by Loren Rhoads
What the hell was going on?
Now that they had her life story pieced together, Raena needed to ask Coni to expedite the documents she’d need to leave the ship. If something was going wrong in her head, she needed to get herself to a real hospital and have a real doctor check her out. And when she got there, she was going to have to be able to answer questions about who she was and where she’d come from—or they were going to lock her up until they could find out.
Raena swore bitterly that no one, anywhere, ever, was going to lock her up again.
Even as she made the promise, she had doubts she’d be able to carry it through. She had trained all her life to be a dangerous weapon. If she was going crazy, maybe locked up was the safest place for everyone else to have her.
She rubbed her temples, eyes closed, alert for another hallucination to overtake her. When nothing swallowed her up immediately, she allowed herself to poke—gently—at the content of the last vision.
She remembered the elation of firing the pistol through her cloak, even if that hadn’t actually happened. The cloak had gotten ruined, yeah, and she’d had to dispose of it, but not because she shot it full of holes.
All the same, as Raena thought about the dream, she remembered the kick of the little pistol in her hand, just exactly what one would expect from a gun that size. She flexed her fingers, remembering the texture of the grip against her palm, the resistance of the trigger under her forefinger.
Did she remember that because she’d shot so many guns growing up with Ariel? Because she’d handled so many weapons as she trained with Thallian? Or because somewhere, somehow, she really had held that same little knock-off gun and really shot that man?
And who was he? He looked like Gavin, all right, but not the Gavin she would have encountered at that point in time. She’d been, what, eighteen or nineteen? That made Gavin twenty-five maybe. Thirty, at the outside.
The man she’d shot was much older than that. Crow’s feet carved in deep around his eyes. There hadn’t been enough light for her to judge the color of his beard, but it made her think of the beard Gavin was wearing when Kavanaugh pulled her out of the tomb on the Templar world. That had been sandy-colored and graying, an uncared-for mess he’d grown because he was too addicted to the Dart to pay any attention to his appearance. Raena had shaved it off of him at the first opportunity.
Gavin shared similarities with the man she’d shot, but it couldn’t be the same person. It wouldn’t make sense for Gavin to be older in her dreams.
Maybe, she told herself, I’m taking all this too literally. Maybe it’s nothing more than a dream. I’ve been sleeping poorly for days. Maybe this is what I get when I decide not to sleep. Now my dreams are spilling over into my waking life, nothing more.
Still, she had pretty much exhausted the range of things she could do to sleep without nightmares. Wearing herself out, drinking herself to sleep, staying awake, going to bed: none of it had halted the parade of death in her dreams. Raena had a horror of pharmaceuticals, but it was beginning to look like nothing else would work.
When she’d been very small, her mother used to give her something called poppy milk to keep her from crying with hunger. It didn’t make her sleep, but it made her limbs so heavy that she couldn’t move. After that, Raena refused to take painkillers, whenever she had a choice, for anything.
Several times, bounty hunters had drugged her in hopes of keeping her docile enough to return to Thallian in one piece. One poor guy gave her RespirAll, hoping to find out why Thallian wanted her back so badly. She chuckled now as she remembered that bounty hunter’s face, once the truth drug had kicked into gear and he couldn’t shut Raena up.
The worst was while she was locked up in the Parrabatta Mining Prison. As an experiment, they fed her a constant diet of some horrific hallucinogen. She might not have survived it, except that one of her cellmates had been a Coalition doctor. She was a strikingly tall creature with bulbous black eyes and fins running down the backs of her arms and legs, some kind of serpentine race. Raena could remember what she looked like, but not her name. The doctor had advised Raena to swallow her own hair. Something about the proteins in the hair counteracted the poison.
The mining prison wasn’t one of Raena’s escapes that she was proud of. She didn’t mourn the Imperial guards who died when she pierced the prison walls and all its atmosphere vented into space, but the prisoners died as well, trapped in their cells. At the time, Raena hadn’t cared. Now, as a non-hallucinating adult, the prison massacre was one of the worst regrets of her life. If she could go back in time, she would save as many prisoners as she could. She would make certain that the helpful doctor got away.
