by Rose, Renee
“But we can get more. We can rescue more.” My voice, thin and hopeful, cracks. “With time, we can make it happen. If not in my lifetime, then…” But I have no one to whom I can bequeath my mission.
“It’s not enough. It will never work this way. And even if we got more beings, more humans, we have no way to protect a growing group. We’d be decimated the second we were found out.” He coughs again, and this time there’s no mistaking the blood that sputters out, flecks of berry red, into his cloth.
“Father, you’re ill.” I stand up, jostling the chair. “What’s wrong?”
He balls up the fabric. Takes my hand with his other one. Gives me a look, and I go quiet. We’re silent for a long minute. The wind whistles along the eaves of the hut, the lonely cry of the dry reeds crackling in the parched creek bed.
He smiles. “Did you know there’s a race of being called the Fi? They’re similar to humans physically. About 500 light years from Jesel. They have the opposite problem of Zandia. They’ve got mostly females left; their males died in wars. Turns out human males work perfectly to mate. That’s where I sent the males.”
“So—what? We should send all our males there?”
“Yes. And females to Zandia?” He smiles. “It sounds like a good place for them.”
I hesitate. “Divide and conquer?”
He smiles. “Like a cell. Basic biology. Split in two and make more of yourself.” He sighs. “I don’t know, child. I’m old, now. More philosophical than I’ve been. Possibly prone to fancy. But I don’t think I’m wrong about this.”
I consider it. “But I came back here for you, Father. For this. For humans.” My voice breaks. “I came for you.”
He squeezes my hand. “But what you get is yourself. Take her and go.”
“But…” My mind wrenches with this new possibility. The scariest thing is that I think he’s right about all of it.
He lets my hand go, pats it once. “Go back to Zandia. And take the other females with you.”
“I can’t leave you alone.” My response is automatic, but I’m already thinking of how it could work. First of all, I’d have to get a craft capable of getting there. Rescue the women from the North group.
Or: Contact Zandia and ask them to help me do it. If they even would listen at this point. I’ve been more trouble than good. “Also they will not want me back. But I can’t leave you.”
I cross my arms, feeling nauseated.
“I’m afraid I’m the one who is leaving.” His voice is low. He holds up his hand with the balled up cloth.
“Father.” My voice catches.
“It’s all right. I’ve had a good run of it.” He smiles. “No regrets, Mirelle.”
“Maybe I could fix up a craft and get you to Talon. They have medical care, and we could barter for some medication.” My mind races and I lean forward, balling my fists. “I can steal something of value and barter—”
My father shakes his head. “This isn’t the kind of thing that can be helped.”
“But…”
“I’ll stay here.” His voice is firm. “For as long as I have left. Jesel is still known as a outflung human post, and we will surely get stray escapees. They’ll need someone to welcome them and send them on to another location. You go to Zandia.”
“What if they don’t want me back?” Emptiness breaks my ribs open and spills my organs.
“Then you convince them otherwise.” He smiles.
“What if they won’t be convinced?”
“That’s not the fighter I know.”
“I’m not the same person I used to be.”
“You’re a stronger one.” He looks approvingly at me. “Your mother would be proud, Mirelle. So would your sister.”
“I don’t know where they are.” I whisper it, and tears flow down my cheeks, sudden and hot.
I look up at the roof of the hut, as if I could see through the rough beams and then through the dusty hot sky, gaze past the stars and the nebulae, and find them. Somewhere, floating. “I never find them, no matter how far I go.”
Hot tears drip down my face. “Why did they have to go?”
My father grabs me up into his arms and I press myself into him, for the last time, maybe, because every time is always the last time. I squeeze him as hard as I think I can without breaking him.
“I don’t know.” His voice cracks. “But you’re here, and there’s no option but to keep going. Bring the flame forward, Mirelle.”
I stop crying as abruptly as I started. Touch my neck. Fuck. “I lost my necklace. Again.”
He squeezes me back. “You don’t need the necklace. The flame is inside you.”
“I know.” I take a deep, shuddering breath. I’ve been hanging onto memories and symbols of memories instead of living.
It’s time to face my future instead of dragging along the past.
Chapter 18
Lanz
“What are we going to do?” I stare at the console, although instead of stars and asteroids, I see Mirelle’s pained face. Hear her angry words.
“Let her go. It’s time.” Domm’s voice is heavy. “She needed to be free. If we love her, we must give her what she desires. No matter how much it hurts.”
“I know.” I take a breath too. “But it’s hard, knowing she’s not ours any longer. That she probably never really was.”
“She isn’t the meek little human female who wants to be kept safe at home. She needs to be out in the galaxy, fighting, saving lives.” He shakes his head. “The sooner we face that, the quicker we get past it.”
We zip past the asteroid belt and into inky dark. “We really need to focus now.”
“I know.” He snaps the words. “You’re the one still talking about her.”
I gnash my teeth, ready to punch my best friend, even though I know my anger isn’t really with him.
