The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Nine

by Jonathan Strahan

  FOR A MOMENT, you almost believe that you can take back the last five minutes. It seems so impossible that you could have done what you did. You were tired and freaked out, but you’d been pretty clever right up until then, clever and quiet and careful. Not crazy. No death wish. For a moment, you’re just angry, so angry – at yourself, at the world. It feels so unfair that you’re going to die because of one stupid decision, one bad moment.

  “Hey,” the pirate calls. “Kid, we know you’re on board. We knew you’d show yourself eventually. Now come on out, and we’ll go easy on you.”

  You snort, because it’s a ridiculous thing to say. What does that mean – go easy on you – like surely he knows that implies nothing easy at all? Plus, it’s too late. He’s swaggering around, cocky, without realizing that you’re both about to be dead. You’re all about to be dead.

  “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” he calls, a laugh in his voice.

  From the casket the Charkazak unfolds itself, bathed in the glow of the light from within. It rises, up and up and up. Eight legs, two sets of arms with six-jointed fingers on its shining onyx chest, and large luminous eyes. It might have human features, but you can’t read its expression. It seems to shudder all over, then swings its head your way.

  Fear makes you nearly pee your pants. You freeze so completely that you don’t even draw in breath. It moves toward you – fast, its legs a blur – and leans down, all wide eyes and flaring nose slits.

  Your mother’s gun is lying beside you, but you don’t grab for it. You released the Charkazak, after all. There’s no point fighting it.

  You whimper.

  “Come on, girl,” calls the pirate. “You think I’ve never been on a cheap old smuggling ship before? You think I can’t find you? Come out or I’m going to make you sorry.”

  You close your eyes, but you can still hear the scratch of Charkazak feet against the floor, can smell the medicinal odor that clings to it from its containment, can hear its ragged breaths.

  “I know you killed Richard,” says the pirate, his voice falling into a false, honeyed tone. He’s come closer to the grate that conceals the hidden cargo area. Maybe he knew where it was all along. Maybe you were a fool, thinking they didn’t know where you were. He laughs. “You did me a favor there. I owed him money.”

  You hear the slide of metal on metal and open your eyes. The Charkazak is no longer in front of you. You let out your breath all at once, so fast that you feel dizzy.

  “Hey, there, you –” the pirate says, then there’s a gasp and a wet, liquid sound.

  You sit in the cargo hold for a while – you don’t know for how long – too scared to move. But then you force yourself numbly to your feet. You walk past the body of the pirate, with a massive bloody hole in his chest like that Charkazak thrust a clawed hand into his chest and pulled out his heart. The pirate’s gurgling a little, but his eyes are shut, and you wouldn’t know how to help him, even if you wanted to, which you don’t.

  You go straight to the galley, passing two more bodies. They are bent at odd angles, one missing the top of her head, her long red-blond hair in a cloud around her face. There is an odd spatter of red along one wall, and laser blasts have blackened the corridor.

  In the galley, you wash your hands and then make yourself a cup of tea. You eat an entire sleeve of sugar cookies and then you heat up a freeze-dried package of salty, soy-drenched noodle soup and eat that, too. There’s no point in dying on an empty stomach.

  After that, you feel super sleepy, your eyes heavy, so you go back to your tiny room, climb under the covers, and close your eyes.

  7. On a spaceship, there really aren’t that many places to hide.

  THE cHARKAZAK ISN’T like the pirates. It’s a monster, and you can’t hide from monsters. So you don’t.

  But it doesn’t come for you.

  You go into the bathroom and take a shower. You change your clothes and check your mother’s gun for ammo.

  Out in the hallway, the bodies are gone. You return to the galley and drink more tea, noting how the food has been picked over. You didn’t count the night before, though, so you’re not sure what was eaten by pirates and what was eaten by the alien.

  You make some oatmeal with powdery reconstituted milk.

