Ascending (The Vardeshi Saga Book 1)

by Meg Pechenick

  The day after my conversations with Hathan and Saresh, the first messages from our respective homeworlds began to arrive. The ones from Earth were exactly as strident as I would have predicted. I could understand the Council’s panic. Their last message from me, sent immediately after the confiscation of my tech, had been freighted with alarm signals. After two weeks of radio silence, they had received one characteristically terse message from Hathan himself—apparently recorded while Saresh and I were both unconscious in the medical clinic—summarizing the explosion, the confrontation, the fact that a firearm had been discharged with injuries to both me and a Vardeshi crewman, and the subsequent removal of Vekesh from command. Councillor Seidel’s reply was equally terse, but every word rang with cold fury. He wanted a video message from me confirming the truth of the previous account, incorporating high-resolution footage of the damage to my arm, and he wanted it now. The Council was poised to terminate the exchange program. If they failed to receive immediate and satisfactory evidence of my well-being, they would do so without hesitation. This fact had been communicated to the Echelon. Every ship carrying a human passenger was currently awaiting the order to turn around.

  I sent a reply at once. Despite a cursory effort to make myself presentable, I knew I looked tired, and I hadn’t yet mastered the art of styling my hair while favoring my right arm. I didn’t think the Council would care about those things. Striving to be as concise as Hathan himself had been, I told them simply that everything he had told them was true and that I was well and safe and receiving good medical care. I had removed my bandages, and I panned the flexscreen over my arm to provide the requested close-up footage. Daskar had noted the signs of healing, and I knew the physicians on Earth would too. I promised to send more information in a written report that would follow shortly. I sent love to my parents and assured them—and, with a couple of well-placed covert signals, Tristan—that I was shaken but more or less intact. I dispatched the message and had Saresh confirm for me that it was gone. The last thing we needed at such a tenuous point in Earth-Vardeshi relations was another technical glitch.

  When I had dealt with the highest-priority messages from Earth, I moved on to the transmission that awaited me from the Echelon. In it, a gray-haired woman who might have been a cousin of Ziral’s offered me the profound apologies of the Vardeshi people for the suffering inflicted on me by one of their own. The Vardeshi had been distressed to learn of the conduct of former Khavi Vekesh and horrified that it had culminated in an attempt on my life. A full investigation had been launched; members of Vekesh House were already being questioned on Vardesh Prime. Of more immediate relevance to me were the hearings scheduled to take place on Arkhati shortly after the Pinion’s arrival there. The spokeswoman explained that my role in the hearings would be minimal. Vekesh’s words before the shooting had been tantamount to a confession, and my innocence had furthermore been established by a Vox. I would not be subjected to another Listening. My participation would be limited to one brief interview to confirm the facts of the case. After that, I would be free to dictate my own path. If I wished to return to Earth, a ship would be provided for me. I could also continue on my original mission to Vardesh Prime. If I wished to trade places with another human participant in the exchange, or join one of them at his or her posting, I was free to do that as well. The Echelon would facilitate any course of action I selected. All I had to do was choose.

  I sent back a brief and awkwardly worded acknowledgment thanking the Echelon for its sympathy and stating my willingness to comply with the hearings. As for the offer that had been extended to me, I said, I honestly didn’t know what I wanted to do next. I repeated my message to Seidel, aloud this time: I needed time to think. I hoped it would be acceptable to defer my response at least until the Pinion arrived at Arkhati. I didn’t think I would be ready to make a decision before then.

  Message sent, I went to the medical clinic to solicit Daskar’s help in replacing the bandages on my arm. I found Zey there as well, sitting on one of the beds with the top half of his uniform undone, his undershirt pulled up to expose his ribs. Daskar was examining a contusion of a livid grayish-mauve that bloomed alarmingly dark against his pale skin. At length she straightened. “It’s not getting any worse, at least. Do your ribs still hurt?”

  “Only when I breathe,” Zey said cheerfully.

  “I’ll give you something for the pain. Come back tomorrow. And tell your brother to come see me.”

  Zey pulled his shirt down and tucked it into the waist of his uniform. “Which one?”

