Exodus

by Toasha Jiordano

  “Why the hell would we do that?” His long legs easily close the gap and propel him in front of me. It’s his turn to stop us in our tracks and place a large hand on my chest. At least he has enough sense to keep it high and away from anything that could get him killed.

  “It’s only right. Marshall, for all his good intentions, didn’t give us a choice. He decided our fate for us. I can’t do that to these people.” I try to push forward but he strong-arms me.

  “And what? Let them watch a hostile ice planet come rushing up at them, with no idea whether they’ll live or die? On that, at least, I agree with Sarge.” Vallon’s cheeks flare and I feel his heart still beating fast in the palm of his hand. Unless that’s mine.

  “Don’t pretend that you grew a conscience overnight.” I stand on my toes so we’re eye to eye. “These are the same people you tried to kill with your own hands!”

  Instead of backing off, he moves in closer, breathing heavy. “It was them or me.”

  “Ha!” I shake my head and open my mouth to let him have it.

  “It’s easy to have a conscience when you also have a bodyguard. Let me know when you’re gasping for your last breath and the only thing standing between you and an agonizing painful death is one measly other person.” He bites his trembling bottom lip.

  Without thinking, I raise my hand to my chest and cover his. He snatches it away and says, “I don’t even want to now.” And he’s gone. Over his shoulder, he warns, “If we’re waking any of them up, he’s first.”

  I stand in the shower for as long as possible, until my lungs are sodden with steam. I’ve never been one to meditate. Who has time for that when you’re trying to survive? But that shower is the closest thing to what I picture meditation to be. I’m not in my body, although the pelting hot droplets massage my aching back and lull me nearly to sleep.

  My mind makes peace with what’s about to come. Every part of my life has been one giant unknown disaster after the other. Now that I’m face to face with the one that could truly end me, I’m at peace. Maybe I’m done fighting the inevitable. Or I’ve put up all the fight I have left and it’s still not enough. Whatever the case, I’m calm and ready for what will happen to me tomorrow.

  In my relaxed state, I let myself drift off down the various branches of the only decision I have left to make. Do I wake everyone up to face their fates?

  In a perfect world, which I’ve never seen nor would I believe if I did, these people would be thankful that I woke them from cryo. Whatever the end result, they would want to know. I would. Wouldn’t I? Then, by some miracle, Gliese would welcome us to our new home. The communications error would be a big misunderstanding. And I’d be heralded for my bravery, doing what’s right against all opposition. I’d see Brooks smiling at me through the crowds and everything would finally be right.

  In Vallon’s world, the one I’m stuck living in… for now… I wake them up and they panic. They don’t want to watch Gliese rise up over the bow of the ship, into the unknown. They mutiny and toss me out of Airlock seven, a mere five months after I should have floated away. For someone living on borrowed time, I squandered what little I had of it.

  Or I don’t wake them at all. This one sits the hardest. People say they’d love to die in their sleep, if they have to go. Not knowing any better. That thought would keep me from ever sleeping. I want to face my future head on, go down fighting.

  But is it my right to impose my way of thinking on hundreds of innocent people? No matter how moral a place it comes from?

  ###

  Decision made, I turn off the water and step out of the shower. My clothes cling to my still wet body, but I drag them on as quickly as I can. I wouldn’t put it past Vallon to have a camera set up in here, and I’m not taking any chances.

  Although it’s only mid-day at most, on what’s possibly my last, I can’t keep my eyes open. I turn off every light on my way to the girls’ quarters. Darkness and silence are a welcomed change to the hectic few days I just washed off of me.

  My bed is cool to the touch, and I climb in fully clothed, pulling an extra blanket from one of the many piles around it. The feel of someone else’s baby blue comforter against my cheek reminds me of the things I saw in Marshall’s room.

  Alone and afraid, he surrounded himself with intimate things from everyone he was trying to save. Anything to feel close to another human being. I know I reacted in much the same way when I gathered odds and ends from each room in my final weeks. I was nesting, for the end. And now it’s here. I am ready.

