by Essa Hansen
Taitn spun to an open space in the row of parked vessels and backed up, hitting cushioning on the wall. A booming clunk riveted the ship in place and the engine hum faded to a whine. Taitn bent to detach his green jacket from the seat and crawled out, stretching noisily.
Laythan handed out salvaged weapons. “We head to the Cartographers’ bar and assess the situation with the nophek planet raid and the slavers. Avoid trouble.” He skipped giving Caiden a weapon and extended an open palm instead. “The gloss.”
Caiden pulled it from his pocket. It sat warm and electric in his palm. The object was functionless to Caiden, but the dazzling ship, the morphcoat, and this gem were the only things that were honestly his.
The deal with the crew was nearing its end. Despite how little time they’d spent together, Caiden’s heart ached a bit.
“Actually, the gloss is safer with me.” En reached out. He’d grown taller, and muscles filled out his now too-small coat and trousers. “Don’t worry, we’ll get you to the Cartographers safely. That’s part of the agreement. Right, Laythan?”
The captain grunted.
Caiden had gotten this far by trust— what was one more leap? Even if they abandoned him now, he was away from the jaws of the nophek and the cruelty of the slavers. He’d made it to this new world. Now he could learn the slavers’ identity.
He dropped the gloss into En’s hand.
“Good kid.” En ruffled his hair.
“Hey! I’m not ten!” Caiden deflected En’s wrist, but En’s grin only widened.
Taitn hit the bay-door controls and glowered at the man’s brawn. Taitn’s face was built harder than En’s, with strong cheekbones and brows, but somehow didn’t look as violent. “En’s more likely to start a fight than stop one, Winn. A little trouble in a Den can escalate quickly. The only place peace is enforced is the Cartographers’ bar, where we’re headed, so stay by me until then.”
Caiden went rigid as the doors unfolded to reveal the Den.
CHAPTER 9
XENID DEN
The size struck him first. The Den interior was as vast and multi-leveled as the exterior. He blinked at colors and lights, surfaces flickering with imagery like windows to other worlds. Tiny ships and darts whizzed in the open air while beings of all sorts milled and streamed and … pulsed. Caiden couldn’t tell what was beast and what was human or whether there was any clear distinction. Individuals and groups clashed. Language blurred the air: everything from guttural rumbles to birdlike trills. The space was stuffed from ceiling to floor with sensory stimulus.
“Follow me.” Taitn guided him forward. “Just focus on your feet if you have to.”
Caiden gagged at a waft of musk in the smoky air, fading to a floral taste and a pleasant spice. Babbling sounds whisked into airy syllables.
Two tall creatures sauntered by, svelte and congealed, like a gelatin coating on spongy bones. Their skin was smooth as a water drop, with an oily sheen that pooled at the extremities of too-numerous limbs. Atop it: a huge faceless droplet of tiny-veined mucus.
Bravery withering, Caiden shrank closer to Taitn, staggering as the space assaulted sense and sensibility.
A human shape drifted by, made of flowing cloud gauze draped over a transparent skeleton. She appeared more solid the longer he looked at her. A figure and face … a face he knew. Leta? No.
A familiar smile surfaced, vibrant and reassuring. Brown hair spilled from a messy bun around a strong jaw. Her stern eyes sparkled.
“Mother?” He lagged.
Taitn turned Caiden away. “Sorry, Winn, we see what we want to see in vishkant. They respond to exterior consciousness, conforming to others’ thoughts and memories.”
Vishkant.
Taitn steered Caiden from tripping over a small, scuttling thing covered in bristling scales. Its hiss razored Caiden’s skull with a piercing tone. He winced and shut his eyes, but all the sounds without the sight was infinitely worse. He clutched the hem of Taitn’s coat, like the ten-year-old he had told En he wasn’t.
“It’ll thin out soon. The concourse is always chaotic.” Taitn dodged a waist-high creature with gaunt, translucent features and glowing eyes. “Should have borrowed one of Pan’s sensory veils for you. Sorry.”
