The Vela: The Complete Season 1

by Yoon Ha Lee, Becky Chambers, SL Huang

  “Ha,” Niko said in a triumphant whisper. They looked up toward the ceiling and sighed with genuine relief. It was the first time since they'd left Uzochi that they didn't look like someone had just shot their dog.

  “We through?” Asala asked.

  “We're through,” Niko confirmed. “It's a rough connection, but it's secure.”

  “You sure?” Asala didn't want to bring a squad of Gan-De's best down on their unsuspecting hosts' heads if they traced a signal back.

  “It'll just look like somebody's calling the cops,” Niko said. “Because that's exactly what I'm doing.”

  “Sorry, you're what?”

  “Last-ditch save,” Niko said. “A local contact I was given in the Gandesian police, in case shit went sideways. One favor only.”

  Asala frowned. “You have a contact in the Gandesian police?”

  “Contact of a contact, but yes.”

  “And you trust this person. This Gandesian cop.”

  “I trust my contact.”

  Their contact. Always a contact with Niko, always a magical friend in the middle of nowhere. Asala knew governments had people stashed everywhere, but the sheer number of Khayyami sympathizers Niko kept turning up itched in a way she didn't like. She opened her mouth, but she wasn't sure what the question was. She watched Niko hammer away at their keyboard. The look of relief they'd had moments before was starting to dissolve. Asala closed her mouth, and let the itch lie.

  • • •

  Soraya dropped a cube of soup mix into a mug, waiting for her kettle to boil. She contemplated the faded soup mix box as the water started its quiet roar. Real grasshen flavor! the text proclaimed. Her eyes shifted to the speckled orange cube in the bottom of her chipped mug, looking like sedimentary rock more than anything that had ever spent a life hopping through a farmer's field. It was the third-cousin ghost of a grasshen, so far removed that it barely counted as eating something from an animal at all. Soup mix was a misnomer, anyway. It didn't make soup; it made the starting ground for a soup. Did that still count as soup, if you had nothing to put in it? Soraya thought about reading the ingredients, then thought better of it. Real grasshen flavor, the box assured her. No need to spoil the illusion, flimsy as it was.

  The kettle made an odd snap, and the roar died before its time. “What—” she began, but the answer arose in the form of a sharp smell, the acrid sting of wiring gone wrong. “Oh, come on.” She shut her eyes, then wearily disconnected the now-useless appliance from its battery. “Fuck.” This was the last thing she needed. Boiling was the only surefire way up here to make sure everything that lingered in the overtaxed water reclamation system wouldn't get inside you.

  With a sigh, she pressed her palm against the kettle. It was warm, at least . . . but warm enough for soup mix? She hesitated, then filled her mug with the almost-hot water. She retrieved a small blue bottle and added a splash of treatment drops as well. The aftertaste they left behind was about as pleasant as sucking chalk, but she'd take that over a microbial war in her gut. Getting sick was not something she had any sort of time for.

  The cube disintegrated, sort of. She tried stirring it. Blobs of oil formed on the surface of the liquid. The detritus of real grasshen flavor swirled like silt. She stirred and stirred, and finally gave up, taking a tentative sip. The partially dissolved soup mix did not play nicely with the treatment drops, and the body-temperature water repulsed rather than soothed. But she wasn't about to waste water, or battery power, or even soup mix. There had to be some vitamins or something in it. No way was she pouring those down the drain.

  Soraya sat at her desk with her unfortunate drink and began to braid her unwashed hair. It was her turn on the chemshower schedule tomorrow, thank whichever gods were still listening. She'd have to steal time to do laundry as well. The threshold had finally been reached where the stink of laundry dip was preferable to the stink of her own body. She'd feel differently after a few days of dip residue singeing her nostrils, but so it always went, back and forth, back and forth, trading one evil for another.

