by Robert McKay
CHAPTER TEN
Several days passed with no further strange incidents. Just endless days of milling about the bay, wondering if they had made it to Colar, the Colarian home world. They both dreaded and hoped for it. When it happened, at least it would bring change.
Only Pickle and Gadget seemed somewhat content to continue as they were. Beatrix watched their blossoming romance with curiosity, and if she was honest, a touch of jealousy. If they hadn't been thrust into this situation, they would have never gotten together. Whenever she saw them sneak off together, she would climb into her Talon and stare at the little grey box.
"You know, if you want to pleasure yourself, you could do it in the shower like the rest of us. You don't have to hide up there," called Hands from down on the ground.
"Don't be such a pervert," replied Beatrix, her cheeks burning just like she had been caught with her hand down her pants. "I just need some time to be alone. I'm an introvert. I love you guys, but being around you all the time is draining."
"Wow, I was just messing around, but now I want to know what you're doing up there." His voice moved a little closer, as if he were getting on the ladder to climb up.
"If your head pops up into view, expect it to be knocked the hell off," growled Beatrix, certain that she was only making him more curious. She also knew that he would never violate her space like that.
"Oh, you know I have no desire to taste your sting," he called back. Beatrix could almost hear him wink at her.
"Why don't you go take a shower, you pervert, and leave me alone with my thoughts."
"I think I might do just that," said Hands, not a trace of shame in his voice as he walked toward the bathroom.
Once she was certain he was gone, Beatrix reached down and picked up the box. If she was already being accused of hiding something, she might as well be guilty of it. Reading wasn't easy in the low light of the bay, but the words were familiar enough that she managed it. She only read the first few pages. All the while, her heart raced, and her face burned with shame. She was betraying her father's memory with each word; her promise not to read fiction until her revenge was complete echoed in her head. And she was lying to her friends. She also felt alive for the first time in weeks, maybe years. In just those first few pages she was wrapped in the words of her favorite author and somehow, though she knew the female spy lead character was headed for tragedy, Beatrix felt hope again.
At the end of the first chapter, the shame became too much and she closed the book. She stuffed it hurriedly back into its box and hid it in the shadows at her feet.
Hands was sitting on his sleeping pallet when she walked up, his hair wet from his shower. "Feel better now?" she asked, a slight smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.
"Much. Thank you," he replied, somehow making the thank you suggestive. Maybe it was just in her head.
"Well, I think I'll go ahead and take one too." She winked at him and then gathered up her plain grey Colarian clothes and walked toward the head.
As usual, her shower was a place for thinking, rather than a place for pleasuring herself. She found that when she was in the shower her mind was too alive with ideas for anything else. This time she pondered all of her favorite novels and their beloved characters. She hadn't realized how much she missed them until she read that first chapter. Now her thoughts raced along carefully crafted plots and love stories both bittersweet and sickly sweet.
Again, her thoughts turned unwillingly to her own love life, or lack thereof. She couldn't imagine what her life would have been like if her father were still alive. She definitely would have left their village, and regardless of what her father thought, she wouldn't have married that brute George. Even though she'd joined the Fleet and her perspective on that had changed, George was still an asshole. Still, she could very well have found love by this point in her life. Now though, her life was so simple, she had no idea how she could ever relate to someone worth having. All she had to talk about was her kill count and strategies to be more efficient. Not very diverse, as conversation went. It wasn't like she didn't have other interests; at least she'd traveled.
Beatrix had been all over the star system and heard about the new worlds that had been discovered while hunting for Colarian bases. There were rumors of magic and adventure unlike anything found on Nedra. When other soldiers brought the new worlds up, her curiosity always pulled her to eavesdrop, but she never participated in the conversation. Whenever she found herself opening her mouth to ask a question about a tea that made you small, dust that could make you fly, or a giant flying lizard, she shook her head and retreated to her bunk and dug out her books on the Colarians.
Now, while in the custody of her mortal enemies, she found herself brimming with questions about the other worlds out there. While getting dressed in her baggy, ugly Colarian clothes, she realized she was probably heading toward one of those other worlds. Sure, all she would see of it is the inside of a cell, but maybe she could at least find out why everything they made was the same damnable shade of grey. That way she could have something interesting to talk about on a date some day. If she ever had one.
Beatrix sighed heavily and stepped out of the head. Her life had been much simpler a few hours before, when all she had cared about was killing as many Colarians as possible. Now she had the nagging feeling that she might want to actually live her life, just when she was certain she didn't have much of one left.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
"Whatcha thinkin' about?" asked Hands, snapping his pocket watch closed and sitting up on his sleeping pallet.
"Just wondering why everything the Colarians make is grey," replied Beatrix, still lying on her pallet and staring vacantly up at the ceiling. Several days had passed since reading the first chapter of A Dark Beauty and she had already finished it once and was starting it again. "It just doesn't make any sense."
"I've always just assumed they were color blind, so the color wouldn't matter to them."
