The Culling (The Culling Trilogy Book 1)

by Ramona Finn

  I raised an eyebrow at him. “We just ate.”

  It was true. Sullia and I had just had soup from a can that we’d heated ourselves. We didn’t trust anything that the Ferrymen made for us.

  Aine had confiscated the can pretty much the second I’d finished emptying the soup, of course.

  “Yeah, I’m sure that bowl of warm water with two pieces of celery floating around in it really tided you over,” Kupier scoffed before holding his sandwich out to me yet again. “Come on. There’s tinned meat in here…”

  Honestly, the salty smell made my stomach grumble, but I’d be damned if I showed him that. Ever since our first, very disconcerting meeting, my goal had been to remain completely aloof and distant since there was absolutely nothing I could do to escape while we were still traveling. Cast had escaped in the only short-range skip, and I had no idea how to fly or land a skip of this size.

  When we docked, wherever we docked, my behavior would be an entirely different story. Get me on land? Then I’d have coordinates to send to the Station. I’d have a hundred places to run to and hide. Hell, I’d have access to any computer I could steal or borrow. I’d be able to communicate with the Station.

  I just needed to make it to some colony. Any colony.

  “I’ll have a bite.”

  The voice over my shoulder bothered me. Even more than it usually did. Sullia leaned her body across the table toward Kupier and accepted the part of his sandwich he’d just broken off for her. The three bodyguard Ferrymen exchanged glances, though Kupier’s expression didn’t change. Aine appeared in the doorway and scowled at Sullia like she wanted to break her fingers off.

  I knew how she felt.

  “Captain, we’ve got a message from home for you.”

  Kupier was up and out of his chair, following Aine in a heartbeat. He was almost out the door of the kitchen before he paused, looked back, and shot a grin in my direction. Then he pulled himself up out of the sunken kitchen and was gone.

  The other three Ferrymen disappeared after Kupier. I couldn’t tell if it was because they wanted to be where he was, or if they were nervous to be so close to two Datapoints. Besides Aine and Kupier, the other Ferrymen aboard were pretty skittish. They kept their distance from us, and that was fine by me. I had no interest in making friends with these lunatics. I was happy to continue minding my business on one end of the ship.

  Sullia, though? Apparently, she had other plans. I turned in her direction, seeing she still chewed at the sandwich he’d shared with her. My eyes narrowed.

  “What’s your problem, DP-1?” Sullia sneered without looking up from the bread she picked at. I could tell she hated the nickname Kupier had given me, and I wondered why she hadn’t given up my real name to them. I was sure that it made sense probably because she didn’t want them to trust me more than they trusted her own head, some sort of strategical decision that I couldn’t work out. She wanted any leg up where she could get it, as evidenced by the sandwich ridiculousness that had just taken place. In her mind, giving up her own name had been a tactical choice. Just like withholding mine was.

  “I don’t have a problem, Sullia. I mean, besides the fact that we’re captives here on a Ferrymen skip that’s about a week of travel away from home, with no way of knowing what they want or what they’ll do to us. And weirdly, that doesn’t seem to be a problem for you.”

  Sullia narrowed her unusually pretty face in my direction. Her hair, still navy blue in places, was braided back off of her face. “Just trying to make friends.”

  I scoffed. “Sullia, you and I both know you don’t give a shit about friends.”

  “Fine.” She rose and tossed the rest of her sandwich in the trash. “But I do give a shit about surviving.”

  “What are you saying?” I asked her back.

  She didn’t reply before she yanked herself out of the galley and was gone.

  “She’s a treat.”

  The voice was one I recognized. It was the youngest member of the Ferrymen, the one who’d held a gun to my head after putting me through the dampener. Oh joy.

  “A real fountain of cheer.”

  He laughed as he slid down into the kitchen. A short burst that seemed almost involuntary. He kept one eye on me as he skirted his way around the kitchen. His eyes flicked to the loaf of bread that sat on the counter directly behind me. I sighed and tossed it over to him.

  “I’m not gonna skin you in the kitchen.”