  She shut her eyes for a moment. She thought about tea so hot you had to wait an hour to drink it, hair falling soft and playful between a lover's fingers, laundry dried by the sway of planetary air. She thought about the real flavor of an actual grasshen, roasted in a brick oven and covered with so much rough-ground rub you could barely see the bird beneath. You still knew it was a bird, though, and only a bird. One ingredient, one animal. Healthy and whole.

  Soraya listened to the sounds coming in through the walls around her, of movement and voices, the songs of weary parents trying to make their nervous children sleep. They longed for real air and real food too, she knew. And so she drank her piss-warm soup grit, tied off her crusty hair, and worked her way through the stack of requests Ifa had left on her desk before he'd gone home for the night. Licking wounds was a natural instinct, she knew, but it wouldn't solve anything. It wouldn't make anything better.

  The idea of bed was starting to appeal when her handheld flashed with an incoming message. She picked it up and studied the alert. No name given, but a secure channel from a source on the ground. Finally. The doubt Asala had cast on Uzochi's work before heading down there was something Soraya was eager to be rid of. She picked up her mug and accepted the call.

  The drink had been a mistake, because Soraya nearly choked when she saw the face that had been summoned into her space. General Cynwrig smiled back, hands folded on an immaculate desk of polished wood. Her uniform was pressed, her hair clean, her smile effortless and hungry. “Soraya,” she said. “We haven't spoken before.”

  Soraya wasn't sure she'd ever spoken to anyone, ever, because she'd completely forgotten how. “I—”

  The general held up her hand. “I am told you are a busy woman, so let me be direct. I assume you've met my friends, Agent Asala and Niko av Ekrem? I know they're down here. I know what they're looking for. I know that you have the ear of everyone up there, and vice versa. And I know about the Vela.”

  The room vanished along with Soraya's words, the room and every scrap of hope she'd kept from drifting away. She wet her lips. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

  The general laughed. “Come now, I said I don't want to waste your time. Why are you wasting mine?”

  Soraya said nothing.

  “Very well. You can listen, at least. Given the Khayyami insistence on butting in where they don't belong, perhaps our interests are in alignment. Yours and mine, I mean. Their efforts here aren't good for me, and I doubt they're good for you. Perhaps we can . . . help each other.” Cynwrig looked as if the words pained her, but the smile held steady. “I will allow one ship—just one—carrying you—and only you—to the surface of Gan-De, so that we might discuss this further. Properly.”

  Soraya opened her mouth, closed it, shook her head, and leaned forward with a frown. “If you have whatever information it is you're after, what do you need me for? What good am I to you?”

  The general gestured at her own screen. “Surely you understand that this is not the best method for discussing delicate matters.”

  “And surely you understand that this sounds like a shit-stupid thing for me to do.” Soraya didn't know if her words were born out of anger or hunger or pure confusion, but she let them ride all the same.

  The general drummed her fingers. “I understand,” she said after a moment. She pressed a button elsewhere on her desk. “Tell them they're go for launch,” Cynwrig said to someone else.

  Soraya swallowed. “What did you do?”

  The general laughed again. “Relax, Soraya. I can appreciate your caution around me. I respect caution. I'd do the same in your position. So, as a token of that appreciation, I'm sending up a cargo ship of ration packs. Not the most appetizing of meals, but I assume you can put them to use.”

  Soraya could feel her cramping stomach trying to grab on to something of substance in the ingested soup mix, and knew she was surrounded by thousands of others feelin
g the same thing. She wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth where food was concerned, even if the horse did smell of brimstone. What else could she do here? Who was she, in the face of someone like General fucking Cynwrig? If the general knew about the Vela, if she'd found out about all of that and hadn't blown the entire camp out of the sky, then something else was up. What that something was, Soraya had no idea. But as she saw it, she didn't have much of a choice.

  “Food first,” Soraya said. “If it's not poison, I'll come down.”

  “I look forward to it,” Cynwrig said.

  The call was ended.

