“Frustrated. Why are you so desperate to risk our lives.”
“I’m desperate because everything I know and love is on that station! I can’t stand by and do nothing while a racist militant psychopath runs rampant in my home!” Nines shouted. She tried to remember the tricks Maz had taught her to calm herself down, but fear and fury coursed through her skull.
“Helpful. Perhaps there is a new home for you here instead and maybe a new love,” Burg said. Nines’s breath caught in her throat. Burg stooped over, both arm clusters picking erratically at her chitinous fingers.
“Is that what this is about? Are you trying to talk me out of this just so … so you can get in my pants?” Nines asked.
“Distressed. I am not familiar with this euphemism perhaps if we could—”
“No. No, I’m done. If you’re not going to help me, I’m going to the bridge,” Nines said, struggling to keep her voice level. She stood and pushed her way past Burg, storming out the door toward the ship trams. The dormitory hallways, normally bustling with Grrzh, had been emptied of all family and personnel as they rushed for bunkers and action stations. Regardless, Nines did her best to keep her composure as she called for a tram. The door slid soundlessly open and she stepped inside.
Nines took a deep breath and entered Burg’s administrative code for the Protectorate Maul’s bridge. The terminal shrieked an error message back at her. She growled and entered the code again. Another error. She had to be off by only one digit; she had never forgotten a code before. Another entry, another shriek, and a toneless Grrzh voice notifying her that another erroneous entry would result in a lockout.
Nines roared and sunk to her knees, slamming her fist against the tram wall. A familiar feeling of helplessness crept over her, spreading through her limbs and seeping into her core in a way she hadn’t felt since she was a child, orphaned in a claustrophobic world of bulkheads and cold vacuum.
She was barely aware of fingers tapping at the terminal above her, and the tram doors sliding shut behind her like a sheathing sword. Nines felt the reassuring grip of a Grrzh hand press down on her shoulder, and she looked up to see Burg.
“Morose. I understand if you do not care for me but I want you to be happy I should not have allowed my feelings to interfere at such an inappropriate time and I apologi—” Nines cut the ambassadress off by throwing her arms around the Grrzh’s waist.
“Thank you,” she said.
“You are welcome. Now let us save your home.”
Dyson Field Station Embassy
“TriumphantthisisAdmiralFerrnjwehavecapturedyourfeebleConsortiumembassy,” Admiral Ferrnj said into the embassy terminal, his fingers wrapped around Maz’s skull. “Witnessthemightofaunifiedraceandtremble.”
Maz did her best not to roll her eyes. Despite his progress, the Grrzh was out of his depth. He had avoided all of the station’s strategic points—armories, defense systems, and life support—to follow Maz’s signal straight to the embassy. There, he had lost a large chunk of his boarding party trying to fight past Captain DuGalle, who had turned their insides to steaming slurry with a military-grade microwave projector the size of a walnut. DuGalle lay unconscious but alive on the other side of the room, his personal shield having dampened a blow which Ferrnj assumed lethal.
“DeterminedIwilldestroythisstationandtakethismeatyfalsifierfortorture.”
“Could you please stop talking about my meat? I understand the biological gap, but it’s still pretty unsettling,” Maz said. She felt the massive Grrzh apply pressure to her skull and gasped in pain.
“Hey! Hands off my lady, asshat!” Nines’ voice called from the embassy terminal.
“Nines! Where are you?”
“Oh, nowhere near close enough to see the predicament you’re in,” Nines said. Maz tried to find her girlfriend in the terminal display, but shadow obscured the onscreen image.
“Indignantyoursquishydeceivingpartnerhasarrivedtoolate.” The admiral paused. “Confuseddoesthatmeanthatsheiscloseorthatsheisfaraway.”
“Right, like I’d tell you that,” Maz said.
“Requestingyeswouldyouplease.”