  Maybe it’s this need for community, to feel for one moment you’re not completely alone in life, that causes me to not scream when Vallon enters the inky black room and slides under the covers beside me.

  Maybe it’s understanding his utterly human need for skin to skin contact, a primal connection between two living things, that inches my body against his without shame.

  Our bed rocks slightly on its metal frame as Vallon maneuvers in the darkness. I hold my breath as his pants and jacket fall to the floor. The masculine smell of him is more intoxicating than I’m comfortable with as his thick warm arms envelop me. He fumbles with the buttons on my own jacket.

  By some force unknown to me, my body raises itself up from the bed and allows him to remove every line of fabric defense separating us, slowly. When his fingers stop, I tug at the bindings around my breasts, which I’d begun wearing again after he woke from cryo. My last safe barrier against the appetites of men like him.

  “Don’t,” he whispers, and lowers me onto the bed again. When the pillow nestles me, a gentle kiss caresses my forehead.

  I’m unable to stop the tremor along my spine. Trepidation rattles me, and… something more feminine. “I —”

  Vallon squeezes me closer, pulling my back to him, and brings his legs up to mine. Nothing is left between us save three layers of gauze. “You smell like lemons.” He breathes deeply, inhaling my homemade shampoo. Howie’s scent.

  I think of Howie now, but don’t speak, because Vallon breathes against me again. His shape expands to cover me, and I’m afraid of how much I don’t want him to stop.

  He pulls the top blanket over our heads and rubs my arm, mistakenly assuming I’m trembling from cold. “Sarge was right about you, Ratnik. You’re stronger than you look.”

  We lay together for a long while, in silent anticipation, until the earthquake inside me calms.

  “Is that how you got your scars?” I ask, speaking mid-thought.

  “What?” His voice is heavy with gravel.

  “I was thinking about the door.” I’m embarrassed for him, angry at myself for prying, but push on. “Is that how you got the scars on your back?” His arm is draped over me and I take his hand, intertwining our fingers.

  “I picked up a few tricks… before Sarge took me in. The door was a simple blasting strip along the frame. I, uh, might have overdone it a bit. Been a while since I got to play with matches.” Vallon sighs, and I think he’s going to continue, but he doesn’t.

  More time passes in fluid silence. My body conforms to the outline of his. I can no longer tell where I end and he begins, except one place I try to ignore.

  “My scars,” Vallon barely breathes the words against the nape of my neck after an achingly long groan, “are a story for another time. If we make it out of this, something for you to look forward to.” There’s a chill to his last statement, a reminder of how I see him in the cold morning light.

  “You don’t have to. It’s personal. I just… if you… wanted to. I’m here.” I run my thumb along more scars lining his hand.

  “Thank you.” In return, a finger softly traces a path up and down my arm and I swallow the sob it elicits.

  Another kind of warmth radiates from within me. This is a side of him I never thought I’d see, didn’t dare believe existed. This overwhelming sense of intimacy washes over me, from Vallon of all people. I stay as still as possible to not break the spell.

  For all my fear
of this moment, the nightmares after what happened in the woods, the inaction with Howie in the Stepp’s house; now that it’s here, I’m ready. I’m willing to freely give that part of me to someone, to him.

  I lay in his arms, reeling from the stir of emotions and fire building in my center. I let myself be conscious of the pressing need of him against my back. The breadth of him behind me is intoxicating.

  I’m not foolish enough to think this is his first time, but I know he’ll respect that it’s mine. My head swims with what’s to come and I force myself to be patient. I match the rise and fall of my chest to his, breathing in sync, sucking in the heady male odor of him. Breathing… slower.

  Until morning.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Freewill -

  God’s greatest gift to man

  And greatest curse to cowards

  - Marcus Stone

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” The veins on Vallon’s neck throb.