  He laughed again, but this time it seemed forced. “I know that. I’ve just… never been around a Datapoint before.”

  “I’ve never been around a Ferryman before.”

  He shrugged like he was conceding my point.

  “Even a junior one,” I finished.

  A frown erupted over his face as he tore off a hunk of bread. “I’m not a junior Ferryman. We’re all equals. On the same level. No matter our age.”

  I eyed his small, stocky frame. He didn’t look delicate, but he sure didn’t look like he was done growing either. I pegged him at twelve, maybe thirteen years old. I thought back to where I’d been when I was thirteen.

  Drowning in blue light. My integrated tech interjects itself into my thoughts. ‘No,’ it tells me. ‘That’s not the fastest way off this table. The most logical way off this table is to integrate. Sync,’ it tells me. And still, I fight.

  “I’ve got two sisters about your age.” I wasn’t sure why I’d said it, but he just looked so young, standing there in holey trousers and a t-shirt with the neck hole pulled to one side.

  He took a bite of the bread and looked at me like he was trying to figure out what the trick was.

  “What’s your name?” I asked him.

  He eyed me a second longer before shrugging again. “Oort.”

  “Oort,” I repeated, completely deadpan.

  He shrugged – something I was coming to recognize as a bit of a tick of his. “Oort.”

  “I’m gonna go ahead and guess that’s a family name?”

  Oort huffed, his cheeks going pink, but there was the slightest trace of humor in his eyes, as well. “At least my name is better than being just some numbers and letters the government assigned me.”

  I rolled my eyes. Kupier’s precious little nickname for me had apparently caught on. And as I’d yet to give up my name to any of the Ferrymen, that’s what they all called me.

  “That’s not my name, you know.”

  “I figured.”

  The skip juddered underneath us as it shifted directions, and I found myself wheeling forward as cans of goods slid to the other ends of their shelves.

  “Damn it!” I shouted as we wheeled back in the other direction and I was forced to grab outward and steady Oort before he brained himself on the counter. “How the heck this God-awful skip is even airtight, I’ll never know.”

  “It’s not a skip,” Oort replied, his eyes on my hand on his shoulder.

  “What?”

  “The Ray. She’s not a skip.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The Ray is a full-on ship. A real one. We don’t use artificial blackholes to jump space.”

  “You’re kidding.” I looked around at the rusted patchwork of bolts and metal all around me. Real spaceships were practically a myth at this point. They were expensive and hard to maintain. Skips that utilized artificial blackholes to jump from one place to another had come into the market about twenty years before. I’d never been in a real ship before.

  “Artificial blackholes are traceable,” Oort said, answering my unspoken question. “We’re not covert in skips. But in ships, we’re untraceable. For the most part.”

  I stood, an unstoppable curiosity fueling me as I swung myself out of the galley.

  “Where are you going?” Oort called out from behind me.

  “I want to look around a little bit,” I answered, pausing instinctively. “I’ve never been on a ship before.”

  Oort laughed as he followed me up and out of the kitchen. “Y
ou’ve been on a ship for the last four days.”

  “Yeah,” I said over my shoulder, a grin hot and quick on my lips. “But I didn’t know.”

  I’m not sure why, but the ship was different to me, once I knew that it wasn’t a skip. That it wasn’t mired in what I’d always thought was a pointless technology. Skips were designed to jump from one artificial blackhole to another, but in short-range distances, or any kind of space-based battle, they were utterly useless, slow and clumsy. In order to skip through artificial blackholes, their designs forewent a lot of the technology required for speed. Sure, they could jump great distances, but skips couldn’t fly half as well as a ship could.

  I took a few steps down one of the hallways, peeking into one of the control rooms that was locked manually. I knew there wasn’t a chance in hell they were letting me in there. I turned halfway back to Oort. “What if I let you tie my hands behind my back – any chance you’d let me in there to look around a little bit?”

  Oort’s mouth dropped open.

  “Is that Europa?”

  I flipped around as I heard Kupier’s deep voice from behind me. He was stealthy, that one.

  “Where?” Oort asked, looking automatically out of the small port windows that lined one side of the hallway.

