Ascension: A Tangled Axon Novel

by Jacqueline Koyanagi

  We might be doing the very same thing to the family who owned this repair lot. Maybe they’d file a theft report with the enforcers, but who would investigate it? Fringe crime was expected. They’d do a few cursory sweeps of the property out of obligation and then declare it unsolved.

  Could I do this? Could I really steal from my own kind, from people just like me and Lai?

  “Alana?” Ovie was halfway out the door. I hadn’t even noticed we landed, I’d been so lost in my thoughts. Tev and Slip were already gone, headed toward the medical facility around the corner. “You coming?”

  I draped a large canvas bag across my body and hopped out, kicking up a cloud of dust.

  Even on different planets, the shops were always the same. Dirt-caked and thick with grease. It smelled like home.

  “You know what we’re looking for?” I asked. The loss of my implant was hitting me harder than ever. Accessing ship schematics via neural interface would have been so much simpler.

  He tapped his head, shifting his weight to adjust his own bag. “Got ’em memorized, just like you. One hour, no longer.”

  I nodded, and we headed in opposite directions through the shadows, through the aisles of parts, scavenged ships, and abandoned engines. I was almost distracted by a few extra fuel cell locks, but I knew we couldn’t spare the weight or the space on the shuttle. It would just be nice to have some backups.

  Truth was, it actually felt damned good just being in a yard again. I had to control myself or Slip was right—I’d overexert my body with the excitement and strain. Shopping for things I could make use of on the Tangled Axon, however remote the need, made me feel a little like a kid, which just made me feel guiltier. I shouldn’t be excited about stealing from these folks.

  Piles of waveguide filaments, loss cones, radiation filters, reflectors, magnetic mirrors, and miscellaneous battered, rusted engine parts formed small mountains between old cockpit seats and empty shuttle skins. Piece by piece, I plucked through the shipyard bones to find what was necessary for our repairs, keeping an eye out for random useful objects, getting my hands dirty. Felt good to be elbow-deep in a repair lot again—

  A noise.

  What was it? I hid and steadied my breath, cradling several parts in my arms. Sharp metal edges cut into my skin, but I kept quiet, not wanting to drop anything and give myself away. I listened.

  Another noise. But it didn’t sound like it was moving any closer. No footsteps. Just a quiet rattling of metal and . . . a voice? A little girl’s voice. Babbling occasionally, quietly. Melodic.

  I peeked around the corner, careful not to fall under any yard lights.

  I was right. It was a little girl—eight, maybe nine years old. Hunched over a pile of parts and oh . . . my heart ached at the sight. Her hair fell across her shoulders in tiny braids, the symbol of an aspiring sky surgeon, an engineer-to-be.

  She worked on a miniature Red Niv III. Memories of my own tiny Series II Greenbelt flooded in: the sweat on my lips as I baked in the sun, watching the baby vessel become a dot in the sky.

  I hurt for this child. Things were already looking grim for sky surgeons when I was a kid, but this girl barely stood a chance. It would be so much easier for her if she wanted to be a spirit guide or a net media consultant. Maybe I should have wanted that for her as I stood there, watching her from the shadows. Maybe I should have intercepted her before she made the same choices I did, before she fell so desperately in love with engines and flight that she’d sacrifice financial security just to get a taste of it. Before she fell in love with a starship captain who loved her medical officer instead.

  Ultimately, I couldn’t warn her away. She deserved the chance to make her choices, to carve out whatever life she wanted, even if it meant that life was threaded with struggle. I didn’t realize I was walking until I was already halfway to her, cradling part of a magnetic mirror in my arms. Gravel popped beneath my boots.

  The child’s head whipped around.

  “Hey!” She stood. “Who are you?”

  “Shh!” I tilted my chin at her project. “What are you working on?”

  “That’s our stuff!” Her voice echoed through the lot as she pointed at me.

  “Oh. Here.” I handed her the part; I still had some of what we needed in my bag. “What are you working on?”

