Metal Wolf

by Lauren Esker

"Jeren? No idea. On the ship, I hope."

  "What are the odds he'll figure out how to fly it and take off without us?"

  "None," Rei said, then amended it to, "Very little, anyway. I don't think he has pilot mods or he'd be gone already."

  "Pilot mods?"

  "Special implants in my head that let me fly spaceships."

  She nodded and settled sleepily in his arms again.

  "Anyway," he said softly into her hair, "if he tries anything, I've had a rough day and I don't mind having someone to take it out on."

  Sarah laughed quietly against his neck, and then slowly her breathing evened out and she slept. He held her as, a few minutes later, she twitched through a nightmare before settling down again.

  It was very like sleeping with his sept, clinging to each other through their dreams, holding each other as they cried.

  He wondered if any of his sept were still alive out there.

  With a ship of his own, and Sarah by his side, perhaps he could find out.

  20

  ___

  I T WAS SUCH AN odd feeling, Sarah thought: trying to compress her entire life on Earth into a suitcase.

  She could take as much with her as she wanted. There was plenty of room on the ship. But as she went through her closet, her keepsakes, her photos, she realized how little of it was meaningful enough to be worth taking to space. She took her favorite picture of Mom—leaving Rei's drawing of his family on the wall; it would stay safe here on Earth—and a picture of her parents together. Some changes of clothes went into the suitcase, along with her favorite soft, well-worn T-shirt for sleeping in.

  There was no need to take a telescope, or any of her science books. She was leaving for a place where all the accumulated scientific knowledge of Earth was probably stuff that people learned in kindergarten.

  She took a couple of her favorite paperback novels, and her ebook reader loaded up with books. Even knowing it was silly, with so much more advanced technology in the place she was going, she tucked her phone into the suitcase too. True, there was no service in outer space, but she had a bunch of games and photos on there. It would be nice to have that.

  Was this was people used to feel like when they went on long journeys? Not knowing if you would ever come back, if you'd ever see your family again? Her ancestors had sailed to a new land and crossed half a continent to get to Wisconsin. Perhaps it only made sense that she was following in their footsteps; the urge to see new places was in her blood.

  The last thing she put in the suitcase was her favorite stuffed toy from her childhood, a threadbare stuffed horse called Spot. She had always hoped she'd be able to give it to a child of her own someday. She still wasn't sure if she believed Rei that the two of them could have children together, but she'd like to have the option.

  She closed the suitcase and clicked it shut.

  Carrying the suitcase, she went down the stairs quietly, stepping automatically around the creaky step. She was wearing ordinary clothes: jeans, a sweater, sneakers. Somehow it felt like she ought to dress up for going to space. But she might as well wear something she felt comfortable in. Who knew what she'd end up wearing eventually, once she was out there?

  No sign of the Men in Black, so apparently Rhodes hadn't sold them out yet. The whole house smelled like baking. In the kitchen doorway, Sarah stopped to watch her dad. He was wearing an apron and just putting a baking sheet into the oven with a pair of mitts.

  "Hey, honey. I made your favorite oatmeal cookies. No chocolate chips so your boy can eat 'em too." He pointed to the baking rack with a mitt-clad hand. "Just let 'em cool and we can pack them up in Tupperware for you to take along."

  That was what did it; that was what made the tears come. "Oh, Dad," Sarah whispered, and threw herself into his arms.

  They hugged for a long time, until the oven timer went ding! As her dad turned away and started getting the cookies out of the oven, Sarah noticed the table was covered with electronics. She didn't recognize most of what she was looking at, but she was pretty sure a lot of it was from Rei's pod, or maybe from the Galatean ship.

  "What's all this?"

  "Had a chat with your boy earlier—"

  "His name is Rei, Dad."

  "—about rigging up some kind of space phone. We gotta do it on the down low, don't want to get those cat folks after us, but I've got time on my hands and he left all this so I can see if I can put something together to talk to you two out there."

  "That would be fantastic," Sarah said. She swallowed; she was pretty sure she'd gotten all the tears out of her system for now, but there might be more if she stayed here too long.

