Off Planet

by Aileen Erin

  Like that old story I’d read about Alice and her rabbit hole, I disappeared into a dream world. Time melted away, and my mind drifted to my hopes and my nightmares.

  I was thrown back into jail. Beaten in alleyways. Shoved out of jets. Thrown into execution arenas. Pain ripped through my body as I died in my dreams, screaming for release from this hell, and then my mind would shift, and the images would change to Mom being captured. Of Roan being murdered by a group of Rojos. I burned to death as Abaddon’s air turned to fire in my lungs, my blood boiling as I begged for death to save me.

  I dreamed of the colonies falling into destruction. Of war between humans and Aunare. Of worlds being destroyed by lucole bombs. And of being powerless to stop any of it.

  Of my father hating me. Denying any help. I’d drop to my knees, begging him to save the humans, but he would back away from me. Telling me that I was too human to be anything but garbage to him. His abandonment drove a dagger through my heart, shattering it again and again as the nightmare replayed.

  Of Declan and his soft kiss. His aching slap. Him dragging me into an execution arena while I pleaded with him that he was supposed to help me. That he’d promised everything would be okay. But his face would morph into his brother’s, and I’d feel his slimy hands reaching into my underwear again and again.

  And when I was at my worst—sobbing in my sleep, begging for it to end—the sound of Lorne’s voice would come to coax me from my full-blown panic.

  And everything would change.

  Lorne was the air I needed to breathe.

  The soft sound of waves sliding onto shore would soothe my tormented soul. The sun warmed me, and in a flash I’d be on a beach. An Aunare boy walking toward me. I couldn’t see his face, but I knew it was Lorne. At least I hoped it was Lorne. I felt the sand fall between my fingertips as I built a sandcastle. He’d laugh beside me, telling me that it was lopsided, and I’d tell him to shut up or I was going to make him eat it.

  His laugh was a balm on my panicked soul.

  Those were the dreams I didn’t want to end.

  I would climb rocks with Lorne. Practice weapon training. On a soft carpet he would read me a story about adventures across the galaxy. There I felt safe and peaceful, living in a home I couldn’t remember—the one my mother had wiped from my brain. I’d get the feeling of everything being okay. That life wouldn’t always be so hard.

  And then Declan would come, dragging me from the beach back into the execution arena, and any reprieve that I got from the nightmares would fade into nothingness.

  One dream flowed into the next without pause over and over again.

  I couldn’t do anything but listen to the sounds of my own muffled screaming echoing in the cryo chamber.

  If anyone was there to hear me, no one ever came to help.

  No one shook me awake.

  I was trapped in the hell of my own mind for two weeks.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I was aware enough to feel the shift in the ship’s vibrations when it started to slow. I knew we were close but wasn’t sure how much longer it’d be. Each second I stayed in the cryo chamber felt like a year. I tried to stay awake and not slip back into my waking nightmares, but holding on made my heart hammer and my skin glow like lit gold. I couldn’t take much more of this. I needed out of my coffin before I went completely insane.

  I started counting. Before I got to one hundred the patch grew hot, and the tingling began to spread again.

  When I’d first gotten into the cryo chamber, I’d hated the tingling, but after feeling nothing for so long, I welcomed it.

  Thank God. At least this part was nearly over.

  The first thing I could move was my lips. “I’m okay. I’m okay. I’m okay.” I said it over and over. I wasn’t sure if anyone could hear me or if this would somehow reveal me as Aunare, but in that moment, all I could think about was getting the hell out of the chamber.

  By the time the glass slid open, I was in control enough to fling my body out. I hit the floor with a painful thump and tried to sit up but couldn’t. I lay spread eagle on the floor and stared up at the ceiling. My limbs weren’t totally working yet, but at least I was awake. The very real pain of my body hitting the ground told me that well enough, and that meant this particular nightmare was over.

  The relief I felt was so strong that it took me a second to register that I was now out of the chamber and my skin was still glowing. That had to stop before anyone else came into the room. I took slow, measured breaths, trying to calm down. I couldn’t hear anyone else moving around, but that didn’t mean someone wouldn’t show up any second.