  “You know which one,” Daskar said irritably.

  As she went to find fresh bandages, I said, “A couple of bruises, Zey?”

  He shrugged, then winced. “Nothing’s broken. It could have been a lot worse.”

  I had been avoiding picturing the actual mechanics of the fight that had left those marks. Now, involuntarily, I saw Zey paired with Vekesh again as they had been toward the end of the ranshai lesson I had watched. There was no question as to where the advantage lay. Vekesh was a foot taller than Zey and correspondingly broader; he must outweigh him by half. In terms of skill, too, he was the clear superior. He had been the instructor, Zey the novice. I pictured again those unnervingly swift exchanges of blows. Even in practice, Vekesh had been a terrifying opponent. What had it been like to face him in earnest? I hadn’t been meaning to speak the words aloud, but I couldn’t help myself. “How did you beat him?”

  Zey didn’t seem troubled by the question. “I caught him off guard. And there were two of us. And I think Vekesh was pretty rattled. We don’t use weapons, ever, and he had just shot two people. He was distracted. Enough for Hathan to get the upper hand. And ranshai fights don’t tend to last very long.”

  I shivered. “I believe it.”

  Zey waited while Daskar finished taping my new bandages in place, then walked with me to the mess hall. Lunch was finishing up when we arrived. I hesitated just slightly in the doorway, dismayed to see the tables so crowded. Then I raised my head and forced myself to step forward. I was innocent. And now everyone knew it. It wasn’t going to be like before. Even so, I went straight through to the galley without meeting anyone’s eyes. I wasn’t ready to be the center of attention, positive or otherwise. As it happened, I needn’t have worried; while humans would have felt the need to make some kind of scene, the Vardeshi shared my aversion to exuberant public reconciliations. Their manner of making amends was more personal.

  While I was standing in the galley, hunting through a cupboard I was sure had had instant pancake mix in it a week ago, Sohra came up to me. Without saying a word, she took my right hand in both of hers, pressed my palm to her forehead, and bowed her head. I stood perfectly still. I had no idea what was happening. After a little while she tightened her fingers on mine, then released my hand. There were tears in her eyes. “Avery, I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry for everything.” Not until then did it dawn on me that I was receiving my first formal Vardeshi apology.

  The sight of her distress brought me immediately to the verge of tears myself. “Sohra, it wasn’t you. You didn’t do anything wrong. You don’t have anything to apologize for.”

  It took a good deal of additional reassurance to persuade her that I knew she hadn’t shunned me by choice and that, furthermore, I still counted her as a friend. Stubbornly she said, “I don't see how you can just forgive me for ignoring you for two weeks.”

  I sighed. “From what I’m hearing, those two weeks weren’t easy on anyone. I know you were just doing what you had to do.”

  Sohra was the first to offer the hand-to-forehead apology. At intermittent times during that evening and the days that followed, Ziral, Khiva, and Ahnir approached me and did the same. Daskar didn’t, nor did the Takheris, but I considered myself more or less reconciled with all of them. Vethna was conspicuous by his absence. I wasn't sure which of us was avoiding the other. Part of me was irritated. Part of me was just glad not to have to look at
him.

  I spent that day and the two that followed in a twilight state reminiscent of jet lag. The compulsion to eat or sleep came upon me at odd times, and I indulged both freely. There were, inevitably, a few urgent tasks that demanded my attention. First and most important, I had to make a full accounting of all my remaining food and gear. Two of the Pinion’s nine cargo holds had decompressed in the explosion, and one of those had housed a considerable quantity of my supplies. Thanks to the foresight of Max and his fellows at the Villiger Center, I was in no danger of starvation. However, I’d lost nearly a year’s worth of food—almost half of what I’d brought with me—and several crates of clothing and medical equipment. One of my two spare oxygenators had been among the losses. The Council had requested a prompt and complete inventory of everything that remained. To my eyes, it looked like more than enough gear to sustain me for the nine months that remained of my original mission if I elected to continue, but I didn’t know what their metric would be. If necessary, I thought, they’d delay me at Arkhati long enough for another human representative to arrive. All the Strangers had been sent with surplus gear for exactly this reason. I didn’t think the Council would recall me on the basis of provisions alone.

