286 looked up at Kala Sirrah, now standing almost directly over her, and leaned back with a shrug, apparently unimpressed. “You said to go get the box. I got it. What’s your problem?”
“My problem? My problem is that you injured eight people, damaged several buildings, and crashed a transport. Or did you miss that part? You rampaged through the city. You caused an incident that I, as a Kala, should have had nothing to do with. You managed to turn an opportunity to prove that you are capable of co-existing with other people outside of a prison world into a fiasco that resulted in the Altairan Government nearly pulling the project!” Sirrah’s voice had risen steadily throughout the rant, going well above the typically serene level that 286 had come to expect from the Kala’s composure. Sirrah closed her eyes for a moment, smoothed her ruffled dress, and took another couple of calming breaths before opening her eyes again. “If I hadn’t beseeched them to give me more time, you would be bound for Urebai, once again, as we speak.”
“Yeah, right.” The scorn was obvious in 286’s voice as her temper began to lightly simmer in her voice and eyes. “Besides, I don’t see how any of that is my fault.”
Sirrah stared at her for a moment with her eyes disbelieving and her mouth just barely open, despite all those years of discipline and training she was so proud of. “How is it not your fault? You’re the one who did it! You broke an old woman’s pelvis!”
5.3 - Sirrah
Prisoner 286 just blinked at her, to all of Sirrah’s observations, devoid of any understanding or guilt. Or care, for that matter. “They didn’t move out of my way. And that is somehow my fault? I didn’t fucking put them there.”
Sirrah stared at her for a few long seconds in shocked silence. “You… don’t actually understand what is wrong with this at all, do you? You don’t even see how… utterly wrong that way of thinking is…”
“Look.” To Sirrah’s surprise, 286 seemed to calm herself down, leaning forward again on her elbows and interlacing her fingers. “When a building collapses on someone, or they fall off of a roof and die, who do you blame? The building? The ground? The sky? Me? Or is it their own damn fault for being there and fucking up?”
Sirrah looked away for a moment, her smooth young brow furrowed ponderously. After a few seconds, she released a breath audibly, and her tension along with it. “It’s no wonder they never made any gains with you.” She said it quietly, as if almost for her benefit alone. “They never understood you at all. They have no idea how you think.” She frowned deeper as she considered the ramifications of that realization. “You never even had a chance…” she whispered at last, eyes wide.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” 286 announced in reply, sitting up straight. “But if they want me to take responsibility for all those people having a run of shitty luck, they can just fuck right off.” Her hazel eyes were Kinetic-reinforced steel.
Sirrah sighed as she turned her face toward 286 again, and stared for a moment as she considered her. This woman had been on the wrong side of the law for as long as Sirrah, or anyone else, knew. She was infamous for being a thorn in the side of not only Altair, but of anywhere she ended up, even beginning with her native Urzra. But looking at it now, she wasn’t sure anymore that this woman was entirely to blame. With all of Altairan society’s regulations and failsafes, with all their attention to doing what is right and just, how had this woman fallen so neatly through the cracks?
She took a step closer to 286, moving to stand just in front of her, then lowered herself gracefully to her knees. She lifted her delicate hands and gently wrapped them around the rough, scarred hands of the most dangerous criminal in the cluster. Then she softened her tone, her burnished chestnut eyes, her expression and her approach. “286, I want you to have a chance. Can’t you see that? Don’t you understand what I am risking in order to help you? Please don’t make it more difficult than it already is. Please, don’t fight me. I only want to help you be free.”
286 grunted, almost immediately pulling her hands out of Sirrah’s gentle grasp. “Yeah, I still haven’t figured out what you’re getting out of all this, which is pretty impressive.” She paused. “Well, besides the fame, which is obvious, but I wouldn’t figure that would be worth the risk.”
Sirrah let her soft hands drop to rest gently on 286’s knees instead. “I understand that you still don’t trust me. I don’t blame you for that. But if you don’t at least work with me, they’re going to—” she hesitated briefly, considering her choice of words, “—try to send you back. Wouldn’t it be better if we could avoid that?”
