Ascension: A Tangled Axon Novel

by Jacqueline Koyanagi

  Which meant, of course, I’d never seen it.

  That was okay. I wasn’t as interested in Gira. Adul was the object of my childhood affections, and it wasn’t until I was older and understood the nature of gaseous planets that I let go of my belief that there were entire seas of sweet cream churning beneath its upper atmosphere. During my school breaks, Kugler and I had begged my parents to let us take a shuttle from the research station to travel down through the storms and into the sugar-sweet winds below.

  More than twenty years later, I found it no less enchanting. Our people peeled away bits of its ephemeral skin, separated its isotopes at the orbiting low-temperature rectification factories, and distributed the helium-3 to ships that ferried us through the silence. Adul gave our vessels their blood from whorls of her breath, like a mother. A goddess.

  Best of all, I loved the gaseous creatures who lived in Adul’s upper atmosphere, organic balloons bobbing between bolts of lightning. Beings who gave my mother and father purpose as their linguistic team worked to decipher the Adulan language of color and light. Floating and puffing innocently through the gas, shimmering with bioluminescence, a single entity would have dwarfed my entire neighborhood back in Heliodor.

  Unlike most other beings in the system, the Adulans weren’t crafted by biosynths. They had evolved on their own on Adul, all the more wondrous to me in their rarity. Only three times had we learned of a natively evolved intelligent species, and two of them weren’t in orbit of our Nulan star. Even most human populations had been seeded from other human-occupied planets.

  Slip returned to the bridge in a hurry, limping under the weight of the large travel case she carried. “Tev—”

  “Alana!” An unmistakable, lilting voice.

  Swathed in fabric so gauzy and golden she looked like liquid sunlight, my sister swept onto the bridge from behind Slip. Her hair—naturally coarse and wild like mine—was pushed back into a glitter-laden orange poof that haloed her head. Gold threads dangled from the hair tie, matching her long, gold earrings and the gold necklace sparkling at her dark throat. Just the right amount of skin peeked through her clothes, daring anyone to ask for more.

  Before I could move, speak, or think, she wrapped me in a sun-draped hug, sleeves billowing around us. Jasmine wafted over me, as if she carried a glamoured breeze with her.

  Actually, she probably did.

  Nova pulled back to look at me, hands still on my shoulders, face thinner than usual. I hadn’t noticed during our comm link. Had she lost even more weight?

  “Are you okay?” Nova said, taking my cheeks into her hands and examining me, tilting my face this way and that.

  “Oh yeah,” I said. “See if you can crack it to the left.”

  She sucked her teeth. “This is no time for joking. Are your muscles okay? You can move okay?” She didn’t wait for my answer before looking at the crew members, one after another, still holding my face as if I were a child. “Give her the antidote. Now.”

  Slip, wearing her lab coat for show and holding another saline-filled injector, made as if to move toward me. How were they preventing Nova from detecting their deception?

  “Belay that, Doctor Vasquez,” Tev said, confronting Nova. “You don’t rush onto my bridge and start giving orders. You have to promise to stay. Put it through the guild as a contract. Delay or cancel whatever you had going on for the next couple of months. Alana gets nothing in the meantime.”

  “I’ve already done all of that.” Nova sighed and tossed her arms in exasperation. “Honestly, I’ve been doing this job long enough to know how to manage my contracts. I’m a stellar-class graduate of the Advisory Guild’s highest level of honor, three-time winner of the Seelig Award, and I’ve served over two-hundred clients—”

  “We don’t need the rundown, Nova,” I said.

  She smiled indulgently and patted my cheek. “The point is, I have accrued a great deal of experience, darling. I know how to tend my own schedule.” She let out another hard sigh, muttering to herself. “For spirit’s sake. Giving me orders as if I don’t know to put it through the guild.”

  Tev raised an eyebrow, shifting her weight. Again, her leg clicked. “And you’ll be staying.”