  She took it, but I could tell she still debated calling out for someone. “Nothing.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that.” I crouched down, knees popping, and pointed to the ship’s small engine. I kept my voice low to encourage her to do the same. “That looks like a Lifeliner engine to me, so that couldn’t be anything other than a Red Niv III. Red-Net retired those ‘liners when they debuted the Niv IV.”

  Her eyes darted over my locs, and they widened in a moment of excitement before she forced a layer of nonchalance over it. “Are you a sky surgeon?”

  “Mm-hmm. And you are too, I see.”

  She shrugged and sat back down, crossing her legs, knees embedded with gravel and dirt. “I want to be.”

  “Then you will.”

  “I don’t know. Mom says it’s not smart.”

  “With all due respect to your mother, that just isn’t true.” I gestured at her ship. “It takes quite a bit of intelligence to put together something like that.”

  “No, I mean . . . you know.” She shrugged again to give herself an extra beat to think. “They want me to do something else. Go to college.”

  “They have degrees for folks like us. You can apprentice, too.”

  She lighted up. “That’s what I want to do!” Her voice echoed, and I resisted the urge to check to see whether she was grabbing anyone’s attention. I didn’t want her to pick up on my anxiety. “I want to do that when I’m done with school. It would be a lot more fun than classes.” She wrinkled her nose. “And I’m definitely not working in an office. Bo-ring.”

  I laughed. “I agree. That’s what I did, you know. Apprentice.” I leaned closer, ignoring the throbbing in my muscles and the bright flash of pain cascading through my head, hands, feet. “And you know what I do now?”

  “What?” she whispered, then bit her lip and leaned in conspiratorially, as if my answer would determine the outcome of her own life.

  I matched her quiet tone. “I’m not just a sky surgeon. I’m a sky surgeon on a starship.”

  “Really?” She actually clapped a few times, she was so excited. Again I resisted the urge to glance around and make sure no one was coming. “I thought there weren’t flying jobs anymore! That’s what Mom says. She says they should drop the ‘sky surgeon’ part and just call you engineers.”

  “There’s still room for us if you look in the right places. Someone has to make sure all those ships are healthy.” I took a risk by touching her back, but still kept a respectful distance. “I won’t lie. It’s not easy when people tell you your dream is a bad idea. I heard it when I was your age too. But if this is what you really want, then don’t ever, ever give up. We need you. All of us need you. If you love this—” I gestured to the Niv. “—then don’t give up. Those ships want you to do your best. They can’t fly without you.”

  A creaking sound came from somewhere far behind me as a door opened.

  “Toren?” came a voice from the shop. “Who are you talking to? Who’s there?”

  I couldn’t keep the fear from my face. I looked at the little girl and barely shook my head, discreetly putting a finger to my lips. I held her eyes. She tilted her head in confusion and said nothing, only stared.

  “Please,” I whispered.

  Her eyes flicked to my bag, then back to me, and to the woman who called for her. I think she began to understand her new friend from the stars was probably in some kind of trouble, but would she suspect more?

  I held my breath while the girl decided my fate. The pain increased the longer I maintained my position.

  “Hang on, Mom! The lady just got lost!”

  “Let me talk to her,” the woman said, closer no
w. She wore jeans and a loose work polo, wiping her hands on a cloth.

  Anxiety pinched at the migraine raging in my temples, shattering it into jagged shards of glass. Putting up a front was so much harder when half my attention was stolen by Mel’s. I could try running and immediately give myself away, or I could talk my way out of this. That was Nova’s skill, not mine, but with the girl’s mother right in front of me, expectant eyes scanning me for any hint of deception, I knew it was the only viable option. Couldn’t blame her, anyway. I’d be suspicious too.

  I didn’t even have time to breathe and collect myself, calm my nerves, soothe my angry body. Time to perform.