Prisoner 286 just shrugged in reply; even for a Kala like Sirrah, it was hard to read if she sincerely didn’t care, or if it was just an emotionless mask. “Sure, why not.”
Sirrah smiled at her softly, carefully hiding the remorse she felt for her. “Then, you’re going to have to try to avoid injuring innocent bystanders. It may not be your fault that they are in the way, but you are capable of going around them, or otherwise making sure that no one gets hurt who isn’t your target, are you not? You are the most skilled, most powerful Kinetic anyone’s ever heard of. Why not take it as a personal challenge to rise above? Like an obstacle course?”
The other woman snorted again in reply, raking back her hair with careless fingers. “Whatever. Maybe. Hey, why is no one pissed about that one guy then? The one that stole your box thingy?”
Sirrah felt her lips quivering upward into a smirk. “Oh, they are. Just, with all the injured Altairan civilians to worry about, and the need to compose an official news report on what happened today, I think no one really focused on the fact that you roughed up a thief in the act of capturing him.”
“Yeah, I was gonna get some answers out of him, but he fainted. Probably a self-defense mechanism.” She let out a short sigh. “Oh well.”
Sirrah’s face lost its humor. “That reminds me.” She folded her hands in her lap with a sober expression, and tipped her head forward very slowly, lowering her face toward her hands as she lifted her palms. “Thank you for retrieving the box for me.” She touched her fingertips gently to her forehead then lowered her hands back to her lap, lifting her face to look up at 286 again, finishing the ancient gesture of gratitude. “It turned out to be rather important.”
“YES! Wow. Finally.” 286 barked out a sudden, one-note laugh and gave a pair of loud, slow claps. “I thought everyone was just going to bitch at me the whole time about what I supposedly did wrong.” She grinned wide, amused, her mood suddenly seeming to upswing dramatically.
Sirrah smiled at her. “Regardless of the wrongs you may have done, you still did me a service, and for that I am grateful. But now that I have straightened out matters with the Altairan Government, there is a rather urgent mission which I must undertake for the Kalaset.” She rose in an elegant motion, gesturing for 286 to follow. “We need a fast ship.”
CHAPTER SIX
Tales to Tell
Merlo
Merlo stopped just inside the open doorway to Captain Branwen’s personal quarters. She had ship-related business, but nothing that couldn’t wait, at least a for a few minutes. She was too respectful of the Captain and her culture to interrupt one of Branwen’s stories, even if it was one she knew had already been told a handful of times.
“He had summoned enough guards that obviously, he thought he would force our silence,” Branwen was saying, leaning forward in her chair, gesturing expressively and intent on telling the tale. “They filled the fringes of the room to bursting, hands on drawn weapons. But it was Zimi that relieved our standoff. She strode right up to the Director’s chair, standing tall over him and ignoring the weapons his men were pointing at us. She told him not only was he going to pay us what we were owed and distribute the medicine properly, but that this was going to be last time he dared divert any medicine away from its rightful recipients.”
“His face was a mask, but you could see the light of anger underneath shining through his eyes. He started to g
esture to his guards, opening his mouth to give an order— but for what, we never found out. Zimi cut across his words, telling him of how we had already been in contact with our ship and that the rest of our crew would contact the Legion and relate the tale to them, if anything happened to us. And that if he failed to cease the thefts from those entrusted to his care, we would find out, and we would tell the Legion of that, as well.” Branwen smiled widely, gesturing again with open arms. “So, it was Zimi who won us the day.”
“Awww Cap'n, it weren’t like all that, really,” Zimi protested from her seat, blushing admirably.
“Wow! Captain, that is extraordinary.” Mr. Leonard, sitting in a chair next to Zimi in the “audience,” clapped his hands. As far as Merlo knew, this wasn’t the first time he’d heard the story, but he always seemed to appreciate it just as much as he had initially. “That was amazing, Miss Zimi. How brave of you.”
