The Xillian Trilogy (The Xillian Rebellion)

by Maia Tanith

  “You’re not a bad person, Azr,” I say. “You don’t need to take me home to clear your conscience.”

  He grins at me. “Look who wants to compliment me all of a sudden? What happened to the woman telling me off about everything?”

  I shrug. “You’re not bad. You think you are. I guess, I thought you were too. Maybe you’re foolhardy. You take a lot of risks. But you’re not a bad person.”

  “Thanks, Delia. Still, I’m taking you back to earth. This is not your mess to clean up. Please don’t try to argue with me. I’m too tired for it right now.”

  I sit down in the chair next to him and reach my hand out to him. After a second, he reaches his hand back, and grips mine tightly. I feel my eyes burning and there are words stuck in the back of my throat that I desperately want to say, but don’t know how.

  Instead I look out the window in front of me and watch as the stars zoom past. We’re going home. I should feel elated, relieved, happy.

  But my chest is tight.

  I don’t feel happy.

  I feel empty.

  Hours pass, and I must have dozed off eventually, as I’m woken by a low curse from Azr.

  “What is it?” I sit upright and stare outside. Nothing but the beautiful starscape in front of us. Azr though is looking at a small screen in front of him, by the controls. “I’ve fucked up again. I wasn’t paying attention. We’ve got a ship coming up. They’ve probably seen us, too.”

  “Who is it?”

  “No one we want to get close to,” he mutters grimly. “It’s a slave ship.”

  My spine stiffens. “Slavers? Have they come from Earth?”

  “Judging by their trajectory, they’re heading there, or they’ve just been somewhere else close by.”

  I turn to him, my stomach roiling. “Have they got people on board? Innocent people?”

  He meets my eyes. “I’d be willing to bet my life on it. Not that it’s worth much these days.”

  “Azr-”

  He cuts me off with a sigh, “I know what you’re going to say.”

  I hold my breath. Part of me knows I have no right to ask for another favor.

  A bigger part of me is willing to scream until I get my way.

  “And perhaps you’re right.”

  I blink. That’s not what I was expecting.

  “You—you want to go in and save the humans on there?” It’s too much to hope for.

  Yet he looks back at me with bright eyes. Some of the life seems to have returned to his face. “If they have humans on board, we may as well take them back to earth along with you. Fuck it, why not? If I’m going to do something good, I might as well become a martyr.” He chuckles. “Plus that ship is a whole lot nicer than this one. If I can steal this ship first, perhaps I’ll get lucky and be able to catch up with my dear weapons. Not to mention slavers usually keep a decent amount of credit on board, too.”

  I roll my eyes. Always an ulterior motive with him. Still—him actually wanting to do something nice for someone aside from himself is a nice change.

  Or for me. He’s always been good to me.

  His cheery self is also a lot better company than the dismal shadow he’s been since the collar was put on him.

  With the push of a few buttons, he changes course, steering us right into the slavers path.

  “I’ve got so little to lose now, it’s almost freeing,” he says. “I’m quite excited about doing a good deed, you know.”

  He fiddles with a few of the controls and a loud beeping fills the room.

  I jump, looking around me for a fire or something.

  “Relax, dear earthling. I’m sending a distress signal.” He fiddles with the controls again and the beeping inside the room stops. “That’s better. I set the internal one by accident.” He looks intently at his screen. “I’m taking they’ll think we’re an ignorant merchant asking for help. They’ll let us dock. Probably to try and steal from us and kill us, but hey, what’s a reward without a little risk?”

  I swallow.

  Azr’s ruse must have worked, as a second later a voice comes through, crackling slightly. The voice sends shivers down my spine. I can tell by that guttural noise that it’s one of the hyena men. “Signal received. What’s the emergency?”

  Azr speaks with a shaky voice. “Permission to dock requested. Issues with air supply. I’m unable to fix myself.”

  He’s a fabulous actor. He even has me worried for a second.

  There’s silence for a second. “What goods are you carrying, merchant?”

