The Vela: The Complete Season 1

by Yoon Ha Lee, Becky Chambers, SL Huang

  Body weary, she limped out of the hovel that had once been the control room of a decent-enough ship. At least she’d been able to land them near their intended destination. They were only a mile or two away from the small town where they hoped to find information on how to proceed. Known for being sympathetic to refugees, Shi Shen was a village on the edge of Gan-De civilization, its economy less industrialized than the larger city centers. Importantly, there were people there who spoke Atlan, the language most of the Eratosi aboard the Vela had been speaking in their videos. It would’ve made sense as a port of call for Uzochi and her followers.

  “Still!” Asala said to Niko in a sharp whisper as they coughed and stumbled. Above them, drones. More fucking drones. They were endless.

  Asala counted eight of them, high in the sky, shaped like flying insects. There wasn’t much information about them in the reference files she’d checked, but she’d heard scuttlebutt that in the less built-up parts of the planet, they were only motion-based.

  “Fuck,” said Niko, looking up.

  “It looks like they’re flying away from us.” Asala let out her breath. “At least there’s that.”

  “Yeah, but how many more of them are there going to be? I don’t have a computer. Any gear. Nothing. How are we going to subvert them?”

  “First we need to get that head wound seen to. Then we’ll figure out the rest later,” Asala said as Niko stumbled again. “Come on. Best get moving.”

  Both of them moved slowly. Asala allowed it. There was time for pushing, and there was time for letting good enough lie.

  Still, night was soon approaching, and with it, a fierce cold. It was nothing, nothing, like Hypatia, of course, not even in the same realm, but it nipped at the senses just the same.

  Shi Shen shone like a bright moon in the distance, all the villagers burning their fires, streetlights aglow. As they got closer, they could hear the chatter of the people. Some sang songs. Already, the smell of street food drifted on the air. Fried sweet desserts, meat being roasted and smoked. It wasn’t much like the Gan-De Asala remembered, but then this was thousands of miles away from where she’d first made port all those years ago.

  They walked into the village, trying to draw as little attention to themselves as they could, but even under the waning light of day, it was clear they were not from around here. Niko’s visible injury didn’t help.

  There were drones here, too, the faintest sound of buzzing. It got under your skin. Whatever the drones were searching for, neither Asala nor Niko seemed to invite any unwanted attention from them.

  An older woman draped in shawls and scarves from head to toe gestured to Niko. “You’ll be wanting to get to Dyfed’s,” she said in heavily accented Upper Crescent Hypatian.

  It was a kind show of faith, speaking to Asala in what the woman assumed was Asala’s mother tongue. Why was it Asala felt most Hypatian away from Hypatia?

  “Where’s Dyfed’s?” Asala asked in Cyril, the local Gandesian tongue. She was rusty, but it would come back.

  Niko leaned most of their weight against Asala. Their steps had recently grown slack and wobbly.

  “I can show you,” the stranger said, “but first, I need to know your names. So I can call ahead and make an appointment. You understand.”

  Asala was about to answer, but Niko squeezed her shoulder hard, interrupting. “Suliza and Shulem,” Niko said. Asala recognized the names as belonging to a sibling pair from a quite famous Gandesian poem.

  “Of course,” said the stranger. “We’ve been expecting you, then.” The cautious tone was gone, and they began to lead them along what looked like the village’s single main street.

  The names had obviously been code words, and not for the first time Asala couldn’t figure out how the hell Niko knew all this stuff.

  Asala scoped the place out, doing her best to get a sense of it. Four hundred people at most, she guessed—a mix of fishers, subsistence farmers, and crafts folk. This region of Gan-De was known for textile making. Under the smell of street food, she got a whiff of the urine used to process haxen, the tawny weed that could be made into a clothing fiber that was exported throughout most of the solar system.

  It was a difficult craft, not easily mastered. General Cynwrig knew Gan-De’s economy depended on the haxen market. Perhaps Shi Shen’s relative freedom came from her awareness that the people here had realized the one truth that could disrupt martial law. She needed them more than they needed her.