  “The right thing.” I lower my voice to its deepest register. It burns my throat, like the stiff boots hurt my feet. But if these people are going to feel safe under my command, I need to look and sound the part.

  “We discussed this.” Vallon’s lips are tight lines across his clenched teeth. I watch his hand ball into a fist at his side. The same hand that rested so softly into mine just a few short hours ago.

  “No, you ordered me around like a jackass.” I push past him and punch Marshall’s code into the next pod. More lavender fills the room and I plaster on a big smile, raising to my fullest height.

  “I’m your commanding officer. This is insubordination.” Vallon paces the room, searching. “Where is it? Where is he?”

  “Safe.”

  A slender man in civilian dress climbs out of the pod and looks at me with confusion in his eyes. I push my voice to the back of my throat and say, “Everyone’s waiting in the rec room, sir. Out the door and down the hall to your left. Can’t miss it.”

  “Is this about last night?” Vallon stands before me, one hand scratching his messy hair and the other still clenched in a fist.

  “Get over yourself.” Maybe a little. “I thought I had it figured out. I spent hours in the control room. I thought… but I was wrong.”

  The next pod slides open and a woman in fatigues staggers out, then sees my dress uniform and snaps her had to her forehead in salute. I return the gesture and point her toward the growing mass of people down the hall. The sight of her reminds me that I should have started with personnel, so I move around the room in search of more camouflage.

  There are two more soldiers in my immediate area. I wake them and go over the basics, nothing too frightening in their first minutes of reality, but enough to instill the urgency of the situation. Then I send them to the game room to fill the other soldiers in and begin crowd control, now that we’re amassing a crowd.

  All the while, Vallon follows me around the room chipping obscenities.

  On their way out the door, I call the soldiers back. “No force. No weapons. These are scared people. Fellow Samaritans.” The word tastes like centuries of oppression and murder. I barely scrape it from my tongue, but I have to play my part. I don’t want the blood of another Marcus Stone on my hands. Both men nod in understanding and leave me alone with Vallon.

  “You think four guards will stand a chance? Remember why we all went into cryo in the first place?” Vallon grabs my arm and yanks me toward him. His eyes are black discs lined with the thinnest dark brown as he continues his tirade. “These people tossed each other out an airlock to get to a pod and you expect them to act rationally now that death is even more certain?”

  The stench of his stale musty breath burns my nose but I don’t turn my head away. Now is not the time for a weak constitution. Holding Vallon’s gaze, I remove his vice-grip from my arm and speak slowly. “If I trust you to behave, then I can surely trust them.”

  Vallon laughs. “You trust me so much you snuck out in the middle of the night to wake these people up.”

  I study the laces on my boot for a long moment, then try to turn away but Vallon slams a hand against the wall behind me, locking me in place. Lifting my eyes to his, I notice the brown has all but vanished, leaving nothing but a livid pupil. I shrink deeper into my oversized wolf’s clothing. “I… I couldn’t sleep.”

  Speaking of wolf; Vallon’s lip curls ever so slightly before he leans in. “Quite an effect I had on you.”

  All the compassion and warmth of last night blinks out like an empty candle when his disgusting hand crawls up my shirt. My knee rushes up, blocked at the last second by the other hand, leaving me free to slip away. I knew, given the choice, which one he’d use.

  “We have work to do,” sings over my shoulder as I head to the farthest ring of pods. My fingers latch onto the nearest one to mask their shaking.

  ###

  Half the day disappears into a lavender haze. Another fifty-six glass lids slide away, releasing their occupants to a brief, bleak future. The lids release them, not me. That’s what I tell myself each time I type the command into their control panels. By the time I make it to the end, I’m almost convinced.

  I make my final rounds, checking every pod, before sealing off the STASIS area and joining the crowd of confused passengers in the rec room. Vallon has long since disappeared, no doubt on a fruitless quest to find Marshall. Let him. Better he stays busy and out of my way. No amount of lavender can erase the sickening tingle on my skin where his hands have been.