  “Hi,” I said, standing and brushing the dirt from my shirt. I hoped my hands wouldn’t betray me by shaking. “Sorry to bother you so late at night. Your daughter was just giving me directions.”

  “Where to, hon? What got you lost in an old lot like this?” She glanced at my hair, then my bag. “You looking for parts?”

  “Oh.” I shifted my bag on my shoulder and winced at another stone-solid knot forming in my neck. How much time had passed since Ovie and I parted ways? Was he waiting for me by now? Were Slip and Tev okay? “No, I just . . . I knew I could turn to a family like this for directions. You know how people can be these days. So hard to trust strangers in unfamiliar cities, not until we’ve got ties. No kin here on Valen. I’m from Orpim. Heliodor. But I trust other folks who work with ship parts.”

  I smiled, as if there could be no question of our implicit connection.

  The girl grabbed her mother’s hand and tugged. “Momma. She flies on a starship.”

  The woman searched my face for a long time, but must have liked what she found there—her uncertainty eventually melted into a smile. “Well, of course, sweetheart. Come on inside and we’ll set you up with a glass of water and I’ll give you directions to wherever you need to go. Lived here for thirty years now; there’s nothing in this city I don’t know about.”

  “Oh that won’t be necessary—thank you, really, I just . . . I have to get going—”

  “Mirla?” a male voice called from the house. “Who’s there?”

  “We’ve got ourselves someone fresh from the Big Quiet!” She turned to the man and gestured for him to join us, as if I were an old friend of the family. Their kindness hurt my heart.

  “Lights alive. We don’t get a lot of business these—” The smile that had started to bloom on his face died the moment he stepped close enough to get a good look at my face.

  Shit.

  “Mirla, Toren, you two get inside.” His voice shook. “Right now.”

  The girl’s mother looked genuinely confused. “What are you talking about—”

  “This is that Quick woman. She’s one of the terrorists what massacred Adul.”

  Mirla cried out and grabbed Toren, dragging her toward the building. I heard the girl protesting, shouting something about flying, while the man lunged for me. I dodged him at the last second and wasted no time: I broke into a run, heavy bag pummeling my lower back. My legs hurt from crouching to talk to the girl and the muscles in my neck had twisted into a mess of pain and stiffness. One wrong step and I’d tumble; who knows if I’d be able to get up again. The migraine split open my head, strobes of light flashing in front of me with every footfall, but I had to push on, to make it to the shuttle. I’d collapse then if I could, but I had to make it. Had to get these parts to the crew.

  “Hello?” the man shouted while he chased me, but I could tell from the tone of his voice he wasn’t talking to me. He was shouting to be heard over his own panting, the thunder of his boots. “I’ve seen the terrorists! They’re at my coordinates right now!”

  By talking to the child, I’d condemned us all.

  “Ovie!” I shouted. He was rounding the corner at a bolt, the black shadow-wolf echoing his body’s movements as he struggled with his now-heavy bag. He must have heard the commotion. Barely giving me a glance, he threw himself into the shuttle and started the engine. I was running so hard my legs seemed to split apart and erupt into flames. If this man stopped me, that was it. I’d be done. If the Tangled Axon left me behind, I was fucked. If they stayed to help, we all were.

  “Wait!” the man shouted entirely too close for comfort, and before I could get my bearings I was on the ground with a mouth full of dirt and indescribable, blinding pain in my neck and head, lights flashing, and everything was spinning, spinning, spinning.

  Until the ground slammed into me and the spinning stopped. It took me a second to realize the man had caught up to me, knocked me over, and pinned me down. My head. Pain. My head, my head, my head. And my ribs. There were knives in my ribs. No air. The shuttle was right there. I could see its hull. Could almost touch it.

  A low growl emanated from somewhere behind me. The weight lifted from my body, but now it was hard to breathe. I tried turning my head to look, but even that was too difficult. Unwelcome whiteness clouded my vision; it happened too often these days.

  The man from the repair lot screamed under Ovie’s barks and vicious snarls. His voice eventually tore in half, and he was quiet.