  "Just let me get these cookies packed up, and I'll bring 'em out."

  Her father's eyes were suspiciously wet, too. Sarah didn't mention it; she just nodded, and grabbed her sheepskin coat on the way out the door.

  It was going to be cold in space. She'd need this.

  "Your boy's at the ship!" her dad called after her.

  "I figured!"

  They'd moved the ship up the hill. Rei had landed it neatly straddling the stream, between the trees, where it couldn't be seen from the road or the Haverford place. They were definitely running on borrowed time, though. The weather was cooperating so far; it was another gray, rainy day. But the clock was ticking down fast until they were discovered.

  Even though she got her shoes wet, Sarah took the scenic route up the hill, walking around the barn and petting Princess's soft gray nose. (She might have cried a little then, too.) She took one last look into the barn, inhaling deeply the mix of hay, grain, and animal smells that had been a part of her life as long as she could remember.

  The battlepod was gone from the barn as if it had never been there. Sarah gazed into the shadowed interior for a little while before she quietly closed the door and turned away.

  She wound her way through the pasture, petting the sheep and the cow one last time. There was a charred place where the crashed skimmer had been; it looked like someone had been burning off the field in that place, or maybe had a bonfire that got a little out of control. The damaged skimmer itself was back in the ship's cargo bay, along with the pod.

  As she neared the top of the hill, Sarah noticed that she was being followed.

  "No, Mouser. Go back." She crouched and petted the cat, but Mouser continued to fawn on her hand, and finally Sarah picked her up so that she wouldn't get wetter. "C'mon, you don't want to go with me. There are no mice in space."

  The deep purr, surprisingly loud for such a small cat, vibrated through Sarah's chest.

  "I wonder if Dad would mind getting another barn cat?" she murmured, scratching Mouser's ears. "I wonder if you'd be happy in space. I don't want you to be sad."

  The ancestors of the Galateans had been part cat, she thought. Someone had taken cats to space, once upon a time.

  Maybe it would be nice, having a ship's cat.

  Carrying Mouser in one arm, and the suitcase with the other, she walked through the trees to the ship sitting incongruously in the middle of the stream, with water purling around it. Sarah splashed to the door standing open in the side. She set Mouser down inside, and smiled as the cat immediately set off into the dark space of the hold, exploring.

  "Rei?" she called.

  "He's up top."

  Sarah nearly jumped out of her skin. "Don't sneak up on people," she snapped at the tall figure in the long coat who was leaning against the wall just inside the door.

  Jeren's teeth flashed in the dark. "You're gonna have to learn to look around you, little girl. Space is full of monsters that'll eat you right up."

  "You remember we're dropping you off on the first inhabited planet we come to, right?" She looked around. The ship's hold was much more crowded than it had been, with the battlepod and the twisted remains of the skimmer. "How are the repairs coming?"

  "Done," Jeren said tersely. "We're ready to go, soon as loverboy gets done plucking feathers for his nest up there."

  "What a
re you talking about?"

  He nodded to the ladder leading to the nearest open trapdoor. "Go up and see."

  Sarah climbed the ladder and poked her head up into the galley. "Rei?"

  "Here!" he called from somewhere out of sight.

  She walked carefully around the tables in the lounge. The door to the forwardmost cabin in the row of crew quarters was standing open, and something that looked very much like a Rubbermaid tote, made of something not unlike rugged blue-tinted plastic, sat outside the door, heaped with clothing and sundry objects. The dead captain's personal effects, Sarah thought. She shuddered and moved it gently out of the way with her foot. She wondered if Rei would object to contacting the dead Galateans' families to send back their things.

  After taking a moment to get herself together, she looked inside.

  Rei was fixing the bed. And everywhere Sarah looked were plants. It looked like Rei had potted them in anything he could find, and he hadn't been choosy about what kind of plants he took, either. Messy wads of grass stuck into coffee cans, thornbushes in shallow gray trays that must have come from somewhere on the ship—

  "Rei, what is all this?" she asked, setting her suitcase inside the door.

