The Vela: The Complete Season 1

by Yoon Ha Lee, Becky Chambers, SL Huang

  Soraya reached for one. The coordinator’s hand stopped her. “No. She’s had her water ration already.”

  The woman’s face began to tremble. “Please. My niece cut herself and I had to wash it . . . my children haven’t had water in two days now. Please, I have another ration due in twelve hours—”

  “You get only what’s on the ration card,” the coordinator said. She didn’t even sound sorry about it.

  But she must have seen Soraya’s face, because as the woman shuffled off crying, she added, “You’ll learn. Everyone will ask. If you give out more, we run out. That’s the cold facts.”

  The cold facts. Soraya lived with them every day now. The cold facts, and the cold choices, here with the cold of space pressing in on every side to devour them all.

  Episode 5

  The Heart of the Web

  Yoon Ha Lee

  Asala, like most people who had served in the military, had a simple philosophy about complications. They sucked. Complications never worked in your favor. And the cube that they had just discovered on the Vela was exactly that: a complication, one that she suspected was liable to get them killed.

  The immense, nearly empty containment chamber of the Vela had, with this one discovery, become a trap. Asala was mortally certain that President Ekrem, who had sent her and Niko all this way to find the ship in the first place, had hidden information from her. She couldn’t imagine that it was a coincidence that what was supposed to be a refugee ship contained a mysterious prototype.

  The question was, how much had Ekrem told Niko, and was Niko hiding anything from her?

  Asala had no intention of dying over a piece of tech, no matter how mysterious. Her eyes were drawn once again to the shining crystalline cube with its uncanny contents, the way the light-sucking black material within kept seething and writhing as if with a mind of its own. What was so important about the cube that he had felt the need to lie to her about the Vela, after all the missions she’d carried out for him? Need-to-know or not, it rankled.

  Asala forced herself to breathe calmly, despite the stink of her own nervous sweat. The Ghalan suit filters weren’t very good. But they were better than nothing, and she was suddenly glad for even this pittance of protection.

  Niko was experimentally waving a hand in front of the cube, and the substance within kept moving in a way that turned Asala’s stomach for reasons she couldn’t articulate.

  “Niko,” she said in a sharp undertone. “Niko!”

  Niko turned to her. Even through the helmet their face looked strained. “I’ve never seen an artificial gravity component that looks like that. Asala, we’ve got to find out what this is and what it does. It makes no sense that a refugee ship is hiding some weird prototype.”

  If Niko knew more about the cube, they were doing a good job hiding it. And there would be ample time to question them about it after they hightailed it out of here. Asala nodded, in agreement with them for once.

  “Help me extract it,” Asala said. The two of them were lucky that the cube was so small, no larger than a handspan in all dimensions. Still, she didn’t want the ship to implode around them if they tampered with the wrong piece of engineering.

  In tense silence, while the black material continued its spooky dance, Asala and Niko studied the hardware. Despite her best efforts, Asala found that the substance kept snagging her attention, and she cursed herself for not focusing on the task at hand. Too bad she couldn’t selectively edit her vision the way she could turn off her hearing.

  “Someone designed this specifically to plug into and supplement the standard artificial grav,” Niko said, pointing to the connectors that held the cube in place. “But if the Vela already has regular artigrav, why does it need an additional . . . thing? Whatever it is?”

  “Unplug it first, figure it out later,” Asala said. She hated feeling out of her depth. Sure, when it came to artigrav, she could handle the basic maintenance tasks that anyone with starship piloting credentials needed to know. That didn’t mean she had the expertise to decipher experimental physics shit.

  “Here goes nothing,” Niko said, and uncoupled the first of the shining metal connectors, more pristine than anything else on the entire ship, before Asala could warn them to be careful.

  The black substance squirmed toward Niko’s grasp, not away, as they jostled the cube. Memory pricked at Asala as she helped with the next connector. Where had she seen that counterintuitive behavior before? As she racked her brain, she began working on another connector, careful not to damage the delicate wiring.