“Anyway,” Nines interjected, “There wasn’t any possible way that we could figure out how to get close to you, especially in a sneaky-ass dreadnaught like this. So there was no hope of me convincing the bridge’s crew to do something outrageously stupid like coming to save you. And there certainly won’t be anyone for the remaining Consortium ships to provide covering fire for in a last-ditch attempt to save the station.”
“Confidentnowthereisnowaythatisafarce.”
Dyson Field
The Protectorate Maul emerged from behind the cover of the Dyson Field and launched itself toward the Consortium space station, leaving only a cosmic whisper of a heat signature in its wake. The dreadnaught continued to pick up speed as the last security frigate slid into view from beyond the Dyson Field. The remaining Grrzh warships saw the Maul too late, and the ship’s traditional knifelike design drove a wedge between the docked rebel capital ship and the space station.
The side of the Maul’s prow bounced off the station’s hull, their kinetic fields repulsing the dreadnaught’s impact, but the rebel battlecruiser was not as fortunate. The docking umbilical snapped like a dry reed as the dreadnaught plowed through the gap between the two structures. The battlecruiser’s hull, already slightly damaged from the earlier battle, buckled under the impact and the ship hurtled helplessly into space. Inside, the rebel crew tried to reverse the ship’s detonation sequence as they scrambled to grasp what was happening, but automated systems under the admiral’s command initiated the countdown regardless.
The battlecruiser drifted almost half a kilometer away from the station before the chain reaction in its engines consumed it from the inside out. Heat washed over the Protectorate Maul, but the dreadnaught’s shields held. Weapons discharge from the Maul and the Consortium frigate in the Dyson Field caught the remaining rebel warships in an unforgiving pincer of fire. In moments, only dust and angry echoes remained of the Grrzh rebel fleet.
Protectorate Maul, Outside Dyson Field Station
Nines cheered from the bridge of the Protectorate Maul and turned to hug Burg once more. She raised her handheld again to find Admiral Ferrnj and his remaining rebel troops staring slackly at the projection she had conjured of the carnage.
“Lay down your arms, Admiral Ferrnj,” Nines said. “Consortium security will pick you up shortly, and they’ll be happy to avoid any more bloodshed.”
The boarders with Ferrnj dropped their weapons without complaint, but the rebel admiral did not move.
“Don’t do anything you’ll regret, Admiral,” Nines heard Maz say. The Grrzh looked to his subordinates and his posture began to droop, his arm clusters loosening their grip on his massive ballistic rifle. Something off-screen caught his eye, and his back straightened.
“AngryIwillnotsurrendertoagalaxyofmanipulatorsIwillfindnorestinyourprisons,” the Grrzh said, tightening his grip on Maz and forcing her to follow him out of the terminal’s line of sight.
“Maz? Maz!” Nines shouted into her handheld. The embassy doors opened and the last of the Grrzh troops submitted to the Consortium security team that stormed in, but formed a semicircle around the door to block further access to the room.
“He’s taking her! Stop him! Please!” Nines shouted into her handheld. If the security team heard her, they gave no sign. Nines lowered her handheld and cut the connection. She turned to the bridge officers.
“I think Ferrnj found the embassy lifeboats. He’ll probably force Maz to give him the code out, but your fighters can catch him as he emerges.” She approached a viewscreen of the station’s exterior and tried to recall what she remembered from her days in hull repair. “The embassy’s lifeboat channel should lead to … this exit here. It’ll come out here; I’m sure of it,” she said, pointing to a cluster of hatches in the station’s side. She looked back to the Grrzh officers, who remained motionless.
“Hesitantwehaveriskedonediplomaticincidentalready,” one of them said. “WedonotwanttoriskasecondbyinadvertentlykillingaConsortiumambassadress.”
“She’ll die either way if you just sit here!” Nines said. “All right, you know what? Sure. I’ll leave her to die. Sounds like an awesome idea. I’m gonna go back to my cabin and twiddle my thumbs.” Nines turned and stepped into the bridge tram, Burg following close behind. The doors shut behind them both, and the bridge was dark and silent once more. One officer raised his virtual mask to look at the rest.
