Tymer turned and gestured, translating for his mother so that the executioner, with a look of baffled bewilderment, brought Odrik down from the platform. It was then that Fegar barreled through the crowd.
“You cannot do this!” he shouted. “He is my prisoner. You have no jurisdiction here.” Fegar turned his eyes on Tymer. “Tell the woman what I just said.”
“I can understand you just fine,” she hissed. “I just can’t speak your foul language, and you weren’t smart enough to get the in-ear devices from the pods. Tymer, translate that.”
Tymer blinked his wide blue eyes and stammered out part of the translation, purposely neglecting to include the bits about their language being foul and the idiocy that had precluded the retrieval of their in-ear translators. “And since he is your prisoner,” Tymer added at the end, “you’ll come with us as well.” It was then that Odrik and the executioner reached the group of his. Mireena turned her eyes on him and smiled.
“What is your name?” she asked Odrik.
“Odrik Nuh’ar,” he said. “And that is Fegar.”
“Fegar Gael, the Chieftain of this tribe.”
“A usurper and peddler of bombast.”
“Yes, yes, gentlemen,” Mireena said, giving a wave of one delicate hand. “We’ll work all of this out in due course. But the day is hot, too hot for my tastes. So if you’ll kindly accompany me…” Mireena gestured to the vehicles, and we followed her toward them.
When Fegar blinked, oblivious, Odrik glared at him and said, in sharp Qeteshi, “Get on.”
Odrik and I rode with Tymer and Mireena, where Fegar rode with the guards, and we darted back toward the shuttle. I should have felt comforted, or somehow put at ease, but I didn’t. Instead, I could feel the tension radiating off of both Odrik and Tymer, and I wanted to know why, precisely, I had ended up here.
Once back at the shuttle, Mireena and Tymer stepped aside to allow the two ambassadors to go before them, and then they headed inside, and the three of us followed them, with the guards taking up the rear. The shuttle was larger than I had originally thought, with wide corridors and a space that looked rather like a boardroom into which we all filed. The guards remained posted at the door; the rest of us took our seats. Odrik and I sat side by side, close to the exit. Fegar sat across from him, as though they were a squabbling couple going through a divorce, and I suddenly found the entire thing absurd. Tymer sat on the other side of me, with his mother across from him and the ambassadors at either end of the table.
“This is Ro Petathera,” Mireena said, gesturing to the aging Qeteshi. “And this is Rebecca Quimby.” She gestured next to the human woman. “They are both members of the Echelon. We asked them to join us today since they are representatives of the sentient species on this planet — ”
“That we know of,” Tymer interjected.
“However, I outrank them, so all requests should go directly through me.” Mireena leaned forward in her chair and rested her hands on the table in front of her, lacing her fingers together. She looked every bit the overbearing CEO, and we, her underlings. “Tell us, Ms. Bryce: why did you send the distress signal?”
“I thought,” I began, “that I was… going to rescue people.” I slouched, my hands in my lap as I realized how silly it all sounded. But if it meant saving Odrik’s life, my ego could take the hit. “I didn’t know the women here had consented to their own abductions.”
“Relocations.”
“Nuance. Which brings me to my first question: why, when everyone else knew exactly what was going on, was I not shown a similar courtesy?” Mireena and Tymer shared a glance between one another, a sort of staring standoff that ended with Tymer demurring. “Why was I just… just taken from my life?” I eyed Tymer then; he would not meet my gaze. “Why did you do that to me?”
“My son,” Mireena began, “is new to his position. He is naive, and inexperienced. He allowed himself to be ruled by his heart — or, perhaps, by an organ somewhat lower.” I doubted very much that Tymer possessed the capacity to blush, but he did have the good grace to look abashed. Odrik, however, shot his eyes like daggers at Tymer and held them there. “It wasn’t until after you were aboard the Atria that I came to understand you hadn’t consented to your journey, and his immediate supervisor made the call to send you to this planet, as planned.” Mireena gave a small sigh and pinched the bridge of her nose between her index and middle fingers. “To her credit, it would have been… just awful for you if we’d sent you home.”