  The two of them had gotten through half the connectors when the alarm went off. It screeched in long blasts, echoing through the passageways of the Vela. Asala had no doubt that it could be heard loud and clear the next ship over as well.

  “Shit!” Niko said under their breath. “I could have sworn I—”

  “Save it,” Asala snapped. The fact that Niko had managed to fool the security system this long was a small miracle. In retrospect, considering the cube’s presence, she was a little surprised that the place wasn’t crawling with guards. But only a little. After all, extraordinary precautions would have alerted Camp Ghala’s populace that a likewise extraordinary secret was being guarded here. And given the desperation of many refugees, she would have expected thieves and scavengers to follow; all the Sorayas in the world couldn’t keep petty crime in check.

  No more time for delicacy. They had to leave. Asala grabbed the cube with both hands and yanked it free over Niko’s stifled yelp of protest. A good thing for them that the Vela’s regular artificial gravity seemed unaffected. Asala had plenty of experience navigating zero-grav maneuvers, but Niko didn’t have that kind of background.

  Asala stuffed the cube into a pouch in her utility belt, then flicked off her suit’s headlamp. Niko did the same without being told. Now that Asala had an idea of the ship’s layout, there was no sense in guiding adversaries to them by leaving the lamps on. They weren’t completely devoid of illumination; the suits had much dimmer light-strips in clan patterns, both for safety and ornamentation, which would keep her and Niko from banging into bulkheads.

  The Vela’s deck vibrated. Voices filtered to them through the passageways, distorted by echoes. The alarm continued to shrill. Security was coming for them.

  Asala led the way. Fortunately, the Vela had a straightforward layout, and its passageways were not blocked by detritus, shops, or huddled sleepers like the rest of Camp Ghala. She breathed slow and deep again, working to keep her heart rate from hammering up. A glance back at Niko revealed that their hands were shaking, but they weren’t slowing her down, either. Good.

  She heard footsteps, stopped. More footsteps. She and Niko squeezed into a side passageway at security’s approach and flattened themselves against the bulkheads. Unfortunately, the ship’s emptiness worked against them. A flashlight glared into her eyes. She knew better than to curse, but it was too late anyway. They’d been spotted.

  “Halt right there!” a sharp soprano called.

  A quick glimpse told her that there were at least four people in this particular squad, and that they wore flimsier skintight EV suits, not combat armorsuits; she hadn’t seen any of the latter in Camp Ghala. Two against four—not insurmountable odds, except she still didn’t trust Niko to be of use in a fistfight. To her relief, no one in the squad had firearms or laser rifles; they were rare in the camp, but she hadn’t known if Soraya would have equipped them with weapons, or if someone else had a cache of arms elsewhere.

  Asala shoved Niko ahead of her. The two of them sprinted back into the depths of the Vela. The clanging of their boots made her wince, but she left her hearing on. In this situation, the extra information would help her. A temporary setback, because sooner or later they needed to get off the Vela. But getting killed would be a permanent setback.

  Where are we? Niko mouthed at her, which she ignored. Niko might have lost track of where they were in the Vela’s depths, but Asala hadn’t.
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br />   She gestured for Niko to hide themself in the lee of a crate, which they did after a scowl in her direction. Then she climbed a ladder halfway and swung herself up to the hand- and footholds on what was, under artificial gravity, the ceiling. But as with any decent starship, the Vela’s designers had also made provisions for any sudden loss of gravity. Any surface might be up—or down.

  Asala was counting on their pursuers, who lived in permanent gravity here on Camp Ghala, to have forgotten about this feature, to have a fixed sense of up and down.

  A squad of four guards slunk down the passageway, assiduously checking their port and starboard.

  Asala had been right. They weren’t looking up. Silently, she drew out her utility knife.

  One of the guards was lagging behind the others. Asala dropped and drove her knife in past the clinging skin of the suit, severing the spine at the base of the skull. They never saw her coming, collapsed with a thud.

