The Vela: The Complete Season 1

by Yoon Ha Lee, Becky Chambers, SL Huang

  • • •

  Cynwrig didn't need to pace now. She stood at her window, hands clasped behind her back. The people outside couldn't see her, but she could see them behind the shielded glass, milling about the city square with everyday industry. She watched a fruit vendor guiding her robotic cart through the crowd, an imperfect line through a busy throng. Then, from nowhere, another person appeared, their trajectory unnoticed until they stopped the cart. A conversation was had. Goods were exchanged. Two random figures in a crowd, their respective intentions unknown until their paths crossed at last.

  The general imagined her puzzle pieces moving in a similar fashion. They were out there, all beginning their drift toward one another. At that very moment, or one quite close to it, a transport was carrying the clannies' champion down from her junk heap perch in low orbit—and from there, to Cynwrig.

  She'd been bluffing, of course. An old conceit, and dead easy. Throw out a few key words you suspect will make a person squirm—Vela, in this case, and Ekrem's lackeys—say nothing of substance, and let them fill in the blanks for you. She didn't know this Soraya beyond name and reputation, so it was impossible to say how quickly answers would come. Cynwrig had no real appetite for interrogation, but neither was she squeamish about it. One way or another, she'd arrive at an answer.

  There was another possibility, too, some potential icing on the cake. If her hunch about Asala being on the surface was correct, and if the Hypatian mercenary got wind of Soraya coming down . . . well, if Cynwrig were in those shoes, that'd be bait worth chasing. After weeks of fruitless efforts, Cynwrig's job was suddenly laughably simple. If she wanted to solve the puzzle, all she had to do was sit back and wait to see what the pieces did.

  • • •

  Pain was the first thing Niko registered. Pain, and movement. Their head throbbed, the world spun, and their empty stomach lurched. They moved to touch their head, but found they could not. They pushed through the throbbing, forcing their vision to clear. Handcuffs. Someone had cuffed them. They looked past that. Upholstery. Metal. A vehicle.

  Shit.

  They sat up quickly—too quickly, their inner ears informed them—and while yes, they were in the back of the police car, there weren't any officers to be found. There was only Asala, in the driver's seat, her eyes flicking toward Niko in the mirror and brimming with silent fury.

  Shit.

  “Asala,” Niko said. The skin of their lips crunched oddly as they spoke, and they cautiously ran their tongue out. Blood, dry now, crusted from . . . down their nose, it felt like. They must've hit their face when they fell down. Gods, but they'd never had a headache like this. “Asala, what's going on?” They shook their cuffed wrists. “What the hell is this?”

  Asala's answer came smooth as ice and every bit as dangerous. “Do you work for your father's government?”

  There wasn't a good word for the sound that came out of Niko's throat. A laugh, in part, but a choke, too, and a scream that lay waiting in the background. “Of course I do. You—is your head okay?”

  Wrong move. Asala's jaw tightened. “Don't,” she said. “Don't insult my intelligence any more than you already have. I'm going to ask you again. Do you work for your father's government? And I'm not asking which office you go to in the mornings, or which cafeteria you spend your meal breaks in. I'm asking about your actual work, your agenda. Your contacts.” She swerved slightly to avoid some roadkill.

  “I don't know—”

  “Last chance.” The look on Asala's face made Niko want to run. Asala had always been intimidating to them. She'd never been frightening.

  Niko considered the cuffs around their wrists, the lump on their head. The gun at Asala's side. Niko suddenly realized Asala had stripped them of everything but their clothes. No weapon, no tools, no handheld.

  They were screwed.

  With a deep breath, Niko jumped off the cliff. “I'm working with the Order of Boreas.”

  Asala nodded once. She said nothing further.

  Niko waited for shouting, indignation, something. They waited a long time. Asala drove on in silence. “I can explain,” they said.

  Asala stared ahead, hands on the wheel.

