by J. M. Page
Vessa’s eyes went wide and she shook her head. “No, oh no, not at all. But… He lacked my open-mindedness. While I was still trying to communicate with our captors and trying to get to the bottom of this incongruous story, Yunna was finding a way to escape. He’s the one that warned my people I was brainwashed, because I wouldn’t leave with him.”
Lina could hardly breathe now, thinking of Bain back in the cell, probably scheming up escape plans at this very moment. Was there any hope of their relationship avoiding the same fate?
Still, as terrifying as the possibility was, she couldn’t see how it was at all relevant to the question at hand. Namely, why they were shot down and captured.
“That’s awful,” she said carefully. “But I still don’t see how it led to my ship being shot down.”
“Right,” Vessa said with a curt nod. “I’m getting to that. You see, Yunna left me here and refused to speak to me anymore. Not even when I found out I was carrying his child.”
Now, Lina’s hands were damp, clammy, and cold at the fingertips. Her throat was dry, her head throbbing with the deluge of information. This woman’s story was sad, yes, but was it necessary? She couldn’t stop listening though she wanted to, and she needed to know the ending, even if she failed to see why it mattered.
“Well, I knew it would be irresponsible try to raise a child on my own here, in a foreign culture, without a real understanding of it myself. I hoped that if I sent her home, they would at least not turn their backs on a helpless infant. I hoped that she’d be raised in a loving home, surrounded by her own kind. And I hoped when the time was right, she too would feel the pull to the stars and come looking for me. With the help of my friends here, I managed to set up an auto-detection system using my own DNA. Of course, it was meant to capture the ship without force, but it doesn’t seem to have responded well to resistance…” She trailed off, looking thoughtful as her eyes wandered to the ceiling.
It was all too much for Lina to take in. The whole story seemed… disconnected.
“Wait a minute… Are you saying—”
“Yes!” Vessa said brightly, clapping her hands together. “You’re my daughter.”
Lina frowned, her mouth twisting as she shook her head. “No… I already have a mother who didn’t send me away, even though she had no idea how to take care of me.”
Vessa’s expression fell. She seemed surprised that Lina wasn’t leaping across the table to embrace her. “Please understand, dear, I only did what I thought was best for you.”
“By sending me to a planet full of giants where I never knew another like me?”
Vessa’s brow furrowed and her lips thinned. “What do you mean? I sent you back to our home. Back to Olinda.”
Lina shook her head, rage bubbling over now. “No. You sent me to Earth. I fit comfortably in my mother’s palm. That’s the kind of world you sent me to. I wasn’t allowed outside, to experience fresh air or sunshine because it was too dangerous.”
“You wouldn’t have had those things here, either,” Vessa snapped, sounding defensive. “And if you never met another of your kind, how do you explain your precious prince?”
Lina rolled her eyes. “It’s really none of your business. You lost the right to know those details of my life when you gave me up.” She stood again, and this time Goblak’s hand didn’t shoot out to stop her.
“Daughter, please,” Vessa said, and Lina realized the woman didn’t even know her name.
She shook her head, barely able to stop herself from breaking down. The only thing keeping her voice level was pure rage. “No, you don’t get to call me that.” She began to storm out of the room, not even sparing a thought for the fact that she had no idea how to find her way back to Bain. Before she reached the door, Vessa called out.
“I’ve worked too hard to build this peace and your boyfriend could ruin it all. Please see reason.”
Her whole body trembling, Lina turned and addressed the Captain. “I’ll do everything in my power to convince Bain you’re not the enemy, but in exchange, I’d like a working ship that can get me the hell out of here.” She wasn’t offering much, and she knew the ship could still use her help, but there was no way she was going to stick around any longer than expressly necessary.
She left without waiting for an answer. They could negotiate later, but right now, she couldn’t be around… that woman. She wouldn’t call her mother. She already had a mother. One who’d taken her in, who’d raised her, who did the very best she could for the tiny baby she had no idea how to take care of. Her mother who saved her from the vacuum and gave her a light so she’d never have to be scared of the dark again.
Not some woman who put her in a spaceship and sent her off into the unknown, just… what? Hoping for the best? What kind of plan was that? She never made contact with her home world to verify that her baby had arrived safely? She never even knew that Lina ended up in the wrong place.
She stormed down the hallways, not sure how to find her way back to Bain, but not in any great hurry to do so, either. She needed time to think, to decompress, to get her head together before she tried to relay all of this information to Bain. She needed to figure out how to approach it. How to word everything in a way that he’d actually listen to her and not give up on her like Vessa’s mate had.
A chill swept through her and Lina wrapped her arms around herself, hugging her body tight. Vessa and Yunna’s story was so similar to her and Bain’s. Too similar. But would Bain stick by her? Or would he think her a lost cause?
She couldn’t bear to find out. It hurt too much to think about. She felt she already knew the answer and it wasn’t one she liked.
So, instead of actually trying to find Bain, Lina found things to keep her busy, to keep her mind occupied. It wasn’t a challenge to find things that needed fixing; finding the proper tools proved to be more of a challenge, but she managed. Though she’d encountered many doors with locks, it seemed that supply closets weren’t worth the hassle.