  “Ciabaans. And a human slave,” Azr replies with a wink at me. “I can’t give you any of ciabaans. It’s not mine to give. But I’ll trade you the slave for assistance. She’s mine.”

  I punch him lightly on the shoulder and mouth “not funny” to him.

  There’s a pause. I can see the slave ship ahead of us now. It’s huge—much larger than the little rust bucket the lizard man sold us. As little as I know about space travel, it certainly looks in much better condition than ours, too. It’s shaped like a triangle, all sleek and sharp angles, while the ship we’re in is more of a misshapen cube.

  “Permission to dock granted.”

  Azr cuts off the communicator and steers our ship to theirs.

  I am shaking inside with sheer terror. “So, how do we do this?” Despite my effort to sound brave, my voice comes out in a squeak.

  Azr takes his hands off the controls for a moment. “They’ll be expecting to find a sick pilot and a human slave. They’ll be rubbing their hands with glee, thinking they’ve just made a lucky capture. We need to get the jump on them.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  If I am going to be a pirate, I am going to do it properly. If there is a right way to be a pirate, then I will learn it.

  Besides, pirating a slave ship is not a crime. Not in my books, anyway.

  “Nothing. Stand around and look terrified.”

  That will be easy enough. I am terrified.

  “Slavers only carry a small crew. A pilot, and two or three guards to act as co-pilot if needed and to manage the cargo. If we can knock out the first set of guards, then we can take the pilot by surprise and the ship will be ours.”

  He makes it sound so simple.

  In the end, it is simple.

  We dock to the larger ship and seal our hatchways together.

  Azr waits off to one side, stun gun at the ready.

  I stand on the other side, hands clasped together and looking meek. Well, I’m aiming for meek. Azr tells me that I look like a constipated goss, and I have to bite the inside of my cheek to stop myself from laughing hysterically.

  When the door opens, I give a little shriek of fright.

  Azr grins and gives me a thumbs up sign

  I square my shoulders. I hadn’t squeaked on purpose, but if Azr thinks it’s a good thing, then I’m okay with it.

  Two of those hyena-men, the slavers, come in with their guns drawn. Even though I know their history now, I still think they are disgusting. Being oppressed doesn’t give you the right to oppress others.

  Azr raises his sun gun and shoots the first. He drops like a stone.

  His companion turns towards Azr, startled, but Azr drops him, too.

  It all happens so quickly that I hardly have time to blink. “You didn’t even greet them,” I say in shock. It didn’t happen like it does in the movies.

  He looks at me as if I’m demented. “As I said, the trick is to drop them before they can drop you. Saying a friendly hello would wreck that plan, don’t you think?”

  It all seems a bit cold-blooded to me, but then again, two of the slavers are down and we don’t have a scratch on us.

  Together, we drag them into the crew quarters. Well, Azr does the dragging while I stand lookout.

  One of them begins to stir. Azr gives him another long blast with the stun gun. He hesitates for a moment, and then blasts the other one again as well. “That will keep them down and out for lo
ng enough. Now for the pilot.”

  We creep our way through the hatchway and into the slave ship.

  It’s quiet. Too quiet. Maybe all the slaves are asleep. Or still knocked out from whatever they used to capture us.

  The memory of being dragged from my home makes me want to go back to the slavers we have already captured and kick them both.

  Hard.

  In the nuts.

  That would give them a taste of the fear and pain I have experienced since being captured.

  I doubt it would help them to see the error of their ways.

  It would probably hurt my toes.

  And anyway, we have a ship to steal. Maybe I can give them just a little goodbye kick after we steal their ship and dump them on our old second-hand flying toaster.

  So I follow Azr to the command room.

  The pilot doesn’t even look up from his controls as we enter. “Have you secured the ship?” he barks at us in his hoarse voice.

  Azr closes the distance between them with a few large strides.

  At the last moment, the pilot senses something is wrong and lifts his head.

  Too late.

