by Loren Rhoads
So the way these dreams kept ending—with Gavin showing up unexpectedly and her killing him with whatever came to hand—made her really uncomfortable. She had no real grudge against Gavin. She would be glad to have a drink with him someday, if they accidentally found themselves in the same bar and she knew she could walk away alone afterward.
It was the sort of dilemma that she supposed someone else would discuss with her girlfriend. But Coni could barely be counted a friend and Vezali, while friendly, would require such a vast amount of backstory that merely listening to the history would be too much to ask.
There was only one person who knew Gavin well enough, good and bad, to be a sympathetic listener. When this adventure with Mellix was over, Raena would have to bother Ariel with her problems.
“We’ll be docking soon,” Haoun said over the comm.
“Thanks,” Raena answered. Time to suit up.
She pulled on another pair of Jain’s trousers and swam into another of his sweaters. This one was a steely gray that she quite liked.
Then she retrieved the paste she’d made in Mykah’s kitchen in the middle of the night. She’d worn something similar on Kai, but she hadn’t made anything like this from scratch in decades. Unsurprising, the recipe came back to her easily. Her hands had concocted it many times while drunk in the middle of the night.
She shook the jar good and hard, before unscrewing its lid. Holding her hair off her forehead with one hand, she quickly painted her face, blotting out the scar that missed removing her eye.
She reached out to close the clothes locker when her eye fell on the coat she’d stolen from Revan Thallian, previous captain of the Veracity.
Raena pulled the coat on and buttoned its cuffs back. It must have been long on Revan, but it hung to Raena’s ankles, with a cinched waist and a full skirt. Although it was big for her, it had enough interior structure to make her seem larger. Perfect. It wouldn’t replace her long-lost cloak, but it was a decent substitute. She felt dressed for battle now.
The coat had a surprising array of interior pockets, meant to be filled with weaponry. She checked through all the pockets, making sure that Revan hadn’t left any nasty surprises behind. Everything was empty and functional as his cabin had been when she commandeered it, except for the breast pocket. In it, Raena found a hard-copy photo of Eilif, Madame Thallian.
Raena strapped herself into the crash webbing, then picked up the photograph. In the picture, Eilif still looked like a young woman, slim and ramrod straight. The photographer caught her by surprise with a teacup in her hand, lifted halfway to her lips. Her smile looked genuine.
Interesting. Why did Revan have a photo of his younger brother’s wife?
Raena shook her head. Anything between Revan and Eilif was undoubtedly one of the great unconsummated romances of the galaxy. Jonan would have killed them both—Eilif first—if he’d ever found out they’d cheated on him.
Would Eilif want the photo, Raena wondered, or would she prefer not to be reminded of the years she’d belonged to the Thallians? Personally, Raena was glad not to have any mementos of her own service with Jonan, beyond the ones he’d carved into her flesh.
She set the photo aside, intending to ask Ariel about it whenever they spoke next. Now it was time to get her head in the game.
Raena didn’t really know what to expect in Capital City. She’d asked Mykah about its banal name, but he said that was merely the Galactic Standard translation. In every case, he said, Standard dumbed names down to their simplest components.
Mykah said the news reports from Capital City had been cautious, not wanting to panic the rest of the galaxy. He expected that people were exceptionally tense. The city occupied a moon-sized space station hung between three gates. All the older ships with non-tesseract drives had evacuated as many tourists and consular staff as possible after the tesseract announcement, but everyone left behind either had crucial governmental work to do or nowhere else to go. Everything from washing water to atmospheric filters was being strictly rationed. Very few people had enough of anything to be satisfied.
The Veracity planned to be in orbit long enough to transfer the vegetables out of the hold, find some sleep aids for Raena, and to get Mellix safely aboard. No telling how long that would take.
Raena hadn’t told Mykah that she and Coni had made another appointment for while they were visiting the station. She touched her eyebrow, tracing the contours of her scar, but didn’t allow herself to dwell on how she’d acquired it. The last thing she wanted was to drift off into the past again.