  “I was going to tell you,” Niko said. “That was the whole plan. Get off Khayyam, tell you who I was really working with, find the Vela armed with that knowledge. We thought—we thought you'd understand. You're Hypatian, you're a refugee. If anyone was going to be sympathetic, it'd be you.” The pain flared, and they winced. “But you were . . . you were hard to read. I couldn't figure out how you'd feel about it. You were focused on the job, so we did the job. I thought, soon as we met Hafiz, you'd be on board with it. You'd remember how things are out there, you'd understand that this is the only way.” The words were pouring out of Niko now, relieved to be set loose. “But you . . .” They shook their head. “I don't understand. After all we've done to you. After all we're still doing. We don't deserve to be saved, Asala. My father—my father is guilty. My planet is guilty. We ruined this system, and the people who got hit by that mess first, we don't care about them. We sit there in our painted halls, sipping water by the gallon and not caring if it spills, debating whether or not we should take in the people left homeless. Left homeless by our hand.” They raised their head despite the pain, echoing the conviction that had won them over from the start. “The Inner planets made this mess. We should have to sit there, first-row seats, and feel the hurt we spread to others. If we get a second chance, if we have the technology to bounce out whenever we want, we'll just do it again, and again, using up every star like the galaxy's a fucking buffet. So, save the innocents. Leave the guilty behind.”

  Asala drove on.

  Niko was unnerved by her silence, and felt their words push out with more urgency, more fear. “I understand that you're pissed. But if we can talk this out—”

  Asala laughed to herself—a dry, spiteful sound.

  It was Niko's turn to be quiet. “Where are we going?” they asked after a while.

  “To get Soraya. It'll be a long drive.”

  The break in silence was jarring, as was Asala's answer. Niko blinked. “Soraya?” That didn't make sense. “She's down here?”

  “Yes.”

  “How do you know?”

  Asala nodded at the message console on the dashboard. “Lots to read here,” she said with a pointed glare. “And the nice thing about Gandesian military vehicles is, they let you track other friendlies.”

  Niko frowned. “Why is she here? How is she here?”

  Asala laughed again. “Like I'd tell you even if I knew.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “I'm going to get her, and get back to Camp Ghala.”

  Niko swallowed. “And me?”

  A shrug. A casual expression. “I haven't decided yet,” Asala said. “But you made one good suggestion in all that bullshit.” Her eyes met Niko's in the mirror. “Leave the guilty behind.”

  • • •

  They hadn't fed her since she'd come down planetside, but for once, that was the least of her worries. Something didn't feel right.

  Soraya shifted uncomfortably in the backseat of the transport. It was a military vehicle, of course, exterior stamped liberally with the seal of the general's party. She didn't know what she was worried about. She wasn't in a prisoner wagon. She wasn't cuffed. The driver was armed, but that was hardly a surprise. Perhaps that was the problem. Nothing about this was surprising, in the context of what Cynwrig had said in that weird-ass call. Maybe the general genuinely wanted to negotiate after all. Maybe this was the political shift they'd all been waiting for.

  Or maybe, Soraya thought, she was going to get shot the moment this car got to wherever it was going. Couldn't rule the possibility out.

  She looked out the window. Muted moon cut through waifish cloud. It had been a long time since she'd seen the sky from this way around.

  “Can we pull over for a minute?” she asked the driver. “I need to go to t
he bathroom.”

  The driver, who looked like he enjoyed this assignment about as much as dental surgery, said nothing.

  “Please,” Soraya said. “It's been hours since the spaceport.”

  The driver's mouth shifted, as if he were sucking something from between his teeth. “I have to clear it,” he said, and began tapping text into the console screen.

  Bureaucrats. Couldn't even pee without jumping through hoops.

  Time passed, and a reply arrived. “Ten minutes,” the driver said with a grudging look. “They've authorized a stop at a place up ahead.”

  The place in question was an abandoned rest stop beside an equally abandoned vehicle service center, presumably meant for farmers and the like on drives such as this. The paint was dilapidated, the lights long dead. Soraya had assumed their hard-won stop would feature a bathroom maintained by humans instead of nested in by rodents, but apparently not. She doubted it was worth holding out hope for running water. Another time in her life, she would've been disgusted, but life in Camp Ghala had a way of tempering expectations. “I'll just be a minute,” she said. She opened the transport door, and nearly moaned.