  Azr zaps him with the stun gun and steps back as his eyes roll into his head and he slides bonelessly to the floor.

  He’s extra heavy, this hyena man, with a thick layer of fat on top of his muscle. It takes us both to wrestle him out of his chair and through the ship’s corridors to the hatch. I have to hold my breath for most of it. He smells like stale sweat and leftovers that have gone rotten in the back of the fridge.

  Azr tosses him through the hatchway, grunting with the effort, and then wipes the sweat off his hands onto his pants. “He’s used to a bit much fine living, if you ask me. I’ve come across lighter heffasauri.”

  “What’s that?” It seems the more I learn about space, the less I realize I know.

  “I’ll explain later,” he says. There’s a chirp in his voice I haven’t heard since we managed to free ourselves of Dezar.

  I hope it’s not from knocking out the two hyena men, and rather from the prospect of having a new ship to fly.

  “Let’s find the slaves first,” he continues.

  “People. Not slaves,” I point out.

  “I suppose no one has bought them yet. Not like you. Technically, may I remind you, that a certain, very good looking Kargan gallant purchased you for what some might say an extortionately over-valued price.”

  I roll my eyes, but my mouth turns up at the corners despite myself. “It was probably the best deal you’ve ever made,” I counter.

  We’ve reached the steep stairs that take us down into what looks like a darkened cellar. I swallow, before striding on ahead of Azr. A light turns on automatically as we enter. I only need to take a few steps down to see that ahead of us, in the wire cages that the slavers evidently use as holding pens, are all empty.

  “Shit. Double shit. We’re too late.” Tears have sprung up out of nowhere to burn my eyelids. We missed them. A whole shipload of innocent people, like me and Faye and Hannah. All taken to a horrible death at the games. Or worse. I stomp my foot on the floor. “We need to ask them where they’ve taken them. We have to do something.”

  Azr gently pushes past me and down the last few steps. He walks up to the cages and looks inside. He sniffs at the floor, then turns and looks around the room, stroking his chin.

  He walks back to the first cage and looks inside again. He reaches his arm through the wire and picks up a bucket sitting in the corner of the cage, tipping it upside down. It’s empty.

  He stands up and walks back to me. He puts his hands on my shoulders and looks into my eyes. “I think that you and I have done more than you think, Delia. No one has been in these cages for a long time, if ever. It’s all freshly cleaned. No waste, no smells that I’d associate with a holding pen of humans. No food scraps. And this is a newly built ship. It’s probably on its maiden voyage.”

  I peer up at him, confused.

  “Delia, they were on their way to Earth. Not on their way back. We’ve stopped them before they got there.”

  I let out a breath of relief. “Do you honestly think so?”

  He nods. “I wouldn’t lie to you about this. I know how important it is to you. But I can be pretty sure we’ve stopped them before they made it there. Don’t beat yourself up. We’re not too late to save anyone. We’ve just saved them before they even knew they needed saving.”

  I fling my arms around him waist and bury my face in his chest. “Thank god. Oh, thank god.”

  He lets me stay there for a second, but then I feel his body stiffen, as though he’s remembered he doesn’t want to be close to me.

  I pull myself away. “What’s the plan now?” I ask, as I turn to walk up out of this horrible room. It might not smell, but just knowing what it was intended to be used for creeps me out.

  “First thing is to check the ship’s log. We can make sure my guess is right. Then we transfer the fuel over and disconnect that old rust bucket. Then it’s home time for you. A lot faster and more comfortably too, I might add.”

  I nod. My body is still shaking with adrenalin, from Azr shooting the hyena men, then the prospect of finding a room of kidnapped women, to realizing we’ve stopped the slavers in time. I can’t focus on the thought of going home now.

  Home. Pushman’s Portaloos. Spreadsheets. Greg. They all seem so far away. Like they were in a different lifetime.

  Greg. Hmmmm. It seems so long ago that I was looking forward to going on a date with him. That I was even thinking of marrying him, if my life continued on its predictable path.

