Aela turned away from the fray to look directly at me. “I’m supposed to impress this upon you. The Serpo Institute welcomes humanity to intergalactic society to learn and flourish, but you must never forget that you may be called to an even greater purpose. Do you accept that?”
It was a total nerd fantasy to get stuffed into a mech-suit and fight a rampaging monster. But seeing the destruction done by the Etherazi—dead Denzans littered the beach and streets—the prospect didn’t seem fun or thrilling. Godzilla would’ve sucked if you had to focus on all the poor Japanese people he smooshed. I remembered the eager bravado in Hiram’s voice on the bridge when the Etherazi came up. I couldn’t understand how someone could see a battle like this and wish they were there.
“I hope I never see one of these bastards,” I said quietly. “But yeah. If they show up again, I’ll fight.”
13
“I got a report from Arkell that you punched a hole in the wall of my ship,” Captain Reno said.
I’d been summoned to the captain’s quarters shortly after my orientation with Aela. Reno’s room wasn’t any bigger than mine, but it definitely looked more lived-in. There was a bearskin carpet (or, well, I thought it was a bear, but it could’ve been some alien beast) and wall hangings that depicted scenes out of Greek mythology. Stuff like Icarus flying too close to the sun and Zeus taking on the shape of a bull to creep on girls. Reno also had an extremely well-stocked liquor cart.
I clasped my hands behind my back. Spending the last few hours with Aela in mind-space or whatever it was, I hadn’t had to think about the changes to my body. But now, I once again felt coiled and antsy.
“It wasn’t a punch,” I said softly. “More like I poked a hole in the screen. A small hole. By accident.”
Reno seemed more amused than anything. “We all went through that, coming off Earth for the first time. None of us were used to the power. You’re lucky that I’m here to guide you. I’d just gotten a new puppy when NASA picked me for the Serpo Project. They let me bring him into the Vastness. A week in, I stroked poor Mittens so hard that one of his eyeballs popped clean out.”
I stared at her. “What.”
“Your face, my goodness. I’m yanking your chain, Cadet,” Reno said, shaking her head. “Come with me. I’ll sort you out.”
The captain brought me over to the Eastwood’s gym. Mostly, the equipment was pretty standard—weights, resistance, cardio—albeit built for various-size creatures. I did note some standing chunks of wood that had been shredded with claw marks. Probably how Zara the Vulpin filed her nails.
“See, you got used to life as an Earthbound weakling,” Reno explained. “You punch a wall there, you maybe put a hole in the drywall and bust up your hand. Here? In the Vastness? You punch a wall, you could bring down a building.”
I thought about how I’d lopped off one of H’Jossu’s fingers during my tour of the Eastwood. I swallowed, feeling a bit like a loaded gun.
“It’s okay,” Reno continued. “You’ll get used to it. You just have to relearn how to be gentle. And that means, first and foremost, knowing your limits.”
To start, she made me lift weights, ticking new pressure plates onto the bar with every set, until I was benching a little more than half a ton. Reno kept forcing me to do more reps until the lifting became almost hypnotic—I was coated in sweat, and my muscles ached, but they didn’t feel close to breaking down.
Then she got out a case of racquetballs.
“Brought these just for you,” Reno said, tying her silvering curls back in a ponytail. “Well, actually, I kinda enjoy this game, too. Your grandfather always said I had a bit of a sadistic streak.”
“What are you—?”
At that point, she started whipping the racquetballs at me, forcing me to catch them. If I brought my hands up too fast or squeezed too tight, the balls would explode in my bare hands. Reno really gunned those things too—it was like standing in front of a pitching machine. My palms stung, and the balls I misjudged left red welts on my arms and chest. At first, I destroyed more balls than I saved, but by the end my touch was lighter and I was able to lob the intact balls back to Reno.
After about an hour of that, Reno wrung out her shoulder.
“I’m almost eighty years old, Cadet, give me a break,” she said, sitting down on the edge of a bench. The woman sure didn’t look eighty, or act like it. Being out in the Vastness was like the fountain of youth. “I meant to ask, how’s your mom doing?”