Haoun got the Veracity docked with Capital City’s elevator without a bump.
“Nice docking,” Raena told him over the comm.
“Thanks,” the big lizard answered. “Lots of simulator hours went into it.”
Raena laughed as she unclipped her harness and retrieved her high-heeled boots from the gun locker by the door. She buckled her boots on and decided to add one final element of Revan’s clothing. Inside one of the desk drawers, she’d found a long black box. Inside that lay a half-dozen pairs of matching black gloves. They were made of Viridian slave cloth, the weave so fine that individual threads were invisible. These gloves left no fibers or fingerprints behind to be traceable. She’d worn them constantly while on the run from Jonan.
Raena chose a pair from the box and slipped them on. The fabric molded around her fingers as if it was liquid. She flexed her fingers, made a fist. Then she went out to join the others at the hatch.
“Haoun’s going to stay onboard and make sure we’re ready to jet,” Mykah said as he handed comm bracelets around to everyone else. Vezali snapped hers high up on one of her tentacles, where it looked like a garter.
“Raena and I have some girl stuff to do,” Coni told him. “Comm us when you need us.”
Mykah glanced from one to the other of them. “Sure,” he said, puzzled.
“I’m looking for an extra life support part,” Vezali said.
Everyone turned to stare at her. “Kidding.” She held up two tentacles and made a gentling motion. “I’ve got some siblings here I want to visit.”
“How many siblings do you have?” Raena asked.
“Seventy-one, still living. Three of them are in the consular service here.”
Raena nodded, keeping her face blank. One of these days, she really was going to have to do more research on her crewmates and learn what she could about their species.
Haoun joined them at the hatch. “Have fun out there and keep your heads down.”
“Do you want us to get you anything?” Raena asked.
“I told my kids I’d send them some souvenirs.”
“We’ll see what we can find,” Coni promised. “Two boys and a girl, right?” Haoun nodded.
Yeah, Raena thought, she really was going to have to learn more about her shipmates. She’d assumed everyone else was just as unencumbered as she was.
“Ready?” Mykah asked. When he’d collected a nod from each of them, he reached forward to open the hatch.
The dockmaster stood directly outside, flanked by two armored guards. He had glossy black fur and extremely sharp teeth. “Captain Chen?” he asked.
Mykah stepped forward. “That’s me.”
He had pulled his hair back under a black scarf and shaved his face clean so he looked bland and respectable. Watching him work, Raena finally understood why the others let Mykah be the captain: he was really good at dealing with bureaucrats. Thank the stars someone could save her from that.
More guards flanked the mouth of the elevator. They were professionals, Raena noticed, clocking their visible weapons and guessing at what she couldn’t see. If they didn’t have sleep grenades, the vestibule itself must be plumbed for gas.
She wondered if she could count on the authorities to protect Mellix when he tried to leave the station, or if the soldiers resented having to stand up here on a spindle in space.
When she clustered with Coni and Vezali in a little knot, Raena not
iced the right-hand guard tracked her every shift in position.
Why had he picked her out as trouble? She’d dressed down. Her scars—and muscles—were covered. She wasn’t armed except with a knife in each boot top, which any girl would carry. Capital City wasn’t weapons-free the way Kai had been, but the permitting process was complicated and time-consuming if you wanted to carry an energy weapon. Raena hadn’t wanted to test her new identity.
Mykah joined them at last, zipping his handheld into the pocket in the back of his jacket. When he shouldered the jacket on, Raena noticed the guards took a pointed interest in him as well.
Coni waited until the four of them were in the elevator car and going down before she muttered, “Even humans have rights.”
Mykah took her hand and nodded toward the camera in the corner of the car.
“How many elevators are there here?” Raena asked conversationally.
“Two completed and others under construction,” Mykah answered. “Both share the same train station and waiting room.”
“Where’s Haoun going to park while he’s waiting for us?”