  She had already swung down and onto the next. They struggled, but she had them between herself and their comrades, which bought her the necessary several seconds it took for her to dispatch the second victim. She lost no time thrusting them forward to impede the remaining two guards and making a break for it. After a panicked second’s pause, Niko pelted after her.

  Retreating to set up more ambushes for their pursuers might have worked except Niko tripped over a warped deck plate. By instinct, Asala flung herself down to cover them, cursing her lack of sniper rifle, though of course bullets and starships didn’t mix.

  Footsteps approached from the other direction. Asala eased up on Niko in case both of them needed maneuverability, fast. Niko mouthed to her, We’re pinned, as if she didn’t know.

  The same soprano voice, presumably belonging to their leader, rang out. “We’ve been instructed to bring you in alive, but there are limits to my patience.”

  The question was, who did these people answer to? Was it Soraya? Asala wasn’t under any illusions that Soraya was soft, but she didn’t think Soraya would order their deaths, either; she wasn’t that kind of person. Soraya had initially sicced the guards on them in response to some warning from that kid Ifa. If some other authority had gotten involved, on the other hand, all bets were off.

  Asala didn’t have any guarantee that surrendering wouldn’t result in a quick execution, either. There were too many unknowns, and she’d never believed in taking unnecessary risks. Peace and order in Camp Ghala didn’t do Asala the least bit of good if she wound up corpsed far from home.

  Khayyam was never really home, a small voice whispered in the back of her head. Asala shoved the thought away. This wasn’t the time for useless sentimentality.

  There was the crackle of a radio, and Asala nudged her head up just enough to see the leader tilt her head. Too bad Asala couldn’t hear the exchange that followed, although she assumed that it included a call for backup. Still, she didn’t have to linger in suspense for long.

  “You have something we want,” the leader went on. “Either I can flush you out from where you’re cowering, or you can come out and I will take you to Hafiz, who will explain what you’ve gotten yourselves involved in.”

  Asala was no negotiator, but this didn’t incline her to stick her neck out. Still, any breath of information could be useful. Hafiz, and not Soraya? What was going on?

  Unfortunately, Niko took matters out of her hands by scrambling to their feet. “D-don’t shoot!” they called out, their voice wavering. “We’ll come.”

  “Brilliant, Niko,” Asala rasped. As much as she was tempted to let the hostiles strangle Niko, she couldn’t abandon Ekrem’s kid. She stood as well and slowly raised her hands to show that she wasn’t armed, a state that she was never going to tolerate again.

  “Trust me,” Niko hissed back. “I know what I’m doing.”

  Asala wished that “trust me” didn’t involve “let’s stand right in between two groups of hostiles, with more probably on the way.”

  On the other hand, there was something to Niko’s philosophy that talking your way out of a fight was easier than fighting your way out.

  Asala thought furiously as she and Niko stepped forward, taking care to move slowly and unthreateningly, in response to the guard’s brusque gestures. Was Hafiz another of Niko’s contacts? She had a vague memory of the name, but not specifics about Hafiz’s importance or influence. Why hadn’t Niko gotten in touch with them earlier, especially if they had the authority to order squads of guards around the camp? She couldn’t ask now; there was no way they wouldn’t be overheard. Frustrating as it was, all she could do was follow Niko’s lead and trust that they knew what they were doing.

  At least the guards hadn’t killed either of them out of hand. She was again grateful that they didn’t carry guns. Asala allowed herself a thread of hope that the two of them would survive.

  “Handcuff them,” the leader said. “For your safety as well as ours,” she added.

  Asala rolled her eyes. Spare me, she thought.

  The guards didn’t waste any time confiscating Asala’s knife and Niko’s. The woman who located the pouch containing the mysterious cube took that as well, but her face twisted with unease. Asala wondered if her captor knew what it did, or if her reaction was as visceral as Asala’s own.

  The guards had come prepared with restraints designed for use with suits. Asala recognized the type and didn’t kick up a fuss. She was sure she’d be able to work her way free, given enough time.