The question caught me off guard. It’d been almost a week since I’d left my mom on Earth. I’d been so busy, I hadn’t had much time to think about what she might be doing back there.
“You know, it was hard on her when I left,” I said, shrugging, not sure how deep I wanted to get into it with Reno. “We’d been on the run for so long, I bet she doesn’t know what to do with herself now.”
“She’s a tough one. I’m sure she’ll figure it out,” Reno said. “Not that I ever got to meet the woman. Just what I heard. She tell you anything about me?”
I puzzled over that question for a second. My mom had mentioned Reno as one of the humans who was helping her and my dad with their far-out plan to basically invade Earth. But what really stuck out to me was how my mom reacted when Tycius told her Reno would be my captain. She’d pulled a face like she wanted to barf.
Reno detected my hesitation. “Your grandpa and I got close on Denza,” she said. “Not saying it was some grand love affair or anything. But when you fight a war together, you know, feelings get heightened. After the war, we shacked up for a few years until he heard your grandma got sick. Then he went running back to Earth.” She shook her head. “Noble idiot decided he’d go ahead and die there.”
I never knew my grandma. She’d died of cancer before I was born. But now my mom’s distaste for Reno made sense.
“Yeah,” I said, looking around awkwardly. “She didn’t tell me any of that.”
Reno chuckled. “Ah, well. Listen to me getting sentimental in my old age.” She massaged her shoulder. “She must’ve told you about our hopes for Earth. About why finding your father is so important. I’d have plugged you into that Wayscope as soon as you got on board, but Tycius says you need training first.”
I thought of the cosmological tether that contained my dad’s coordinates. I was supposed to keep it a secret, so I’d hidden the box in one of the planters in my room. I’d already taken it out of the dirt twice, brushed it off, and checked to make sure the light hadn’t gone out. They wanted to locate my dad in the hopes that he’d discovered those mythical Lost People and a cure for the Wasting. I just wanted to find him.
“Imagine if everyone on Earth could feel the way you’re feeling now,” Reno continued, eyeing me. “Imagine if the old biddies my age down there, dragging oxygen tanks on the backs of their scooters, could live like I do.”
“There’d be a lot of holes getting punched in a lot of walls,” I replied. I’d meant it as a joke, but the words came out flat. Just like when my mom first told me about her plan, the whole thing gave me a strange feeling—like I was part of something secret and dangerous. It didn’t feel quite right. “Anyway, you guys aren’t talking about making people on Earth stronger and healthier. You’re talking about sending enhanced humans back to rule the rest.”
Reno smiled at me. “That’s the half-Denzan in you, honey. Worried about making waves. Our entire species would be uplifted, in time.”
“You’re assuming my dad even found anything,” I replied.
Reno nodded. “It’s a long shot. I know.”
“I just want to know why he left us. I want answers.”
“Same here, Cadet. Same here.” Reno patted her thighs and stood up. “Hot shower time for me. You, on the other hand, need to keep working out. Until you’ve adjusted to the power, exhaustion is the best way to keep you from accidentally maiming one of your crewmates.”
I winced. “You heard about that.”
“Sure,” Reno replied
. “H’Jossu thought it was dope, apparently. Whatever that means.”
Before the Captain left, she inputted some commands into a touch screen, and what looked like a heavy bag for boxing lowered from the ceiling. While it looked like sand and leather, the bag was actually reinforced with adaptable ultonate. Basically, I could hit it as hard as I wanted.
So I did.
It felt good to simply unleash. To release all the new power boiling inside me and pummel that heavy bag until my mind turned off. I’m not sure how long I went at it, but by the end my uniform was soaked through with sweat and I was panting.
My knuckles weren’t even red, though. I wasn’t sore.
“You see that, Darcy? That’s a killer Earthling right there.”
I’m not sure how long Hiram and Darcy were watching me. Long enough that Hiram had taken a seat, Darcy hovering behind him. From what little I’d seen of these two around the Eastwood, Darcy was never far from Hiram. She was like his shadow.
“Hey, guys,” I said. “Just, uh, creepily watching me work out, huh?”
