by Loren Rhoads
She thought over what Raena had said about memories and dreams. Vezali wasn’t entirely sure what the distinction was. Her translator used the same word in Dagat for both. She’d ask Mykah what the difference was later. Raena was already too fragile to be upset by difficulties in communication.
Kavanaugh got a call as he was coming in to land. He concentrated on his flying, got his ship settled comfortably in its dock, and was glad to see the new parents were waiting when he and his passengers came down the ramp. The meeting between the orphans and their adopting parents was awkward, but sweet, and Kavanaugh couldn’t keep the smile from his face through the exchange.
He also had been orphaned by the War. Luckily, Doc had been there to take him in, with her companion, the big wolf-faced Skyler. They’d been like parents to him, but as far as he knew, there’d never been any official connection between them. He wasn’t sure how Doc wrangled the legal niceties. She might have claimed him as a slave, for all he knew, although she always treated him more like a son. He supposed he could ask her, if it really mattered. He thought of her as his parent, though not necessarily as his mother, and that had always been good enough for him.
He was interested to see that Ariel wasn’t placing the kids for whom she found homes with strictly human families either. In Kavanaugh’s admittedly limited experience delivering orphans for Ariel, at least one member of the adopting family always seemed to be human. Sometimes the families were just couples, but more often they were trios or other multiples, who may or may not have had nonhuman children, as well.
As jobs went, delivering orphans to their new homes was one of the better ones he’d ever taken. At least this one didn’t trouble his conscience or give him bad dreams.
He had planned to shut the ship down, go into town, and see if he could find someone to share his good mood. But as he moved around the cockpit, locking everything up, he saw the message light was still on. He set it to play for company.
He wasn’t sure what he had expected, but the message he heard came out of the blue.
“Mr. Kavanaugh, I’m a shipmate of Raena Zacari. She had an accident today and asked me to contact you.”
Kavanaugh stepped back to the monitor and set the message to begin again, so he could make certain he’d heard that right.
The girl delivering the message was humanoid, in that her body was bipedal. Blue fur the color of Kavanaugh’s favorite sky covered as much of her as he could see. A boxy black jacket covered the rest. Her eyes were an alarming shade of lavender. Her face had a muzzle sort of like Skyler’s, but hers was more feline.
Of all the people in the galaxy Raena could call—and Kavanaugh didn’t expect there were many—he wasn’t sure why his name would come up. Last time he’d seen Raena, she laid him out flat with a single blow to the head. No lasting damage had been done, luckily, but it didn’t inspire him to think she felt too fondly toward him. He certainly didn’t owe her any favors.
Ariel would have been easier to find, Kavanaugh thought. Whatever was the matter, it apparently wasn’t something Raena wanted to discuss with her sister.
He thought reluctantly of the shore leave he’d had planned, then reached forward to return the call. As he did so, he noticed the name of the ship. Why did Veracity sound so familiar?
The blue girl was picking up when Kavanaugh flashed on the documentary he’d watched about the Thallian family exploring the Templar tombs—and the avalanche Raena set to kill them. The Veracity was the ship that’d broken the news about the fall of the house of Thallian. These were the good guys.
“I’m Kavanaugh,” he said by way of hello.
“Thanks for returning my call,” the blue girl said. “My name is Coni Dottr Gounot. Raena Zacari is working with us on the Veracity, but she’s been having a hard time lately. We didn’t know her beforehand, so we don’t really know if this issue is long-standing. She said that you were an old friend, that you could help.”
“If you’re asking me if Raena is dangerous, I would say yes,” Kavanaugh said.
“We’re not to that point yet,” Coni said. “She hasn’t been dangerous to us, but we’re aware of how she can be.”
“What can I help you with, then?”
“I’m not sure exactly. Raena had a seizure earlier today. She’s scared.”
Kavanaugh leaned closer to the screen. “Raena, scared? That is hard to imagine. Scared of what?”