“I’m not sure I agree — ”
“All those poor people, raving about abductions. No one ever takes them seriously. And eventually, they begin to doubt the truth of it themselves. No, if I had been in Tymer’s supervisor’s position, I would have done the same thing.”
“Fine, but what do you plan to do with me now?”
“Well — ”
“You were my first acquisition,” Tymer interjected, finally venturing to look at up me. “I followed protocol, but I…” I leaned forward and peered at him. Oddly enough, I wasn’t angry. Why wasn’t I angry? He cleared his throat and continued. “I… was worried. If you found out what I was sent to Earth to do, I thought you would think… that I didn’t… that is, er… I never wanted to give you the impression that you didn’t mean anything to me. All right?”
I blinked at him and, in that moment, I couldn’t help but look to Odrik, whose stern expression bespoke how much he hated the notion that Tymer might covet what was his. And I was his, wasn’t I? Insofar as I was anyone’s, I was his. And he was mine.
“So you… just decided to take me with you into space?”
He shifted in his seat. “I knew you were a match for the program, so I thought if I brought you with me I could hide you when it was time to send the women to this planet. You seemed so at ease on the Atria, I thought I’d have all the time in the world to explain myself. To… to make a case for myself.”
“A case?”
“I thought…” Tymer bowed his head again and didn’t attempt to finish his sentence right away. So I took the opportunity to cast furtive glances from Mireena, to Odrik and the ambassadors, and back again. Rebecca Quimby was rolling her eyes; Ro seemed utterly nonplussed and maybe more than a little irritated that he’d been called away to deal with this; Fegar was growing more and more incensed by the instant; Mireena’s expression was an odd mixture of regret and frustration; and Odrik… Well, Odrik I couldn’t read. He had simply locked his eyes on me.
“What did you think, Tymer?” I urged, my tone perhaps a little sharper than I’d intended.
“I thought… if you liked me back…”
“The Echelon is a democracy,” Mireena interjected, “whose leader is voted into power, and serves up to three ten-year terms, consecutively. But like anywhere else in the galaxy, a family that has risen to power often stays in power.” She looked fondly on Tymer then, and I thought for a moment she might reach out and take his hand. But she didn’t; it would have been, I believe she thought, uncouth. “Tymer has been groomed from the moment he was born to take over my position. That doesn’t mean he will, of course, only that he will be better prepared than anyone he may find himself running against. And he knows that it is in his best interest to align himself with a species other than his own, to showcase how open-minded he is about the rest of the galaxy. How he doesn’t necessarily believe that the Europax are inherently better than, say, earthlings or the Qeteshi, et cetera.” Europax. I guess that’s what Tymer and Mireena were. From Jupiter’s moon, Europa? That was my best guess, but I didn’t dare interrupt her for clarification.
“And I liked you,” Tymer said. “I… I like you. I thought I could show you the galaxy and… Frankly, your life wasn’t altogether that impressive back on Earth.” He puffed his chest up a little bit. “I thought you’d be grateful.”
“Grateful?” I spat back.
“I thought you might want to — ”
“What? Be you
r human bride so you can take over… whatever Big Brother organization the Echelon seems to be?” That’s when my vision went red and I felt myself pulse with anger.
“In so many words,” Tymer confirmed. “And it isn’t too late. You can come back with me. That’s why we’re here. That’s why we answered the distress signal.”
“Why didn’t you just come get me when you first sent me here? Why did you wait?”
“Because,” Mireena answered for her son, “I would not permit him to expend Federation resources just to go on a rescue mission we weren’t sure you even wanted. We thought that you, like your fellow human women, might be happy on this planet.”
It hit me so hard it nearly knocked the air from my lungs: I had been. At least, happier than I had been at home, toiling in a thankless job in a city full of strangers.
“But when we got your distress signal, we were able to divert the ship’s trajectory to rescue you,” Tymer said, smiling a little. “So. Here we are.”