  “Don’t worry about those things,” said the woman, pointing to one of the drones. “They don’t see the world as it is.” She wore a sly smile on her wrinkled face.

  Asala frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “They’re hacked?” Niko sounded impressed.

  “It’s not so difficult to send false inputs into their sensors when you’re familiar with the technology. My name is Soren, by the way. Any questions you have, you can ask me or my brother, Uriel. We’ll arrange anything you need, but times are lean, and it may take a few days to get everything in order. In the meantime, you’ll stay with Uriel and me.”

  Asala hadn’t been expecting such a welcome, least of all in Gan-De. She took in her surroundings. Shi Shen seemed to be the only thing for miles and miles. It was the kind of place where the wild could still get in, nothing like Almagest or the cities back on Khayyam, where there was a sense of separation between the human life inside and the animal life far beyond its borders.

  Animals hooted, called, chirped, howled in the distance as night fell. Children were rushed into their small apartments by worried parents, so as not to be gobbled by any number of hungry beasts brave enough to enter the village. Beyond Shi Shen, the world was all tall red-needled trees, piney and dense. Blood conifers. Farther away, there were snowcapped mountains. Just over those mountains was where most of Gan-De’s cities lay.

  “They’re called the Sinowen-ku,” said Soren, noticing that Asala had been looking toward the mountains. “It means—”

  “Seven days,” Asala answered.

  “Yes. For that’s how long the journey is through them.”

  No wonder the people had found a refuge here. Asala felt hopeful they’d find Uzochi. This was most definitely the region the Eratosi would have gone to.

  “You like it?” asked Soren.

  “Hm?”

  “Here,” said Soren.

  Asala nodded. It was a magnificent, wild place, much like Hypatia had once been.

  She tried to imagine what it might be like to love this place as much as General Cynwrig did. Could Asala ever stoop to such cruelty and exclusionism to protect something so clearly worth protecting?

  She didn’t think she could, not that any of it mattered. Gan-De, Hypatia, all the great beauties of this solar system—soon they would be gone, barely a trace of them left in the cosmos.

  “How much—how much longer?” asked Niko, dragging their feet. Their words slurred too.

  “Not far now. Come on,” said Soren, grabbing their arm so both she and Asala were supporting them from either side.

  It was only a few more strides before they’d arrived. Soren helped Asala take Niko up a short flight of stairs, then politely bid them farewell after the briefest of introductions to Dyfed. “I’ll fetch you in a couple of hours and we can see what needs doing,” she said.

  Asala had been expecting a doctor, but it would’ve been a stretch to call Dyfed that. She was . . . well, on Khayyam they might’ve called her a witch.

  Her place was a tiny apartment in a small two-story complex. Every surface was covered in dried plant matter. Hanging flowers and weeds and herbs. There were shelves of amber bottles filled with tinctures and so on. There was a pot bubbling on the stove, and Asala couldn’t be sure whether it was supposed to be food or medicine.

  “Sit down there, honey,” Dyfed told Niko, pointing to a little cot that was half-covered in stacks of old books. Physical books! Asala made a note to herself to look at them when things settled
down and she’d have a chance. “And drink this.” She handed Niko a small vial of something black.

  “There’s no sedative in that, right?” Asala asked. If Niko had a concussion, a soporific was the last thing they needed.

  The witch scoffed. “No, busybody. Just some mild anti-inflammatory and blood thinner for the pain.”

  Dyfed didn’t have skin-sealing technology, and she had to stitch Niko’s gash back together by hand after cleaning and treating it. Asala hadn’t seen such a procedure performed before, and she watched in awe as the woman worked on the anesthetized skin.

  “Get me some more gauze, busybody,” said Dyfed.

  Asala obeyed, not letting her desire to continue watching get the better of her. Curiosity had its place, and its place wasn’t here.

  “Feel free to eat some of that grub too,” Dyfed offered.