  While you’re eating, there’s movement in the hallway. You duck down under the table, hoping that you’re not worth the Charkazak’s notice. Maybe you’re like a rat to it, some kind of ship vermin. Maybe you don’t matter. You wrap your arms around your legs and hope you don’t matter.

  It skitters into the room, and you can’t help noticing that as large as it is, there is a certain gliding elegance to its movements.

  Then the Charkazak’s body crouches low, bending forward, two pairs of arms reaching to the floor to take its weight. Its head tilts under the table, looking straight at you.

  It blinks. Twice.

  “Um, hi,” you say, because you don’t know what else to do.

  It keeps looking at you, tilting its head the other way this time. Don’t be afraid of silence, your uncle told you, but you are afraid.

  You don’t have the upper hand in this situation. You don’t have anything to bargain with in trade for your life.

  8. You’ll catch more Charkazaks with salt than with sugar.

  “I COULD MAKE you something,” you say, “if you don’t know how to cook.” “I know how,” it says after a long moment, and you’re completely startled by its voice, which has a little hiss behind it and an accent you’re not used to but that you understand easily enough. It’s a young voice, a not-much-older-than-you voice, and you have no idea what to make of that.

  Of course some part of you knew that Charkazaks could talk – or at least understand commands. They couldn’t have betrayed any treaties if they didn’t talk, couldn’t have committed treason if they hadn’t sworn fealty to the InterPlanetary government, but you’re still surprised. Monsters aren’t supposed to sound like everybody else.

  It – he – leans up and begins to move things on the counter, turning on the water heater and setting out two tin cups. His many legs move, swift as a centipede’s, and equally disturbing.

  “I am going to make some of this red fern tea,” he says, opening one of the tins of leaves. “You will drink it.”

  You listen to the crinkle of paper, the whine of the steam, and the sound of water splashing into the cup. Tea making is confusing, because you associate it with comfortably curling up with your holo-reader and sleeping off a minor illness. Monsters aren’t supposed to be able to make tea. If monsters can make tea, then nothing’s safe.

  “What happened to their ship?” you ask, because he hasn’t killed you so maybe he’ll keep on not killing you.

  You heard the metal spoon clank against the sides of the cup. “Their ship is unharmed.”

  Which meant that everyone who’d once been inside of it was dead. The Charkazak leans down again and passes you a cup with his delicate, multi-jointed fingers. It’s warm in your hands.

  “Th-thank you,” you manage, and take a sip. Then you start to cough. It’s salty, like your mother described the seas of old earth.

  “Is there something wrong with it?” the Charkazak asks, folding his limbs under him, so he can look at you.

  You shake your head, terrified. You force yourself to take another swig and try not to choke. You don’t think you quite pull it off, though, because he looks oddly stricken, studying you with those large, pale eyes. “Was this your parents’ ship?” he asks, taking the cup from you and drinking deeply, as though he’s not afraid of tasting your spit or getting your germs. As though he really, really likes salt.

  “How do you know the Celeris isn’t mine?” you ask. Then you remember that you’re trying to get him to think of you as some kind of ship vermin, entirely unimportant, and wish you could take back those words. “Is it yours?” he asks, not seeming unwilling to believe it, just confused. “No,” you admit. “The ship belonged to my uncle, bu
t I’m pretty sure he’s dead.”

  He tilts his head and narrows his eyes, studying you. “You freed me,” he accuses softly. “By accident?”

  You don’t want to tell him that you thought of him as a bullet to the head.

  Your big murder-suicide plan, now staring at you with that implacable gaze.

  “I –” you begin, but you can’t think of a lie fast enough.

  He nods and picks up something from the counter. Then he leaves, the sharpness of his many steps across the floor a reminder of just how fast and lethal the Charkazaks are.

  Once he’s gone, you draw up your legs, wrap your arms around them, and feel smaller and stupider than ever.