“Hopefuldoyouthinkshemeantit?”
Emergency Lifeboat, Eighty Meters From Consortium Station and Counting
Maz closed her eyes to stop her vision from swimming. Ferrnj had slammed her head against the lifeboat door when she had refused to give him access, and the haze refused to clear. The Grrzh held his rifle barrel pointed at her temple, but his eyes were fixed straight ahead as he piloted the lifeboat in a beeline for the Dyson Field.
“Maz, you out there?” Nines voice asked over the lifeboat radio. Admiral Ferrnj glanced at Maz before fixing his gaze back on the pilot’s screen.
“SeethingtellherthatIwillkillyouifshedoesnotbackoff.”
“You hear that, Nines?” Maz asked.
“Sure did,” Nines said. “I assume he’s got you dead to rights in there, huh? No way to escape, even with a bit of help?”
Maz looked to the Grrzh next to her, who did not meet her gaze. She glanced at the console between them, where a medical kit and a compact rad-projector rested under a layer of emergency webbing.
“No, nothing to be done,” Maz said. “Whatever you try, there’s no way it’s going to work.”
Nines’ Maintenance Tug, Twenty Meters From Emergency Lifeboat and Closing
“Never heard that one before,” Nines said, opening the throttle.
The human pilot smashed a bottle of their intoxicant into the transport’s virgin hull, the impact blossoming into a tiny nova of glass and golden liquid. Zierr swished her tails politely, cheering with everyone else out of obligation. There was no good reason for her not to attend this ceremony. It wasn’t the strangest custom, and she kept telling herself that every culture had their eccentricities. But the humans’ rituals were always so damned public. Zierr didn’t like public. She kept to herself.
Munith shimmied to her side. “Once you’re en route, this will all have been worth it,” Munith whispered through an antenna, uninvited. She resisted the impulse to slap his antenna away. It wasn’t uncommon for exes to retain that familiarity, even if it had been years. His presumptuousness was almost comforting. That cockiness had drawn her once. To be honest, it still worked well for him.
“Social bonding is very important to humans,” he continued, “Go up and exchange touches at some point. It makes you more real to him.”
“Ugh, no,” Zierr replied. “They’re too wriggly. Did you have to touch it much?”
“Eh … ‘have to’ is relative. The project didn’t demand much, no.” Munith had designed the human interface for this new transport. “But there was plenty of touching that ‘had to’ be done to keep them comfortable. A touch at every greeting and leave-taking, and often other incidentals. You get used to it.”
Zierr squirmed with discomfort. “You should spend more time with your own kind—I think they’re rubbing off on you.”
Munith’s antenna trembled in amusement. “Not possible. They have the most shattered minds of any species, they couldn’t rub off on another species even if we wanted it. We think that’s why they’re so resilient, and why they constantly latch on to others.”
Of course by “we” he meant the broader human-research community, rather than Zierr and the rest of the gathered transport design team. He delighted in learning everything he could about these squirmy little creatures with the steel psyches. It reminded her of their time together, and brought with it an unwelcome melancholy ache. Fortunately, he’d spent most of his time at this project with the volunteer human and Zierr hadn’t run into him often.
“This sort of public bonding is a weak form of human soul-joining, across many minds at once. Come on.” Munith took a shuffling quarter-stride toward the human.
Zierr recoiled. “Oh my god, they soul-join across species?”
“Oh, lay off, it barely even counts. It’s the lightest psychic touch. They have to mediate it across air vibrations and physical contact. Aren’t you the least bit interested in what makes them so hard to crack?”
“No. I’m not crazy.” But she relented and followed him. The discovery of the human race had revolutionized warp transportation. It couldn’t hurt to be in their pilot’s good graces.
Zierr did her best not to think about what this was like for the human as she fondled his little hand in an up-and-down pumping motion, and let him pat her shoulder mounds. He bared his teeth from within the furry bush that covered most of his face—their way of smiling. She really hoped this was worth it.