  Fresh air.

  A strong breeze whipped her hair, and she stepped out slowly, reverently, into the open night. The wind rushed over her eyelashes, her nostrils, a hard caress that made her breathe clean. She could practically feel her blood rush with the influx of oxygen born pure from the surrounding trees, a respite from the recycled molecules that had traversed a thousand lungs. It was better than sleep, better than sex. She closed her eyes, transported by the thrill of an atmosphere.

  The moment shattered with a sound from the driver. Soraya's eyes shot open. Another vehicle had pulled through the fog, coming to a stop in an aggressive angle across the road.

  Soraya's driver stepped out of the car and unholstered his gun. “Hey,” he called. He sounded confused, and Soraya felt the same. The headlights of their vehicle illuminated a police sigil on the car ahead. The driver called out again, holding his gun at his side. “You need any help?”

  Soraya wasn't entirely sure what happened next. She hit the dry ground the moment an energy blast lit up the night. Other shots followed in deafening disagreement, and Soraya felt her body curl instinctively.

  There was a candy wrapper caught in the grass, right by her face. She stared at it as shots flashed and echoed. It seemed out of place, out of sync. A bright remnant from a vanished moment, its joy long since departed.

  Then: silence. Silence was worse, almost. Silence meant someone had won. Soraya tried to steady her breath, but it had quickened past her control.

  “Soraya!” someone called. Not just someone—a woman, Hypatian. She spoke in a low voice to someone else, the edges of her words sharp. “Get out of the car. Do not try anything.”

  Soraya slowly got up and peeked over the edge of the car. She exhaled deeply as her suspicion was confirmed. “What the fuck,” she snapped. She stood up and raised her hands in indignant query. Her driver was dead on the ground, blood already pooling. She stepped over his body, continuing toward her . . . her what? Her savior? Her saboteur? “What are you doing here?” She noticed Asala's tagalong lurking in the background, and her questions doubled. “Why are they cuffed? What's going on?”

  “You're welcome,” Asala said irritably.

  “For what? I came here freely; I'm not a prisoner. Cynwrig wants to negotiate.”

  Asala laughed short and loud. “And you believe that?”

  Soraya prickled. She was in no mood for some smug soldier's shit. “Of course not,” she said. “But the alternative was to wait in the dark to see what she'd do. She knows about the Vela.”

  “Oh fuck,” Niko said.

  “Don't be stupid,” Asala shot at them, far more angrily than the situation warranted. “She doesn't know a goddamn thing. She's fishing.”

  Niko looked away bitterly but gave no reply. What had happened here?

  Soraya shook her head, trying to choose one question at a time. “How do you know?” she asked.

  “Because if she knew what we know, she'd be combing the planet, not wasting her time inviting you to tea.” Asala put up her hands. “No offense.”

  Soraya shrugged tersely. “All right,” she said. “But whatever it is you've got in your pocket—and I assume you're going to tell me—it's only half your problem.”

  Asala turned her head slowly toward Soraya, looking as tired as any person could. “What's the other half?”

  Soraya shifted her gaze to Niko. “Your father,” she said.

  Niko's eyes widened. “What about him?”

  “I overheard it in the spaceport. Gandesian pilots being dispatched, a threat found on long-range scans.” Soraya arched her head back and drew in a deep breath. She was going to breathe as much as she could in the short time they had. “I don't know what ant nests you two have been kicking in recent weeks, but somewhere along the way, you got the Inners' attention.”

  A shadow crossed Asala's face. “How much attention?”

  “All of it.” Soraya let the good air inside her lungs go. “The Khayyami fleet's inbound.” She laughed. “Funny how everybody suddenly gives a shit about us now that we've got something worth taking.”

  Episode 8

  Gravity

  SL Huang

  The news that the Khayyami fleet was coming should have made Asala feel something. Betrayal, fear, anger, something. Instead, her brain swallowed it into numbness, drawing conclusions detached from emotion.