A lanky bluish body lumbered past, and all Caiden registered was their horrific face: the nose an inverted pit of flowery bone, their phosphorescent eyes huge with diamond pupils and things swimming inside.
Taitn grinned. “Saavee. Friend of all. If you get separated from us, find a saavee.”
Caiden gripped tighter, determined not to get separated. The pilot veered him into a wide corridor through a canyon of stacked rooms. The glass floor revealed sprawling vistas of activity below. Nauseous, he fixed his gaze firmly up and matched the purposeful gait of Laythan’s crew. He’d entered the real world, and needed to be able to handle it to survive.
In front of a glowing wall, a stunning figure caught Caiden’s eye. She was humanoid but ethereal and slender, with prosthetic scaffolding around tapered legs. Skin paper-thin and pearly. Her thick hair was so long it pooled onto the floor and clothed her body in dressy billows and braids. Wings spilled three to a side, formed of something plush: feathers, scales, petals, but soft, so soft-looking.
“Sweet young thing, how tired you are.” Her words burrowed through the air into his head, caressing him in feather down. As he neared, her gentle hands wrapped his arm and the back of his neck to curl him closer. “You can rest with me.”
En’s brawny shadow fell on the creature. He peeled Caiden away. “Mauya company is overpriced every-damn-where.”
Transfixion broken, Caiden back-stepped fast, bumped something hard, and looked up at a blue-black metallic face.
“Watch yer walk, vermin.” The voice was muffled yet amplified. The same sort of voice that had said, You’ll all be taken care of.
The chaos spiraled out of Caiden’s vision until there was only that mask. “Taken care of …”
“Eh?” The overseer squared themselves and loomed. Glinting metals encrusted their wiry frame.
“People,” they called us. But we were livestock to them. Caiden’s clammy fear lit like a fuel and fired up wrath, powering him forward— but Taitn’s arm hooked around him and a hand flew over his mouth, clamping in the shout that raced up his throat. He spun Caiden around as more overseers poured from a hazy side room. The overhead lighting glistened across mismatched metallic clothing, straps, weapons, and blue faceplates peppered with holes and slits. Their clatter settled to a jingle as they stopped. The conversation died to a murmur.
They loaded us up. Caiden fought Taitn pulling him onward. His gaze locked on the overseers and blurred with tears. Blood roared in his ears, drowning out the Den. All he wanted to do was hurt them.
“No …” Taitn hissed near Caiden’s ear as he dragged. “No. No.”
Dumped us to be slaughtered. The event swelled around Caiden as if no time had passed and he was herded into the dark. He ripped free from Taitn’s arm and swiveled around, only to slam into the leg of a beast half again as tall as Laythan and several times more muscled than En, chiseled solid as a rock from head to toe, naked, and covered in a rough purple-gray hide.
The monster threw a punch with a fist the size of Caiden’s head.
En shot forward and caught the strike with both hands. His muscles bulged and his posture leaned full into it as he skidded back two meters.
En spoke in a language more like growling than words, yet he still managed to make his words sound cheeky. The beast grunted, withdrew, and lumbered off with steps that shook the ground.
Caiden twisted around. The overseers had left.
He wasn’t in the dark or the desert, but there was sweat, and the roar, and he struggled to force himself to stop trembling.
En released a shaky sigh and shook out his arms. “Chketin,” En explained. “Best to avoid them.”
Laythan pushed En aside and swooped in, crouching to Caiden’s level. “That was them,
huh? Those armored passagers. Your slavers.”
Armor … Caiden blinked, trying to take in Laythan’s face and get back to his own body, the moment.
“I suspected as much,” Laythan said. “They’re Casthen, a publicly aboveboard organization. Most people don’t consider them slavers, and a great deal of multiversal economy relies on them, so even if they were behind the nophek operation, they’ll have strong allies who are invested in hiding it. There’s nothing we can do yet. Deep breaths.” He nodded and straightened.
Caiden gulped air. “What do you mean there’s nothing we can do? A fist can do a lot.”
En sniggered. “Seriously, Laythan, can we keep him?”
The captain responded with a glare. Like Caiden’s father: allergic to questions.