  “Hit the ground too hard.” Ahiga’s speech was groggy and slurred. “Should’a stayed in the chamber.”

  I wasn’t sure where the nurse was, but it was probably for the best that she hadn’t seen my cryo chamber exit. “I needed out of there.”

  “If you were claustrophobic, you could’ve told the nurse.” His speech was already sounding better. “She’d have added a bit of relaxant to the wake-up cycle.”

  No amount of relaxant was going to fix what was wrong with me. “I’m not claustrophobic.” At least I hadn’t been, but after solitary and my reaction in the elevator and now two weeks in that chamber, maybe I was.

  “Then why’d you jump out?”

  I couldn’t answer that without giving myself away, so I stayed perfectly silent. I licked my lips. They were dry and cracked, and I would kill for a glass of ice-cold water.

  I brushed my sweaty hair off my forehead, and my arms shook with the effort. The tingling was fading, but it left weakness in its wake. I wasn’t sure my legs would hold me, and that was worse than the tingling. I didn’t like feeling weak. Especially not here in a SpaceTech ship. Especially not now on Abaddon. The glow was gone, but I was far from being okay.

  But there was nothing I could do while I waited for the drugs to process out of my body.

  “How you hanging in?” Ahiga asked.

  “I’m hanging.” Barely.

  The urge to run beat against my mind, but I wasn’t certain I had enough energy to get up off the ground, let alone run. I didn’t want to be here or feel this way or have these chemicals in my body. My skin started glowing again, and I squeezed my eyes closed, taking another measured breath. Inhaling until my lungs burned and letting it out painfully slow.

  Declan had mentioned that thinking of happy places and times helped when doing the breathing exercises. So I did my best and I pictured myself on a warm, sunny beach. The one I’d dreamed of, with perfectly white sand and crystal-clear water. I could almost hear the water lapping against the shore. I could smell the salt in the air.

  I took another breath and happily sank into my imagination.

  “Amihanna.” Lorne’s voice rolled through me.

  My eyes flew open as I gasped and looked around. It’d sounded like Lorne was here in this room, but he wasn’t.

  And damn it. My skin was glowing brighter, and I had to make it stop.

  The stupid drugs really must not be out of my system yet if I was still dreaming about him.

  “Maité?” Ahiga asked.

  I swallowed hard. So much for visualizing a happy place. “Did you hear anything?”

  “Besides you breathing weird? No.”

  Which meant I’d hallucinated. Fantastic. “Sorry.”

  The cold, hard floor was nice against my sweaty skin. There was more than enough space for me to lie comfortably between the cryo chambers, and I was going to stay there until I got my shit together.

  I focused on the wins. I made it to Abaddon in one piece and with my sanity mostly intact. I was still breathing, and that meant that I was surviving. One day at a time.

  I stared up at the gray ceiling as I focused again on the breathing that Declan had taught me. After a few minutes, my skin was back to normal, and I was pretty sure I could sit up, but I couldn’t walk. That didn’t matter though. Without Ahiga, I didn’t have any idea where to go. So
I’d wait. At least I was out of the chamber.

  The nurse strode in and scoffed when she saw me lying on the floor. “If you’d told me you were claustrophobic, I would’ve added a relaxant to your wake-up.”

  Ahiga let out a low laugh. “That’s what I said.”

  “I’m not…” I started to say, but the nurse was already walking out again.

  It took an hour for me to gain full use of my body, but Ahiga had been good to go ten minutes after coming out of stasis. He watched me very carefully while he waited for me to be able to move, bit by bit. When I finally stood up, his sigh was audible.

  “I’m a survivor.” And a di Aetes never gives up.

  “I wouldn’t expect anything less.”

  Ahiga didn’t ask me any questions, but he knew something had gone wrong with my stasis. The guarded way he was watching me told me that clearly enough. There was nothing he could do about it now, but I was never, ever going to try deep space travel the human way again.

