Dhakhar

by Annabelle Rex

  And I owe Taph a beer or six.

  “I’m convinced, Captain,” Judge J’Nesric says. “So I’m offering you the position as Commander of Xentra Station.”

  “What?” I say.

  He smiles in a reserved, Vetruen fashion - barely an upward turn of the corners of his lips. But it is a smile.

  “Xentra is going to need good leadership, and I’m confident they’ll find it in you, Commander.”

  I open my mouth, but there aren’t words.

  “Of course, you do have the right to refuse. Station living isn’t for everyone. If you’re keen to return to the core systems, something can be arranged.” He gives me a sympathetic look. “Although, if your experience on Chasira was anything like I expect it was, life on Xentra probably sounds far more appealing.”

  My thoughts go back to that day. Charlie upset by the way the Chasirans treated me. Charlie’s mouth against mine, her kiss slightly salty from her tears.

  Then let’s make some memories.

  But she’d known. She’d known that the Protectorate were going to take her memories. That she wouldn’t remember being in my arms any more than she’d remember the people who treated me so badly. Another gift she gave to me, a good memory for me to banish the bad with.

  The thought of her at home with no memory of everything we went through hits me like a sucker punch.

  “Attitudes will change,” Judge J’Nesric says, misinterpreting my distress. “But it will take time. Perhaps our lifetimes.”

  “I know,” I say, because I can’t say I don’t give a single damn about any of the shitty things people have said to me, recently or not. All of it pales in comparison to the pain of losing Charlie.

  “I would be honoured to accept the Commander post,” I say.

  “Good.”

  A curt nod tells me we are done. Shaken by the turn of events, it takes me a moment to find my feet. It all feels too good to be true, like the floor is going to be pulled out from under me at any moment.

  Just walk out, I think. Say nothing else. Walk out and take what he’s offering and don’t question it.

  I get as far as the door before my resolve wavers.

  “And the pr… and Charlie?” I say, turning back to him.

  Judge J’Nesric nods. “She’ll be fine, Commander. The Protectorate is advancing plans to initiate Humans into the Universe, and I’m going to be taking a personal interest in them. We won’t interfere with her life directly, but we can keep an eye on her. Ensure she reintegrates with her people.”

  It’s hardly a comfort, but it’s better than nothing.

  Chapter 29

  Dhakhar

  Taph is waiting outside. I don’t know how he got here, or why, but he’s dusted off an old military uniform, looking the impeccable soldier as he rises to his feet. Though the expression on his face is far from military, as is the string of expletives he mutters when he sees my - probably pale and dazed - face.

  “Well?” Taph says. “They’re not leading you out in handcuffs, so that has to be a good start, but you look like someone just punched you in the balls.”

  “I’m fine,” I say. “What are you doing here?”

  “You’re even more of an idiot than I thought if you thought I wouldn’t at least try to fight for you. First vecking half-decent UP-LE Captain I’ve come across and you expect me to let them have a chance to replace you?”

  “I appreciate your concern for my personal well being,” I say.

  Taph’s lips curl into the beginning of a snarl. “I count on you to be concerned for your personal well being, though apparently you’re abysmal at it. Now are you going to tell me what happened in there?”

  I’m still not exactly sure myself.

  “Everything’s okay,” I say. “It’s all good.”

  “It’s all good?” Taph’s expression is diamond hard. “You’re going to have to give me a little more than that, Captain.”

  “Commander,” I tell him.

  “What?”

  “It’s Commander,” I say. “The judge promoted me.”

  Taph is speechless for a moment. A long, blissful moment.

  “You?” he says. “You were arrested for a crime. You.” He gestures at me, as if I’m not aware of the mix of my DNA. “And you got promoted?”

  “Yes, Taph, that’s what happened.”

  I give him a brief run down.

  “You managed to be assigned the only fair vecking judge in the entire Protectorate?”

  “I’m sure J’Nesric isn’t the only fair judge.”

  “The only fair Vetruen judge.”

  He scrapes a hand through his hair, mussing it in a way that is very much not military regulation

  “Well,” he says. “I was expecting to be told you were being shipped off to Renza Seven. This makes for a pleasant surprise.”

  “Sir,” I say.

  “What?”

  “This makes for a pleasant surprise, sir. You’re speaking to your Commander, you know.”

  “Veck off,” Taph says. “Didn’t call H’Varak ‘sir’, I’m certainly not starting with you.”

  I laugh. I’m so surprised to be laughing, it makes me laugh a little more.

  “Did the good Judge let you know how much I’ve pestered him for the last few days?” Taph asks.

  “He referred to you as ‘particularly belligerent’,” I say.

  Taph seems to take this as a compliment.

  “So it’s really all going to be okay?” he says, coming as close to a smile as I’ve ever seen him manage.

  “Yeah,” I say, even as I wonder if I’m ever going to be okay again.

  Taph hitched a lift to the Core with a Junker on a delivery run, so he rides with me on the way back. I take Charlie’s room and Taph doesn’t protest the arrangement. I figure maybe he thinks I deserve the better bed after several nights in a jail cell.