The crew walked on and Caiden looked between his feet and followed one step at a time, telling himself he wasn’t walking back into the desert, feeling the hot breath on his heels, hearing the bray of the beasts.
They entered a sector with self-luminous glassy white floors. Caiden focused on its blankness.
He and Leta used to lie tired in the field after tasks were done, and they’d stare up at a luminous gray sky like this. “Maybe nothing’s up there, just gray forever,” he had said, curiosity bobbing up as always. And Leta, younger but wiser, answered, “What if everything is up there?” And the idea had shut him up for a long while.
She’d been right.
Laythan brought the crew to a halt in a large chamber, the lights too bright, everything white all over. The space was colored by a variety of xenids passing through.
More of the Casthen slavers strolled by in the mix, and no one batted an eye.
Caiden crossed his arms and grabbed fistfuls of his morphcoat, which changed to scales in his grasp and bit the flesh of his palm. He couldn’t restart life in a world where groups like the Casthen were allowed to do what they wanted and no one cared that an entire population had been part of a terrible machine and no better than meat in the end.
Taitn noticed Caiden’s distress. He scratched his bearded cheek and lowered his voice. “There’ll be an investigation into the universe you’re from now that it’s exposed. Passagers will uncover anything incriminating that’s there. Meanwhile, you’re the only survivor who saw everything firsthand. Let’s find out what the Cartographers know, be patient, and let this untangle. We can get you settled in a new home.”
“I don’t want a new home.” The hot itch of anger stampeded up Caiden’s spine. “Can’t we tell someone? I saw everything. Two of them, they … they loaded us up and then …”
En cruised over. “He’s just a kid, you can’t tell him the thing he needs to hit is behind locked doors. You have to let him hit it, or he’ll end up hitting something else.” En bent to match Caiden’s eye level, hands on his hips. “This is the Cartographers’ main district, so let’s get you scanned, find out a little more about you, then we can think about what to do, all right?”
Caiden blurted, “I want to register as a passager. I need to be like you. To do what I want and go where I want.”
Taitn made a strangled sound. En straightened, frowning.
Laythan walked over, saying, “You need education and counseling. That’s not our job. The Cartographers will set you up somewhere safe.”
“No.” Caiden gazed over his hands where the scour had so easily erased years of calluses, stain, and scrapes, his entire life a waste. He’d been a tiny nut in a vast machine, fulfilling one purpose. Now he was a piece that didn’t fit in any other mechanism, and would go unused, passed around. One of those homeless parts that always got discarded to a scrap heap in the end.
“I don’t care about a safe life on some new planet. I’m registering.” He rubbed the brand at the back of his neck; the concealing spray En had applied still smoothed over top, but the mark was permanent.
En huffed. “Did you see any other kids while we were walking here? You’re too young to do anything about the Casthen. This isn’t a world for children.”
“I’m not a child.”
Laythan said, “No kid chooses to become a passager. We’re convicts, slavers, rebels, drifters. What you went through … no one should have to live with that experience, and it’s going to take time for the past to feel like it’s behind you. It took me decades to bury my own. We want you to learn the lessons we did sooner, without years of mistakes. Have more experiences before you decide if you’re going to let hatred define your whole life.”
“What if the hatred never goes away?” Even now, he hated the quaver in his voice, he hated the quiver in his body, and he hated Laythan’s careful tone.
“You’ll have to turn it into something else,” the captain said. “Use it as fuel to do good.”
A knot cinched in Caiden’s chest like a drive belt too tight, overheating, ready to snap. He was trying to do good: becoming a passager to be free to destroy the slavers so no more people would suffer.
“Stay somewhere safe to learn and regrow,” Laythan concluded. “There are plenty of quiet planets that won’t feel foreign to you.”
He wasn’t going to regrow. The ordeal would always define him, like a chunk of rock reshaped by the chisel. He would always be misshapen, so there had to be something he was good for, something his new shape could unlock. Even if he never belonged anywhere with anyone, he could still serve a purpose. Justice.
