“Sascha!” Irine said and grabbed him. “Angels! I thought you were dead!”
“Did you?” Sascha asked. “Silly sib.”
“Ungh,” Kis’eh’t said. “I love you all but three of you pressing on my spine is too much. And you’re stepping on my wing, Sascha.”
“Sorry!” Sascha said, wiggling down onto the ground and pressing his back against the wall opposite the door.
“You’re hurt,” Irine said. “What did they do to you?”
“Nothing serious.”
“Contusions,” Hirianthial said without looking up. “Two broken ribs. Fractured radius. Bind the cut on his forehead.”
Sascha touched the patch of red above his eye. “They just beat me up. It doesn’t matter. I got a call out on the Fleet broadcast channels, and they didn’t catch it until just now. It’s been going out for fifteen minutes now.”
“Will they come in time?” Irine asked.
“I hope so,” Reese said.
Hirianthial had seen centuries pass—had spent those centuries in what he’d perceived as appropriate tasks. He’d bred horses through generations. He’d mastered many of the more genteel arts a lord of any rank should know. He’d become educated in several disciplines, traveled, and even taken up a profession when he’d left Jisiensire. Though he’d done more and learned more than the member of any other Alliance species could have in several lifetimes, he’d never felt old until he’d lost his Butterfly. His wanders through Alliance space had been an epilogue to a life he’d decided was over until the Earthrise’s crew reminded him that there was still joy in the world, still surprises. When remembering that hadn’t chased away all the aches and pains in his limbs, he’d realized he actually was old, but hadn’t minded.
Some part of his mind had always equated age with death.
That part of him was wrong.
He was currently trapped in a closet surrounded by people, but he could feel neither the floor beneath his flesh nor the touch of their bodies. He couldn’t tell where the walls stopped and his hallucinations began. He couldn’t hear his own heart beating... couldn’t hold a thought about anything long enough to freight it with meaning.
He was standing across from death, and his knees were weakening. Too much longer and they’d crumple, and he would fall at the mercy of that shade and be gone. And to leave so soon in such an ignominious fashion after discovering relationships worth tending was too much to bear. He had to stay alive, somehow. That the disconnected thoughts of the people in the closet with him were hastening his demise was obvious. Out of well-meaning concern for him they remained silent, as if stilling their voices would likewise still their minds. Instead it allowed each of them to descend into a private storm of thoughts, all on different topics with crazed tangents. He had to stop them. He had to get them thinking down the same path.
“Story.”
Their attention focused on him, though he couldn’t see their lifted faces. His voice sounded hoarse and too far away. He cleared it. “Tell us a story.”
“Are you sure?” Sascha asked.
“Please,” Hirianthial said.
“It would pass the time,” Kis’eh’t said.
“What story, though?” Reese asked.
“Tell us what happened on Mars,” Sascha said.
Reese’s denial fractured the fog in the room. “That’s not a story.”
“You went to Mars?” Irine asked.
“I want to hear about this,” Kis’eh’t said, her thoughts narrowing to a pinprick of curiosity.
“It’s not your business what I did on Mars,” Reese said. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Is it all that important compared to us dying in an hour or two?” Sascha asked.
“We’re not going to die!” Reese said testily.
“I hope we’re not,” Kis’eh’t said, “but odds aren’t good.”
The silence grew top-heavy with Reese’s wariness and fear.
“Tell us, Reese,” Irine said. An arabesque of humor that dissipated like incense smoke, softening the air: “What could be worse than sitting naked in a closet with a bunch of Harat-Shar?”
Reese’s voice lost its taut pressure. “Fine. Fine. Mars.” A sigh. “A long, long time ago, Mars was a colony. It was a productive colony. Lots of cities under bubbles, tourism, mining, very exciting stuff. We were humanity’s first major colony in space, the first self-sustaining one... would you believe the Moon didn’t get a permanent colony until after Mars was established? Yeah, really.”