Raena took a deep breath and shook her head to clear it. Wishing for time travel? Really? These dreams of the past were starting to unhinge her.
She rubbed her temples again. She needed good, black, dreamless sleep, without a horrible bloody nightmare to spit her back into the waking world afterward. There must be some nice, gentle sedative that would ease her off to solid, uninterrupted unconsciousness.
It was a huge step to take, but at this point, she couldn’t remember the last time she closed her eyes without a brain-splitting nightmare. For her sanity’s sake, she would turn to medicine. She simply needed to ask Mykah to find her some sleeping pills. He’d know something that was safe for humans. She’d take it for a while, give the dreams time to go away on their own.
And if they didn’t, she would haul herself to the best head-shrinker in the galaxy and find out what the hell was wrong with her.
In the Thomas Allard Home for Retired Interstellar Laborers, Doc glanced over at the Dakarai struggling to breathe in the bed beside her chair. The poor guy was not going to last the night. Fluid was seeping into his lungs from breathing toxins in the engine room of the decrepit freighter where he’d spent most of his life. Doc had done her best to relieve his pain, but unless he asked her for more, she couldn’t do anything else.
She cracked the seal on a new bottle of whiskey, the last Gavin Sloane had given her, and poured herself a stiff drink. It was going to be a long night, but she might as well sit vigil until the Dakarai asked her for more relief or the end came of its own accord. Either way, she was going to be up in the night to attend to him.
The hour and the darkness conspired against her and she closed her eyes to grab what rest she could. It seemed as if the dream was waiting for her.
Raena Zacari stood at the Panacea’s hatch, ready to be on her way. Doc had done her best to patch the girl up, mending bones and torn muscles, shoring up her immune system to do the rest. The girl had clearly lived a rough life, but she was broken enough that she didn’t want to talk about it. Doc respected that, even while it made her heart ache to see it.
She’d tried to talk the girl into coming with them and joining the Coalition, but Raena shot that down. She was terrified enough of the man chasing her that she would continue to run rather than put any more lives at risk. Doc had Skyler and the kid to protect now, so she couldn’t say Raena made the wrong choice. She just wished they weren’t dumping her off the ship in the middle of a monsoon.
Doc handed Raena the rich black cloak. “Skyler brought me this from the bounty hunter’s ship, but I knew it had to be yours. Better put it on. It’s raining buckets out there.” The lined fabric didn’t seem like enough protection from everything out there that could harm the girl. “Maybe I should get you an extra jacket, or …”
“Thanks,” Raena said, “but I don’t think you have anything that would fit me.”
Skyler handed her one of the bounty hunter’s smaller pistols. “Thought you might have a use for this, though.”
“Thanks.” The smile that flashed across her face made her almost pretty. “That will come in handy, I’m sure.”
“Cut the belt way down for you.” He passed her the holster. Doc stared at him, amazed that he was being so effusive. The girl must have touched his heart, too.
“Perfec
t. Thank you.” After a moment’s pause, she said, “I guess I’ve kept you long enough.”
Skyler opened the hatch for her.
“Be careful,” Doc ordered. Stupid and useless advice.
Before anyone could say anything else, Raena slipped through the hatchway into the side-blown rain.
Tarik followed her outside. Doc watched the kids talk at the foot of the ramp.
“Want me to go after him?” Skyler asked.
“You won’t need to,” Doc predicted. Then the girl leaned forward, brushed a kiss against Tarik’s lips, and melted into the night.
The look on the boy’s face, when he turned back to the ship, woke Doc from the dream. She wiped her eyes and had another belt of whiskey.
CHAPTER 7
“Can I talk to you for a moment?” Raena asked when she found Mykah in the galley.
