for a window of time that large. Maybe it will be quicker for us—and safer for them, too, since Mellix’s stuff won’t be sitting in a warehouse they’ll have to guard—if we can dock the ship against one of the station’s maintenance hatches and load it directly. Since they’ve already got this area evacuated, they won’t have to worry so much about the safety of anyone but us.”
“I’ll ask.”
“We’ll help with the packing,” Coni said.
The creature that ambled out of the back room seemed similar to the sorts of animals Raena’s childhood friends kept as pets. Those were descended from squirrels from Old Earth. Raena recognized him from the news broadcasts. The trouble they were in was worse than she’d thought, if Mellix was not as hidden as she’d been promised.
“Mellix,” Mykah said, “this is Raena. She’ll provide security for you until we can get you out of Capital City.”
Mellix made a sweeping motion with his arms and bowed. Raena inclined her head to hide her smile.
“Are you armed?” the creature asked in Galactic Standard.
Barely, she thought, but she said, “Of course.”
“I’d prefer to be protected without harming anyone else,” he said.
“Define harm,” Raena said. “You want them stopped, but not permanently disabled?”
“Well,” Mellix said, one of his hands clutching the other. “Well, yes.”
“I can do that if they’re within arm’s reach,” Raena promised. “But I’m not magic.”
“You’ll just need to get me from here to the Veracity.”
“I’m figuring out how to do that now,” she answered. “Customs coming in didn’t seem too bad.”
“We had to submit everyone’s passports before they let us enter the system,” Coni said. “All that waiting while Mykah talked to the dockmaster was so they could compare the info they’d been given to the people standing around.”
“So I passed.”
“You did,” Coni said neutrally.
“Thank you.”
“My pleasure.”
Raena directed her next question to Mellix. “If we get you to the elevator, will Emigration Control let you leave?”
“What do you mean? Why wouldn’t they?”
“Things seem tense here. Lots of armed guards, all these evacuated apartments—is that a common thing on Capital City? My guess is that the government is feeling kind of like trapped rats. If anyone wants to come here and wipe out the bulk of the galactic government, now would be the time, while everyone’s stuck here. Say, if you have a cruise ship that’s suddenly grounded, full of potentially mutinous passengers demanding costly food and lodging until they can make other arrangements to get home. My point is: are you sure you have permission to leave before the attack comes down? Or do they want you to be here to share the general doom?”
“Cheerful, Mykah. I like her.”
“Unfortunately, I’m serious,” Raena said. “Is it that they’ve removed everyone around here for your protection—or to make you more of a target? Not only is everyone trapped on Capital City until they can arrange to leave, if they can afford to, but now they’re stuffed into temporary shelters. It seems to me that people don’t have much else to lose and nowhere else to focus their anger.”
No one had an answer for her.
“What should we do?” Mykah asked.
“We need to get out of here as quickly as possible, whether we have official permission to go or not.”
“Let me contact Control and see what they have to say,” Mykah said. “If they’re ready to expedite us out of here, that will tell us one thing. If there’s a delay …”
Raena nodded. “Another question, first: How well are they scanning things going off-world?”
“You’re thinking of smuggling me off?” Mellix asked.
“Is it beneath your dignity?” she asked.
“No, it’s just … Not many people know this, but … I’m claustrophobic.”
“I used to be, too,” Raena admitted.
“How’d you get over it?”
“Jail time,” she hedged. It was an easily caught contradiction to her new identity, but plenty of security operatives puffed up their resumés to add to their mystique. Combat experience, jail time, and military service were expected parts of the package. The contradiction wouldn’t raise any eyebrows if discovered.
“Oh.” Mellix glanced at Mykah, who shrugged.
“She’s reformed,” he promised. “You can trust her with your life. I trust her with mine.”
Raena hadn’t thought of it like that, but she supposed that was true every time they sparred.
As Coni settled in to pack up the rest of the things in the front room, Raena moved farther back into the apartment to see what else needed to come along.
She opened a door to what she assumed was a bedroom and something gray and ankle-high bounced out. It streaked under the spare crate lid resting against the wall. “What was that?”
“Steam,” Mellix said from behind her. “One of my kiisas. They’re upset by all this disruption.”
Raena smiled at the vast understatement.
Mellix chuckled self-consciously. “Them and everyone else.”
“How do you normally care for them when you travel?”
“My assi
stant stays here with them.”
“Do they have a crate or anything?”
“They sleep on my bed,” he said apologetically. “They were born here in Capital City. They’ve never known anywhere else.”
“Vezali’s already working on something safe for them to travel in,” Raena assured. “She wanted me to make sure you had enough food and litter to keep them comfortable on the ship.”
“I think so. Like everything else, those things are being rationed.”
The gray blur crept back to rub against Mellix’s ankles. He reached down to sweep it up into his arms. The creature was roughly the size of a sun melon, mostly round, with a long thin tail that ended in a tuft. Its eyes were round as polished silver coins. It snuggled against Mellix, taking visible pleasure as he petted it.
“I’m going to start packing in here,” Raena said. “Come in and let me know if there’s anything you’d like me to leave out.”
At last, the packing seemed to be done. They had things they couldn’t fit into the packing crates they had, things Mellix regretted leaving behind, but the job was as finished as it was likely to get.
“Why don’t you ask Vezali to bring our supplies here?” Raena asked Mykah. “She can hire a robot to push the cart, if she needs to.”
“Why?”
“We might as well have it all in one place, rather than some in the warehouse and some here. It will make it easier to be sure we get it all to the elevator at the same time.”
“All right. I was going to invite her for dinner, anyway. Mellix has a bunch of perishables that we should eat up, rather than compost.”
After he called Vezali, Mykah got busy in the kitchen.
Raena sat on the sofa beside Coni. She held out the pouch of anesthetic she’d stolen from the spa. “Could you research this for me?”
Coni nodded, but didn’t take it from Raena’s hand. Raena set it between them on the cushion.
“Where did you meet Mykah?” Mellix asked.
Raena was surprised Mykah hadn’t told him before, but probably the journalist was simply making conversation, not fact checking. “On Kai,” she answered, looking up to meet his eyes. “He’d organized a free-running game and invited me to play.”
