The Vela: The Complete Season 1

by Yoon Ha Lee, Becky Chambers, SL Huang

  Soraya flung a hand toward Niko, her eyes brimming with pain and loss. “It’s not right, what Uzochi and Hafiz are doing—no, Niko, it’s not. Yes, there’s been oppression and complacency, but that doesn’t justify genociding hundreds of thousands of people. I don’t know how you can think—” She swiped a thick coat sleeve across her face and turned back to Asala. “Help me steal one of the cubes. Just one. We’ll offer it to Khayyam in exchange for them calling off their attack. Their scientists can reverse engineer it and figure out a way to build their own in enough time to evacuate.”

  “They’ll come after you—” started Niko.

  “So you and Hafiz and Uzochi, your solution is to kill everybody?” Soraya cried. “What, we murder everyone on three planets, because we’re afraid they’ll come after and destroy us? That can’t be the humanity we choose. I won’t. I have to—we have to have faith. Asala, please, you have to help me try.”

  Asala’s gloved hand clenched against the grip of her gun. The whole planetary system in jeopardy, and now Soraya was putting it all on her? Her whole life, she’d known enough to let go of what was happening in the Outer Ring, because what could she do? Not a damn thing. She had to draw her boundaries, turn her back to protect her own sanity.

  And now Soraya wanted to dump the fate of the entire fucking solar system on her.

  This isn’t my job, she wanted to scream. Not my responsibility. Not my problem.

  “Please,” Soraya said. “Please. Uzochi and Hafiz and the camp can go first, right now, but they can’t be allowed to kill the people who stay behind—and Great Mother permitting, maybe we can even stop a war.”

  Asala couldn’t answer. This was all too big, an impossibility that couldn’t fit in her head, and she didn’t know who she was working for anymore, or where her loyalties should lie, or whether she even had a choice in any of it.

  The military vehicle Soraya had arrived in exploded.

  The air bludgeoned into Asala, ratcheting her back against the boards of the building behind her. Shrapnel sliced at her skin and dust spit into her eyes. She tried to reverse momentum and flip back forward toward the enemy—her enemy—where was her enemy? Her fingers scrambled to clench her gun, to raise it and fire back.

  Out of nowhere, the stinging whip of a cable lashed out, knocking the weapon from Asala’s hand. Three of her fingers went instantly numb, and pain shot up to her elbow. Out of the grass, out of the dust, from around the siding of the cheap roadside rest stop rose snaking silhouettes—metallic, cable-like tentacles that climbed into monstrous shapes, surrounding them all in a writhing mass, crisscrossed in the darkness by slashing searchlights.

  Gandesian battle AIs. Asala had never seen this type before. They’d slithered close while she was wasting time talking, while she’d been distracted by a swamp of overwhelm and anger.

  And beyond the robots—Asala touched her implants, edging her hearing up a notch—the rumble of more military vehicles rolling in out of the night. A lot more. The whole scene blazed in white artificial light now, flashing painfully against Asala’s retinas, their enemies’ need for stealth gone.

  “No sudden moves,” said a vibrating alto. Asala blinked her vision clearer. The sharp-edged black creases of Gandesian military uniforms solidified from among the AIs, carrying the Mark 2 military-issue rifles of Gandesian soldiers. One stepped forward to loom over her.

  Asala sought out Soraya and Niko through the crisscrossing shadows—Soraya seemed all right, Niko dazed. Niko had hit the ground with their hands still cuffed, and the cut on their head that had been stitched over in Shi Shen had split open, sending blood sheeting down their face. They were trying to push themself up, but had barely made it to a seated lean against the building. Asala hardened herself against sympathy.

  “This is why I was called down here, isn’t it?” Soraya said. She fumbled to sit up too, her hands raised and shaking. “You were watching. You knew Asala would find me . . .”

  “An astute observation.” The new voice floated through the dust and smoke and flame—flat, hard, oblivion crushed into a steel point. The tall form of General Cynwrig strode slowly out of the debris, manifesting from the shadow and relief of her troops like white-haired death. “I knew I could get you to lead me to something, and I suspected that something might be . . . her. Though I admit I didn’t expect it to happen quite so quickly or conveniently.”

  She drew her sidearm and pointed it at Soraya.