Zierr’s mother had worked in pilot recovery, pre-humanity. Not on the front lines, which was mostly corpse-recovery. Zierr’s mother worked in rehabilitation. She saw the few who had been successfully apprehended before they could force open the airlocks, or override the safeties in the medbay. She was given the survivors. The ones that clutched their antenna against their bodies, staring voiceless into dimensions beyond physical sight. The ones that breathed an endless stream of words, each one intelligible, and consistent with the words before and after it, but in aggregate the words wove together into a single endless sentence without any meaning. … worm summoning the twisting world with the power of their lives while who we are cannot be asked for the reason that never pursues …
“We can’t just write them off,” Zierr’s mother said. “They’ve given their lives to keep our species relevant. We owe them.”
When she was older, Zierr sought out her mother’s former mates. Most wouldn’t talk about her. They folded their antenna and pulled away. Only Jathem took her into his confidence, let her taste his over-sweet regrets.
“Yeah, she would tell me the same things,” he confirmed. “Species self-determination and all that. It makes a great slogan, doesn’t it?” He sighed, a light taste. “And of course we can’t cede the galaxy to the other races. But people like your mother, people who work in recovery … well, that’s not the real reason they do it. If you hear their private words, you can taste the truth. She had to save everyone. Save the world, the species, maybe the galaxy. It’s a noble sort of broken, but it’s still broken.”
Zierr should have done more. Her father had died before her birth, but she could have told her teachers. She’d known something was wrong, even at her age. Her mother’s words had listed toward salt for months. Near the end, no utterance was free of saline undertones. Even discussing Zierr’s schoolwork came with a taste of briny dread; an ever-present seasoning of despair.
“People like your mother feel too much of others’ emotions,” Jathem said, “even without tasting them. They mean well, but they can’t let go. Your mother was doomed from the start. She should have never stepped within a mile of a pilot.”
Jathem had left before the end. Maybe he’d felt it coming.
“Why wasn’t I enough?” Munith asked her, a few weeks after the design team had been assembled. They’d stayed late after a team dinner, once the others had left, catching up over a slow hookah. He had aged gracefully. The short furs of his muzzle and crest were touched with symmetrical silver streaks—just enough to make him look distinguished.
Zierr sighed, wondering if she should answer. Would it make the workplace more uncomfortable to leave this hanging, or to let him know? She didn’t think he’d be satisfied with her answer anyway.
“How many other mates did you have while we were together?” she asked him in reply.
“None.” Answered without hesitation.
“And how many did I have?”
“Um … just Ce
rric I think? Wait, Dnyira, too, for a few months.”
“Well, there you go.”
Munith’s antenna soured slightly. “I wasn’t popular enough for you?” He studied her face. “You know how busy I was. Hell, I still am. These humans are fascinating! They shouldn’t be able to function, but here they are, not just walking but creating … well, never mind. The point is, I don’t have time for a lot of relationships. So what? You weren’t the sort of person to care about popularity.”
Zierr shifted to her other elbow and pulled from the hookah. She took a moment before answering: “I don’t have a lot of time either, Munith”—she exhaled—“but I didn’t make that your problem. You think warp engineering leaves me with a lot of spare hours? I made time for what was important. You could have, too.”
“I didn’t want any other mates.”
And there it was. That selfishness again, the counterpart to his cockiness. She let him taste her growing frustration.
“Right. You laid all your emotions and needs on me, instead of spreading them out. I never did that to you. You saved time by overloading me. Don’t you get how intolerable that is?” Even for someone as attractive as Munith.
“You didn’t have to though! Didn’t you read any of the mono-amory books I lent you? You could have put everything on me as well, and we’d be equal. It’s so simple. Just, why … why wasn’t I enough?”
Oh god. Zierr pulled her antenna away. He didn’t get it. He would never get it.
“People die, you know,” she told him simply, via sound. “Or they change. Or they leave. Who did you have to fall back on when I left?”
Humans Wanted Page 12