“She’s been having bad dreams,” Coni said. “They’re related to her memories. She’s been trying to medicate herself, but despite that, things seem to be getting worse. She’s started sleepwalking. The dream she had this afternoon triggered some kind of chemical imbalance and caused the seizure. Luckily, we were with her when it happened. She’s strong enough that she could have really injured herself.”
Or someone else, Kavanaugh realized. Hating himself but knowing there was nothing else he could say and get to sleep at night, Kavanaugh asked, “How can I help?”
“I’m not exactly sure. Raena asked for you specifically. Do you have medical training?”
“Not officially.”
“We’re working on getting her medical documentation so that she can get legitimate treatment. But if there’s anything you can do for her right now …”
A stubble-bearded twenty-something human came into the frame behind the blue girl. “She’s resting now,” he said. “Look, I know travel isn’t cheap, Mr. Kavanaugh. Raena has money of her own. I’m sure she will pay your expenses. Can you meet us at Tengri?”
“I’m not really sure what I can do for her. All I know is battlefield medicine. If Raena’s having a psychotic break, you’re gonna need to sedate her and get her into restraints.”
“She’s already volunteered for the restraints,” the young man said.
That chilled Kavanaugh more than anything they’d said yet. He knew exactly how long Raena had spent locked up in that tomb. If she was volunteering for any kind of imprisonment, she must be well and truly scared.
He keyed Tengri into the navcom and read the response. “You’re lucky. I’m pretty close. Thirty standard hours. I’ll see you at Tengri.”
“Thank you,” Coni and the young man said simultaneously.
After she’d signed out of the comm program, Coni asked, “What are we going to do?”
“I’ve been working with Haoun. He’s not as clever with the ship as Vezali is and she’ll have to check our work, but we think we’ve modified Raena’s cabin door so we can lock it from the outside. We can make sure she doesn’t wander.” Mykah came to sit in Haoun’s oversized chair and stared out the port at the stars. “Have you got some way to monitor her in there?”
Coni stared at him, but he didn’t look her way. Did Mykah know that she had been studying Raena ever since she’d come on board? Probably. He knew her well enough to guess that. Rather than ask what he knew about her spying, Coni said, “Yes, I can re-activate the old monitoring system that the Thallians ran throughout the ship. Do you want me just to monitor her, or to record her as well?”
Mykah shook his head, still staring into the distance. “I hate to spy on her,” he said, his voice torn, “but we should record it. In case …”
He didn’t say what it was he feared.
“I can clear some space and set the feed to record directly to the Veracity’s computer,” she promised.
“Hopefully, it won’t be for long.” Mykah turned to face her finally, his dark eyes alive with compassion and sorrow. Coni didn’t see love in them, though, not love for Raena, and for that she was surprisingly grateful. “How are you coming with Raena’s identity papers?” he asked.
“I’m meeting my friend on Tengri to get the final documents,” she assured. “After the money changes hands, Raena should look completely legal.”
Coni wondered if she should say, “And then we can drop her off at the nearest emergency psych ward,” but she didn’t. As much pity as she felt for the strange small woman, Coni didn’t have any illusions about w
hat Raena had done and was still capable of doing. She might be insane and unable to sleep without company or drugs, but she was also in amazing physical shape. She could kill them all before any of them could get the gun locker open.
So busy not saying what she wanted to, Coni rushed into the next question. “While Vezali is modifying Raena’s cabin, should we have her figure out a way to gas her?”
“What?” Mykah gasped. “No.”
“Not like that,” Coni said, exasperated. “To put her to sleep. Didn’t you find some Doze gas or something in the Thallians’ stores when you inventoried the ship?”
“I think so. I’ll check again. Thank you. We’ll have to calculate the dosage carefully for someone her size, but it’s good to know we’ll have a backup if things get out of hand.”
He got up from Haoun’s chair and came over to kiss her. Coni drew him closer and rubbed her head against his chest, scenting him.
He was smiling when he stepped away.
Coni knew she was going to ruin his moment of peace, but she said, “I don’t think she can hurt herself if we knock her out.”