  Ekrem was coming for the cubes. He’d have the wormhole generators from Uzochi and Hafiz, or he’d blast them and their people into craters. Gan-De wouldn’t stand by while their space was violated either. This battle was about to rain blood out of the skies.

  The whole system had thus far been blithely willing to ignore the pending apocalypse, but now that a single, shining chance at a future dangled before them, they were going to slaughter each other in order to snatch it.

  It should have awoken something in Asala, the inescapable conclusion bearing down on her that this was about to become a massacre, that a system-wide war would decimate the population before anyone had a chance to escape. But maybe it was all too big. Or maybe she’d used up all her feeling on Niko.

  Niko. Fuck. She hadn’t thought it was still possible for something to gut punch her that way. How had she allowed an inexpert child to get under her armor? She should never have permitted it. She should have remembered: People inevitably betray, disappoint, fail.

  This was her fault. She’d allowed Niko to get close. She’d failed to rip out the grudging fondness that had been growing in her like a fungus.

  “Asala?” Soraya said. “What’s going on with—with you two? Why is Niko . . . ?”

  “They’re a traitor.” Oh, and that was all coming together in Asala’s head like a riddle that made her want to vomit. From the very beginning, back on Khayyam—Niko scrambling on their handheld, and every interface in their vicinity suddenly going dark. Niko conveniently finding glow on the assassin and conveniently pointing the finger toward cartels out of Khwarizmi. Niko knowing how to hack General Cynwrig’s spiders in less than no time at all.

  Because they’d already hacked them, and sent the hack to the rebels.

  They’d sounded so personally injured at how inexpertly the hack had been used. Now she knew why. And then all the “malfunctions” on the Altair, and mysterious contacts crawling out of every crack in Shi Shen—how had Asala not realized?

  “They’re a toady for Hafiz,” she said to Soraya. Her voice sounded as cracked and cold as the night air. “They have been all along.”

  “I’m not a toady,” Niko objected. “I only wanted—I want justice. My planet has been killing yours for centuries. We’re all guilty, and so are Khwarizmi and Gan-De. The people we’ve been stomping all over deserve to build a civilization without us strangling them. If my dad gets his hands on even one of those cubes, I guarantee you he’s going to try to re-cr
eate Khayyam on the other side, a clone of the same old power structures—”

  Asala drew her gun, thumb going to the dial that was still set to maximum. Niko stopped talking and flinched away, stumbling back in the light of the police car’s headlamps, their cuffed hands coming up reflexively in front of them. Fury clawed up Asala’s throat. How dare they question her ethics, that she would stoop to murder when they were no threat? Murder was what Niko had tried to do.

  Beside Asala, Soraya’s eyes had gone as wide as moons.

  “Here’s what’s going to happen,” Asala said. “I don’t have time to babysit you. Or to arrest you.” Besides, what authorities would she hand them over to? Gan-De, whose law enforcement would be all too happy to whip Asala behind bars too? Ekrem, who had also lied to her, who was bearing down on them all to wage world-ending war, and who would probably give his wayward progeny no more than a gentle bureaucratic slap anyway? Asala was no stranger to the politics of family.

  “I’m going to uncuff you,” Asala continued to Niko. “Then I’m going to take Soraya in one of these vehicles and make sure she gets dropped off on Camp Ghala safely, with the intelligence we gathered here. And you’re going to take the other and get out of my sight, and I am never going to lay eyes on you again.”

  Instead of the relief Asala had expected, Niko’s face crumpled. Her anger sparked again. They should be fucking grateful.

  “Wait,” Soraya said, sounding panicked. “What do you mean, drop me off? Great Mother, Asala, you have to help us!”

  “I am helping you. I’m giving you our intelligence,” Asala said. “What else do you expect me to do? Take on the whole fucking Khayyami fleet?” One person couldn’t make a difference anyway. She was giving Soraya what she needed to evacuate as many of her people as possible before the bloodbath. What else was there?