  “No,” Kupier laughed, stepping fully into the hallway and locking the door he’d just come through. “I meant in DP-1’s accent. Is that Europa I hear?”

  I frowned at him. Always with the questions with this guy. “No.”

  “Ah,” he nodded, a small, knowing smile coming over his face. “Io, then. I always get those two accents confused. They’re so similar.”

  I said nothing.

  “DP-1 Io,” he said with that same annoying smile on his face. He was fishing for my first name again.

  “I don’t have to guess your last name,” I told him through a frown. “I know you don’t have one.”

  His smile only grew, even though I’d just insulted him. Ferrymen went without last names of any kind. Most of them were from Charon, but plenty of them were recruited from the other colonies. They went without second names to symbolically shake off the customs of a solar system they didn’t want to be lumped in with. But they also did it to remain as covert as possible. None of them wanted their families to be connected to their activities as Ferrymen. I realized, though, that this wouldn’t be an insult to him. This lunatic was actually proud of being a Ferryman.

  “You really thought Europa would be out the window, Oort? You know for a fact we’re lightyears away.” Kupier laughed, leaning back against the wall and eyeing the young Ferryman with amusement.

  “It was knee-jerk!” Oort insisted, leaning against his own wall in exactly the same manner.

  I looked back and forth between the two Ferrymen. One of them was tall and thin, lean muscles lining his arms, an amused and nearly disdainful expression on his face. The other was short and square, looking like a battleship couldn’t knock him over. But there was something there. Something very familiar in both of them.

  “Wait…” I began slowly. “Brothers?”

  Oort looked up at me in surprise. “No one ever guesses.”

  I shrugged. “It’s in the facial expressions.”

  Kupier said nothing, but his eyes didn’t leave my face. I started to shift on my feet then, but I froze instead. I wasn’t going to let this guy with his freaky blue eyes and annoying smile make me uncomfortable.

  The human in me made me want to say something as I turned to walk away. The Datapoint in me had me turning on my heel and heading back down the hallway.

  I could feel two sets of eyes on my back as I stalked down the hall.

  It wasn’t until I was back on my side of the ship, where the doors were actually unlocked, that I let out a breath. I closed the door to the small chamber they’d given me. Sullia’s was just next door.

  There was a cot, a port window no bigger than my hand, and a single blanket. This was the only place on this ship that I was safe, I reminded myself. Everything else was an illusion.

  Kupier watched DP-1 head down the hall with a thoughtful expression on his face. “You making friends with the Datapoint?” he asked his brother.

  “Shut up.” Oort’s ears went red.

  “No,” Kupier teased. “I get it. She’s cute.”

  “Shut up, Kup.”

  Kupier snickered, and had to admit that it felt good to clown around with his brother. Especially after the call he’d just gotten from their home base on Charon. Things were bleaker than ever there. Kupier thought guiltily of the sandwich that was filling up his belly. They were bringing as many supplies back to Moat, the main city on Charon, as they could, and it still wouldn’t be enough. And now those supplies sat useless in the belly of the Ray. Because everything was grinding to a halt, what with these two Datapoints making everything so confusing.

  He needed a willing Datapoint for this plan to work. He’d thought the abduction was the hard part. Yeah. Right. The hardest part was trying to figure out these two Datapoints.

  DP-1 was prickly and righteous. Dangerous as hell and ready to slit his throat the first chance he gave her. But it was the other one he really didn’t trust. Sullia. With that sultry smile and her constant hints that she’d take any kind of deal he had to offer. He had absolutely zero doubts that she’d stab him in the back in a second.

  If he had to choose between having his throat slit and being stabbed in the back, he’d choose the blade to his throat. At least he’d know who his attacker was.

  Kupier sighed, suddenly very, very tired. He dragged a hand over his face. “Seriously, Oort. You think there’s any chance she comes around on us?”

  Oort lifted his eyebrows. “Would you if you were in her place?”

  Kupier eyed his little brother as he walked down the hallway toward the cockpit, Oort easily falling into place beside him. “Good point.”