  You no longer believe that he’ll just kill you outright, but that makes you realize how bleak your future has become. Even if the Charkazak dumps you off at some space station, even if you drain your uncle’s bank account of all his credits, the only place you have to go is home. You didn’t learn enough from your uncle to fly the Celeris yourself. You’ve got no way to make any money back on Zvezda-9. You’re just a farming kid with delusions of grandeur.

  Of course, you’re not sure that the Charkazak will let you off the ship.

  He’s from a fugitive race, hunted by InterPlanetary Centurions – he might want to keep you around so he could shove your face in front of any call screens until he moved outside regulated space. Then you’d be in the same situation you were in with the pirates; he could sell you or eat you or... well, you’ve heard stories about Charkazaks ripping humans apart in a sexual frenzy, but you’re trying not to think about that.

  You decide you’re going to make dinner for him. You break out more rehydratable noodles and start in on making a vat-meat goulash. There’s a tube of apple-quince jelly and some cheese that you figure you can either make into a dessert or some kind of first course.

  Halfway through, you think about cooking for your uncle, and tears come to your eyes. You have to sit down and sob for a little while, but it passes. Once the food’s done, you pad through the halls of the ship to find the Charkazak. A smear of blood still marks one of the walls, wiped by something but not wiped clean.

  9. The dead are a lot less trouble than the living.

  YOU LOOK FOR the Charkazak in the cargo area, but you find dead bodies instead. They’re lined up on the floor, the cold keeping them from decaying quickly, but they’re still a mess. Eleven pirates, men and women, scarred and tough-looking, and your uncle, all with their eyes open, staring at a nothing that’s even bigger than space. Your uncle’s shirt is blackened from blaster fire. They must have shot him soon after boarding. You lean down and take out his identification card from his pocket, running your finger over the holo-picture of him, the one where he’s not horribly pale, the one where his lips aren’t blue and his eyes aren’t cloudy. The one where he isn’t dead.

  You wanted to be just like him – you wanted to have adventures and see the universe. You didn’t want to believe there were rules.

  See where it got him, your mother would say. See where it got you.

  Leaning over his body, you close his eyes. “I love you,” you tell him, brushing his hair back from his face. “I love you and all your hidden depths.”

  On your way out, you can’t help but notice how nine of those eleven pirates died, though. They were sliced open or stabbed through. One was missing a limb as though it had been pulled clean off her.

  You find the Charkazak in the cockpit, pressing buttons with those long, delicate fingers, his dagger-like feet balanced easily against the floor. He turns toward you swiftly, a blur of gray skin and gleaming black carapace, his body hunched, as if braced for flight.

  “I made dinner,” you say lamely, heart pounding.

  He doesn’t immediately respond. You watch as he slowly relaxes and wonder if, for a moment, he’d thought you were stupid enough to attack him.

  “It’s ready, b-but I could j-just bring you a plate if you’re b-busy.” You’re stammering.

  He touches the screen again, twice, quickly, then begins to unfurl toward you. “I am honored by your hospitality,” he says, and each time he speaks, you are startled anew that he sounds almost human. “We will eat together.”

  You go together through the hall, with you walking in front. You can hear him behind you, can hear the clattering sound of his many feet, and you steel yourself not to look, because you’re afraid that if you do, despite everything, you’ll run. You’ll scream.

  10. Good food is universal. And it’s universally true that you’re not going to get any good food in space.

  IN THE GALLEY, he manages to perch on the bench while you plate the goulash.

  He waits, watching.

  Finally, he says, “I’m called Reth.”

  Which is odd, because of course you knew he must have a name, but you’d never have asked him for it. “I’m Tera.”

  “Tera,” he echoes, and then begins to eat, his long fingers making him seem like a mantis.

  You wait until you’ve pulled out the cheese and apple-quince paste to ask him the question that’s been haunting you. “What are you going to do with me?”

  He tilts his head, studying you. “I know you’re afraid. I even know why.” You are silent, because of course you’re scared. And of course he knows why.