Hiram tossed me a towel. “Man, you were in the zone. Didn’t want to mess you up.”
I caught the towel out of the air and draped it around my neck, looking past Hiram to Darcy. She eyed me back, hands thrust into the front pocket of her hoodie. There was an awkward moment where we were both kind of sizing each other up, not sure what to say. Hiram crossed his arms, seeming to enjoy the awkwardness.
“Too much eye contact,” Darcy finally muttered, tugging at her hood.
“Sorry,” I said. “I’ve just—I’ve never met anyone like me before.” Hiram grinned at that, pumping his eyebrows at Darcy. She didn’t seem at all amused.
“Like you,” she repeated. “Like you how?”
“You know . . .” I felt suddenly nervous, like I was falling into a trip. “A hybrid.”
“I’m a human,” Darcy said sharply. “I identify as human.”
“Oh,” I replied. I took another look at her and was sure that my eyes didn’t deceive me—she had all the quirks that identified a half-Denzan. The long fingers, the big eyes, the faintly glowing hair. I knew the look; I’d seen it in my own mirror often enough. “But . . . are you really?”
Finally, Hiram groaned, like he was tired of this conversation. “Come on, Darcy, quit screwing with him. You can’t blame the Earther for not knowing what’s up.”
“I’m a human,” Darcy reiterated to me.
“She’s a hybrid,” Hiram confirmed to me with a sigh. “Darcy’s bitter because her mom turned out to be one of those Merciful Rampart freaks.”
Darcy scowled. “You don’t have to immediately tell that to every new person we meet.”
“We’re getting to know each other!” Hiram responded. “No secrets allowed on the Eastwood’s crew.”
“Merciful Rampart?” I asked. “I don’t know what that is.”
“They’re a political organization on Denza that thinks humans should be quarantined to Earth because we’re dangerous for the universe,” Hiram replied, making a jerk-off motion. “They never actually do anything except give us dirty looks. Occasionally, they get a couple of their people on the Senate and lobby for restrictions on immigrating humans or try to get us all sent back to Earth, but that trash never goes anywhere.”
“Sometimes they do worse than that,” Darcy said darkly.
Back on Earth, I wouldn’t have pried into her business, but I couldn’t resist. “Your mom was an antihuman Denzan, and she . . . ?”
“Hooked up with my dad?” Darcy made a face. “Yeah. She was spying on him. He’s first officer on the ISV Searchlight. I think her plan was to frame him for smuggling Denzan technology back to Earth—which he wasn’t—and make all us humans look bad.”
“How did she get caught?”
“She confessed!” Hiram answered for her, laughing incredulously. “The Denzans are always apologizing about something or confessing they stepped on somebody’s toe or whatever. Huge consciences, little biceps.”
“She exiled herself to an ultonate processing plant after that,” Darcy said. “I haven’t seen her since I was five.”
“Things are kind of weird with my mom, too,” I said to Darcy, feeling like I should give her something after Hiram forced her to spill her family secrets. “She spent ten years making me hide all over Earth because someone was after us. Turned out it was just my uncle Tycius trying to bring me here.”
Darcy perked up a bit. “Wow, you—”
“Seriously, though,” Hiram spoke over her. “How screwed up is Earth? I mean, part of me wants to visit there someday, it being the birthplace of humanity and all, even though the Denzans still haven’t figured out why we get so sick when we go back.”
“They don’t want to figure that out,” Darcy muttered. “They don’t care.”
I knew that wasn’t true. My dad and uncle were both searching for a cure for humanity’s strange affliction. I decided against bringing that up, though. I still couldn’t quite get a read on whether I should trust these two.
“All our people, like, living in their own shit basically, sick all the time.” Hiram shook his head. “It’s unreal to me. I don’t think I could stand it.”
“I didn’t know,” I said, looking down at my hands, flexing my fingers. “I didn’t know what else was possible. Didn’t know I could feel this good.”
“Ignorance is bliss,” Darcy said.