  "I can't take your planet with you, Sarah, but I can bring some little pieces of it." He snapped the sheet into place and turned around with a smile. "I thought it might make you less homesick to have a few things from your farm with you. I even thought about taking that gray animal in the barn—"

  "What, the horse? No, she would be miserable on the ship. Horses need space to run."

  "No, the little one. The cat. I couldn't find it."

  Sarah laughed. "I have good news for you, then. She followed me up to the ship. It looks like we have a ship's cat whether we want one or not. I was just going to ask how you felt about it, but I guess this answers my question."

  "Ship's cat? Is that a normal thing on Earth?"

  She put her arms around him. He was wearing the battered red sweater, scorched and torn in places, but still soft and warm to the touch. "They're supposed to be good luck."

  "That sounds like something we could use."

  ***

  And so, here they were, ready to leave Earth.

  It was early afternoon, the morning having vanished in a hundred small tasks. Her dad had dropped off several large Tupperware containers of fresh-baked cookies and muffins. Sarah had picked up a bag of cat food and a tray of dirt for a litterbox; they would have to find outer-space substitutes for both, but this would do for now. Rei topped off the ship's water supply from the stream, reassuring Sarah that the tanks would purify it of any surface contaminants.("Refilling on planets is a standard procedure." "Yes, but this planet has giardia!") And still, Sarah kept thinking of more things to run down the hill to get. Deodorant! Sanitary supplies! Who knew what kind of substitutes they had in space?

  Sarah's dad had somehow talked Rei into getting the pumpkin from the back of the truck. "Really?" Sarah said, coming upon them as Rei was helping him load it into the ship. "We're taking a pumpkin to space?"

  "Bet you can't get them in any outer-space market," Gary said, dusting off his hands and reaching for his cane.

  "Actually, from what Rei's told me about Earth-based ecosystems, I wouldn't be surprised if you can."

  "Still. That's a good solid Midwest-grown pumpkin. Show the boy how to carve a jack-o-lantern and bake him a pumpkin pie. Then you can plant the seeds wherever you end up."

  "Dad, that's called introducing an invasive foreign weed."

  "Ain't a weed if it's useful," her father grumbled. He snapped his fingers. "You oughta take some spices too. Pepper. Where are you gonna get basic pepper in outer space?"

  "Dad!"

  "Oh hell," Gary muttered to himself, "almost forgot," and he was off down the hill, swinging along on his canes.

  Sarah sighed, traded grins with Rei, and went to stow the pumpkin so it wouldn't roll around.

  Her dad was back shortly, limping up the hill on one cane and carrying a box that must have contained all the spice bottles in the kitchen, along with a bottle of Scotch poking out of one corner.

  "Give this to Blue," he said, tapping the bottle after Sarah took the box. "I promised him a drink one time, one old soldier to another. We never got to have it, but at least he can try good Earth whisky."

  Sarah hesitated and then handed the bottle back. "Tell you what, Dad. You keep it here. It'll be a ... a promise you can keep when we come back."

  "Coming back, are you?" There was a slight catch in his voice.

  Sarah had to blink away tears. Damn it, she'd turned into a faucet over the last couple of days. "Of course we're coming back. We've got to visit. And you're building a space phone, so we can talk, right?"

  Her father gazed at her for a moment with a smile.

  "What?" Sarah said.

  "Just thinking about how much you make me think of Maggie sometimes," he said quietly. "She'd be real proud of you, kiddo."

  What finally put an end to the endless errand-running and cycle of goodbyes was a lightening of the clouds overhead. Blue sky was showing to the east. They needed to take off soon, or else they'd have to wait for nightfall. Already there was a risk of the neighbors noticing their takeoff, now that the rain had stopped.

  "What kind of spaceship doesn't have a cloak, anyway?" Sarah asked Rei as he went through some kind of preflight checklist on the bridge.

  "What do you mean, a cloak?"

  "I mean, something to stop the ship from being seen." Like on TV, she didn't say.

  "It has shields. Like the shields produced by my cuffs, they can confound many kinds of sensors. It's still visible to the eye, however."