  My first few steps felt like I was walking on feet made of jelly-filled plastic bags. I started to stumble, but Ahiga grabbed me before I face-planted.

  “Thanks.”

  “No problem.” He hooked his arm under my shoulders and helped me stay upright as we walked through the ship. At first, we moved slower than when I’d guided Ahiga across the catwalks, but after a few minutes, my feet started to get more feeling in them. Every step was a little stronger than the one before it. When we got to the exit, he was barely holding my weight anymore.

  Ahiga leaned close to my ear. “You going to be okay from here out? Better if you show a strong front. They’ll be watching.”

  I knew all about faking it. I could suck up any signs of weakness until I got to a spot where I could rest. I wasn’t sure what was going to be on the other side of that door, but I had to be ready for anything. I stepped away from him. “How long will I be like this?”

  “For anyone else, I’d say they’d be fine in an hour, but I’m not sure how long it’ll last for you. The drugs should process out of your system in twenty-four hours. If you’re not better by then, we’ll figure something out.”

  I gave him a small nod, hoping he was right. That this overall dead weight feeling in my body would fade and that I’d feel more like myself soon. Because I wasn’t sure I could take it much longer.

  He entered a code in the panel beside the door, and it slowly opened. Heat rolled into me, and I stumbled back a step. One second in it and my tank top was already sticking to me. I pulled it away from my skin and shot a look at Ahiga.

  “We’re on a volcano planet. Better get used to the heat quick,” Ahiga said.

  For some idiotic reason, I’d been expecting to see the surface of Abaddon when I stepped out of the ship. Which made no sense. But I was kind of disappointed that I didn’t even get a glimpse of it. The entire ship was swallowed up by the windowless hangar. It could easily hold downtown Albuquerque inside of it, skyscrapers and all.

  This was going to be my new home, and it was important that I took note of everything I could. I was in a whole new place, and surviving meant observing everything I could about my surroundings. So I kept my eyes open as I stepped out of the ship and onto the catwalk.

  Even one foot out of the ship and it was suffocatingly hot. “Is the AC running?”

  Ahiga grunted, pointing to rows on rows of square blocks along the walls of the hold. “Those units are going all the time, but they just let our ship in. It’ll take a couple hours for the hot air to circulate out and bring the temp back down. And by then, another ship will be here. So mostly it stays this way. It’s only 107 right now.”

  That was a pretty specific temperature. “How do you know?”

  He pointed to a vidscreen by the large bay doors. It said the temp in bright red numbers.

  “Right.” I took another step before reaching back for Ahiga and pulling him onto the catwalk with me. An alarm went off, and I froze. “What’s that? Did I do something wrong?”

  Ahiga muttered a few curses and then looked down. “Nah. See those guys there? In the heat suits?”

  From up here, everyone looked tiny, but I saw a group of guys standing by one of the doors. They were covered head to toe in black suits—giant boots covered their feet, helmets on their heads, and what had to be oxygen on their backs. “Yeah.”

  “They’re about to open the doors. The fans and cooling will combat it, but they’re not miracle workers. Dangerous as fuck to go out there. The ground can be a lot even for the suits. It’s volatile. No one usually goes outside, unless everything’s about to go to hell and—”

  Cooling systems started blasting the doors, sending a cloud of steam around the men waiting for them to open.

  “What do you think’s going on?”

  “Dunno. Could be a problem on the surface or some repairs to the outside or they could just be doing some extreme training.”

  I watched as the guys disappeared and the alarm stopped.

  “You ready?” Ahiga asked.

  No. Not even a little bit. “I guess. Where are we headed?”

  “Straight across.”

  “Perfect.” As I walked forward, still holding Ahiga’s hand, I glanced down at the people below. A group ran a weaving path through all the workers. “Why would they choose this place to work out? There have got to be cooler places to exercise on the base.”

  “This is a base. We train military personnel here, and—” Ahiga jerked to a stop.

  When I glanced back, he was staring straight up at the ceiling. The look of pure misery on his face made me laugh. “You looked down again, didn’t you?”