  When I wasn’t otherwise occupied, I colonized one of the alcoves in the lounge with a blanket and my e-reader. I cooked and ate elaborate meals in the mess hall. Zey and Sohra joined me in the lounge in the evenings. We played dice games, or Zey played snatches of songs on a mandolin he’d borrowed from Ahnir, but mostly we drank beer and talked. They filled me in on everything I had missed. Shortly after the shooting, with Vekesh restrained and Saresh and myself in the medical clinic, Hathan had called an all-hands emergency briefing to fill everyone in on the facts as they had been revealed over the course of the night. No one had questioned his assumption of command, although, Sohra said, there had been a few tense minutes at the beginning. Ziral and Khiva had been especially resistant to the thought of Vekesh’s guilt.

  “Ziral insisted on going to the medical clinic to see you and Saresh for herself. I think that convinced her. As soon as Saresh was awake again, there was another briefing. He told everyone about the Listening. Hathan had already talked about it, but no one questions the word of a Vox. And the first thing they did was get the communications system working again. If this had been some kind of Takheri coup, the last thing they would have wanted was a functional comm network.”

  Stabilizing the ship and repairing essential systems had taken the entire day and night following the explosion. Now, Sohra told me, everyone was more or less where I was: exhausted, confused, and trying to adjust simultaneously to a new chain of command and a sudden lack of purpose.

  “I don’t understand that last part,” I said.

  “Our mission was to take you to Vardesh Prime,” Zey said. “We know what the Echelon said to you. Every ship in Vardeshi space has seen that message by now. You can go anywhere and do anything you want. If you decide to go home, we’re all of out of a job. We’ll be stuck on Arkhati until we’re given new assignments. And the Fleet won’t be in any hurry to find us new postings. They’ll make us wait as long as they can.”

  “They’d punish you like that? For what Vekesh did?”

  “He almost killed you,” Sohra said. “And the alliance is hanging by a thread. We’ll be lucky if that’s the worst they do.”

  “You should see the messages they’re sending us,” Zey said darkly.

  I picked aimlessly at the label on my beer bottle. I didn’t like the thought that my friends might be punished for their commander’s mistakes. I had seen firsthand how deeply ingrained was the Vardeshi respect for authority. It had been nearly impossible for Hathan and Saresh to question the khavi’s innocence. The cultural taboo against challenging those in power had been almost insurmountable, even with the lives of the Pinion’s entire crew on the line. It was troubling to think that the Echelon intended to make examples of Fleet employees who had simply been doing what they were trained to do. There could only be one reason for making their message to me public knowledge: if I chose a different assignment, the crew of the Pinion would bear the stain of my rejection in a manner that everyone in the Fleet could see. I didn’t like what the Echelon was doing. It made me angry. I didn’t know if anger alone was enough to keep me here.

  I was walking back from the lounge one night when I heard a voice say diffidently, “Eyvri?” Recognizing it as Vethna’s, I looked up and saw with a start that he was standing right beside me. I took a step back, remembering our last corridor confrontation.

  “What is it?” I said coldly. There were any number of honorifics that would have been appropriate to the circumstances. I didn’t use any of them.

  He reached for my right hand. I jerked it back reflexively. He stared at me, his jaw working. I stared back. Then he said, “I’m here to apologize.”

  Belatedly I realized that he had been reaching for my hand in order to press it to his forehead in the ritual gesture of apology. I clenched my fist and lowered my hand to my side, well out of his reach. “So apologize.”

  Clearly irritated, he said, “That time outside the mess hall, when I grabbed your arm. It wasn’t personal, all right? Vekesh asked me to do it. He wanted you scared. He thought if you were unhappy enough, you’d quit and go home. He was going to put me back on rana if I . . . helped things along.”

  “You’ve been after me ever since I came aboard. You can’t blame that on Vekesh.”

  “Part of that was me. Part of it wasn’t. Vekesh didn’t like humans.”