“They’ve got some complicated orbital system worked out. When we all get our business done, we contact him and he’ll apply for another docking window. Then we’d better get on the ship during that window or we’ll be left behind.”
“What’s the fine for overstaying your time slot?” Vezali asked.
“We can’t afford it,” Mykah promised. “So don’t shut your comms off. When we get the word it’s time to fly, we’re going.”
The elevator slowed and eased itself down the last hundred meters. Raena’s ears popped as the pressure changed. More guards stood outside the elevator doors, facing another vestibule. Beyond yet another pair of blast doors, more guards surrounded a waiting area crowded with people hanging around until their appointments to leave.
Raena didn’t like the look of that. If anyone found out Mellix was leaving, that waiting area would be the last opportunity to stop him. Unless, of course, they planned to take the entire elevator down. If people were that serious, there wasn’t a lot she could do about it.
A sparking force field marked a walkway through the crowd. The fence would make you jump if you stumbled into it, but it wouldn’t slow down a determined stampede. Raena counted eight guards, or roughly one for every five people waiting. The space was too tight for weapons that required accuracy to function. Raena glanced upward, expecting to see shock nets, but the ceiling was featureless except for inset light panels.
The crowd shifted enough that she caught a solid glimpse of one of the guards. He balanced on a short pedestal, not much more than a box. That meant that the floor was hot. They’d use it to pacify the rabble when the riot came.
She’d seen Mykah and Coni flying above the crowd in the casino on Kai, but she didn’t know if Vezali could jump. Avoiding the first jolt would only leave you standing for the guards’ hand weapons to bring you down. A puzzle, she thought.
“How long are we likely to be on the station, Captain?” she asked.
“We’re aiming for a standard day, so nobody has to pay for accommodations in the City. We’ll see if they really let us out of here that quickly.”
As they explored Capital City, Raena walked on the outside of the passageway for a while. That way Coni could be closer to the displays as she window-shopped for Haoun’s souvenirs. The tchotchkes didn’t call to Raena, since she didn’t recognize what most of them were.
Instead she watched the people. Their variety was breathtaking: feathers, fur, scales, all variety of clothing or lack thereof. The first time someone crossed to the other side of the passage to avoid her, she didn’t think anything of it. By the fifth or sixth time, she started experimenting. Once she even took a half step toward someone, just to watch him skip backward like a startled cat.
“Don’t start a fight,” Coni scolded quietly.
“Not trying to, “ Raena admitted. “Just making sure I saw what I thought I saw.”
“You’re really seeing it. Welcome to the galaxy-at-large.”
Even humans have rights, Raena thought. She hadn’t realized how tolerant the crew of the Veracity was. And how much more she should have appreciated them.
Coni consulted her handheld and turned down an alley that looked like all the others to Raena. It was quieter here. A variety of spas lined both sides of the passage, but business seemed to be slow as people conserved their money for food and lodging—and passage off Capital City, if they could find it.
Coni halted in front of a storefront that looked polished and sterile as an operating room. “Ready?”
“Let’s get it over.” Raena pushed the door open and stepped inside.
The medical robot grasped Raena’s chin in one claw and turned her face gently from side to side, examining her skin in a variety of spectrums so it could see through her paint job.
“Yes, we can erase that scar without damaging your eye. Looks like you’ve lived with it a long time, though. It would have been easier to repair when the wound was fresh.”
“I was stuck shipboard,” Raena said, “until I could save the money up.”
Coni was impressed by the ease with which the lie left the little woman’s lips. She didn’t know where Raena had gotten the scar that nearly cost her an eye, but it predated her induction into Imperial service. Receiving that scar was one story she hadn’t told Jain Thallian.
Coni was still surprised that Raena had asked her to accompany her to the plastic surgeon. The little woman generally seemed so self-assured that Coni wasn’t sure what about this process made Raena anxious.
The robot led Raena toward a door back into the salon. Coni followed along. Raena cast a glance over her shoulder that Coni read as gratitude.