  “Your fault.” The cold look he gave me was enough to frighten the toughest of guys, but it wasn’t working on me. Not when I was holding his hand to walk him across the catwalk like a little kid.

  “Sorry,” I said, but the laugh felt earned. I needed it.

  As we reached the end of the catwalk, Ahiga let go of my hand and moved in front of me. “This way.” A couple of turns later and we were in front of a stairwell.

  “Are you using a chip to navigate in here?” I could buy him knowing his way around the ship. I assumed most cargo ships were laid out the same way, but this base was supposed to be different than most due to the mining and the fact that it was built on fiery hot, molten lava.

  If Ahiga was annoyed by my constant stream of questions, he didn’t act it. “Nah. I was here a couple years ago to work with an IAF group. Spent the longest ninety days of my life running drills and taking the guys out on the surface for twenty-minute training sessions. Swore I’d never come back.”

  “Should I apologize?” It wasn’t my fault, but this situation was shitty for more than just me.

  “Things change.” He shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. This isn’t as bad as some other places I’ve been. Like NR3. That planet and its constant quakes…” His eyebrows rose, disappearing into the tattoos on his forehead. “Trust me. I’ll take the heat to that place any day.”

  I wasn’t sure which colony he was talking about, but SpaceTech kept so much information confidential that I wasn’t surprised I hadn’t heard of it.

  As we went down flight after flight of stairs, the fitted tank top felt like it was melting onto my back. I wiped a drop of sweat from my brow with my hand. “Jesus. You’d think they’d have an elevator in this place.”

  “They don’t like any extra machinery in this part of the base that they’d have to keep cool.”

  “Don’t they have a way to keep it cool? I mean, it’s not like fuel is a concern here, right? With all the access to lucole?” Not even SpaceTech could be this cheap.

  “You’d think, but that’s not the case. SpaceTech rations every ounce of it.”

  Well, I was clearly mistaken. SpaceTech was exactly that cheap.

  Ahiga waved for me to keep moving. “We’re going to miss mealtime.”

  “Sorry.” I had a lot of questions, but if Ahiga was hungry, they could wait.

>   The only people we passed as we walked through the base had STIAF—SpaceTech Interplanetary Armed Forces—in big gray letters printed across their navy tees.

  “What’s with all the IAF?” I knew it was a base, but it was mostly for mining. Not for training. At least that’s what I thought. “It’s not like anyone could steal from this base. It’s in the center of SpaceTech territory. And no one can make a run for it, even if they got control of one of the mining ships.” The mining ships were meant for short-range at best.

  And—as far as I knew—the Aunare didn’t have any interest in the lucole. They had much cleaner, more efficient fuel sources. Fuel that they’d shared with some of the other species out there, but not with the Earthers. I was sure they had their reasons though. Why give an evil corporation more power?

  “Better safe than sorry is one of the Murtaghs’ favorite sayings. Without the lucole SpaceTech stores on the base, they would be outgunned against the Aunare. With war coming… Gotta be prepared. He’s increased IAF presence on the base and in ships around the whole system.”

  “Right.” He had a point. If I were my father, Abaddon would the first place I’d destroy. Dismantling the source of SpaceTech’s fuel and weapons was a no-brainer. Still, it was in the middle of SpaceTech’s territory. It’d be hard to get here without causing a war. But if my father knew I was here, he couldn’t attack the base with any long-range weapons.

  Maybe that was Jason’s plan? Having me here definitely secured the base. At least until my dad decided to come get me himself and blow it up on his way out the door.

  The more I thought about it, the more questions and theories I had. I couldn’t rule anything out yet.

  The only thing I knew was that Jason had a plan. That war was coming. And that somehow—some way—I was going to have to survive here long enough to find a way to stop it.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Ahiga led me through the base. I’d seen a few doors—each marked with letters and numbers—but no windows. Each hallway led to more hallways. And as far as I could tell, the only way outside was through the cargo bay. I was going to dub SpaceTech’s design style as coffin-chic if this kept up.