  “So you were bullying me to score points with him?”

  He gave a one-sided shrug. “Like I said, part of it was me. I don’t like humans either.”

  “What the hell did humanity ever do to you? And if that’s how you feel, why bother apologizing? Because I have to say, you’re not really selling it.”

  Vethna’s mouth tightened. “Do you accept the apology or not?”

  “Do I accept it? Sure. Do I think it’s worth anything? Not after what you just told me. Unlike you, though, I actually do believe in the alliance. So let’s call it a clean slate. On both sides. I’ll give you a chance if you’ll give humanity a chance. If you’re not an asshole, stop acting like one. And one more thing.” I waited until he met my eyes. “If you ever touch me again, I’ll have you thrown off the ship. You know what the Echelon offered me. Right now they’ll give me anything I want. All I have to do is ask. So if I were you”—in a moment of inspiration, I seized on Vekesh’s self-denigrating mantra—“I’d endeavor to be more satisfactory.”

  At the end of my third day of recovery, I sent Hathan a text asking if we could meet. I was sitting at the bar in the lounge, attempting to draft a report to send to Earth. It wasn’t going well. I had watched Hathan’s original message in order to discover what gaps needed to be filled in. There were details he had omitted for the sake of brevity, things I knew would intensify the Council’s anger. They were already irate about the language restriction; Seidel had touched upon it in his message, stating in no uncertain terms that the policy violated both my rights and the spirit of the exchange. Now I had to explain the tech that had been planted in my quarters, the tribunal, the demotion, the imprisonment, and the Listening. I was worried about how they would react to those revelations. I was aiming for as neutral a tone as possible, but there was really no way to put a positive gloss on the events I was describing.

  I feared, too, that my description of a successful telepathic contact would prompt them to recall me at once, either as a research subject or as the victim of an apparent psychotic break. I didn’t dare omit the Listening from my retelling, though. There was no chance of keeping it a secret. The Echelon and the Council were in communication as frequently as the one-day turnaround time on messages between Earth and the closest starhavens would allow. To the Echelon, the Listening was the single most compelling proof of Vekesh’s guilt. Earth was going to hear about it in any case. It was entirely possible that
they already had.

  I was sitting with my head in my hand in front of a thermos of coffee and a mostly empty notebook page when Hathan arrived. I looked up, startled, when he sat down. “Oh. I didn’t—it’s not urgent. I hope I didn’t give you the wrong impression.”

  “You didn’t. I was passing by.” He indicated the notebook. “Is that your report?”

  “What there is of it.” I angled the page toward him, and as he surveyed the mess of half-finished sentences and crossed-out phrases, I studied him. The cut on his forehead had been seen to. He was wearing a clean uniform, with a different pattern of studs on the sleeve. I recognized them as the khavi’s insignia. Khavi Takheri, I thought, trying the words out in my head. They sounded a hell of a lot better than Khavi Vekesh.

  Hathan tapped the notebook page and said, “You’re trying to defend us. Don’t bother. We can speak for ourselves.”

  I’d forgotten how perceptive he was. I immediately regretted showing him the draft. “I’m not trying to defend you. I’m just trying to be precise about who was really at fault.”

  “Ultimately, that will be up to the Echelon to decide.”

  “I know, but if the Council pulls me out in a panic, it won’t matter what the Echelon says.”

  “Would they do that?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I’m trying to stall them. I need some time to think.”

  He nodded. “Good luck, then. What’s your non-urgent question?”

  “Actually,” I said tentatively, “it’s a request. I haven’t made any kind of final decision yet, but . . . I think I’d like my job back, at least until we get to the starhaven. I know you’re shorthanded, and I can help. And it might wash away some of the ugliness of the last couple of weeks. I’m sick of being an outcast. Or a victim. I’d like to be part of the crew again. I’d like a fresh start. If that’s possible. So . . . What do you think?”

  “It’s your decision.”

  “But it’s your ship. If you think it’s a bad idea, I’m not going to force it. I’ve already had one commander who didn’t like me, and we all saw how that turned out.”