  So whatever was bubbling on the small two-burner stove was food. “Don’t hog it all,” Niko called, their voice wobbly.

  But Asala was starving, and she scooped up a healthy serving of the stuff in the pot, which turned out to be some sort of savory grain-based porridge with rehydrated dry mushrooms, boiled egg, spices, and slivers of slow-cooked meat.

  “There’s pickled roots in the fridge,” Dyfed added.

  Asala helped herself to some as the witch continued seeing to Niko, letting herself take it easy. Tomorrow, after Niko had rested, they’d decide on their next move.

  * * *

  Niko and Asala pored over maps of the terrain. Soren had helpfully marked the safe and unsafe routes. Most of them were unsafe. Those marked safe still came with heavy dangers. “‘Safe’ is kind of a misnomer. More like, ‘slightly lower chance of fatality,’” said Soren.

  Asala let Niko take the lead. They clearly knew more about talking to people here than Asala did. They lied easily and swiftly, knowing just what to say.

  “We’re looking for some people who probably passed through here on their way looking for, I don’t know, an abandoned factory? Something like that?”

  Soren nodded. “I might know who you mean.”

  No names were exchanged. Soren still didn’t know that Niko was Niko and Asala was Asala. Probably part of their general safety procedures. Asala wondered if Soren was her real name, or if Dyfed’s was Dyfed’s. She scanned her memory for literary references, like the code names Niko had provided in that first meeting, but none immediately came to mind.

  “We don’t keep records of people’s comings and goings. People don’t tell us where they’re going, and we don’t ask,” said Soren.

  “But don’t you have a way of getting in contact with them?” Asala interjected.

  “No. Of course not. This little village might be more or less a safe zone, but the general has eyes and ears everywhere. We’re more likely to communicate by messenger birds than by hardlines or networks if we don’t want our messages intercepted. People in the know know where to go.”

  “Thank you, Soren,” said Niko. “We can take it from here.”

  They could? That was news to Asala.

  “We’ll have a transport ready for you in a couple of hours loaded up with supplies, including food, water, and weapons. You’re going to need them,” said Soren. “I’ll see you in a bit.”

  After Soren left, Niko circled a few areas on the maps. “So I’ve been looking into it. Turns out near the Seven Day Mountains, there’s a cave network by the coast. There used to be manufacturing facilities here and here,” they said, placing their finger on two different points.

  “Mm. I remember something like that,” said Asala. “Back when Cynwrig was trying to expand into this region.”

  “Right,” said Niko. “I learned a bit about it in some of my computer security courses. The caves were originally thought to be a good location for storing servers because they maintain a low temperature and controlled climate. Then later, because there was so much infrastructure already in place to house the servers, General Cynwrig decided to expand it into a factory.”

  “But the whole thing went bust when the servers were compromised,” Asala said, remembering the fiasco. Rebels launched one of the most successful hacks on Gan-De, almost toppling Cynwrig’s regime when they destroyed all of the servers in the cave system.

  Most of the city’s workers, whether they had any connection to the attack or not, were interrogated and imprisoned, some executed. The manufacturing plants were shut down, abandoned for nearly three decades.

  “So you think that’s where they’d go?” Asala asked.

  “It’s the only place that makes sense,” said Niko, rubbing a bit at the gauze bandage over their head. “It’s got the necessary computing equipment and machinery to make more of the cubes.”

  “But it’s so old. Surely everything must be in a state of disrepair. Could it really be functional?”

  “If you had Uzochi’s engineering skills? If you had a crew of people and a month to get everything in order? Absolutely.”

  Asala nodded and took a sip of the tea Dyfed had made her. “Okay, so that’s where we’re headed.”

  “The only problem is the cave network expands over about forty miles, all with abandoned manufacturing plants inside. It’s a lot of territory to cover to see where they are exactly,” said Niko.

  Asala traced her finger over the various routes they could take on the map to the caves. It was a two-day journey, assuming the personal vehicle they got was new enough to travel at one hundred miles per hour.