  Soraya’s breath hitched, and she flinched away.

  Fishing, Asala reminded herself. She called Soraya down here fishing. “If it’s the Vela you want, we don’t have it,” she called out.

  “Oh, I’m far beyond the Vela. I’ve since received a far more interesting intelligence report.” She looked back down her nose at where Soraya hunched on the ground. “Wormholes. What marvelous technology. Did you really think you and Hafiz could hide this from us? And now Gan-De will have these ships . . . and this future.”

  Asala’s gut went leaden. Not just fishing, then, at least not anymore. Cynwrig knew.

  And that made one more player who would go into the upcoming slaughter beyond reason, convinced no level of human life lost would be too high a cost. Not when weighed against the magnitude of what Uzochi possessed.

  Cynwrig abruptly flipped up her weapon and retrained it on Asala, her eyes glittering black. “I know one of you can tell me where these remarkable ships are on my world. Which shall it be? Who wants to say?” She snapped her aim back to Soraya, then to Asala again, and her speech became a singsong. “Hana, mana, mona, mye—who shall speak, and who will die?”

  The gun landed on Niko.

  Cynwrig’s smile slashed her face cruelly. “Or maybe I’ll just kill this extra one now, to show you how serious I am.”

  “Stop!” The word tore out of Asala before she’d decided to speak. She tried to order her thoughts, to plan a way out of this—but how could she, when the stakes for Cynwrig were so high that she’d care about nothing else? “You know Niko’s father is President Ekrem,” she tried. “The Khayyami fleet is almost here. If you kill them, you lose a, a vital bargaining chip . . .”

  Cynwrig took one step closer to Niko, drew back her hand, and pistol-whipped them across the face. Niko yelped and fell, their chin hitting the dust. Cynwrig crouched and drove the muzzle of her weapon hard up against their temple.

  “This is a new world, Agent Asala,” she said calmly. “One in which Khayyam will shortly become irrelevant. I will say this only one time. Take me. To. The ships.”

  Keeping her hands raised, Asala got slowly to her feet.

  She wasn’t equipped to make these decisions. If Uzochi had the technology or Cynwrig had it, what the hell difference did it make? Both were going to leave 90 percent of the solar system to die. She was being asked to choose between one genocide and another—taking a stand in either direction was a moral illusion.

  And she sure wasn’t going to sacrifice their own lives for it.

  Niko whimpered against the ground.

  “Please,” whispered Soraya next to her, and Asala knew what she meant.

  • • •

  Niko stumbled to keep up, blinking away tears and blood and dust, the cold stinging against their swollen face. The soldiers had zealously taken to the task of keeping the business ends of their weapons on Cynwrig’s designated hostage, and the twisting, whip-like appendages of the battle AIs with them somehow also seemed to orient on Niko as though hungry. Death itself seemed to lean in from all sides, ravenous, just waiting for Niko to step wrong or breathe wrong, and shattering their concentration every time they tried to form a coherent thought.

  Or maybe that was the head injury. When Cynwrig had hit them, they hadn’t blacked out again, but their head throbbed so hard they felt it in their teeth and eyes, even worse than back in Shi Shen. The world felt woozier too, as if Niko were seeing it through frosted glass, or as if this were some sort of dream that wasn’t connecting to itself.

  N
ot a dream. A nightmare.

  General Cynwrig’s threat seemed to cycle again and again through Niko’s stuttering mind like a broken vid. She’d raised her weapon and their eyes had fastened on her face, its planes carved in remorseless cruelty, and all Niko could see was that fucking vanilla puff from the Altair and Cynwrig talking about her grandson and all they could think was and now she’s going to shoot me, she’s going to shoot me without even a thought.

  But she hadn’t. Because Asala had spoken up and multiplied the nightmare by a thousand.

  Just like that, Asala had coolly agreed to lead General Cynwrig to the caves where Uzochi had been building her ships. Truthfully, as far as Niko could tell. At first, Niko hadn’t even been able to register what was happening, and when they caught up, they’d clung to the hope that Asala’s subterfuge had always been good. But when she’d pointed Cynwrig toward the right direction and told her accurately how long it would take them to go by vehicle, Niko’s hopes had crusted up and crumbled to nothing.