  Soraya sat staring for several minutes, trying to make sense of whatever the hell had just happened. She hated everything about this. She hated Cynwrig. She hated Asala for apparently getting sloppy. She hated—hated—the fact that the first response that shot knee-jerk through her brain when faced with the bewildering reality of heading down to Gan-De for a chat with its suddenly chummy dictator was maybe they'll feed you down there.

  • • •

  “I don't like this.” It wasn't the first time Asala had said it, and she doubted it would be the last. They'd left the shelter of the barn for the chill of a grassy roadside, about two miles from where they'd made the call.

  “It'll be fine,” Niko assured her. Asala couldn't see their expression, but their foggy breath glowed faintly with moonlight. “Please, trust me.”

  They were hidden away behind an unmanned fuel station along the main road leading away from the mountain. Floodlights haloed the vehicle chargers, but Asala and Niko kept to the scrub and shadows, awaiting the cops.

  A patrol vehicle approached, pulling into the light. The Gandesian seal emblazoned on the side was unnecessary. No civilian alive had ever owned a ride with that much armored plating. The engine came to rest, and four officers exited the cabin. They faced the fuel station, expecting their contacts to be somewhere behind the chargers—not, as they were, watching from the side.

  The officers stood in formation, clad in protective vests and too heavily armed for Asala's liking. Friends or no, this wasn't doing much to ease her concern.

  One of them stepped forward toward the chargers, hands on his belt. “The air is dry, but I bet it'll rain tomorrow,” he said.

  Niko opened their mouth to reply, then stopped. Even without touching them, Asala could feel them tense.

  “What's wrong?” Asala whispered.

  The officer looked around, waiting for a reply. “The air is dry, but I bet it'll rain tomorrow,” he repeated.

  “What's he look like?” Niko breathed.

  Asala got the best look she could through the night-vision goggles. “Gray hair, bald spot, a nose that didn't heal right.”

  Niko shook their head hard. “That's not my contact,” they said. “And that's an old passphrase. That's not the one currently in use.”

  “Shit.” Asala drew her gun as quietly as she could. “You sure? Absolutely sure?”

  The kid nodded grimly.

  Asala's thoughts raced. Four of them, one of her. Not the best odds, but not the worst she'd had, either. She took a deep breath, the kind she took before taking the shot. She let herself parse the given data, the numbers, the surroundings, the—

  Ah. Yes, that could work. It was a terrible idea, but . . . still. Could work.

  She dialed her weapon to a lethal setting. “Do you remember what I told you, about brave and stupid going together?”

  Niko frowned. “Yeah.”

  “I'm about to do one of those,” Asala said. “Stay back.” She looked around. “Way back.”

  Niko didn't need to be told twice. They pulled back, way back into the grass.

  Asala began to move back herself, one foot behind the other. She needed distance, if she was going to pull this off. She needed—

  A branch snapped beneath her boot.

  The officers turned toward the scrub, drawing their weapons.

  Amateurish, she chided herself. Nothing for it now. She popped up out of the scrub. A quartet of gun barrels converged in her direction, but she was faster, she had the advantage, and her aim was elsewhere. It was the lesson she'd learned way back when, back during her training. There was a time and a place for an out-and-out barrage—but sometimes, the most effective thing in the world was just one good shot.

  She pulled the trigger. A sparking bundle of energy let loose, traveling through the air, past the cops . . . and right into the containment block for the charging stations.

  Boom.

  The containment block exploded in a blossom of blue-tinged light. The officers didn't have much time to scream. Not that Asala saw the fusion burst when it hit them. A half-second later, and she wouldn't remember any of it.

  She'd only been out for . . . not long, she gathered, but it was enough for everything to have changed. She was on her back, for one, and it felt like she'd broken a bush with her body (or maybe the other way around). And there was Niko, right up in her face. Whatever had happened, they were way closer to her than was necessary.

  “Asala!” Niko was yelling, shaking her by the shoulders.