“Who knows what it will do to her dreams?” Mykah’s mouth twisted into a grimace. “Still, we won’t hit her with it until I can tell her that we might. She’s not a prisoner and she hasn’t endangered any of us yet. Right now, all we’re afraid of is her fear that she might hurt us. I want her to know we have a way to neutralize her, if we need to.”
Would that set her mind at ease? Coni wondered. If Raena really was going crazy, she might find a way to turn the gas on her captors.
“She can probably calculate the dosage for herself better than we can, anyway,” Mykah said.
He left the cockpit, off on his errand, so Coni turned to the computer and started to modify the system she already had in place for spying on Raena. Now she wouldn’t have to worry about Haoun stumbling across her recordings by accident.
CHAPTER 12
Mellix caught Mykah in the galley as he was pulling out ingredients to begin dinner. “May I have some of that berry cordial?”
“Please help yourself,” Mykah said. He stood out of the way so Mellix could retrieve a bottle from the cooler.
“Is Raena going to be all right?”
“We don’t know,” Mykah confessed. “We’re not sure what happened. Apparently, she had some sort of reaction to the sleep drops.”
“I’ve never heard of that happening before.”
“Me, either.” Torn between his loyalty to his mentor and to the woman who’d given him his ship and the life he’d always wanted, Mykah wasn’t sure how much more to say.
“She is something special,” Mellix said. “She seemed extremely calm when the attack on my apartment was imminent. I’m glad I didn’t know how much danger I was in.”
“Raena’s very good at what she does,” Mykah agreed. “It’s just … she’s been suffering from some brutal insomnia. We were hoping the sleep drops could help her.”
“I’m sorry they didn’t,” Mellix said. “She seems as if she’d be a formidable …”
Mykah sent down the knife and stepped away from the vegetables he was preparing to chop. “You don’t need to worry about Raena, Mellix. We have a couple more tools at hand to help her, if they’re necessary. I told you I trust her with my life. She also trusts me with hers. We’ll look after her.”
Something about having Vezali at her side did help Raena sleep. Her body must have needed the time to recuperate from the seizure, but even more, her mind needed the solace of being watched over. She got a good, solid rest before the dreams ate at her again.
Raena remembered the day the transporters hired by her mother had escorted her to the chapter house where Raena was supposed to continue her fight training. They arrived at the correct address, but it was not the haven Raena expected.
Oh, the chapter house had certainly been there. In its place stood a blackened ruin, twisted girders jabbing jaggedly into the sky. The fire had been so long ago that the smell of ashes had dissipated. There was so little left of the building that the fire must have been spectacularly hot.
“That’s just great,” Kendra shouted. “What am I supposed to do with you now?” She pulled out her comm and called Llew back at the ship. “It’s gone,” she ranted. “The whole building’s gone. There’s no place to dump the kid.”
Raena looked at the place where her teachers were supposed to be. The broken girders made her think of a forest in winter, bare trees naked amidst the snow. She’d seen an illustration like that in a children’s story.
She could hear only half the conversation, but she got the sense that Llew calmed Kendra down. The woman’s pacing took on a smaller circuit, slowed, then stopped altogether.
Raena couldn’t have said what she wanted, even if it had occurred to anyone to ask. She didn’t want to go home to her mother, whose behavior had grown increasingly erratic as she’d internalized more of the Humans First! rhetoric. Even a ten-year-old could grasp that things at home had gotten seriously dangerous. If they dragged her back, Raena promised herself that she would run away.
It wasn’t as if she had any other family to which she could go. Raena didn’t know her grandparents’ names or have any clue how to find them—as if they’d be inclined to take in the street-rat that their lunatic child had spawned.
“Come on,” Kendra said harshly, yanking Raena away from the ruins. “Let’s go back to the ship. Llew’s gonna see if he can find where the chapter relocated to.”