"No, that doesn't add up. There's no way that plastic, metal, cloth, and every other material just happens to end up grey because they don't see color." Beatrix had heard that theory dozens of times over the years and even read it in some prominent scientific journals. It hadn't seemed important to her until a few days ago, and she'd dismissed that theory almost immediately.
"Well, I guess I don't really care as long as the bastards are still spilling red Nedran blood all over the place."
"Right..." Beatrix was surprised to find herself ready to argue with Hands. It wasn't that she disagreed with the idea of taking out the Colarians. It was that something didn't quite make sense to her now that she had all this time to sit around and think. There wasn't enough information to draw any real conclusions; only enough to keep her finding more unanswered questions. One repeated itself to her over and over so often she felt something akin to physical pain when it crossed her mind.
Why had they given her the book?
She steadfastly refused to think of it being the Colarian who had murdered her father any more, but there wasn't any other way for that book to have gotten there. One time that thought had put her into a mental tailspin so violent she practically went catatonic. Torch had found her spiraling down that rabbit hole and literally slapped her back to reality. Since then, she always thought of the book dropper as a nameless faceless group of Colarians. That way it wasn't anything personal. If it was less of a personal violation, then it was alright for her to read the book. It was fuzzy logic, but that book was all she had to keep her from going insane with all the waiting they were doing.
Then, as if the universe could hear her thoughts, the waiting was over. A series of dull thuds hit all around the cargo bay. Hands opened his watch even though the last supply drop couldn't have been more than an hour before.
"It's too early," he said, his voice a hoarse whisper.
Torch stumbled into their sleeping area, followed by a trail of smoke. His hand clamped his shirt up over his mouth and nose. "Gas,"
he said, and then his eyes rolled back in his head and he fell on the floor.
Beatrix's first instinct was to head for their flight suits. They were piled in a corner, not far away from where she and Hands sat. Before she could do little more than pull her shirt up over her nose, she was enveloped in smoke. She expected it to stink and make her choke. Instead she drifted off into unconsciousness to a smell like citrus.
CHAPTER TWELVE
"I knew we should have kept our helmets on," grumbled Pickle, somewhere near.
While the gas hadn't smelled terrible, it didn't leave her mind easily. The smell of citrus still filled her senses and wrapped her thoughts in a thick layer of cotton. The world tilted to and fro in her blurry vision. If she squinted in just the right way she could make out ants crawling about on the ground below. Then a foggy haze drifted before her eyes and she dozed for a time.
When she came to again, her mind was more clear and she recognized the ants as people. The tilting world was a result of the small aircraft they were on banking during turns. Her mind still mustn't have been completely clear, because she could have sworn the buildings they were flying over were in a riot of color. Pinks and greens sat beside reds and blues. Every color of the rainbow could be seen without turning her head. Not one speck of dreadful grey anywhere unless she turned her eyes from the window to the small passenger compartment she shared with Torch, Gadget, Pickle, Hands, and three menacing Colarian guards. Then grey was all she saw.
Her hands and feet were firmly chained, so she decided to take advantage of her delusional state and stared out the window. They flew across what looked like farm land. Not much different from where she had grown up if she was honest with herself. Fields in various shades of green gave way to golden brown pastures dotted with livestock that, while foreign to her, still seemed familiar in their docile manner. Interestingly, the few Colarians she saw weren't the huge beasts she was used to. They varied as much in size and shape as any Nedran.
Beatrix realized that she was picking out a lot of detail, so they must be approaching their destination and dropping lower to the ground. Her mind didn't feel altered any more by the gas, but the large building they circled was a shade of light blue that shimmered to a pearly white in small splotches, giving it the appearance of being part of the sky with an occasional cloud. It was the most beautiful house—no, mansion—that Beatrix had ever seen. Too bad it wasn't real. She was certain that soon she would blink and it would change into an artless grey block and they would haul her to a cell inside, never to be seen again.
Their forward motion stopped just behind the building, where they slowly lowered to the ground. The others stirred awake when the aircraft touched down with a slight thump. Each of them turned immediately toward the nearest window. Their faces lit up with surprise. "It's so beautiful," murmured Hands.
The guards raised their weapons, obviously ready to gun them all down if they so much as sneezed. Beatrix studied them closely, ignoring the menacing barrels of their guns. She'd only ever seen one Colarian up close and personal. Then her judgment had been so impaired by panic that when she saw them in a textbook later, she assumed the book was wrong. In her mind's eye Colarians were beastly beyond comparison, with barely any Nedran features to separate them from the huge cats that stalked the jungles and filled the roles of villains in children's stories. In truth, they looked much more like very tall and strong Nedrans than anything else. The coloration of the hair that covered their bodies varied greatly, from tawny to dark red, to brown, and black. The three that held them were all the same shade of light brown, though their similarities mostly ended there.
The hair, or fur, on the one that was closest to her was thick and woolly looking. It made him look rather ridiculous; nothing like the Colarian who had killed her father. Scholars seemed to choose whether to call it hair or fur seemingly at random. After reading countless essays and papers, and then learning more about their authors, she found the choice was usually made on personal bias. If the author thought of the Colarians more as beasts, they called it fur. If they thought of them as men, they called it hair. So, Beatrix made up her mind to call it fur. That meant the longer hair on the head was called a mane.