  Cynwrig’s people had dragged Niko up then, leaving their wrists secured in front of them in Asala’s handcuffs—Niko was pretty sure the troops had been snickering about that—and trussing Asala and Soraya similarly, strapping their hands palm to palm to escort them all toward the vehicles.

  Asala was leading Cynwrig to Uzochi. Giving Cynwrig the ships. The wormholes. The way out.

  Everything the general wanted. And all because of Niko.

  Niko had never felt so helpless. So turned around. They’d only ever wanted to help, to do what was right . . . Had they ever truly known what that was? Guilt gnawed at them, even though when they tried to claw past the pounding and unsteadiness in their brain and think, logically and ethically, they couldn’t trace back to any place they thought they’d gone exactly wrong.

  Except Asala. The hurt and betrayal in her eyes when she looked at Niko . . .

  They tried to tell themself they hadn’t had any choice. They’d made the right call at every turn, protecting the cause. And then they remembered the look in Asala’s eyes again, and everything twisted in on itself, stabbing ugly and acrid from their aching head down to their stumbling feet, until Niko didn’t know the right answer anymore.

  Now everyone outside Gan-De might die, all because Asala couldn’t condemn Niko to execution at General Cynwrig’s hands. The general would capture or kill Uzochi, take the cubes, wipe out Hafiz and the Order if they got in her way, and then she’d take her own people and hers alone through the wormhole toward the possibility of future generations. Gan-De had only ever been for Gandesians—Cynwrig would put her planet first and only.

  Could Asala really do that? Sacrifice the potential of Hypatia’s grandchildren because she couldn’t bear to see Niko shot in the head? Niko, the well-meaning traitor who’d inadvertently tried to kill her? I’m not worth it.

  The idea unfurled in Niko’s head in a terrifying pronouncement of power: They could change this future. Change it by not being a liability.

  By not needing protection, or pity.

  Be the sacrifice instead of requiring it.

  The plan took over their brain in an unholy mix of fear and righteousness. It was like staring into a black hole. For a few moments Niko could ignore the pain in their head and wrists, burning only with the knowledge that this would, for the first time, unequivocally be the right path.

  Cynwrig’s people shuffled them onto some sort of caterpillar-wheeled armored vehicle, the first in a convoy of tanks that were all much bigger than the transport the AIs had blown up to ambush them. The air inside was stale and close, and very dry, but at least lacked the biting cold of outside.

  Niko would have to go at Cynwrig herself. They’d been glancing around at the soldiers and scraping back into their apprenticeship memories, trying to catalogue the weapons the rest of the troops were carrying, and the general’s sidearm was the only one they could be pretty certain would be lethal on first blast. Some model of sear weapon, if Niko was remembering right—utterly painful and flesh-chewing, and massively effective even if it didn’t hit dead-on.

  They tried not to think about that.

  Voices drifted back to Niko—Soraya talking to Asala. It sounded like all she was saying was, “Please.”

  Niko would give them that opportunity.

  Cynwrig was near the front of the space, nearer Asala and Soraya. She wasn’t paying attention to Niko anymore, leaving them to her soldiers. Niko shifted slightly to clear the angle. Their muscles were liquid, their mouth dry. This was it. This was—gods, they were about to die, would their father even know or—

  Don’t think. Just do it.

  Niko planted one foot back against the bench they were seated on, took one more hitching breath, and rocketed forward. A battle scream tore from their throat. Cynwrig’s silhouette filled their vision—blade-sharp with shorn white hair—turning impossibly quickly, her weapon coming up. Niko couldn’t turn back now if they wanted to. The muzzle filled their vision, a chasm to fall into, and then the world flashed bright and slammed into their back. Agony blossomed across their chest and shoulder, and they were still screaming, screaming and couldn’t stop.

  The world was upside down and inside out, with soldiers looming everywhere in Niko’s vision, towering huge against the ceiling above them.

  Then the butt of one of the soldier’s rifles came at Niko’s face, and all they could think was, I’m alive. I’m still alive.

  I’ve failed.

  • • •

  “Stop it!” cried Soraya. “Stop it, please, stop—”

  “We’re taking you to the ships!” Asala yelled over her. She was no stranger to violence, but this—beating the shit out of a cuffed prisoner, out of Niko—

  Niko. What did you do?