With the words came pictures: rolling landscapes, red and pink and dusty. The approach from space, with the long curve of the planet seeded with Reese’s affection. This place was home. All the thoughts of the listeners aligned, caught up in Reese’s words. Hirianthial began to breathe again—no, to notice his breathing.
“We were just heading into space, really into space. Those were really special times,” Reese said. “It wasn’t as easy for us as it was for you in the Alliance. You left and... I don’t know. You just had it easier. We had to fight our own instincts to get out into the solar system. It was expensive. There was so much to do on Earth... how could we justify spending the money on pie-in-the-sky projects like space? If we hadn’t started getting scared about asteroid hits, we might have never gone.” An introspective pause, full of apprehension over something that had never happened. “But we did go. And we prospered. Humans need to be pioneers, you understand? They need to get out. I think we must have given that to you Pelted, and I’m glad, since it’s one of our better qualities.
“Anyway, we were a colony under a strange charter. Earth had a united world government then, if a sort of rickety one made up of all the nations agreeing to a super-body above them. It wasn’t a very effective world government, but it worked for a while. Mars was established under their charter, so they’re the ones Mars went to when it decided it was done being a colony and was ready to be a real nation. Except they didn’t want to be governed by Earth’s global government because it was, well, Earth’s global government. Mars was a different planet. We had different needs. And since Earth needed so much more than we did... and we had so much to give, we didn’t want to end up indentured servants for life. We thought it was reasonable, anyway.”
Reese stopped for a moment. The dense cloud of thoughts and emotions in the room had clarified to the point where he could see again; she was picking at her nails.
“This is ancient history, but it feels like it happened to me because in a way it did,” Reese said. “The short of it is that there was a war. The nations on Earth couldn’t even agree on whether to attack us or not, so they separated and started fighting one another at the same time half of them were fighting us. It was a very long, vicious war, and by the time it was done Earth was in shambles and Mars had lost most of its fighters. Most of them men. The women got by and had families by ordering sperm and getting artificially fertilized.
“That was ancestors ago for me,” Reese said. “Most Martian families now are normal, but some insist on keeping tradition. My family’s been an unbroken line of girls born to fatherless women for generations. We stay home, eke out a living doing something appropriately homey, have a nice baby daughter and then that daughter takes care of us when we get old.”
“And you’re out here,” Irine said—Hirianthial was fairly certain, at least. Their thoughts were so loud it was sometimes hard to tell when they were being said or being nursed in silence.
Reese nodded. “I’m out here. Spending the family money on something not very homey at all. And very definitely not settling down to take care of my mother and grandmother and having a girl of my own.” No, instead, I’m looking for the father my mother never picked because she was afraid of real partnerships. Of love. Love like in romance novels. Love that lasts until you die and maybe after that.
“You can’t give your mother a husband,” Hirianthial said.
Utter shock, so bright he realized Reese’s last thoughts had been jus
t that.
“Excuse me?” Reese asked.
So long as he was damned, he should give her the antidote in its entirety. “Nor can you prove to your family that not all masculine endeavors are unworthy and not all marriages are travesties. You cannot give them the happiness and balance they have denounced. You can only seek it yourself.”
All the doors in her mind slammed shut, demonstrating that non-espers could in fact shield their thoughts—they just didn’t know how to do so consciously and rarely had cause. The last thing that leaked from her before the lock-down completed was a wrath at his betrayal so towering it nearly branded the words into his heart: HE ROBBED MY MIND. HE INVADED ME!
“My deepest apologies,” he said, though he knew the words would fall on closed ears.
“It’s okay, Boss,” Sascha said. “We’re all looking for something we can’t find.”
“What’s that?” Reese asked.
“Home,” Sascha said.
“Purpose,” Irine said.
“A garden,” Bryer said, surprising them all.
Kis’eh’t nodded. “All of those things. And peace.”
Reese eyed Hirianthial. “And you?”