But he hadn’t. When she and Kendra arrived back at the docking slip, a pod of Viridians was waiting. Raena didn’t recognize them. She’d led a fairly sheltered life in the strictly human moon colony. Aliens hadn’t been welcome. Incoming news had been heavily censored. She’d known that there were aliens in the galaxy, but she hadn’t actually ever seen any. If she’d known what these were, she would have fled.
The Viridians swarmed around her, measuring and prodding and penning her in. Finally, tired of being poked, she rounded on one.
Another whipped out a length of black cloth that coiled around her wrist and stopped her blow from landing. He yanked her hand back hard and secured it to her side as the others moved in and pinned her free arm. Raena kicked and struggled, but all too soon she was cocooned.
“Stop,” one of them said over a tinny translator, “or we cover your face.”
Raena couldn’t tell them apart. There were six in the pod, ludicrously tall and thin, like scarecrows cobbled together from green sticks.
One tested her compliance by stroking her face with his long knobby fingers. Raena snapped at him, missing his finger by millimeters. Without another word, another Viridian wrapped the fabric over her face.
When the air wouldn’t come, Raena panicked. She thrashed, lungs burning, wondering why they were killing her, what she had done.
When they sliced the binding off of her, she’d been collared and chained in the hold of a Viridian ship. In the dimness, she couldn’t see the limits of the room, but she recognized the misery of all the creatures chained around her. Most of them lay still, curled up as small as they could make themselves, as if they only wanted to disappear. Like all the rest, Raena had been stripped nude, her hands manacled around the chain that held her to the deck.
Near her feet lurked a foul-smelling drain. She hoped that it was meant for waste, not for food. Not that she intended to eat anything onboard this ship. Let the slavers realize their bad investment as she starved herself to death.
Of course, she hadn’t any clue about the torments they would subject her to, in order to get her to eat. She was too young to put up much resistance yet.
Gah. Raena shook herself awake, but her aching limbs were heavy and she slipped back into the dream.
She was lucky that she hadn’t spent more than a couple of weeks on the Viridian ship. It wasn’t really what they did to her that was the worst part, because she learned fairly quickly to comply and keep her head down and thereby escape punishmen
t. They didn’t want to permanently damage their property before they found a buyer for it, so compliance was rewarded with neglect. What scarred her were the things she saw done to the other slaves, the things that some of the slaves did to each other. She shuddered to remember them. With her hands manacled, she had been unable to block her ears.
That journey marked the death of her childhood.
Fighting her way out of the dream again, still groggy, Raena forced herself to sit up. Her limbs felt weighted. As soon as she let herself slump against the bulkhead between her cabin and the passageway, sleep overpowered her again.
Frigid water plummeted from the ceiling, beating Raena to the floor. She felt bruised, even as she forced herself to her feet, shivering, shaking her head to clear the water from her face. The Viridians marched through or over the slaves between her and the door. There was no way she could get away from them, nothing to hide behind, so she stood, black hair hanging damply over her face, wondering what she had done. Once the other creatures around her had been washed, the Viridians took them and they never came back.
The next time she got her eyes forced open, Raena pushed herself to her feet.
“What’s going on?” Vezali asked sleepily.
“Bad dream. It won’t let me go.”
Raena paced her cabin, hoping to get her blood flowing. She splashed some cold water from the tap onto her cheeks. When that didn’t guarantee consciousness, she flung herself into an icy shower. She did not want to go back into that dream.
The gelid water hitting her skin shocked enough adrenaline into her system that she felt awareness finally rushing into place. Shivering, she readjusted the water temperature and let herself indulge in the external warmth until the chill left her flesh.
She did have happy memories, she reminded herself. Chief among them was standing over Thallian’s burning corpse. Then there were the days of running around with Ariel as a teenager, stealing guns from her father’s factory and trading them for drugs. And seeing Kavanaugh again, after he’d opened her tomb. She’d always liked him. There was that final day on Kai, the one day when Ariel and Gavin had gotten along, before Thallian’s men found them. Even some days of her childhood, learning to fight in the street and running across the rooftops and diving in the colony’s deep tank and the first time she walked on the moon’s surface and saw the stars overhead …