A ping from our panel makes both of us turn.
“Alert from Master Seke.”
Domm answers it. “Master Seke, we’re here. What is it?” His face changes as he listens to his comms device.
“She what? Where?”
My heart is a cold ball. “Mirelle is gone?”
He nods, his face pale. “She left in her own craft. The tower saw her leave but there were no fighters scrambled to follow, and the king said to let her go, and we’d deal with her later.”
“Clever timing.” I shake my head, dread and admiration warring.
“As always.” He sighs.
“Where did she go?”
“Where do you think?”
“Jesel.”
He nods. “I guess we knew we’d lose her to it sooner or later.”
The airspace suddenly feels too thick. It’s like losing everything, all over again. My parents, siblings, home. Everything I knew.
Part of me still believed once we came back, we’d be able to fix things. Now I know it’s all really over.
* * *
Mirelle
“I kind of wish you’d waited to send the males to Fi.” I stare at the junk pile, assessing what we have. And don’t have.
“I didn’t think you’d be back.” My father puts his hand on my shoulder. “The craft was best used for their future.”
“I don’t disagree. But it would sure be helpful to have it right around now.”
“Anything useful here?”
“I’ll need to check. They’re so close and so far at the same time. Maddening.”
He knows I’m talking about Mandy and Tess. “Patience and planning, Mirelle.”
“I know.” I laugh. “I’ve missed hearing you say that.”
I smile at him, and for a second it’s like old times, when my sister was alive, when our community here—although rough and primitive, was thriving and primed for the future.
“When do you want to reach out to Zandia?”
I shake my head. “Not yet. Not until I have the women. And a working communication device that can actually reach that far.” I scoff.
“If you ask for help, you could use their fortifications for the rescue. A Zandian ship could get to the north camp in seconds, destroy the necessary areas, and capture the women.”
“They wouldn’t send it.”
“But they want human women. This would be two additional ones.”
“They surely wouldn’t trust me. Besides, they’re still not venturing into this territory. The king is concerned about Ocretion pirates trying to steal a Zandian ship.”
“Fair worry.” My father coughs, but luckily it doesn’t evolve into the whole body racking fit that plagues him lately. “Although you made it in an unarmed craft.” He raises a brow. “I think they could do all right.”
“If they felt it worth their while.” I sigh. “I don’t want to risk it. If they say no…”
“Make them say yes. Give them something they can’t resist.”
“So I’d like to get the women, then go to their planet.” I think about it. “I believe they’ll grant us all asylum. Then, even if they turn me away because I’m too untrustworthy, Mandy and Tess can still have a safe home. A future.”
“How can you show them you’re not untrustworthy?”
I tap my lips. “Perhaps I could bring them something they need. Something they can’t do without.” An idea starts to form in my mind.
“And that would be?”
I take a breath. “I need to get an Ocretion pirate ship.”
“That’s a tall order.” He widens his eyes. “Impossible.”
I nod. “Indeed.” I look at my own craft, which flies well when it’s functional, but has no weapons of any kind. Not to mention that it’s damaged; at the moment, inoperable. “If I could surprise them…” I shake my head.
“We don’t have weapons here,” my father reminds me. “Or enough men to plan any ambush. And their craft are some of the most well and fiercely guarded in the galaxy.”
“I’ll sleep on it. Sometimes my best ideas come in dreams.”
My father smiles, but his eyes are sad. “Just like your mother.”
“Tell me more about her?”
I know these are our final planet rotations together, and even though there is an important mission at play, I want to soak up information about my past. Maybe it matters to nobody else in the universe, but it means something to me.
“Ah, Mirelle, she was so fierce. She learned a technique to get out of cuffs or surprise an enemy. She used this technique more than once. It was how the two of us first escaped from Ocretia, all those years ago.”
“Why did you never tell me this?”
He shakes his head. “It wasn’t time.” He coughs. “A little metal shank, just so long.” He holds up his hands. “Insert it under her fingernail. The pain was surely excruciating at first, but she said that if you could handle the pain at first, you get the freedom.”
“She’d use it to do what?”
“The cuffs at that time weren't electronic, all of them. Some had a mechanical lock she could pick with the shank. You know, like the kind used for cargo holds.”
“And that’s what she did?”
“She wore that shank in her body for months, waiting for the opportunity. It became part of her, in a sense.”
“That’s amazing. I wish I could be like her.” My voice is reverent.
He glances past me, and his face is fond. “She had patience and foresight. It was like she could see into the future, ten steps ahead. The planning she’d do.” He shakes his head. “By the time the Ocretions learned we were gone from the slave huts, she already had us so far ahead, logistically, that they could never catch up.”
“What do you mean?”
“She planned everything out meticulously. If a, then b. If c, then d. Contingencies upon contingencies. Things we never had to use, but which we had in place just in case. Such a strategist. She’d have made an amazing planetary leader.”
“She was one. For a time. Yes.” I take his hand.