The hallways in this part of the ship seemed mostly deserted, but even when she did encounter a Fibbun, they hardly paid her any attention. Some grunted a word or two at her, but she never said anything back and just kept working.
She couldn’t have said how much time had passed before her stomach grumbled and her mind finally felt clear enough to face Bain. She’d worked through the conversation a thousand times and hoped that she’d be able to remember the most important points when it came time to talk to him. Assuming she could find her way back to him.
Hoping that someone would come by who could give her directions, Lina kept her head down, focused on fixing what she could before the time to leave came. At least this should earn her some goodwill. They hadn’t agreed to give her a ship yet, but maybe this would sway them. She could only hope.
A garbled grunt came from a neighboring hallway before she ever heard the footsteps, but in moments, Goblak was upon her, practically frothing mad.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Oh… Hello,” she said, looking up as she finished tightening a panel on the wall. She flipped the switch, holding her breath, and air rattled through from vents on all sides, blowing in fresh, temperate air. She swiped the back of her hand across her forehead, and sweat beaded up again immediately. Before she’d fixed it, this hallway was sweltering, barely tolerable.
“Where have you been?”
Lina looked up again and saw Goblak was holding the translator cube. She gestured around her. “Fixing the ship. You?” She could tell he was angry, possibly that he’d even catch trouble for her little stunt of storming out, but directing her annoyance into flippancy came natural and she didn’t really feel guilty about it.
“Looking for you,” came the reply.
“Found me,” she said, standing slowly, her muscles aching from all the crouching and bending and crawling she’d been doing the last few hours. She was out of practice. The repairs on Mabnoa weren’t nearly so physically demanding. Her elbows popped as sh
e stretched her arms up over her head.
“Getting kind of hungry though. Think you could show me back to my room?”
Goblak scowled. “The Captain is most displeased with you.”
Lina shrugged. “Have to say, I’m not totally thrilled either. Are mothers a thing with your race?”
His sideways eyes narrowed. “Yes, of course.”
“And would it be odd for a mother in your society to send her young out into space with no one to look after them?”
Goblak shifted from one foot to another, looking over his shoulder. “It has never occurred. The bond between mother and young is crucial.”
Lina sucked her teeth, grinning though there wasn’t a scrap of joy to be found in the gesture. “Bingo.”
Goblak blinked, unfamiliar with the phrase.
Lina sighed. “Look, the point is, whatever that woman says, she’s not my mother. She’s some crazy person that launched her baby into space. And to be perfectly honest with you, I don’t want to be anywhere near her.”
Goblak nodded. “It is clear that bringing Vessa into the discussion has done more harm than we anticipated.” He hesitated a moment longer before adding, “She was under the impression you’d come looking for her.”
Laughter erupted violently from Lina’s throat. “Looking for her? I’ve never cared about her. I was trying to get home to my real mother. Bain and I… We just want to get to Earth.”
Goblak nodded again, something strange crossing his features. “I will speak to the Captain on your behalf, but he is going to want some guarantee from the so-called prince.”
Lina sighed, slumping with exhaustion and defeat, the fight all but drained out of her. “Sure. I’ll see what I can do. But first, I need to get back to him.”
Goblak nodded and gestured her forward. “Come with me.”
The trip back to the dungeon, or brig, or whatever it was, took longer than it should have, mostly because Lina kept making Goblak stop so that she could fix something that ‘would only take a minute.’ Funny thing, those minutes added up, and by the time he was opening the door for her, Lina felt dead on her feet.
“You’re back!” Bain cried, leaping from the chair in the corner to greet her. “What’s wrong? What have they done to you?” He turned to Goblak, murder already in his eyes. “If you hurt her, I swear it will be the last thing—”
“Bain. Stop,” Lina groaned, collapsing onto the cot. “I’m fine.”
Goblak didn’t wait for any more outbursts. He left the two of them alone in the room, Bain watching his retreat like a hawk.
Eventually, he must have ventured out of sight, because Bain finally left the door and came to the bedside. “Lina my love, what happened?”
She sighed, her whole body feeling like it weighed a ton, her stomach far past the point of hunger, and her eyes so tired she could barely pry them open. “It’s a long story,” she managed. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance you’ve figured out the foodmaker?” The few steps to the table seemed an impossible distance to her.
Bain leapt to his feet. “As a matter of fact… There wasn’t much else to do but play with this while you were gone,” he said. “It’s not just a foodmaker.” He went over and pressed a couple of buttons and another projection came on, this one on the blank wall in front of the corner chair. Fibbuns filled the screen, all grunting at each other. It seemed like pandemonium, but Lina quickly realized this was some kind of entertainment, like the TVs on Earth. Of course, everything was made for aliens in a language she didn’t understand, so it wasn’t really all that exciting.
“There are games, too,” he said, changing the channel. A maze appeared with a tiny figure of a Fibbun in the corner. Bain began to navigate, collecting tiny blinking dots until something appeared from the wall and his sprite exploded.
“I haven’t quite gotten the hang of it yet,” he said sheepishly. “But there’s a lot more I bet I haven’t even found yet.”