“Any time,” he said, turning away from the ball of dough he had been shoving into shape.
Raena sat at the table. Her hands found each other in her lap. This was surprisingly hard. She’d been scared before, too many times, but the solution had always been fairly straightforward: meet violence with violence. Pre-empt it, if you could. Thallian’s motto had been strike first—and leave your opposition too shattered to return fire.
None of that served her now. This time she was choosing to surrender control. “I think there’s something wrong,” she said hesitantly.
Mykah poured two cups of coffee: the real stuff, from beans he roasted obsessively until the whole ship smelled burnt. Raena didn’t normally touch it, figuring the caffeine wouldn’t help her insomnia, but after the dreams she’d been having, maybe she should drink it until she got the medicine she needed.
“I’ve been having bad dreams,” Raena said. Prize for understatement.
“Still?” Mykah asked. “You told me that before.”
Had she? Raena frowned, trying to remember. “I’ve been reliving moments in my life. All out of order. It’s like they were turning points. Moments when things might have gone another way for me. But I am who I am, who I’ve always been, and I’ve only ever seen one path in my life. And that path ended with Thallian’s death.”
She reached a shaky hand out and grabbed the metal coffee cup, just to have something solid to hold on to. “Anyway, these dreams I’m having … they always end in violence. People that I like—used to like, at least—keep getting hurt in them. By me. I don’t recognize them until after I kill them and wake up. Either I am younger in the dreams and I haven’t met these people yet, or I haven’t met them yet the way they look in the dreams. And the dreams seem so real. They’re like memories of things that never really happened.”
She sipped the coffee and was grateful for its bitter flavor.
“I’m not surprised,” Mykah said gently. “I don’t know everything about your life, but I know it’s been rough. You haven’t been out of the last prison six months yet. It makes sense that you’ve got some processing to do.”
“I thought processing was supposed to make you feel better,” she said hopelessly.
“Not at first.” He said it with enough confidence that Raena realized she didn’t know much, really, about Mykah’s life before she found him waiting tables. He’d studied the media, pulled his little pranks, and it seemed like a good idea when she plucked him away from all of that to find her a crew for the Veracity. He had been ridiculously, uncomfortably grateful. Now that she thought about it, life couldn’t have been easy for him, growing up in the aftermath of the War and the purges, a human loose in a potentially hostile universe, blamed for atrocities perpetrated by madmen.
“How do I get through it?” Raena asked. She didn’t like the tone in her voice, a shade too much like begging.
“What do you want to do? Do you want some professional help?”
“Maybe. After Coni gets all the documentation for my new identity nailed down. For now, though, I just want something safe to help me sleep.”
“That I can find you,” Mykah promised. “Let me make a couple of calls to Capital City.”
“Thanks, Mykah.”
“Always happy to help.”
Kavanaugh was glad to see a message from Ariel Shaad. He laughed at himself when he actually got up to find a comb before returning her call. If he was going to dream about his past, he wondered, why couldn’t he dream about the last flight with Ariel?
“Thanks for getting back to me so quickly, Tarik.” She was leaning forward enough that he could see down her white blouse. Her hazel eyes sparkled, but the outfit was Ariel’s regular uniform. The pose didn’t necessarily mean anything.
“Any time, Ms. Shaad. What’s on your mind?”
“It’s work-related, unfortunately.”
Tarik grinned to cover his disappointment. “I need work.”
“I’ve got a couple more kids matched up with new families, but I can’t deliver them myself. I just had the damn racer upgraded with a tesseract drive last year. I’m afraid if the kids don’t get to Kaluum, I’ll lose the parents. I know you could make more money hauling freight, so I will make it worth your while. Tell me what the job will cost me this time.”
He typed in a figure, knowing she would match it.
“Thanks, Tarik.” She made a couple of strokes and he heard the chime that meant the deposit had gone through. “When can we expect you?”
“I’m in your neighborhood.”
“Perfect.”