  Even if Azr gets me back home and I can slot back into my old life as if nothing has happened, I’m not sure that I will ever feel that way about Greg again. Kind, tubby, balding Greg.

  I don’t think I can settle for him when I have seen all the stars in the universe rushing past my spaceship window.

  If I ever told him about my kidnapping, he would think I was hallucinating. If I insisted on sticking to the truth, he’d think I had gone crazy and send me off to a shrink or section me. Aliens don’t figure in Greg’s world. They simply don’t exist.

  I know that. That was my world, too, not so long ago.

  We head back towards the control room where Azr shot the pilot. The room is a mystery to me. Knobs, dials, flashing lights cover a large desk, with screens in front of the pilot’s seat covered with multicolored lines and squiggles and dots that move. I want to be helpful, and check the ship’s log for Azr, but I might as well be in the middle of China Town. It’s all written in a new, confusing, language to me.

  At least, I assume the squiggles and diagrams have some meaning to someone.

  Once, when I was a teen, a friend of mine took me fishing. Her parents had a boat with a little screen they called a fish finder on it. It was supposed to tell them if fish were under the boat. Even that simple little screen was enough to confuse me—colored lines and dots that look like a child had scribbled on the screen apparently meant a school of fish.

  I was fascinated by it and asked her dad a million questions about how it worked. He tried to explain, but either he wasn’t so good at explaining or I wasn’t so good at understanding, or both. I never did figure out how it worked.

  Sadly I’d been moved to a new foster home not long after. I never got to see that friend or be taken out on their boat again.

  This control room is a thousand times more complex than that little fish finder.

  The window out into space catches my attention again. This window is larger, with clearer glass. If I didn’t know there was glass in front of me, I’d think I could just take a step forwards and find myself falling into space among the stars.

  Azr doesn’t glance outside. His attention is taken by the screens in front of him. He clicks through them all, pushing buttons and tapping things with an intense gaze. I see his jaw twitch and watch as his eyes dart from screen to screen with a rapid speed. He clenches his fist. “It can’t
be,” he mutters.

  “What? What is it?” I lean over his shoulder, but all I see are messages in a language I don’t understand, and a map which looks like it shows a bunch of insects flying around a room.

  Finally, he pulls back from the screen. His face is tight with fury. “I have good news and bad news for you, Delia. Good news is I was right. This is the ship’s maiden voyage, and we’ve intercepted them on their way to Earth. We’ve just stopped them picking up an entire ship full of new slaves.”

  A heavy stone disappears from my stomach and I feel weightless. I jump with joy and punch the air in a gesture totally unlike anything I’ve ever done before. “Yes!”

  We did it. We saved the slaves, even before they were slaves.

  “Before you get too excited, I need to ask you—is your offer to help me still valid?” His voice is clipped.

  I gulp. “You mean to help you before we go back to Earth? Did you find something in the logs?”

  His eyes meet mine, wide, intense. There’s an anger simmering underneath that scares me. Still, my offer was and still is serious. I can’t make him take me home when I owe him so much, and he might be killed if he’s delayed on his mission due to me.

  And it’s not just that, I want to help him. Once I am back on Earth, my life will go back to how it used to be. I will never get to ride in a spaceship again. I will never see the stars up close. I will never visit a different world.

  I will be earthbound.

  Stable.

  Predictable

  I’m not so sure that I want those things so much anymore.

  I want to spend a bit more time with him before I go home.

  “Yes,” I say, and mean it. Sure I’m scared about what it might mean, but I can deal with scared. “I need to repay you, to help you like you helped me.”

  “Thank you. Because I need to delay your trip home. I’ve just found something on the ship’s log. Something that changes everything.”

  Chapter 8

  Azr

  My heart is hammering in my chest. There’s a spark of anger that has been flickering away inside me for a long time now. A spark that has kept me going through the long lonely nights of solo piloting a ship. Through the long lonely evenings sitting in spaceport bars, listening to bartenders’ gossip. Though the long, lonely days of exile from my plant and from my people.