I took in a deep breath and gave a slow nod of my head. “So, to recap,” I began, rubbing at my eyes with the heels of my hands, “Tymer actually really liked me, so he abducted me off of my home planet and brought me aboard a Federation ship — and, like, we will eventually need to get into what the Federation actually is — because he wanted to make me his human bride so that he could be a better politician? But then his supervisor found out what he wanted to do and sent me to this planet anyway, even though I wasn’t supposed to be here, even though I hadn’t consented to be here. And when I landed on this planet, a freak accident is why I ended up attached to another girl’s pod, and she died, and then Odrik found me.” I looked at Odrik then, for some modicum of support, but he was still as stone.
“That seems to be the long and short of it,” Mireena confirmed. “Chalk it up to a bureaucratic error.”
I couldn’t help but laugh, so I did. “Right,” I breathed, “like you lost some paperwork or something.”
“You can come with us now,” Tymer said. “And I can take you home if that is what you wish. But I hope you’ll reconsider.”
“So do I.” This, from Odrik, who finally spoke, whose eyes were two black pools, a swirling miasma of emotion. “I hope, now that you know you aren’t stuck here, that you’ll choose to stay. With me.”
“He should not be afforded the opportunity to speak,” Fegar growled. “He is a prisoner. And furthermore, no one has translated anything.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Mireena mumbled and made a vague gesture toward Tymer, who — rather begrudgingly, I thought — turned to Fegar and began to give him the rundown of all that had been discussed.
“And,” Fegar continued, after he’d nodded mutely along to Tymer’s translation, his jaw hanging rather slack, “the woman cannot stay with Odrik. Odrik is to be executed. I am the Chieftain of this clan. It is well within my rights to — ”
“You are no Chieftain.” Ro Petathera had spoken, his voice gruff and low. His words silenced us all until we were even breathing as quietly as we could. All eyes were on him now. “You comport yourself like a child playing King of the Hill. You use your power to sate your lust and to get your grubby little paws on the finest frippery this planet, rich in gemstones, has to offer. You lead your lady about by a rope as though she were no better than a dog, and you treat your most loyal companions with contempt or, on a good day, neglect. You,” he repeated, pointing directly at Fegar, “are no Chieftain.”
“By rights, I am,” Fegar insisted, puffing himself up, making himself tall in his seat. “I defeated Odrik Nuh’ar in single combat.”
I wasn’t looking at Odrik in that moment, but I could feel him bristle beside me.
“You poisoned him,” Ro went on, and I sucked in a sharp breath of air. “He was debilitated before he came into the ring with you.”
“Preposterous,” Fegar stammered. “I would — I would never do such a thing.”
I looked at Odrik then, whose eyes were wide, startled, as though he had been given information that suddenly put everything into stark perspective.
“You gave him a draft that weakened him,” Ro insisted, leaning forward across the table, “and when you defeated him, you sliced off his horn with your knife and kept it for a trophy. Then, you exiled him, your people’s rightful leader, and when he deigned to return to the village, only to help the woman he loves, you threw him in a cell and threatened to set him afire. You, Fegar Gael, are no Chieftain. You are a coward, and a damned villain.”
I was beginning to gather that Fegar Gael wasn’t exactly the brightest star in the sky. He was gaping at Ro Petathera, blinking rapidly, before he asked, “How… how could you possibly know any of this?”
Ro smirked, and I saw a youthfulness to this old man who had otherwise seemed stern, severe, and uncompromising. “Do you think,” he replied, “that anyone would go through the trouble to relocate an entire species and then not keep an eye on them? How do you think we knew that you needed mateable females? We have eyes in the clouds, Fegar Gael, and we have seen all that you do.” Ro leaned back then, and I saw Rebecca Quimby place her hand over his and wondered if they weren’t, perhaps, the first Qeteshi-human pairing, if they hadn’t been the ones who had proved that our species were compatible. I could see that there was a great deal of affection between them, even in that one small, simple gesture.