  “Fuck, get off,” she said, weakly shoving the kid back. “Okay. Important lesson.” She rolled herself into a sitting position, and took a moment to assess the metallic taste in her mouth. She tentatively pressed various spots on her torso, and was relieved to feel nothing wrong beyond the surface. There was blood in her mouth, yes, but not deep blood. She'd just bitten her tongue. She spat, and continued. “If someone gets knocked out, that means something fucked up their head. And if something fucked up their head”—and boy, that little stunt really had, given the throb that had already set up shop—“shaking them is a bad call.” She paused. “I'm assuming they're dead and that you're not doing this when there are people behind you about to shoot us.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, then.” Asala reached out, asking for a hand up. Niko obliged, and she got to her feet. She groaned. She was okay. She felt like shit, but she was okay. Pain would pass, like it always did.

  Part of the fuel station had caught fire, but that was the least of her concerns. She eyed what was left of the ambush squad. “You said your contact was good,” she said. “Quick ride to the spaceport.”

  “They must've traced my contact,” Niko said bitterly.

  “It's not your fault,” Asala said, heading for their vehicle. “It happens.” She opened the door and began to dig around the cabin.

  Niko hurried after her, gingerly sidestepping the charred bodies. “Is stealing a cop car a good idea?”

  “No,” Asala said. She climbed into the driver's seat and looked around for the go button. “Can you see if any of the chargers are still working?”

  Niko slowly looked over their shoulder, then back to Asala. “You—you do know you blew the containment hub?”

  “I know,” Asala said, irritated at Niko in lieu of herself. “But I don't know how long it will take us to get there, and we are sure as hell not stopping to fuel up. So, if there's anything here I didn't break, that would be helpful.”

  The car booted up as Niko started timidly searching through the smoking wreckage. A comm screen lit up on the center console, its piercing light making Asala wince. She fumbled to dial down the brightness, and as she did so, she noticed that the driver—she assumed the former Officer Broken Nose—had left their handheld synced to the vehicle. A message was still glowing on-screen.

  Contact made between mole and possible insurgent on surface. Mole has been sentenced to interrogation and execution, effective immediately. Given communication methods used and message content, target is allied with Ghalan terrorists. Apprehend target alive and return to base for interrogation and possible custody. Target will expect a passphrase. Use attached intelligence report for further details.

  Asala accessed the intelligence report. There was the apparently out-of-date passphrase, yes, but there was also plenty of dirt on Officer Busa, the aforementioned mole and, presumably, Niko's cont
act. They'd been watching her for a long time—almost a year. Gandesians were nothing if not patient when war was on the line. Asala kept reading, looking for the evidence of the officer's ties to Khayyam. But it wasn't there. Khayyam wasn't there, not in name or in suggestion. Asala's frown deepened. They didn't suspect Busa of passing information to Ekrem's underlings. No, they suspected her of working a lot closer to home than that.

  They suspected her of working with Hafiz's people in Camp Ghala.

  Asala sat all the way back into the seat. She looked out the window at Niko. Clumsy, floppy-haired, eager-to-please Niko. The kid who wanted to save the world. The kid who'd barely blinked when Hafiz had dropped their coldblooded plan at their feet, who'd been nearly apoplectic when Asala hadn't let them stay to help Uzochi with her one-way trip, who had all their contacts and passphrases and never, ever wanted Asala looking over their shoulder, because—they'd say, with those big, innocent eyes—they just needed to focus.

  How could she have been so stupid?

  And just as important: How could Niko?

  Niko was saying something to her as she got back out of the car. Something about one of the chargers being salvageable, but it would take a bit. They sounded pleased about it. They looked proud. Asala didn't hear the words, though. Her implants were on and undamaged. Her head still hurt, but was improving. Even so, all she heard was static as she walked straight for Niko. As Niko's smile faded. As Niko asked a question. As Niko looked confused. As Niko took a step back. As Asala hit Niko hard over the head with the butt of her gun.