Lina groaned, sliding back in the bed so that the pillows would keep her head propped up for her. Holding it up was too much effort. “That’s great… but, food?” She was beyond happy that Bain had been exploring the system. Even more so that he seemed to be starting to see what she’d been trying to tell him — this wasn’t how you treated prisoners. You didn’t give them all the food they wanted, a comfortable bed, and entertainment. Not when you were in a war as vicious as the one that was described. It just didn’t add up. At least she now knew why. The only hitch was convincing Bain of the truth, but at least he seemed to be tiptoeing over toward her side on his own.
“Right, right. Of course. I’m sorry. You must be starving. Did they not feed you all day?”
She groaned again. “Not exactly.”
“I took the liberty of trying the menu,” he said, bringing her a bowl of chunky stew. It looked like the same thing she’d had the day before. Or was that earlier today? How long had she even been on this ship at this point? It was all starting to blur together. She needed to get out of here. “This is the best dish, by far. Almost everything else is far too briny.”
Lina sat up with some help from Bain and shoveled the food in without really thinking about the taste. If she did think about it, it was pretty good, but focusing on anything took an inordinate amount of mental energy at the moment.
“How are you feeling?” she finally asked, remembering his weakened state. They’d been too busy fighting before for her to dwell on it too much, and now she felt guilty for forgetting he’d gotten shot for her.
He waved off her concerns. “I’m fine. Took a little while to really shake off those drugs and it’s still a little tender, but I don’t think that gun was designed to do any permanent damage,” he said, lifting up his shirt. His torso wasn’t even bandaged now, but it was covered in a yellow-ringed bruise, his skin mottled and damaged, but clearly on the mend.
“I’m glad,” she said, handing him the empty bowl as she fell back into the pillows again.
“I have a lot to tell you,” she said, pulling the blankets up to her chin. “But it’ll have to wait,” she added with a big yawn.
Bain frowned, looking like he might demand the information from her right now, but instead, he crawled into the bed with her, wrapped his arms around her, and pulled her close to him, kissing the top of her head. “Whatever it is, I don’t think we’re going anywhere. Tell me after you’ve slept.”
She nodded, yawning again, the last thought flitting through her mind was Vessa’s story of Yunna leaving her. Not believing her. Lina squeezed her eyes tight together, trying to push those thoughts away. “Don’t leave,” was all her sleep-deprived brain was able to make of her worries.
Bain shushed her, smoothing her hair as he held her close. “I’m right here,” he murmured. “Right here.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
For the first time in some time, Lina woke up naturally. Without knocking at her door, without warning bells blaring, without arguing at the foot of her bed. It felt strange to open her eyes, blinking, and think ‘what woke me?’ only to realize that nothing had. Just her body, finally rested, telling her it was time to get up.
And as the rest of her body woke up following her brain’s lead, she realized Bain was still right there with her like he’d promised, still holding her tight. She shifted in his arms, all her muscles tight and stiff from not moving for however many hours, and Bain’s eyes slowly opened, a lazy smile following.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” she said back, smiling, twisting in his arms to face him.
Bain leaned in and gave her a quick kiss, his eyes barely open. “Feel better?”
“Much,” she answered. “I was barely standing when I got back here last night.”
“I remember. I was worried.”
“No need to be. Everything’s fine. I’ll tell you all about it after a shower and breakfast.”
He nodded. “Sounds good. Wake me up then.”
Lina wriggled out from under him, giving
him another quick kiss as he reached for a pillow and clung to it now that she was gone. She went to the adjoining bathroom and started the shower. The hot water pushed away the bliss of sleep and brought back all her worries. Bain had clearly moved on from their earlier fight, and she wanted to keep moving forward like this. Both of them happy, not fighting, falling asleep in each other’s arms. She wanted to keep going like that, but she couldn’t help but worry that Bain wouldn’t want it anymore. Not once he knew how she sympathized with the enemy. How she wanted to try to end this war.
It was going to be a hard road and she just didn’t know if Bain would be willing to walk it with her. She could hope, but that’s all she could do.
When she got out of the shower, the room provided her with new, fresh clothes. They didn’t fit perfectly, a little baggy throughout and too long in the legs, but she suspected it was the best the thing could do. She hadn’t ever seen a Fibbun child, but she wouldn’t be surprised if this jumpsuit was made with them in mind.
Still, she was grateful to feel clean again, and to be in clean clothes. Those two things alone made a world of difference to her state of mind.
When she reemerged, Bain was sitting at the table and another chair had appeared, along with two plates of hot food, calling to her. They ate in quiet, Bain presumably letting her collect her thoughts, which she certainly appreciated.
“Sleep well?” she finally asked, finishing the last of her breakfast.
He nodded. “You?”
“Like the dead.”
“So…” he started, trailing off. Lina took a deep breath and expelled it.
“So, I have some things to tell you and you might not like any of them, but I hope you’ll listen to me anyway and consider what I have to say.”
He looked worried now, but leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. “I’ll do my best,” he said, and Lina believed him. Maybe he’d struggled before, maybe the threat was too present and obvious and he couldn’t think rationally, but the Bain she was used to, the one she’d grown to love, was the one staring back at her, waiting for her information.