  It’s not so far back to Xentra when you aren’t taking the back routes. Six gates later, and we’re bursting out of Nova, less than three day’s flight to home. Which is good, because I’ve been feeling grim. I figure it’s my body processing all the stress, the heartbreak. Everything I’ve bottled up while waiting to find out my fate. It’s coming back to bite me now, my body aching, my head splitting. But probably nothing a good night’s sleep won’t cure. As soon as the gate sickness passes, I head down to Charlie’s room. My room.

  We left in such a hurry, I’m still wearing the clothes they gave me in the Protectorate jail. I strip out of them, use the Vetruen cleanser, then pull some clothes on. Just my regular clothes, but as I’m feeling a bit under the weather, I grab my UP-LE jacket to keep me warm. When I pull it on, I feel something heavy in the pocket.

  Dipping my hand in, I pull out the necklace that Charlie always wore.

  I stare at it for a long time.

  I thought she’d taken everything with her. But she knew she was going to get her memory erased, knew she wasn’t going to be able to keep anything. So she’d hidden this necklace somewhere I would find it?

  A reminder, I think. Of her final message for me.

  I love you. Whatever happens, remember that.

  I grip the crystal in my hands, raise it to my face. Press my lips to it like it’s her I’m holding, not a piece of rock.

  “What are we going to do about the others?” Taph says over lunch.

  “The others?” I say, pushing my food round my plate a bit. My appetite isn’t great. I’m blaming that one on the heart ache.

  “The other women. Aren’t there another twenty three? We gonna ship them all back to the Protectorate?”

  “Don’t think H’Varak mentioned the others in his messages to the Protectorate,” I say.

  Taph snorts. “Not as profitable to him as the ‘princess’.”

  The way he puts a sarcastic emphasis on the word makes my Dravosic side seethe.

  “I don’t blame her for lying,” I say, a hard note in my voice just daring him to contradict me. I want to smash some
thing, all of a sudden, and Taph’s face would do just nicely.

  “Never said I did, either,” Taph says, and the rage deflates.

  What is vecking wrong with me? Taph is probably a large part of why I’m sitting here, not rotting on Renza Seven, and I’m thinking about hitting him?

  “The Protectorate don’t know about them,” I say. “And they don’t have to. If they were assimilated in to Low Town…”

  “You want to make them stay on Xentra?” Taph says.

  “No,” I say. “I want to give them the choice.”

  “They want a few days to decide,” Mylan says. “Well, some of them. Some of them are ready to go home right now.”

  “Give them until I get back,” I say. “I can blame transit for not making a decision about them, but as soon as I’m home, I need to be reporting their numbers to the Protectorate.”

  “You’re less than three days out,” Mylan says. “Not a lot of time.”

  “I know,” I say. “But it’s all they’ve got.”

  Mylan nods, then smirks. “I’ll let them know, Commander.”

  I shake my head, then shut the comm off. As soon as the screen dies, I slump back into the chair, wiping away the sweat that’s gathered on my brow. Since lunch time, my temperature has started spiking, leading me to think it’s not just mental exhaustion making me feel like this.

  “You don’t look so hot, Commander,” Taph says as he steps onto the bridge, managing to lace the word ‘commander’ with plenty of sarcasm, even through his general tone of concern.

  “Don’t feel so hot,” I say. “Must have picked something up in the jail.”

  Taph frowns, scrutinising me, but says nothing.

  The next day, I feel even worse. My whole body aches and I don’t want to get out of bed. I force myself to, clutching my fingers round Charlie’s necklace in my pocket, as if I can draw some of her strength from it.

  “Describe it,” Taph says when I sink into the chair opposite him in the kitchen area. “Describe what you feel like.”

  “Don’t recall you having any medical qualifications,” I say, wincing as I take a sip of water.

  “No, much better at killing people than saving them. Describe it.”

  “I just… hurt. Everywhere.”

  “Hurt like what, like sharp pain? An ache? Muscles? Bones?”

  “Taph, it’s probably just a virus. I’ll see R’Shaad as soon as we’re back on Xentra. If R’Shaad is still on Xentra.”

  “Humour me, Commander,” Taph says, with no trace of humour in his expression at all.

  “An ache,” I say. “In my bones. And my head. And I’m struggling to sleep because of it. Probably just need knocking out with a sedative, let my body do the rest.”

  Taph considers me a moment. “You’ve got a little bit of Dravosic in you, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Because, you vecking idiot, you’re picking at your food. Barely eating or drinking. You’ve gone so pale you’re almost not blue anymore and you’re talking about an ache deep in your bones and head. All classic symptoms of Mating Sickness, so is there something you’d like to tell me about what happened between you and the little princess who’s not a princess?”

  “Mating Sickness?” I say. I’ve never heard of it.

  “Yes, it’s the delightful counterpoint to the mating bond. If you try to deny the bond, or if your bonded mate dies, you get sick. Eventually, it kills you.”

  “But mating bonds only form between members of the same species.”