  Kupier came back to the image of her striding down the hallway just then. Proud, angry, suspicious, that slight limp in her walk. And there was something else mixed in, too. She’d held one hand over the dead tech on her arm. She often did that. He wondered if she even realized that she did it.

  An idea fluttered down like a feather from the sky.

  Chapter Seven

  “He wants to see you,” a stiff voice said from the doorway of my bleak little chamber. I’d found a ball the day before and I was currently taking great pleasure in bouncing it on the wall between mine and Sullia’s chambers, but the interruption brought me to look up, and instantly frown.

  It was the bald chick, Aine. I thought she might be narrowing her eyes to match the pursing of her lips, but it was hard to tell with the black eye I’d given her. She crossed her arms over her chest and stood as still as a photograph.

  “Who?” I asked from where I sat with my back against the wall, my fingers tracing over the ball in my hand.

  “Who do you think?” she asked, the look on her face telling me that she thought I was the biggest idiot in the world.

  For a second, I considered refusing to go, just to screw with this chick. Because we both knew she couldn’t make me.

  “Christ, Glade,” Sullia spoke from behind Aine, her eyes rolling so far back in her head that I couldn’t even see the brown in them. “Stop being so difficult.”

  I glared at Sullia, bouncing the ball hard against the wall and snatching it from the air with one hand. I was very glad to see a muscle in her cheek twitch. I knew the sound must have been bugging the crap out of her for the last hour.

  “Glade?” Aine asked, disdain dripping from every letter. “So you actually have a name.”

  I ignored that, sending a glare toward Sullia. I hadn’t intentionally been keeping my name from the Ferrymen for any reason in particular. But it had made me feel like I had the upper hand in some small way. With the secret out, I felt yet another shred of power dissolve into thin air.

  “Why do you act like he’s the king?" I asked Aine as I rose and join
ed them in the hallway.

  “Kupier isn’t a king,” she said quickly. “He’s the captain of this ship and—”

  “Well, you act like he’s some sort of all-powerful ruler. Like he can do no wrong. Like a god or something.”

  “I do not.” Her words were as stiff as her steps, and Sullia and I exchanged glances when the back of Aine’s neck started turning pink, but we followed her just the same. “I value having a leader who is fair and smart.”

  “Smart?” I scoffed. I thought back to his mouth full of sandwich, that annoying grin, and him sitting backwards in a chair. Smart was not exactly the first adjective I would have chosen to describe him.

  Aine stopped dead in her tracks. “You don’t know anything about him.”

  “I know that he sent an underling to fetch the Datapoints for him.”

  “He didn’t send me.” She scowled and picked up her pace again. “I asked to come get you.”

  Another glance to Sullia. “And why’s that?”

  She was practically speed-walking through the halls now. “Because I don’t trust you. And it’s best if I spend time with you, because I’m not in danger of succumbing to one of your little games.”

  What the hell was this chick talking about? “Games?”

  Aine’s eyes traveled Sullia’s body from head to toe. Ah. Okay. Well, fair point. Sullia was definitely playing some kind of a game. One I didn’t quite understand either. But me? I wasn’t playing a game. I was just trying to keep to myself.

  Aine’s hands scraped over the circles tattooed on her wrists. All of the Ferrymen had them. “Both of you are so brainwashed by the Authority that you’re acting like this whole thing is a game. An inconvenience. You don’t give a shit that we’ve worked for years to get here. To get you here. That we’ve all lost people in this struggle. That our last leader was murdered by the Authority before Kupier’s eyes. That we’re thanklessly fighting for every soul in the solar system, including yours.” Her eyes were narrowed into hateful slits as her words slammed into me. “And you don’t care. You see our ship and think, ‘stupid Ferrymen with their cobbled together technology.’ You don’t even see the innovation and intelligence and determination it took to make all this! And I’m not just talking about the ship. I’m talking about the entire movement. You have no idea what each and every one of us has been through, personally and as a group. You have no idea. You just sit there with your fancy tech feeding you every comforting lie in the galaxy and wait for a way to sabotage all of it!”