Surrounded on all sides by the purity of their longing and the clean light of their candor, Hirianthial thought of how lucky he’d been to have had all those things for a short time... and how unlikely it seemed that he could hope for them again after so much destruction and pain.
And you? What do you want?
“A second chance.”
The intensity of their married thoughts helped keep Hirianthial focused, so focused he could prepare for the door opening.
“Time to go,” the guard said. “Pastehead first. Then the rest of you.” He grinned and waved several pairs of cuffs. “This time, no tricks.”
“You could just leave us in the closet,” Sascha said cheerfully. “We might even look the other way about you stealing our cargo.”
“No go, furry,” the guard said. “The boss wants you all now that you’ve become so much trouble.” He grinned. “White and skinny first.”
The guard was not alone, and using what remained of his strength in an attempt to win free of the tangle of limbs and escape the men lined up in the hall would be a waste. If there was a path leading to freedom from this place it didn’t diverge now. Best they thought him weak—it wasn’t far from the truth anyway. “I can’t get up alone.”
The guard snorted and grabbed his arm, stabbing him with irritation and the smog of an unexamined mind. With the help of a comrade, they cuffed his hands behind his back. His knuckles rested over his hair and against something hard that filled his eyes with the sight of Irine’s mischievous smile. The dangle, probably.
Shaking his head, Hirianthial waited in the corridor as the guards marched each of the crew out of the closet. His tabard fell to the floor on Reese, and Irine hadn’t found the side clips that held it closed at his waist; on Reese, those clips hung near the upper thighs. As they started down the hall, she tripped on the tabard’s edge twice.
“Cut it,” the guard said. “We don’t need her making an excuse for any sudden movements.”
“No!” Reese said, twisting away. “I don’t know where Blond and Nasty picked you people up, but don’t you have any decency at all?”
“The lady says decent,” the guard said with a grin and grabbed the front end of the tabard. Before Reese could object, he burned it off at the knees and left it hanging, ragged. “There. Nice and modest for the queen here.”
“Do you like destroying beautiful things or is it just part of the job?” Reese asked with a knotted asperity.
“Just keep moving, chocolate.”
Throughout the trip to the cargo bay, Hirianthial forced himself to narrow his thoughts to the future, to finding a solution to their impending capture. His knife was gone. His hands were locked behind his back. And if Irine’s laughing in his ears was an indication, he was still going insane. He could sense all five of the crew’s anxieties separately, like burrs under his skin, dragging his attention from one direction to the next.
They were in the cargo bay. The pad station’s status lights were on, including the blue one that signified the stable tunnel. The boxes were already arrayed beside it, each one crowded with carrion birds and crowned with a cold black shadow.
The blond leader awaited them near the pad. “First the spy,” he said. “Then the boxes. Then the rest of the riffraff.”
“You’re calling us riffraff?” Reese asked. “You must be kidding.”
“No kidding, Captain,” Blond said. “I note you’re finely dressed for someone I sent to a closet naked.” He glanced at the guards. “Our spy is prettily dressed as well.”
The guards shrugged. “He was going to die.”
“I highly doubt that,” Blond said.
“Why are we going across?” Kis’eh’t asked.
“I don’t ask questions, four-foot, and neither will you.” The leader grabbed Hirianthial’s wrists, pressing them against his back, and the Eldritch lost the sight of the cargo bay entirely.
You’re not seriously going to put that into the dangle, are you? Sascha, grinning.
Why not? Irine’s fingers, braiding the floss, hiding it from view. We need something stiff at the bottom so the bell will have something to move against. Besides, remember how we met him?
In a cell? Sascha laughing this time.
Irine grinned. You never know when he might need one. Her fingers tucked the final knot around the base of the lock pick, concealing its metal gleam.
I have a weapon, Hirianthial thought, stunned. His mind flashed back to the hospital on Harat-Sharii and the hours he’d spent toiling on the Medimage platform; he saw the diagram he wanted, right down to the page number.
“A couple more steps,” Blond said. “You can make it.”