  Two guards took up positions to either side, one of them just half a pace ahead so they could lead the way. Everyone else, including the leader, fell in behind Asala and Niko. The back of Asala’s neck prickled the entire march out of the Vela. She couldn’t help but stare at the woman currently in possession of the cube, whose stiff gait betrayed continuing discomfort.

  Although Asala knew it was her imagination, the ship seemed to awaken around them. The way their footfalls reverberated through the passageways, the way light emphasized the corrosion and graffiti on the bulkheads. It reminded her of her own escape from Hypatia, people scratching the names of those they’d left behind into every available surface so that some record would remain of lovers or children, fellow clanners they never expected to see again. That, or poetry and songs native to the cold lands. Asala had memorized the verses and whispered them to herself, never sharing them with another soul even in her thirty-four years on Khayyam. No one would have understood.

  At last they reached the egress. The Vela clung like a barnacle to a decrepit old freighter. Asala didn’t enjoy the thought of making the crossing between the airlock and the old ship’s loading bays again, this time with her hands bound. The stress marks she’d spotted in the rickety metal seemed even more prominent this time around, and EV suits or no, she’d spent enough time on starships that the sight of an airlock permanently open when they were in space made her cringe inside.

  The guards didn’t give the stress marks or crystallization a second glance. Given the state of the rest of Camp Ghala, they probably didn’t think twice about it. Asala conceded that the fact that the camp hadn’t fallen apart or had its orbit destabilized suggested that something was working, as precarious as the whole endeavor seemed. In all fairness, it wasn’t as if the refugees who made this their home had much choice, given Gan-De’s refusal to welcome them.

  Once they emerged on the other side, Niko attempted to make conversation. “You should get your security systems looked into,” they said in that cheerful, casual tone that Asala was so unfond of. “We didn’t realize that entire area was off-limits.”

  “Save it for Hafiz,” the guard leader said, unimpressed.

  Asala would have been happier if someone shoved Niko, not because she wished her companion ill, but because it would have spoken to a certain reassuring brute unprofessionalism on the guards’ part. Their supposedly ragtag captors had been a bit too disciplined for her comfort.

  They marched through unfamiliar corridors—it wasn’t as though Asala or
Niko had had a chance to search the entirety of the freighter—and crossed over to another ship. She recognized this one as a Jaguar-class merchanter, popular a few decades back because they were easy to refit with some of the nastier weapons available to civilians. Her unease grew.

  Not every ship at Camp Ghala was a heap of junk. But the camp did, in general, have an air of decrepitude. This ship was one of the few exceptions she’d seen—or, she corrected herself, been allowed to see. Its deck gleamed; she could see her reflection in the shining metal. No graffiti, no stains, no detritus. Someone cared about this ship, and had the pull to maintain it to a higher standard than the rest of the camp.

  They passed people of all ages, from hunched maintenance workers to children, some very young, carrying small bundles. None of them appeared to find the strange procession remarkable, and none of them challenged the guards. Asala couldn’t blame them; who wanted trouble?

  At last they arrived at the command deck of the merchanter. Four sentries stood at attention. Asala noticed straight off that all of them looked well-fed compared to the Camp Ghala norm, even if they didn’t sport uniforms, which would have been difficult to manage here anyway. Definitely an elite of some sort.

  Niko glanced at Asala for reassurance.

  It’s a little late to have reservations, Asala thought, and offered them a tight smile.

  “Two guests to see Hafiz,” said the woman who had taken her and Niko captive. Her voice dipped sarcastically on “guests.”

  “Found the rat in the nest, did you?” responded one of the sentries, a stout woman with clan tattoos that an inner-worlder would have called similar to Asala’s own. To Asala’s eye, the style was clearly different—more angular, with flower-like marks accenting the lines. The sentry’s brow furrowed as she considered Asala’s own incomplete tattoo, and Asala restrained herself from bristling. “They’ll need to be searched.”

  Niko offered a wry smile. “That’s not a problem. They already took away my utility knife.”