In the corner of his vision, a figure approached behind a lengthy white counter. They had a formal posture and a uniform that matched others he’d seen on the walk over: angular and fitted, light gray and inviting purple.
They must be a Cartographer. Caiden snapped his spine straight and marched over, just tall enough to plant his elbows on the counter.
“I need to register as a passager.”
CHAPTER 10
REGISTRATION
The Cartographer approached with a swaying gait. They were Andalvian, like Ksiñe: the tan spots dusting their pale skin pinched into wisps of sparkling blue. They wore a long, angular tunic pulled tight around their body, all light gray and purple. A black crown wrapped their head in layers of curving spikes— the jaw of an animal, upside-down. What creature was it from? Had they killed it?
“You look stunning as ever,” En greeted, gliding in.
The Andalvian narrowed their eyes, which had black sclera and bright pupils like Ksiñe’s, but their eyeshine was gentle blue. Wisps on their face thickened into dark streaks of scowl as En leaned against the counter. “And you look like you are trying too hard. I enjoy the other you better.”
En changed. This time, Caiden watched him do it.
En’s facial structure slimmed, feathery bangs stretched over her forehead, and her eyes creased in a smile as smoky paint oozed around them. Her skin tone darkened and cooled. She stretched her shoulders in an arc that carried down her whole body. Muscles relaxed and softened, frame shortened. In a heartbeat, female En was beaming at the Cartographer.
“Blue, right?” En’s hair lengthened and brightened from black to waves of ocean blue spilling over her shoulders and back.
“Better.” Stripes rippled down the Andalvian’s neck into purplish sparkles, which rained into their shirt.
Taitn dashed his gaze away and pretended to examine a map on the ceiling. He wrinkled his nose and muttered, “Can’t recall her name, but remembers she likes blue.”
Caiden asked, “What is her name?” He warmed up his courage again.
“Sina,” Taitn said.
Caiden turned back to the Cartographer, whose skin settled into a dusting of stationary spots as she focused on him. “Sina, I want to register as a passager.”
“Winn,” Taitn warned.
En raised her hand. “Let him decide. We’re not his parents.”
“Young, for passager,” Sina said, her animal gaze flashing across Caiden.
“Please?” He flushed under her scrutiny. “I need to know more. I need to be free and—” Better. “You deal in knowledge, right?”
Sina cocked her head. “Correct. While the Dynast in Unity pays for technology, we Cartographers pay for knowledge. Technology grows old, but knowledge is always new to someone. With passagers buying and selling chartings, we map the expanding multiverse and make worlds navigable, together.”
“Please. I have a ship. I need to be able to navigate worlds.”
“Very well.” Sina gave a formal bow. “It is a Cartographer’s duty to see that all passagers are well and accounted for. Forehead here—” She indicated sections of the counter that lit up with starbursts. “Hands here. Eyes open.”
Caiden bowed to the counter and was met with a blinding flash as his forehead touched. Heat pulsed to his soles and receded into chill.
“Sequenced.” Sina’s fingers flew in gestures across the counter display. “Name?”
“My name …”
En leaned next to him, blue hair coiling on the counter. “You can always change it. Make one up. I have thirty names.”
“One for every lover,” Taitn muttered, still glaring at the ceiling.
En shrugged proudly and leaned on tiptoes to peer at Sina’s screens. “I was right about his makeup. There’s a fair amount of Graven genes in there. Those freckles.”
Caiden scratched his face, where light-colored freckles sprinkled across his nose, cheeks, and temples.
“A lot of unanalyzable stuff.” En peered over at the data again, frowned, and glanced at Taitn. The pilot flinched, then mouthed, What?
“Sterile.”
“What does that mean?” Caiden asked.
Taitn opened his mouth to speak, but hesitated. Caiden recognized the dullness in his eyes as he hid the truth. “It means … your genes have less risk of contamination.”
They treat me like a child, but also say this isn’t a world for children? “Tell me the truth.”
Taitn winced. “You don’t have the right knowledge to make sense of the truth yet. Be patient.”
“I spent my whole life patient and stupid.” Caiden swiveled straight. “Cartographer Sina, what does ‘sterile’ mean?”