  “They caught me off the salty sea of Callisto – and I heard them talking while they processed me. I am on my way to be harvested for experiments and organs, just like the rest of my race.”

  You study his strange face – those luminous eyes, the grayish color of his skin, those tattooed marks that remind you of the stripes on a tiger, his high cheekbones, and the sharp elegance of his features, which make him both almost human and very alien. You hear the anger in his voice, but he’s got something to be angry about.

  “I know what they say about my people. I know the rumors of savagery and horror. Not all of it is untrue, but the war – the reasons you have heard it was declared, those are lies. The InterPlanetary government wanted us to fight their wars, wanted our own government to sacrifice its children, and when the Charkazaks would not become a slave race, they decided to destroy us and engineer the army they desired from our flesh.”

  He could be lying, but he doesn’t sound like he’s lying.

  He could be mistaken, but he doesn’t sound like his knowledge is secondhand. “I’m sorry,” you say, because you can’t imagine being hunted across the galaxy, whatever the reason.

  Reth shakes his head. “No, don’t say that. Because I have become like your legends about my people. I can kill quickly and surely now – and as for where I am taking this ship, I am completing the course that your uncle had set. I am planning on docking and destroying those scientists who would have cut me open and used my body for their experiments. I am going to destroy their laboratory, and I am going to free whatever creatures are being tormented there.” He slams down two of his fists on the table and then seems startled by the action. He looks over at you with haunted, hunted eyes. He was trying to stop you from being scared, and he thinks he’s scared you worse. But he hasn’t really. He’s just startled you. You never heard of any Charkazaks saving anyone, and the anger in his voice is righteous fury, not the desire for bloodshed. He might not sell you to anyone, you realize. Might not rip you apart or eat you. Might not even mean you any harm at all, despite being the scariest thing you’ve ever seen.

  You force yourself to reach across the table and touch his arm. His skin feels smooth, almost like patent leather. He tenses as your fingers brush up his arm and then goes entirely still.

  “This dish you made is very good,” he says suddenly, and you can hear in his voice a shy nervousness that fills you with a sudden giddy power. “I told you I knew how to work the cooking things – but all the food was unfamiliar.

  I ate one of the green packages and found it entirely strange. I feel sure I was supposed to do something more to it, but I wasn’t sure what . . . .” You keep your hand on his arm a momen
t more, fingers dragging over his skin, and his words gutter out. You wonder when the last time it was that someone touched him – or touched him without anger. You wonder how lonely it’s possible to become out in the void of space.

  The comm crackles at that moment, a voice booming from the speakers in the wall. “Centurion ship Orion hailing the Celeris. Are you there, Captain Lloyd?”

  Reth’s eyes narrow and he rises, looming above you on those long black legs.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” he says softly. It makes you try to imagine what it would be like to grow up with all the world against you. “But if they know I’m here, they will destroy your ship. They won’t face me – they’ve heard the same stories you have. They’ll kill us both to avoid facing me.” Don’t be afraid of silence, your uncle told you. Silence shows your strength. You know it’s not the nicest thing you’ve ever done, especially because you’re pretty sure Reth’s correct about the Centurions’ likelihood of blowing up the ship rather than fighting him, but you make yourself stay quiet as the seconds tick by. Reth needs you to go to that comm, but you need things from him, too. Promises.

  “Please,” he says again.

  “If you want my help, you have to agree to my terms,” you say. “Agree that you’ll teach me how to fly. That we will split the salvage profits from the pirate ship fifty-fifty. And that we’ll be partners.”

  “Partners,” he echoes, as though he’s trying out the word, as though he doesn’t know what to do with it. As though you’re giving him something, instead of asking for something from him.

  Have a bottom line, your uncle told you. Sometimes to make a deal, you’ve got to walk away from a deal.

  But there isn’t going to be any walking away this time. There was nowhere to walk to, not for either one of you.