  In the hallway before entering the game room, I smooth my dress uniform and hair, hoping the last drops of lotion keep it corralled long enough. The chatter inside the room is already rising louder than I’d like. The soldiers only know what little I’ve told them, and now fully awake, the passengers are itching to turn on them.

  I clear my throat and take a deep cleansing breath.

  When I enter, standing as tall and broad as possible, all voices cease. I’m the first face they saw when the woke, earning me instant respect. I will do my best to keep it.

  “I’m sure you all have a lot of questions. I’m afraid I don’t have all the answers, but I will tell you what I know.”

  A slew of questions and demands rush forward, along with some of the less patient people.

  “Where are we?”

  “When are we?”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Why have the engines stopped?”

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “Where’s my son?” That one comes from a tearful woman about my height, clutching a torn piece of olive green fabric. I can barely make out the partial WC logo for Waste Containment; the one I’ve seen in my nightmares since the cryo-pod tour.

  I scan the sea of passengers. Every one of these people had to see the same horrific scenes in their stasis. Not one of the questions thrown at me had anything to do with the fate of those poor Unrein slaves.

  I begin to think Vallon was right for not wanting to wake them, but for a much darker reason.

  “Ma’am, I’m not sure what happened to your son… just yet. We’re working on compiling lists of…” Don’t say survivors. “In the meantime, we need to –” She doesn’t wait for the rest, slinking back into the crowd that quickly fills the void around her.

  Voices rise up again, teeming with anger and venom.

  Exactly two minutes. That’s how long my imprinted respect lasts.

  Just as I’m about to turn tail and run, a large hand rests itself on my backside and gives the faintest squeeze.

  “What Officer Ratnik, here, is trying to say is —” Vallon commands instant silence and everyone turns to look up at him. I don’t dare move, but from the corner of my eye, a gold epaulet sways against a midnight blue dress jacket sleeve. “Now, does anyone here have flight experience. Any vessel at all. It doesn’t matter at this point. We just want a butt in the seat.”

  //Thank you,// I chip to Vallon, deflating against him.

  //You owe me.//
He doesn’t skip a beat in his speech. “Things haven’t gone as planned on our trip. My partner and I,” he gives me another squeeze, “thought you had a right to know, to make your own decisions.”

  My partner and I. Ha.

  “First things first, though, we need a pilot. So someone needs to come forward before we can move forward.”

  Nobody moves, and Vallon doesn’t continue.

  In the silence, where all eyes are on him and I can feel him returning their glares, daring someone to try him, he tries me. //Pretty smart hiding spot. Almost didn’t think to look there.//

  My body goes rigid. Then I realize, he wouldn’t be here if he knew. I hum the most earwormy tune I know as loud as I can through the airwaves to shut him out. I catch my own fingers playing along and clench my fist. If these are my last seconds, I won’t allow myself to die with that song stuck in my head.

  Vallon’s hand latches onto me harder than before and doesn’t let up. //Play all the games you want. Let’s just hope for his sake you’re right.//

  “I… I fly experimental aircraft.” A slender woman raises her hand and inches out of the crowd. All heads turn to her. As she comes closer, I have to swallow a whimper.

  She has Penelope’s eyes.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  My judgment shall be swift

  Your punishment shall not

  - Meutier

  I stumble backward into the great wall of Vallon, desperate to avoid eye contact with this woman with Penelope’s eyes. He shoves me ever so not gently off of him.

  “Great. Are you chipped?” Vallon manhandles her, twisting her so he can see behind both ears. Penelope’s eyes are wide and watery in this woman’s head.

  Vallon doesn’t notice or ignores it. “Come on, don’t be shy. I’m sure you won’t be the only one.”

  A shuffle echoes through the shrinking rec room as various hands go up to cover splotchy ears, or necks crick to one side.

  “N… no.” Her voice isn’t like Penelope’s. At least, not how I hear – heard it. Of course I don’t still hear her some nights when I’m on the edge of sleep.