“So it would seem that we have two matters to settle here today,” Mireena said, leaning back and crossing one long, lithe leg over the other. “The matter of Ms. Bryce and whether or not she would like to return to Earth, and the matter of Chieftain Gael and Odrik Nuh’ar.” Mireena glanced between the lot of us, and though her expression was impassive, I could see the wheels turning in her mind. “It seems the only fair thing,” she went on at length, “is to allow Odrik the opportunity he was never given: a fair fight.”
I looked at Odrik then, my hand darting out to take his before I had even registered the gesture. He smiled at me, his eyes twinkling, and sat up very straight in his chair. “I accept,” Odrik said.
“What?” Fegar asked, “What does he accept?” Tymer sighed and mumbled the translation into his ear even as Mireena pressed a finger to her forehead as though he were giving her quite a headache.
“We have got to get that man an in-ear device,” she said. “At any rate, to ensure that it is, in fact, a fair match, we shall have both men stay aboard the Atria until the match.”
“I shall stay with Odrik,” I blurted, and Mireena gave me a quizzical sort of look, but ultimately just nodded her head.
“Very well.”
After Tymer had finished translating for Fegar, he glared openly at Mireena.
“I am rightful Chieftain,” he protested. “I should not have to fight this man a second time.”
“You are free, then, to abdicate all of your power to him now, if you prefer not to fight,” Tymer said in perfect Qeteshi.
If he could have blushed, I believe Fegar would have been bright pink. But he simply sat back in his chair and shook his head.
“Then it’s settled,” Mireena said and rose to her feet. “If I could have you all please accompany me, we will have you strapped into a seat and ready for takeoff.”
I stood, but Odrik didn’t let go of my hand. He gripped it, in fact, as we made our way toward the bridge where we would all sit down and strap in. Next stop: the Atria.
CHAPTER 16: ODRIK
My journey aboard the small aircraft en route to the great Atria afforded me the opportunity to glean some new information about myself: I was afflicted with terrible motion sickness that left me vomiting bile into a paper bag for the duration of the trip. I did not like space travel, or even air travel, for that matter. My one consolation was that my Novalyn was by my side. And I was not standing shackled in front of a pyre.
Once aboard the grand Federation vessel, I was tempted to follow Ro Petathera, to ask him all of the questions I had kept locked inside of mysel
f about the relocation of our species to our current planet, about what had happened to our home, about what he had seen when I had fought Fegar. But I noticed that my lady continued to limp, so I — much to my chagrin — hooked my hand around little Tymer’s arm until he turned around to face me.
“She was injured,” I said. “Certainly you must have some… advanced technology aboard this ship to help heal her.”
He glanced from me to Novalyn and back again and gave a sharp nod of his head. “Follow me,” he said, and so we did.
He led us to a small room where Novalyn sat on a table. The space was stark and white, and the table was silver. The entire room was bare, save for a small control panel by the door. “Odrik, please step out.”
“No!” Novalyn protested. “He can stay.”
Tymer bristled, his lips pursed. “Fine,” he said between clenched teeth. “But you will need to disrobe.”
“It is nothing he has not already seen,” Novalyn said, a small smile playing on her lips as she tugged her gown off over her head.
“Nor I,” Tymer mused, and I shot a glare at him. Novalyn laid her naked form down on the table, and Tymer hit a few buttons on the control panel that made the room go dark. Then, a projection of Novalyn’s anatomy appeared in the air over her body. It was her skin, then her muscles, then her bones, then her organs, with bright patches lighting up where it detected injury or anomaly: her ankle, her inner thigh, her belly.
Tymer manipulated the machine at the console and it focused in on her ankle. He examined the readout on the screen. “Just a sprain,” he remarked. “I can fix that right up for you, if you like.”
“Yes, please,” Novalyn said. “I’m sick of limping around on it.”
Tymer hit a few keys and the ceiling opened up. A long white tube descended, peering around the room like a snake’s head until it coiled itself around Novalyn’s injured ankle. She gasped through her teeth as the white tube began to glow red, but she heaved a sigh of relief when it uncoiled itself and lifted up to linger above the anatomical projection.
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