  We could wait, Sarah thought, and then: No.

  If she allowed herself to think that way, she might never leave.

  And she was ready.

  She shut Mouser in their quarters for the takeoff, just in case the cat panicked. She wasn't sure what spaceship liftoff was going to feel like. Her dad was watching from the edge of the trees, at what Rei reassured her was a safe distance.

  Jeren had joined them on the bridge, to Sarah's dismay, but at least he was just leaning against the wall and staying out of the way. She couldn't wait 'til they found a planet and got rid of that guy.

  Rei buried his hands in the ship's innards. She still couldn't get over what an interesting way to fly a ship it was, nothing at all like spaceships on TV, or any Earth vehicles that she knew of. The pilot's chair held him like a sling, tilted forward with his hands encased in machinery.

  Under her feet, the deck began to vibrate. There was a distant sense of ... not even sound, exactly, but a great pressure she could feel in her chest and eardrums. Low-frequency sound waves?

  What she didn't feel was any sense of movement, even when the trees outside the viewscreens trembled, losing leaves in great gold and red showers, and then fell away beneath them.

  Rei tilted the ship so Sarah could see Gary, his hair blowing back, waving to them. She still didn't feel any sense of motion; it was like they were standing still. That helped a bit with the sense of loss as her father dwindled, as the trees dwindled, as the farm shrank to a handful of scattered toys and then vanished beneath a gray bank of clouds. She could pretend it was all happening on a TV screen rather than in real life.

  The sense of pressure had begun to fade as soon as they were in the air. Now the only pressure was a tightness in her throat. Sarah swallowed hard and refused to cry. Rei was focusing on flying, but she was aware of Jeren watching her with his sardonic gaze. She definitely wasn't breaking down in front of that guy.

  They really couldn't find an inhabited planet soon enough ...

  And then they broke out of the clouds, and she gasped aloud.

  She'd rarely had a chance to fly on a jet. Just a couple of times, once to Washington, DC for a school trip, and once to visit her grandparents after they moved to Florida. She had loved it, especially the way the sky darkened and deepened to a
rich midnight blue as the plane reached cruising altitude. At the time, she'd thought it was the closest she would ever get to space.

  The clouds spread below them like a soft cottony floor, the same way she remembered from those trips, with gaps through which a hazy, distance-blued patchwork of farm and field could be glimpsed. Even those gaps were shrinking as they rose and rose, faster than any jet. Sarah still had the eerie sense that she should be feeling them move, but wasn't.

  "The ship is somehow damping down our acceleration, isn't it?" she asked.

  "Yes," Rei said, his voice distracted as he worked on flying. "The artificial gravity does it. Otherwise you'd be flattened to the deck, and probably crushed. We are traveling more swiftly than any vehicle on your planet."

  They certainly were. She could already see the distant curve of the Earth, pale at the horizon, deepening to a dark purplish blue overhead. As they rose and rose, the clouds below them blurred to white and blue swirls, and above them, the stars began to come out.

  The stars.

  She had never seen stars like these before.

  There was no atmosphere in the way. These stars didn't twinkle; they were clear and brilliant, each a sharp pinprick in the velvet blackness that had now lost all traces of blue.

  "There's a satellite," Sarah gasped, pointing. They swept past it so swiftly she hardly got a chance to glimpse it. She couldn't believe their speed, still with no sense of motion at all. She could see the entire Earth now, looking exactly like photographs she'd seen: a great, swirly, blue-and-white-and-green sphere hanging against the backdrop of space.

  Dwindling, dwindling ...

  "The jump drive is charged," Rei said in that oddly flat, absent tone. "You should sit down or hold onto something. Are you ready?"

  "Ready," Sarah said. She didn't sit down, but she gripped the back of the seat in front of her.

  There was an odd wrenching sensation. Everything around her blurred, and along with it, her own sense of self: an instant's profound dislocation that reminded her of the disorientation that goes along with a high fever. The Earth and stars smeared like a watercolor in the rain, stretching, tearing—