“That she was.” He squeezes. “Right here. And her best creation of all, her best plan, sweet girl, was you. She would have loved you.”
I shake my head. “She should have been leading armies of humans.” I think of the martial arts training I gave the other humans on Zandia, how my mates arranged it.
“Sometimes one is stronger than many. The right one.” He coughs and wheezes. “You have her passion. Keep working on the strategy. It’s in you. You’re more like her than you can ever know.”
And so, as my father and I sit in our rough hut, drinking scalding lemonberry tea and eating aprix jerky, he talks late into the night, as the stars shine and then fade. That night and the next few, I make it my goal to soak up every word. And to use my dreams to help me plan.
I work on the short-range comm device and my father helps me craft the fake messages we hope and pray pirates will intercept. The ones that say that we have humans here, ones who escaped Ocretia, lots of human women.
And we wait.
* * *
Domm
“Do you think she made it there?” My chest is tight. We should’ve been with her—we should’ve taken the dangerous voyage at her side.
“I don’t know. It’s not likely that any other being could.”
“But she’s different,” I say. “I wish…” I begin.
“You wish what?”
“I think we need to go get her.” I stand up straight.
“She said she hates us. She prefers to be on Jesel.” His voice is flat.
“I don’t believe it. She doesn’t hate us. She just—she was torn into two pieces.” I look out at the stars. “I believe she cares. Besides, she may be in danger right now while we’re sitting here with our thumbs up our asses. It doesn’t matter if she loves us—I love her, and if she’s battling, I should be at her side.”
Domm straightens, his hand falling to his sword as if he’s ready to draw it for her right now. He glances at our navigation panel. “You know we’re not permitted into that star territory right now.”
“It’s a rescue mission.” I shrug and smile. “An emergency mission. We are still allowed to deviate course when it’s life or death.”
“And if she doesn’t want rescuing?” He raises a brow.
“Oh no. We’re not rescuing her.” I grin. “We’re rescuing ourselves.”
Chapter 19
Mirelle
I wake with a jerk. The noise is loud and reverberates into my skull, and I recognize it immediately: An Ocretion craft. Terror and adrenaline surge and I jump to my feet, grabbing my dagger and small phaser.
“Father! It worked. They heard the signal. They’re here.” I glance over, and he’s still, his face pale. A trickle of blood is dried at the corner of his mouth. I race to him, touch his wrist, his neck, but he’s cold. So cold, and his chest is motionless.
Oh no. Please, no. Sweet Mother Earth—I’m not ready for this.
“Father.” I whisper it and grab his hand, but there’s not even time to say goodbye.
I race out of the hut and to the lookout ridge, peering up, and there’s the Ocretion craft, hovering, large and black, a sick beetle in the sky.
And here I am. Just me. One small human, with a short dagger.
I put my hand to my mouth and wince. “Goodbye,” I whisper to my father in the hut. “I love you.”
Then I stand tall and wait, as the Ocretion transfer craft emerges from a slot in the hull, shining like water in the sun. Like the giant craft is giving birth to something slick and wicked. And wait.
* * *
The smell is always what gets me first about the Ocretions, their stink. Then their cold fishy eyes and gray skin. Their darting movements.
They have me in magna cuffs on board their smaller craft, three of them. Backed up against a wall, I stare out at their faces, trying to control my breathing.
“A human.” The one in charge steps closer, then backhands me across the face, knocking me backward so my skull bounces against the metal hull.
> “Ugh.” I grunt at the pain, stars flashing in front of my eyes, and my mouth fills with blood. I spit, let it dribble down my chin, the metallic tang and thick texture of it familiar, intimate.
“Red hair. Exotic. Will fetch a fair price at auction.” The second one grabs my breast and squeezes so hard I gasp, terrified he’ll tear my flesh with his rough claw-like nails.
When he lets go, I stumble, blinking, trying to stand. My legs are shaky and I’m terrified, more than I’ve ever been in my life.
“Of course, we’ll need her to tell us where the others are.” The third one kicks me, my knee, and I scream, fall to the floor, trying to grab at my body.
“Because if she wants the privilege of being whole when she goes to auction, she knows that talking is her best option.” He kicks my side and I can’t breathe, and my entire chest is on fire. He’s broken at least one rib, probably two. Maybe three.
I suck in little bits of air, and their voices drift in and out of my ears. Their laughter. Their smell is all around me, suffocating.
I’m hauled to my feet. “Stand,” the Ocretion orders. “Look at me.” He holds up my own dagger, which he’s removed from my waist. “I’ll cut your tongue out if I don’t like your answer. Where are the other humans?”
“The…” I spit out more blood. Sway on my feet. Force out the words. “North. Camp.” I cough and stagger. “Across the planet, a development.”
“Who runs it? How many?”
“Garrett. Main leader.” I pant, my eyes on the dagger.
He presses it to my cheek, flicks his hand and I feel the blood trickle. “And? Don’t stop now.”