Merlo watched with amusement as Zimi’s face reddened even further, and she mumbled something shy and unintelligible in her defense. Merlo had been initially hesitant about having another crew member come aboard, regardless of her skill in having saved the Captain. But Branwen seemed to be a rather good judge of people; Zimi wasn’t bad company to have around, she supposed.
Zimi had also been useful, especially with the Captain still injured. She had been helping with the cargo, and had even picked up cooking duty. Merlo had to admit her enjoyment of dinnertime had stepped up a notch as a result; Mr. Leonard was a pretty decent cook, but the Captain was... better suited for other things. It also relieved her to have the safety net of a “medical officer” on board, considering what passed for first aid in these clusters.
In fact, “storytime” seemed to come more often now that Zimi was here. Zimi seemed especially enraptured by some of the tales Branwen had begun telling about Fade, and Merlo couldn’t complain. She looked around at the Captain’s quarters again while she waited. It wasn’t any more spacious than her quarters, or any other quarters on the ship, but it had far more decoration and evidence of a personal touch.
Merlo’s room was still spartan; she didn’t really know what to do with all the empty space, despite a few helpful suggestions from the Captain. Branwen’s, on the other hand, was full of curios and mementos from her life on Fade; hand-held, metal shields with foreign designs etched into them rested side by side with broken swords, woven cloth banners, or the severed horns of some enormous creature. Thanks to Zimi’s prompting, Merlo could name what warlord that banner belonged to, and she could relate that the solid, stone-like tusk over there was once attached to an equally solid, ice-dwelling “monster,” as the Captain called it.
Then there were the tales Merlo knew were exaggerated, like those of men and women being “touched by the Fade” and having strange, supernatural powers. But she didn’t mind, those stories were fun too. She tuned back in to the ongoing conversation just in time to catch Branwen speaking to her.
“What is it?” The Captain asked, everyone in the room now looking up at Merlo.
Merlo shook her head. “Nah, it can wait, Captain. I don’t want to interrupt.” She gestured at Zimi, who she vaguely remembered speaking a moment before. “Sorry. What were you saying?”
“Zimi was telling us about her homeworld. It is a subject I have been rather curious about, considering what I have read on the subject.” Branwen explained.
Merlo thought about it for a moment. “Eraki, right? The one with the really elliptical orbit? I’m pretty curious about that myself.”
Mr. Leonard nodded. “Eraki is a class three planet that orbits a small, yellow, main sequence star at a high velocity, and is only in its system’s habitable zone for about two thirds of its orbital year. The days are understandably short due to quicker rotation, and… I’m sorry, Miss Zimi. I’m stealing your story.” Mr. Leonard looked suddenly embarrassed.
“Now, it ain’t no big deal, Mr. Leonard. I don’t mind you takin’ the science part off of my hands. That ain’t really the stuff I know by heart, after all. I just know what it was like to live there, bein’ part of a group that’s just tryin’ to make it day by day.” She gave him a shy smile before looking around at the others.
“Well, let’s hear it.” Merlo gave her what she hoped was an encouraging smile and crossed her arms. She wanted to get to know Zimi better if the girl was going to be a permanent addition to the crew, and so far Merlo hadn’t been very good at finding topics of casual conversation.
“What do ya say about the place you were born an’ raised?” Zimi seemed momentarily shy at being the center of attention, but warmed to it as she kept talking. “Maybe it’s different for some places, like fancy star ports where you see other walks of life all the time, but for most people, what ya grow up knowin’ is all there is.”
Zimi paused for a moment, and smiled over at the Captain as Branwen slid her a sturdy, clear glass of some cool blue liquid, which she gratefully took a few sips of before continuing. “For me an’ my family, and our neighbors, it was like that. All we knew was Eraki, little towns scattered all over outside of a few bigger towns. The heat durin’ the short summers, where ya gotta go underground durin’ the day. The cold durin’ the long winters, where ya gotta keep heat goin’ all day long and trap it inside for nightfall, or else.”