  Nova adjusted her dress, fixing some minute flaw only she could perceive. “I’m hardly at the beck-and-call of someone like you. You’re from Woolera, aren’t you.” Her voice fell flat. “Leave it to my sister to pick a farmer’s daughter over someone who could actually support her.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” Ovie growled, fists clenched.

  “Down, fella.” Nova winked. Then, briefly, her eyes locked onto Marre’s back at the navigation console, and a flicker of something unnamed crossed my sister’s face. Marre hadn’t acknowledged Nova; in fact, she seemed utterly uninterested in anything happening around her.

  Nova just turned toward Tev. “So. The antidote?”

  “We’ll give it to her when we’ve left orbit. She has plenty of time.” Tev gave her a sarcastic grin. “The tremors shouldn’t start for another couple of hours.”

  Slip returned the pharm-injector to her pocket and shrugged, as if my life were inconsequential. “Captain’s orders, ladies.”

  “Heartless lowlifes.” Nova said, then turned to me, obviously no longer interested in what anyone had else to say. “Sweetheart, you really need to do something about this hair.” She sucked her teeth again and played with a few of my locs, then dropped them. “You look so dark and brooding with it hanging down by your hips. Like some kind of wild thing on Valen. You should let me cut it.”

  “You know I can’t.”

  She waved her hand. “Really, Alana, still going on about all that sky surgeon nonsense? No one hires you because of your hair, of all things.”

  “It’s tradition.”

  “Blah, blah, blah. Well?” She opened her arms in a grand, sweeping motion as if to embrace the Tangled Axon, landing her gaze on the captain. “Where’s my room? I assume I have a room to myself if you’re taking up my time with such brash confidence and assaulting my little sister. Knowing my luck, you won’t even tip me well. I should at least have comfortable quarters.”

  Tev took a breath but obviously contained whatever response she’d had in mind, instead glancing at Ovie. “Will you?”

  He said nothing, but grunted and gestured for Nova to come with him. She just followed him with her eyes and crossed her arms, gold-tipped nails shining against her skin. “Really, Captain. Employing a wolf?”

  Tev didn’t even bother looking up from the flight path she now examined. “Who I choose to employ is none of your concern. We’re done here. Marre, I want to route us around Sena. Too much traffic since Translim opened that rental ship depot.”

  “Let’s talk!” Nova linked her arm with mine, capturing me in her bubble of jasmine and wafting us out into the corridor like mist. She waved at Ovie. “Go on, show me to my room. And take my travel case; you’re bigger than me.”

  He glared and shoved the case toward her with his foot. “You have arms.”

  I mouthed sorry to Ovie, but he just glared, face stern between a frame of thick locs.

  Positively seething with offense, Nova straightened her back. She looked at me, but there was no way in all the silence I was carrying my entitled sister’s luggage. She knew as well as I did that an uncoordinated stumble down a corridor with a heavy bag would exacerbate my Mel’s pain. I just tied my hair back and raised my eyebrows at her. “No time like the present to start working out.”

  “Rude.” She grabbed a strap hanging from the end and dragged it as we walked, ranting to herself. “No concept of manners on this ship. Haven’t they ever worked with a guide before? Oh, of course not. Look at them.”

  “How did you know?” I said, knowing better than to argue with her when she was on a roll. “About the wolf thing.”

  Nova scoffed. “Alana. Don’t be so simple. Canine stench permeates his whole aura. Always been more of a cat person myself. I met the most wo
nderful panther-person on Valen last year. Gave me a tour of her plumberry winery. Remember that bottle of 2494 I sent you—”

  “Nova. Stop. What the hell are you talking about?”

  “How did my little sister end up on a cargo ship, anyway?”

  She said “cargo ship” the way someone else might say “infectious disease” or “low credit score.”

  “You have to promise not to tell Mom and Dad,” I said, rubbing at a knot at the back of my neck.

  Nova paused in her lurching attempt to drag her travel case, tilted her chin up a few degrees, and gave me a you should know better look. “I make no such guarantee.”

  “Fine, forget it.”