Hirianthial twined his fingers through his hair... and stumbled. His captor cursed as they fell and Hirianthial rolled onto his side, yanking at the base of the dangle where Irine’s clever fingers had left a loop.
“What are you doing?” Blond said.
Push me back—and the man did, kicking him in the stomach. Hirianthial flopped onto the pin he held out in his clenched fingers... driving it through the winking lights on the Pad. If it really was as much like the Medimage platform as the manual had claimed... and it was. An innocuous click, too small for the magnitude of its meaning. The lights on the Pad died.
“What the—” Their leader grabbed his shoulder and jerked him forward, then exploded into red flame, seething. He turned to the guards that had escorted them into the closet and killed them, two bursts from his rifle.
“Next time when I say naked, I mean naked,” Blond said to the remaining pirates. “Not dressed and NOT ARMED.”
The brutal murder of humans should have scarred him, defenseless and open... but it had been so quick Hirianthial didn’t have time to feel them passing before another wave crested against his mind, alien and unexpected. He smiled and closed his eyes as the cavalry charged.
Dozens of people erupted into the cargo bay out of Pad nothingness, black and blue uniforms sprinting past, beams of light appearing out of nowhere. A voice barked orders: “Keep them alive!”
And then Jonah NotAgain of the UAV StarCounter and his very welcome crew immobilized every single pirate, disarmed them and pressed them flat onto the deck with their hands behind their backs and their legs cuffed. With quiet competence, the Fleet men and women stripped the fetters off her crew and Reese found herself catapulted from abject fear and hopelessness to a profound joy.
“I could hug you,” she said to the craggy-faced captain of the StarCounter. “In fact, I will.” And she did. The Tam-illee held his arms out from her, then chuckled.
“You called, Captain Eddings? I wish we could have arrived sooner.”
“You’re here now,” Reese said. “And am I glad. But there’s another ship—”
“We’ve already impounded both shi
ps,” NotAgain said. “The first’s not much good anymore; we had to poke too many holes in it. The second didn’t put up much of a fight, so we figured most of them were here. Turns out that part’s true.”
“So all the pirates,” Reese started.
“Dead or in the brig,” NotAgain said. His gaze caught on the captives on the floor. “Or they will be soon.” He nodded to his people. “Take them back for questioning.”
“Captain,” Reese said. “We’ve got to talk. And our Eldritch needs a real Medplex, if you’ve got one. And the twins, they broke some of their bones.”
“Our medical staff’s at your disposal,” NotAgain said. “Shandy, see to the injured, please.”
The medic checked the twins over and said, “The woman’s fine, but we’ll have to take the man back.” She looked up at Irine. “You’re going to have some pretty ugly bruises, though.”
“Bruises I can handle,” Irine said.
NotAgain looked down at Reese. “Perhaps we can meet in two marks? That should give you time to assess the damage to your vessel.”
Reese wondered if that was a polite way of giving her the time to get dressed. The shorn tabard suddenly felt draftier. “Two marks sounds fine, Captain. We’ll have coffee.”
“And pie,” Kis’eh’t said weakly.
“You have pie?” NotAgain asked, amused.
“If you’ve got fruit, we do,” Kis’eh’t said. She ran her hands down her front legs, as if trying to keep them from trembling. “Anything for our saviors.”
NotAgain laughed. “You don’t have to trouble yourself.”
“It’s no trouble,” Kis’eh’t said.
“Let her,” Reese said. “If you don’t I’ll never hear the end of it.”
The Tam-illee shook his head. “All right,” he said with a smile. “We’ll send a bag over from stores. Pie and coffee in two marks... and we’ll take care of your wounded.”
“Thanks,” Reese said and stepped back. In silence, she and the crew watched NotAgain’s people rouse the prisoners, unfold their portable Pad, pick up the unconscious Eldritch, guide Sascha in front of them and vanish, all within minutes.
Earthrise (Her Instruments Book 1) Page 32