“What about spring and fall?” Merlo asked, speaking as Zimi paused to tuck wayward strands of golden brown back behind her ears. “I mean, you do have those, right?” Merlo had read up on seasonal change after Branwen had mentioned something about it a few weeks back.
Zimi actually laughed, a happy, lighthearted sound. “Well, we do, but it ain’t necessarily what other people would call by the same name! And they ain’t as much good for growin’ and farmin’ and such as you’d think.”
“Why not?” Now Merlo was interested. One definitely didn’t learn “useless” stuff like this in Starlance.
Zimi smiled at her. “Cause stuff grows really quick in spring. It ain’t got no choice on Eraki. And that’s when all the critters come out. Pretty much everything on Eraki is big an’ tough enough to survive the seasons, so when it starts t’ warm up they come out and hunt. Unfortunately, they don’t mind huntin’ people along with anything else that moves.”
“We have some of the same on Fade.” Branwen nodded her understanding, taking a long draw from her tankard.
“Some of the plants are just about as bad, even.” The thin young girl continued. “But that’s just in the warmer times. Winter’s bad cause all the surface water freezes, an’ you gotta go out in exosuits an’ crack the ice, or go deeper into the underground an’ draw up water. Snowstorms can come outta nowhere and last for days, an’ they’ll leave you either blind or froze.”
“It sounds rather difficult to survive there, Miss Zimi.” Mr. Leonard’s voice was quiet. “Don’t all the Altairan Alliance supplies help? I know they make a point of delivering goods to the planets that most need them.”
“Like how we met back on Pireida.” Branwen chuckled.
Zimi blushed and ducked her head slightly, still seeming embarrassed on the villagers’ behalf at the events that led to the Captain’s injury. “Well, it helps, but most of the outlying settlements are clustered around places where there’s access to underground steam or magma vents, so we can get power an’ heat in the winter, an’ power our bits of industry. But it means we’re scattered around pretty far out in a lot of cases, and we can’t necessarily get supplies when we most need them. Or sometimes, we don’t get ‘em at all.”
“Ha!” Merlo exclaimed, then she almost blushed herself as she realized she’d startled Zimi and Mr. Leonard with the outburst. “Um, I just mean, that’s the reason you got so mad about what happened on Pireda, right? About people misusing the medicine meant for that little town?” She was pretty sure she’d nailed the reason, or at least part of it. “You’d seen that kind of thing before. It was personal.”
“Well, not just that, but it sure does get my blood boilin’ real good.�
� Zimi sighed, a frown settling onto her face. “I been too many places where somebody was in charge who didn’t need t’ be, takin’ stuff from people that couldn’t afford to lose it. So when I see a chance t’ do somethin’ about it, I just got to.” She looked surprisingly fierce, in an adorably even-younger-than-Merlo way.
I wonder what all that must be like. On the Starlance station, things may have been all business and tough, rigorous training, but all of their basic needs were cared for. No one was in danger of dying from uncontrollable temperature exposure, or not having enough food.
Merlo started to zone out of the conversation a bit as she made the comparisons and her mind wandered. She only barely heard Zimi explaining the different kinds of aggressive plant and animal life and how the inhabitants build defenses against them to protect their basic summer and winter homes. She shook off the thoughtful mood and listened to Zimi explain how most of their clothes and decor were either handmade, or eclectic mismatches of imports from various worlds, and how their clear night sky changed as the seasons passed, dominated through part of the year by the red glow of a nearby companion star or the gleam of light reflected from the three large gas giants hovering just past Eraki’s orbit.
Some time later, Merlo realized that she'd been taken in by the story telling, and that more time had passed than she'd intended. Listening to stories had been nice, but she'd come here with another purpose in mind that still needed seeing to. So she reluctantly cleared her throat and looked toward the Captain, getting her attention from where she and the other two crew members had continued chatting animatedly.
“Sorry to interrupt again, Captain, but I do need you for a minute now.” Merlo jerked her head towards the stairs down, vaguely indicating the direction of their current load of extremely expensive cargo.
Destiny Abounds (Starlight Saga Book 1) Page 9