There was no way to change the subject casually, so he just bulled on ahead. “What’s Raena up to these days?”
“She’s traveling with a gang of kids her apparent age.” Ariel said it drily enough that her real feelings on the subject were hidden. That was out of character; Ariel’s emotions were usually right on the surface. “Why do you ask?”
He didn’t want to admit that he’d been having nightmares about Ariel’s little sister. “I saw some documentary about the Thallians looting the Templar tombs.”
Ariel shuddered. “You think Gavin’s behind that lie?”
He wanted to say that it wasn’t like Gavin Sloane to be that subtle. Instead, he said, “The credits thanked the crew of the Veracity.”
“Yeah, that’s the ship Raena’s on. If you talk to her, say hi.”
From which Kavanaugh understood that Ariel and Raena weren’t speaking at the moment. “Wasn’t planning on it. I just thought it was weird, the misdirection from a ship called Veracity.”
“The kids might not even know the truth,” Ariel said. “It’s not like Raena ever tells anyone what she’s really doing and why.”
Kavanaugh supposed that was true. He remembered the kiss she’d brushed across his lips as she disappeared into the rain on Barraniche and wondered what it really meant to her. He shuddered.
Ariel misinterpreted it. “Is your head still ringing?”
“Nah. I’m just gonna keep myself out of arm’s reach from her from now on.”
“Good plan.”
“See you soon,” he said.
“I’m looking forward to it.”
Kavanaugh broke the connection, puzzling over the hint of flirt in Ariel’s tone. Was that a promise of something more, or was she just being friendly? Damned if he could figure the two sisters out.
Shipping permits were much easier to get these days, when all sorts of antique craft were being brought out of mothballs to haul food around the galaxy. Coni handled the permitting process while Mykah negotiated with the Inkeri authorities about landing.
The process was so mundane that Raena found it comforting.
She was even more interested in the things the crew wanted to order from Capital City. Coni put her to work collecting up a list, which ranged from obscure vintage engine parts for Vezali to some kind of dried worms for Haoun. Mykah, unsurprisingly, had a whole grocery list.
Raena struggled to think of anything she wanted. Clothes, probably. Something to replace the magenta catsuit? But the catalogs she paged through online didn’t sing to her. She dec
ided she could get by with wearing Jain’s clothes for a while longer.
The shopping process vaguely depressed her. For the first time in her life, thanks to her share of the Thallian bounty, Raena could actually afford almost anything she could think of. Did it show a lack of imagination that she couldn’t think of anything other than a new spacesuit that might distract her from her unhappiness?
She supposed it meant she ought to get a hobby.
She was glad when Haoun finally kicked her out of the cockpit so they could dock with the Eske freighter.
After the Veracity connected to the Eske ship, Raena showed up at the hatch, ready to drive a loader if needed. The freighter’s crew ignored her. They were meter-high curry-colored rodents with black button eyes. Delicate membranous ears stuck out from their heads like wings. Since they didn’t wear translators amongst themselves, there was much grumbling that she didn’t understand. The way their heads turned toward her afterward made their meanings clear.
She watched them climb over the crates, securing them for transport, and wondered why she felt inclined to start something. The energy building inside her wanted an outlet.
Haoun came to stand over Raena’s shoulder. The lizard towered over her, the tallest member of the Veracity’s crew. He didn’t stand up straight often—Raena thought it wasn’t all that comfortable for him—but it was always impressive when he did. If she had to guess, he could stretch to over two and a half meters tall.
She suspected his translator must translate all languages, not just Galactic Standard. She leaned back against him so she could ask quietly, “What did they say?”
“You don’t want to know,” Haoun’s translator said. His real voice rumbled at such a low frequency that it raised her hackles.
“That’s what I thought,” Raena said. “Are they insulting me or all humans?”
“Does it matter?” Haoun asked. The tone of his words through the translator was honestly curious.
“Not really,” she decided. “I could use some exercise.”