“Man, H’Jossu made me watch this ridiculous Earth show. Shit wasn’t even 3-D. It was about this sad, sick old man who forces his slave boy to start making poison with him. Poison that Earth humans smoke. On purpose. You ever see anything like that?”
Before I could answer, we all turned to the sound of shuffling footsteps in the hall outside. Arkell stalked by the doorway, pausing for a moment to look in at us with his nose upturned. His gaze focused on me, the scars around his eye and mouth pinching as he spoke.
“Break anything else today, Cadet?”
“No,” I said. “Again, sorry about—”
He didn’t let me finish. The Denzan simply grunted and resumed his path down the hall.
“He’s one of them,” Darcy said quietly, once Arkell was gone. “He used to be in the Merciful Rampart.”
“Rumor is he once tried to blow up the wormhole to Earth,” Hiram added. “It’s how he got his scars and why he keeps his whole arm bound. Shit, I can at least respect that.”
Unlike Aela, Hiram didn’t have the tact to avoid talking about a Denzan’s shame. I was glad to get the scoop on Arkell, though, even if it came from Hiram. Of course the guy who’d welcomed me to the ship by calling me “mutt” would be part of some racist antihuman organization. I shook my head.
“Why would they let him serve on a Serpo Institute ship?” I asked.
“Probably punishment,” Hiram said. “Force him to work with humans so he’ll understand us better.”
“We’re his rehabilitation,” Darcy added. “Denzans actually think that kind of crap works.”
I rubbed the back of my neck. Someone had sabotaged my dad’s mission and caused him to get lost in space. And someone had sent a Vulpin assassin to Earth to clean up the trail. Considering what my mom and dad were up to, it seemed like these Merciful Rampart guys would be the sort of Denzans who might want my dad disappeared.
I had my first suspect.
14
“The purpose of today’s orientation seminar will be cross-species acceptance,” Aela said, the tinny voice of their exo-suit echoing in their furnitureless room. “I will be pulling the two of you into a memory that H’Jossu has kindly chosen to share with us.”
Even though I told myself not to, I pressed my back into the wall behind me. I couldn’t help myself. The whole purpose of this exercise was to get me more comfortable around extraterrestrials like the Panalax, and I was already off to a bad start.
H’Jossu stood across the room from me—huge, shaggy, rotting. He happily shook out his furry limbs, and whit
e mold spores, like dandruff, floated through the air. They were promptly sucked into one of Aela’s ceiling air vents.
“I’ve been a little homesick, so I’m totally amped for this,” the Panalax told me. “You excited?”
My mouth felt dry. “Sure.”
Aela stood in the space between us. This time, they didn’t ask me if I wanted to get naked. “Ready?”
“Yup,” H’Jossu said happily.
I nodded grimly.
We went through the same procedure as in my last class with Aela. H’Jossu and I were both sprayed down by the showers in the room’s floor and ceiling. The mold that filled H’Jossu’s eyes and mouth wiggled happily in the moisture. Then, with the two of us thoroughly decontaminated—but one of us feeling like he might puke—Aela’s gaseous form poured out of their exo-suit and up our noses.
I entered the mind-space, my revulsion level cratering now that I was out of my own body.
The jungle was hot as balls. No better way to put it.
Actually, I’m sure there are a million better ways to put it. But I’m sticking with “hot as balls.”
I stood under a dense canopy of greenery, like the Amazon rain forest on steroids. The trees were massive, with bark that looked like turtle shells, the bulbous roots creating waist-high hills in the soft black soil. Bat-shaped creatures flitted through the branches, drilling their pointy hummingbird beaks into the juicy melons that hung from the boughs. Sticky nectar spilled down like rain.
“Welcome to the Ghost Garden,” H’Jossu said. “My home world.”
He was right next to me, swaying happily in the humidity. Aela was with us too, once again in the striking humanoid shape that reminded me of a living lightning storm.
In a small clearing ahead of us, surrounded by a circle of ornamental rocks, an animal was dying.
The creature was about the size of a golden retriever, with reddish, leathery skin and a long floppy trunk. It lay on its side, its eyes glazed over, each slow breath rattling around in its rib cage. Dude didn’t have long to go.
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