  “Oh, don’t be like that. You know I can’t keep secrets from kin.” She fluffed her hair and resumed her pulling, following a silent Ovie. “It’s not in my nature. So tell me. What are you doing on this clunker?”

  I sighed. “They came looking for you at the shop and I kind of stowed away.”

  “What!” She wheeled toward me and grabbed my shoulders again. “You didn’t!”

  “You’re right. I didn’t. You’re hallucinating. It’s all that perfume you’re wearing.”

  “Alana Quick, I don’t believe you.”

  “Okay.”

  “This is unbecoming behavior for a Quick woman. For no other reason than that, I won’t tell our parents; it would break their hearts to know you threw away everything to gallivant around between the stars.”

  I liked the sound of gallivanting around between the stars. I was pretty sure they would too.

  “This selfish behavior has to stop,” Nova said. “Before you end up hurting someone. Life isn’t all about you, you know.”

  I could pretend to be hurting far worse than I am, I thought. That would get her to stop talking. Capitalize on her belief that I’d been poisoned just to get her to stop nagging me. Tempting, but ultimately I thought better of it. Criminal or not, I did have some integrity. Besides, distracting her now would just make my job harder later, so I bit my already-bruised tongue.

  “You’ve lost weight,” I said.

  “Have I?” She grinned, fanned her arms open, and looked down at her body, shifting each hip in turn to examine herself. Flawless, dark expanses of skin poked out of her gold garment, legs thin and taut. “Oh, I never know what my weight is doing these days, but you’re so sweet to say so.”

  Of course, she feigned all modesty; the flicker of self-satisfaction across her face told me as much. Never mind that my comment wasn’t intended as a compliment. Her flesh had lost more softness than it should have, cheekbones too severe for her face. But what else was I to expect? Guides ate as little as they could, exerted minimal physical energy, and subsisted on the lowest-calorie diet they could manage. The SAG installed biomechanical nutritional applications in their contact displays when students graduated from the guide program. Caloric restriction was simply part of the guide lifestyle.

  As Nova babbled about her vacation on our slow march to her quarters, I remembered when she first told me about it. The lifestyle, that is. The caloric restriction and the slow whittling away of the physical self. Nova had come home from guild training on holiday one year and explained everything to me in a flurry of excitement, face bright with new experiences. She’d told me that guides from all over the system were waiting for the first of them to achieve the impossible: to become mere wisps of energy, rid of the bodies that confined them, free of the flesh that insisted on twisting gruesome blood and muscle around their pure spirit forms. “Ascension,” she’d whisper, awed. Ever since, I’d watched her waste her healthy body, worry it away with resentment.

  It didn’t surprise me. The first time I saw Nova injured as a child—a paper cut, nothing more—she screamed and wept for hours, unable to reconcile the visceral, heartbreaking reality of blood and split skin. It was too much, too far removed from her expectations of what little girls should be made of. Surely a tear in her flesh should have leaked purity and rapture into the world. Surely her soul should have escaped in vaporous arabesques, dissipating into the aether.

  Each day thereafter was a bitter disappointment to Nova. She felt her embodiment as an unwelcome thing that hung onto her like a demon’s shadow, and she told me about it when we fell asleep at night. In her mind, if she could project her spirit-self across the system, if she could inspire greatness in artists and writers, if she could help the dying walk into the next life with grace, then surely she should have been able to free herself of the confines of skin and muscle.

  I understood what she refused to acknowledge, and no matter how many times I said it to her, she waved it away in denial: because Nova persisted, her body persisted. There was no difference.

  No more than five minutes after settling into her quarters, Nova had opened her small planet of a travel case and draped gold and red silk over one wall. Ever determined to surround herself with color and luxury, even in the belly of a cargo ship. Her impromptu wallhanging caught light from the dim lamp in the corner, softening the room. I had to smile at seeing the Tangled Axon draped in something so beautiful. This ship deserved it if anyone did.

  “I do hope we leave soon,” she said, crossing her endless legs and eyeing me while fanning herself. “Are you feeling okay? Does the poison hurt?”