The fur on the other two was sleek and laid flat against their body, looking like skin at a distance. One had long sharp features on its face and light blue eyes with a vertical pupil. The second sleek Colarian was orange and white in a blotchy pattern. The woolly one's face was round with a blunt nose and green eyes. His thin lips were curled up in a nasty sneer, just daring them to step out of line.
The one other thing that tied them together in appearance was the same on all Colarians. Above their eyes were two hairless black strips of flesh that ran up their foreheads, through their manes, and down the back of their necks. They were their symbionts. It was one of those strips of flesh that Beatrix had cut away when the Colarian had attacked her home. She knew from her studies that the symbiont covered most of their back beneath their identical grey uniforms. They burrowed into the Colarians' bodies at different points, connecting to each of the major systems. Together they functioned almost as a singular organism. In early experiments, scientists had attempted to separate them when they captured a Colarian alive, in order to better understand their relationship. Neither the host, nor the symbiont, ever survived the procedure. The practice was quickly outlawed and the intricacies of the symbiont relationship remained a mystery.
The woolly Colarian grunted and gestured with his gun for them to move toward the rear of the aircraft. It was then that Beatrix noticed that Woolly only had one strip of black flesh above his eyes. She wondered if there was another woman out there who had cut it off like she'd done to the beast who killed her father. The back wall tilted down to the ground, forming a ramp so they could disembark. Torch stepped up beside Beatrix and whispered, "Don't try anything stupid." He tilted his head toward the large complement of guards standing on either side of the ramp, each holding weapons trained on them.
"Me?" Beatrix asked, quirking an eyebrow. "Never."
"Sting..."
"I'm not that stupid, Cap. When I make a break for it, I'll make sure I can get away, or do a hell of a lot of damage. Or both."
A grunt and a nudge from the barrel of a gun silenced them. Even without a threat from the guards, Beatrix was struck dumb. The effect of the mansion was mind-boggling. She was certain now that it was real. They were walking alongside it and still it felt like she could fall right into it and touch only air. Even after all of her pilot training, it made her dizzy to look to the side and see the open sky. Only the occasional window and corner broke the illusion. It wasn't until she saw a bird flit across its surface and then caught sight of it on her other side that she realized the image was a reflection of the actual sky around the building.
"It's amazing, isn't it?" purred a baritone voice from just behind her left shoulder.
Beatrix jumped, her heart leaping into her throat. She knew a Colarian was behind her, but nothing had prepared her to hear one speak, let alone to hear it speak lightly accented Nedran. It was like walking through a forest and hearing a tree speak to you in your own language. Even when put in a room together, Colarian prisoners never spoke a word to one another, though it was obvious they could communicate in some way.
Finally, she chanced a glance over her shoulder, certain what she would find. Sure enough, it was the beast who had killed her father. His fur was sleek and black, and the place where his symbiont should be attached, above his left eye, was just a light puckered scar. Beatrix shuddered and pulled the chains that held her hands taut. She turned her head back to the path in front of her. Her back stiffened and a low growl erupted involuntarily from her throat. There was an answering growl and then sudden silence. When she turned back, determined to strangle him or die trying, he was nowhere to be found. Woolly stepped up and nudged her with his gun, an attempt to spur her back into motion.
Woolly had badly misjudged the situation.
With her intended target gone, Beatrix lashed out at the next best thing. She knocked Woolly's gun aside, jumped up and wrapped her shackles around the back of his neck, planted her feet in his midsection and heaved backward and down with all of her strength. When he bent forward and her back hit the ground, she used his momentum and her leverage to toss him over her and into the wall of the mansion. His back collided with the fake blue sky and sent a ripple across its surface. He dropped to the ground. His head absorbed the impact of his landing. Before she could attack him again, the other guards had surrounded her. The click of guns being cocked almost drowned out Torch's strangled, "What the hell is wrong with you, Sting?"
Beatrix ignored him, her rage still boiling in her veins. Woolly pulled himself to his feet, looking no worse for the abuse she'd just given him. As a matter of fact, he was smiling, and not in the vindictive way of someone who was about to try to kill you. He reached up and rubbed the spot where the remaining symbiont tentacle connected to his head, and smiled even wider. He then turned his back and led them into the house. The other guards fell into line beside their prisoners without any spoken command. Beatrix pondered Woolly's weird reaction and realized her rage had subsided. That was good. Fighting more at this point would just get her killed.
"I don't know why they didn't kill us all," whispered Torch from behind her. "But if you try something like that again, I'll take you out myself."
Beatrix gave him a curt nod, not trusting herself to speak. They were ushered inside the building through a grand entrance twice as tall as Beatrix. The beauty of the place was mostly lost on her now that the beast had soured her thoughts. Still, some part of her observed the rich colors of the tapestries and the beautiful pink striations in the marble below their feet. This place was nothing like the cold stone structures she had imagined the Colarians living in. Any noble in Nedra would be proud to live in a dwelling as fine as this.