  They must have known they couldn’t hurt Cynwrig, not cuffed as they were, not with only a thimbleful of training compared to the general and trapped in a tank full of her soldiers.

  They hadn’t been trying to assassinate her.

  They’d been trying to die.

  “Stop,” Cynwrig said, with no particular volume to it, and the soldiers abruptly stilled and straightened, withdrawing to the sides of the vehicle.

  Niko’s still form lay sprawled on the floor, their face a bloody mess. Cynwrig’s sear gun had flayed their shoulder and left arm into a raw, pulverized mass, like meat crushed to grounds by a butcher.

  “Let me try to stop the bleeding,” begged Soraya.

  Cynwrig gave an indifferent jerk of her head and turned away. Soraya crouched and awkwardly tried to fold Niko’s shredded coat over the worst of the injuries with her strapped hands.

  Niko wasn’t moving. Asala watched for a few long moments, guilty bile stirring in her stomach, to verify they were still breathing.

  “How much farther?” Cynwrig said blandly.

  Asala swallowed back her reaction and glanced down at the navigation panel. “Not far. Steer east about three degrees.”

  And maybe once there, she and Soraya would find their opportunity for escape. Asala had been watching and looking for that window since they’d been taken. She’d only need a moment. Cynwrig could take whatever Uzochi had, as long as Asala and Soraya could save one small piece of it—and, preferably, get themselves out unharmed.

  Of course, now it would be damnably hard to try to get Niko out with them.

  Asala’s eyes crept back to the floor. Soraya was stanching the worst of the bleeding, but Niko was almost unrecognizable, their features swamped with blood and eyes almost swelled shut. Their eyelids fluttered slightly.

  She tried to be angry at them, for almost dying, for making it that much harder to escape when they all needed to—hell, she tried to stoke her fury from only an hour ago, when she’d wanted to pound Niko’s face into a wall herself for what they’d done to her. But where her anger had been, she now felt only a void.

  Niko, stupid, good, idealistic Niko, had just tried to get themself killed for her and Soraya. They’d halfway managed it
.

  She turned away.

  “Ah. The old factories in the Seven Day Mountains,” Cynwrig said. “Clever. I take it we’re arriving.”

  Asala glanced down at the readouts. “Yes. We did as you asked.”

  The armored convoy strained up the slopes, tree branches scraping the sides of the vehicle. Finally, they shuddered to a halt. The soldiers poked at Asala with their rifles, and she stood to climb out.

  Cynwrig pointed her weapon at Soraya. “You. Take the kid.”

  “Wait! Don’t,” Soraya pleaded. “It’s not like they’re going anywhere—if you move Niko now, it could—”

  “Kill them?” The general raised her eyebrows. “What do you think I’m going to do if you haven’t brought me to the right place?”

  Asala’s hands tightened into fists, straining against the binding straps. The guards prodded at her again, this time jabbing hard enough to bruise, and she forced herself to climb up through the hatch and then down the sharp grating of the steep trap steps.

  The sun had crept over the horizon while they drove, and the red pine forest rose around them, jagged rust-colored spikes stabbing up against the lightening sky. Asala’s boots crunched against cones. Across a needle-carpeted clearing, the same yawning opening she and Niko had found fissured the mountainside.

  She tried to steady her breathing. Watch. Wait. Find a window . . .

  Behind her, the soldiers had cut Soraya’s bonds so she could help a barely conscious Niko down, with soldiers shoving at them none too patiently from behind. Asala wasn’t even sure if Soraya was helping Niko or mostly carrying them. Other armored vehicles from the caravan rolled up behind and around, and more soldiers and robots poured out with faceless precision. The huge, octopus-like AIs that had burst out of the grass had accompanied them from where they’d been ambushed, an unstoppable force all by themselves, and the air vibrated with the arrival of quadcopter bombers and hover drones in the sky overhead. Asala cast her eyes forward and back—Cynwrig must know the layout here, and the air support was amassing to cover the whole cave network, blanketing the sky across the mountains. Asala had no idea where Uzochi had planned to launch from, but at this rate, anywhere she tried to burst from the ground, she would hit an armored wall.