  “About that.” I looked around for a place to sit, but I wasn’t sure what to do with myself. She’d already established her dominion, claiming every centimeter of space she moved through as if she’d been born to inhabit it. I’d vowed never to tell her how envious of that ability I’d always been, or how badly I wished she’d have taught me how to do it, growing up.

  “Oh, just sit there.” She wiggled her manicured fingers at the end of the bed. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on, or not?”

  “I was going to.” I sat, pointlessly smoothing my pants, conscious of her staring at my hair.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “The injection was saline.”

  I braced myself for spitfire, but she just sighed and plucked at the end of her sleeve, not meeting my eye. “I know. I’m not stupid. I’m surprised you even bothered lying.”

  “You know.”

  “Obviously. You can’t lie to me. I knew the instant I saw you; it was all over your energy. I’m just glad you’re okay.”

  “When they injected me, I thought it was real. But how did they convince you?

  Nova remained quiet for a beat. “That girl on the bridge. She blocked my empathic abilities during our comm link. I don’t know how. Something is terribly wrong with her.”

  “That’s what they want to talk to you about—”

  “You’ve got to take better care of yourself, sweetheart. Running around with these types is not good for your reputation.” She placed a hand on my leg. “It’s good to see you anyway, Alana.”

  “You’re not upset with me?”

  Nova sighed and idly examined her clothing. “You cut my vacation short. I certainly should be angry, but even guides can’t be too picky about the contracts they accept these days. Clients aren’t as plentiful as they used to be.” Her gaze snapped up to mine. “Not that I’m hurting for money, mind you. It’s just not worth getting angry when a job is a job, and I get to see my little sister, make sure she’s not getting into too much trouble with these fringe folk.”

  “These fringe folk are my folk, Nova.”

  “You’re my sister; you’re better than that.” She yawned. “Anyway, what do they want?”

  “Has your agent been getting contract requests from someone named Birke?”

  She grabbed my hand, recognition registering on her face. “Yes, I—”

  Something almost threw us off the bed. The world upended, spinning and rocking as the ship rumbled, hull groaning. Lights flickered. One corner of Nova’s silk hanging came undone, fluttering over us as we were thrown into the wall. My head banged against the metal, tweaking my neck muscles and temporarily blurring my vision before I could grab onto the edge of t
he bed and situate myself. Clothes, shoes, and crystals launched from Nova’s case when the ship rocked again.

  Once we’d righted ourselves, we stayed plastered at the corner of the bed and I checked to make sure the pills were still in my pocket. Centrifugal force pressed us to one side as alarms wailed over us. Nova reached for my hand and squeezed it, nails digging into my palm, eyes wide with confusion.

  “Are we crashing?” she shouted over the noise, voice almost a squeak. “What’s happening?”

  The disturbance was brief. The Axon stilled.

  Tev’s voice burst in over the intercom, replacing the alarm. “This is the captain. All hands to the bridge.”

  “You stay here,” I said, hurrying to the door, but Nova grabbed me by the shirt.

  “No way. She said all hands.”

  “I don’t think she meant—”

  “I doubt you speak for the captain.”

  Before I could say anything, she ran down the corridor in a flutter of gold, and I hurried to catch up. Once on the bridge, I could see we were well away from Adul. The planet was no longer visible.

  “Captain . . . ” Ovie clutched Marre’s shoulder and her half-fleshless hand rested on his. They both stared out the viewer.

  Another crash rocked the ship. Everyone grabbed the nearest thing, be it console or seat or person.

  “Is this ship safe?” Nova said, voice pinched, her words coming rapidly. “Is it going to fall apart on us? I can’t stay on a faulty ship! This thing is so old.”

  “No hull damage,” Marre reported.

  “The ship is fine,” Tev said to Nova, hand and eyes lingering on the wall a moment longer than necessary, as if sensing the Tangled Axon’s well-being through her skin. “And you’d do well to show some respect.”