  No stabbing in my ribs. No pain in my head.

  Just sleep.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Opening my eyes was a mistake. Light instantly blinded me and the pain in my back and neck returned, accompanied by that familiar stabbing in the side of my head. Every time I took a breath, the pain was so intense it shouldn’t have been possible to be both conscious and in that much agony. Yet somehow, there I was. And, oh joy, there was that charred plastic smell I loved so much. Must be in the infirmary.

  “Heeeey,” Slip drawled lovingly, appearing above me. She was little more than a blurred shadow with dark hair, so I tried to sit up, but my body had other ideas. I shouted and grabbed my throbbing side, but that movement hurt just as badly, so I collapsed again, which just made me dizzy. Definitely not my best day.

  “Take it easy,” she said. “He beat you up and you’ve got two broken ribs, but it could’ve been worse. You need to stop spending so much time in my bed.”

  “What?” As soon as the hoarse word was out of my mouth, I remembered. The shipyard. The little girl. Her father, chasing me. Ovie in the shuttle. The ground. The screaming.

  “When did you get back?” I said. “The shuttle . . . ”

  “Tev used the hospital comm system to contact Marre when you two didn’t show. Nova picked us up in the second shuttle.”

  Ovie had to have told them what I’d done, how I’d gotten distracted and ruined everything, how I’d forced him to do whatever it was he’d done to the man who had broken my ribs. I’d brought the enforcers down on us again. Wait, were the enforcers after us? I wanted to ask but somehow I couldn’t get my mouth to work.

  “Here.” Slip tilted my head up, forcing me to endure the pain when I winced and cried out. There was a glass of water at my lips, and I was soon drinking, gulping, soaking the sheet over my chest.

  “You’ve been out for a while,” she said. “These painkillers are brutal.”

  “Dexitek?” I managed.

  She winked. “Should be pumping through your body as we speak.”

  I grabbed her hand. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me, thank Tev. She’s the one who held off security when they figured out we weren’t the doctors we claimed to be. Girlfriend is vicious with those plasma channel weapons. She stole one from the chief security officer at the medical facility and stunned half their force when we fought our way out. Of course now we look exactly like the criminals they think we are, so maybe she should’ve taken a more judicious route. You too, clearly.” She laughed and shook her head. “You’re crazy, girl.”

  I finished my glass of water and wiped my mouth. “I didn’t mean to.”

  She smirked. “Yeah, I don’t think many people mean to get their ass beat.”

  “No, I mean I didn’t mean to—”

  Footsteps near the infirmary doorway.

  “
You’re awake.”

  Tev. My heart jumped as fear trickled in. She’d kick me off the crew for my foolishness, to say nothing of what her opinion of me would be now. Not that it mattered much anymore. Between this and my earlier stunt with the device, I’d proven my irresponsibility several times over.

  Doused as I was in all that shame, Tev was the last person I wanted to see right now. I turned my head to look at Slip, wincing against the pain, but she just smiled and excused herself. I heard the door slide shut behind her, and then Tev’s footsteps drawing closer, leg clicking.

  My mind raced as I tried to formulate a way to apologize that would make any difference, but I couldn’t think of how to atone for being so careless, for screwing up the only chance we had to secure the parts to repair the Tangled Axon. Even with my own body throbbing in pain, I could still feel her broken, beaten hull, her damaged thrusters. Now what would we do? Every shop in the system would be on high alert, waiting for the chance to turn us in if we showed our faces.

  Tev stood next to the bed. Instead of berating me, she turned my hand over and held it with both of hers, lightly rubbing a thumb over my exposed wrist. Her expression was soft, and that gorgeous golden hair fell around her, harsh infirmary light filtering through it like the sun.

  “Ovie told me what you did.”

  I swallowed. Her words sounded tinny through my haze of pain and drugs. “Oh.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re not angry?”

  Confusion flashed across her face. “For what?”