  “That we know of,” Taph says. “And wouldn’t it just suit the Vetruen propaganda machine if the people who didn’t act on their bond with someone of another species died? I’m just calling it like I see it, Dhak. And I saw it plenty after they razed Menarzi. Worst vecking thing about it,” he mutters. “They didn’t just kill all the people on the planet. Killing them killed most of the survivors, too.”

  The horror of this strikes me hard enough to make me forget my pain.

  “Shit, Taph, I had no idea.”

  The little shake of his head he gives me tells me I still don’t.

  “Wars aren’t pretty, Commander. I doubt I saw even close to the worst of it. If you start puking tomorrow, you’ll know I’m right.”

  He finds me the next morning with my head in the toilet.

  “Vecking hate being right sometimes,” he says, then stalks off.

  He reappears a little while later, helping me back into the bed. I feel so weak and awful, I can barely speak. I just stare at Charlie’s necklace in my hand, running my finger over the uneven edge of it.

  “Just hold on a little while longer, Captain,” Taph says. “We’re almost home.”

  “Commander,” I croak.

  Taph smirks. “Exactly. Keep that up.”

  I’m almost unconscious when we arrive at Xentra. Taph has to fly the Starlight in, which he does with about as much precision as a trainee on his first day. I wince a little, and take it as a good sign that there’s still some of me left amongst all the pain and fuzz and sickness.

  Dantari is waiting with a gurney, and Mylan helps Taph carry me out and lift me on to it.

  Dantari touches her cool fingers to my head. “He’s burning up.”

  “Is there any cure, Taph?” Mylan asks, and I gather that Taph has filled them in on my little situation.

  “Ordinarily, no, because ordinarily the other person in the bond is dead. But our fake princess is just back home, memory wiped away. If we could get her back…”

  “There’s no way we can get her back,” Dantari says. “Protected planet. And the Captain’s already faced going to prison. You think they might change their mind about his guilt if they found out he has a mating bond with her?”

  Commander, I think, absently. I don’t have the energy to say it.

  “What about Charlie, though?” Mylan says. “Will she be okay?”

  “Humans don’t have mating bonds, I asked the others,” Dantari says. “And she doesn’t even remember him - surely that would override the bond even if there was one?”

  “Could we have Dhak’s memory wiped?” Mylan says. “Could that reverse the bond?”

  No. I think. I’d rather die than forget her.

  I wonder if that’s me or the bond talking. Wonder if there’s a difference.

  “No, you idiots,” Taph says. “It doesn’t work like that. Mating bonds are biological. You can wipe his memory, but then he’d just feel shit and die and never understand why.”

  “There has to be something we can do!” Dantari’s voice is laced with tears. I want to reach out and touch her, reassure her that it’s okay.

  But touch is what would reassure Charlie, not Dantari. I’m getting muddled. Wires in my brain are starting to overlap.

  “You have to freeze him,” another voice says. A sharp, bitter voice. Doctor R’Shaad. I’m surprised he’s still on Xentra. More surprised that he’s come to help me.

  “That could work,” Taph says.

  “Just freeze him indefinitely?” Dantari says.

  “The Human planet is close to being integrated with the Universe,” R’Shaad says. “When it is, you go and find the girl and bring her here. Then we can safely wake him up. Mating Sickness reverses almost instantly when the sufferer is returned to their mate.”

  “She’s not going to remember him,” Dantari says, frustration in his tone.

  “Doesn’t matter. Like Tapharanix said, it’s biological. Just her being near will be enough to save him.”

  “Then that’s what we do,” Mylan says. “Get the Captain in cryostasis, then as soon as we can, find Charlie and bring her here.”

  “Against her will?” Dantari says.

  “If we have to.”

  “Well, you would say that,” Taph says.

  “Veck off, Taph.”

  “Children,” R’Shaad’s voice cuts through their bickering. “The Captain doesn’t have a great deal of time. Shall we proceed?”

 
I barely even feel it when I’m lowered into a cryostasis chamber, the liquid lapping over my skin as it’s pumped in. Mylan sits beside the chamber as it fills.

  “You’re in charge,” I tell him.

  “Sure,” he says. “Sure, I’ll keep your seat warm for you.”

  “Try not to murder Taph.”

  “Not making any promises on that front.”

  I manage a small laugh.

  Then the liquid goes over my head. I hold my breath and count back from ten like you’re supposed to when you’re frozen.

  Ten.

  Nine.

  The lid of the chamber closes over me.

  Eight.

  Seven.

  I hear a voice but can’t tell if it’s Mylan or R’Shaad talking.

  Six.

  Five.

  I wonder how many years it will be before they can wake me up.

  If they’ll ever be able to wake me up.

  Four.

  Three.

  A bright flash. And then…

  Chapter 31

  Charlie

  My eyes flutter open. Bright light overhead, a symphony of beeps and buzzes sounding all around me. I raise a hand to my face, scrubbing my eyes, and feel a wince of pain as something snags, tugging my hand.

  As my eyes adjust to the light, I look down at my hand to see a tube emerging out of it, taped down. I follow the tube to the drip hanging from a stand beside my bed. Hospital. I’m in hospital.

  Why?

  My memory feels hazy. The last thing I can recall clearly is walking home from the pub. Jason. He chased after me, made up with me.