  This was going to be far from easy. There were roads, but barely. The terrain looked rough. According to Dyfed and Soren, there would be AI presence throughout the journey, not to mention locals less friendly to folks off-planet. Soren suggested Asala wear a mask or otherwise cover up the tattoos on her face and neck, but she wouldn’t do that. Couldn’t do that.

  She shook her head. The only thing on Asala’s mind should be figuring this out. Nothing else. Hadn’t everything she’d learned so far confirmed that? Finding Uzochi was priority number one.

  * * *

  Asala broke the silence. “Still in a lot of pain?”

  “Hm?” Niko murmured, distracted.

  Miles and miles of hilly red forest stretched before and around them. The truck they’d been gifted bumped along noisily and uncomfortably in the dark.

  “You still in a lot of pain?” Asala repeated.

  “I’m all right,” they said.

  Asala shrugged. “You’re just quieter than usual.”

  “Just tired. Maybe this is finally starting to weigh on me,” said Niko, feet up on the dash as they leaned back in their seat. Positioned so casually, they looked younger than usual, the image bringing to mind an insolent teenager, angst and all.

  “I hear you,” said Asala.

  “Do you? Or are you happy to be hunting down Uzochi just because my dad says so?” Niko asked. Asala swallowed, licking her bottom lip as she pulled forward through the winding, pitted dirt road. “Sorry, Asala, but I just don’t get you sometimes. I really don’t. It’s not about you being Hypatian. It’s not. It’s about you being a person. Do you even care whether or not we’re doing the right thing? What are we even doing here, Asala? Have you thought about that? Just tell me one thing—do you trust my dad?”

  Asala didn’t know how she felt about Ekrem. She’d known him for years, though, and he’d never shown himself as anything but earnest. A little full of himself, but earnest. He’d always been an excellent commanding officer, but as the years had passed and as he began to pursue politics, he’d grown more calculating, more cunning. Or perhaps the tendency had been there all along, and she hadn’t noticed it before. She had to mean something to him after all this time, didn’t she?

  “Think about it. Why did he send us?” Niko said. “Why did he send his top mercenary contact if it was just some missing refugees? Why is it all off the books? Why not go through official channels? Yeah, there’s whatever bullshit excuse he gave, but you know there’s more to it than that. There has to be
.” They’d spoken to her more in the last few minutes than they had since leaving Camp Ghala. Maybe this was the first time they’d had a chance.

  “I don’t know,” Asala answered honestly. What she did know was the mission. She’d see the mission through to the bitter end; she always did. “I admit to not having all the answers, but you can’t really agree with Hafiz, can you? That the inner planets should be left behind?”

  Niko shook their head. “No. I don’t know. Khayyam destroyed the outer planets. It’s genocide. Literally. Millions of people are dead because of their greed and selfishness. Doesn’t that fucking make you angry? Because it makes me wanna—”

  “Makes you want to what? Commit another genocide? Condemn millions to death who are in no way responsible for what’s happening to the system?” Asala countered, with more heat than she’d intended.

  “How do you define responsible for? Khayyami citizens benefited from what they were doing for centuries. Did they fight it? Did they demand change? Or did they live their lives complacent while the government and the corporations scooped the sun out?”

  Asala shook her head. “Murder is murder.”

  “Yet you’re more keen to condemn the people who are suffering than those who caused the suffering,” Niko noted bitterly.

  Asala sighed. “What the hell do you want me to say, kid?”

  “I don’t know. Something beyond trite expressions like ‘murder is murder.’”

  “It’s all fucked to fucking pieces. That’s what I’ve got to say about it. You satisfied?” she asked.

  Niko was silent for several moments. “Kind of.”

  Despite herself, Asala laughed. They both did.

  “It’s just, how can you ever know what to do when you’re just a small piece in a small maze, one tiny subsection of a labyrinth that stretches back centuries?” asked Asala. These weren’t real choices. She was unable to undo anything that had been done. Her only option was focusing on the task at hand, and she couldn’t figure out why Niko didn't see that.