A Shtrell nurse trotted up to intercept the big blue-furred girl. “You don’t need to accompany your friend …”
Coni cut her off before she could insult her with a menu of treatments. “We’ve already run into some anti-humanism since we landed here.” Coni kept moving forward. Raena loitered to give her time to catch up. “I know that won’t be a problem here,” Coni said, injecting emphasis, “but my friend was badly frightened. She’ll be more comfortable if I stay with her.”
The Shtrell shrugged, ruffling her feathers. “You’ll need to stay out of the doctor’s way.”
“Of course,” Coni agreed. She took the hand Raena held out to her, gave it a gentle squeeze. She wondered at herself, acting like Raena’s friend. Strangely enough, she—and the rest of the Veracity’s crew—seemed to be the only friends Raena had, other than Ariel Shaad. Maybe it wasn’t such an act.
Raena let herself be strapped into a complicated frame that would restrain her completely from the shoulders up. It reminded her of a telenovel she and Ariel watched as teenagers: people were always changing their faces, coming back into their lives as someone new whenever different actors took over the roles.
Bounty hunters had marked her. Thallian had remodeled her to reflect his dominance. The scar between her eyes predated all the others. It was the first scar, the primal one that had changed her the most. She’d thought she would never let it go, but it had—more than anything else, more than her DNA itself—trapped her in the past, tied her to the person she no longer wanted to be. The time had come to let it go.
Raena watched the nurses smooth her hair back from her face and secure it under a soft turban that stretched around her skull.
A stout little nurse that reminded her of Vezali—because she had tentacles, not hands—succeeded in distracting her while another rubbed numbing cream across her forehead and over her eyelid. No wonder they hadn’t wanted Coni to see this part: it felt scary. Raena felt her eyelid drooping slackly over her eye. She could no longer blink.
The birdlike nurse came toward her with a mask full of anesthetic. Locked into the head frame, Raena couldn’t pull away. One breath of that stuff knocked her out.
It was easy to remember when she got
the scar. She’d been young—four, maybe, probably not as much as five. Her mother had been having a nightmare. A scream choked behind Fiana’s teeth had woken Raena.
Raena stood at her mother’s bedside, frightened, uncertain what to do. Fiana writhed on her pallet, breathing raggedly. Raena whispered, “Mama? Wake up,” but Fiana didn’t seem to hear.
“Mama?” she called a little louder. She was afraid to wake the others in the shelter, but they couldn’t afford to be thrown out. Her mother had said they had nowhere else to go.
Raena saw the scream rising in her mother’s chest. Lunging forward, she cupped her hand over Fiana’s mouth.
Her mother woke instantly. One hand flashed upward to shove Raena away. There was something sharp in it: a broken cup, the raw ceramic edge like a knife.
Raena didn’t feel the pain at first. Instead, she felt hot wetness spill into her eye. The blood blurred her vision and she started to cry. It stung.
“Hush, you idiot.” The broken cup fell from Fiana’s hand, forgotten. “What did you do?”
Fiana dug into her pack for a clean shirt. She pressed Raena’s hand over the fabric to hold it in place while she pulled out the staple gun. When she prodded her daughter’s forehead with a finger, she set the gun aside. “This is going to have to be done by hand,” Fiana grumbled. “Why can’t you be more careful?”
Raena said nothing.
“Honestly,” Fiana hissed. She pulled out the sewing kit and her headlamp. “Come lie in my lap,” she directed, patting her thigh. “Put your head here.”
Raena did as she was told, still clutching the shirt to her face. It had grown soggy and chilled in her fingers.
Fiana eased the shirt away from the wound. She pressed a dry corner over Raena’s eyelid and sprayed her forehead with something icy. Then she mopped the blood away.
“Hold this for me,” Fiana ordered. She thrust a mirror into Raena’s hand. “Watch this.” Raena saw her own reflection, scared, young, smeared with drying blood.