by Lea Linnett
Ellie’s lips parted soundlessly. Her mind was a wordless whirl of emotion, centering in on Helik. This was the levekk who had given her the chance at a new life, without ever understanding just how important that was. This was the levekk who had clutched her close and found the strength to be himself around her after years and years struggling to be someone else. This was the levekk who had risked his reputation—which was his life, as far as he was concerned—to be with her. And for whom she’d risked her freedom in return.
She felt her eyes grow wet and cursed herself. She wasn’t meant to cry; she was meant to be fearless.
But she couldn’t keep the smile from her face as she looked up at Helik, and she felt a wave of relief wash over her as his own face softened into something so open and vulnerable that she barely recognized him.
This was her choice. She couldn’t leave him behind after all they’d been through. Not even for Augusta. Augusta had made this decision twice over, and if Ellie had to let her go in order to move on with the family she’d chosen then…
Then she’d just have to do it. No matter how much it hurt.
She turned to Cara. “I can’t do that,” she said, taking up Helik’s hand in hers. “We don’t belong here anymore. I’m sorry, Cara.”
For a split second, the rebel looked more hurt than angry, and Ellie remembered with a rush that this was her friend, not just a faceless rebel. They’d spent hours together in the Senekkar, swapping stories and sharing drinks—Ellie wondered where that camaraderie had gone.
But Cara’s moment of vulnerability was fleeting, interrupted by Scott snapping from over Ellie’s shoulder, “No deal, Cara. I know where I need to be.” He and Devis shared a look that spoke volumes, although their skin only touched at the shoulder as they leaned against each other.
Cara glared at them, looking rather smaller than she had before. “Anna?”
Ellie held her breath as she looked at Anna, whose amber eyes were watching Cara with an unreadable expression. Of all of them, Anna was the most likely to take the rebel up on her offer. She’d never wanted to leave, and really, what right did Ellie have to stop her? It was Ellie’s fault that she was even involved in this mess, and she’d been a member of the Lodestars before, however briefly.
The tanned girl stared at Cara for a long time, tear tracks drying on her face. She looked once at Ellie and their ragtag collection of criminals, and once at Taz and Deeno and the other rebels, who had lowered their weapons and wore matching looks of shock and confusion.
For a moment, Ellie thought she might have to say her goodbyes, but then Anna shook her head.
And that was all.
“Anna, come on.” Cara looked crestfallen now. “What about your family?”
“It’s too late,” Anna said in a wobbly voice. “The enforcers know who I am. I don’t want to be here if every day I’m reminded of how I still can’t go home.”
With that, she burst into tears, and, to Ellie’s surprise, it was Roia who stepped up to wrap her hard arms around the girl. They edged towards the ship, passing Scott and Devis, who looked back at Cara with sharper expressions.
“Will you let us go?” Ellie pleaded, squeezing Helik’s hand for strength and eyeing the rebels’ lowered guns. “Please don’t help the enforcers. They’ve done wrong by all of us.”
For a moment, Cara looked as if she may argue, but then she deflated. “No wonder he picked you for the camera stuff,” she murmured, her eyes empty. “You always seem to know what to say.”
Ellie blinked, waiting for the catch, but Cara turned away, waving the others back.
“Just go,” she called over her shoulder. “I don’t want to be here when the enforcers come knocking all that much myself.”
Helik tugged her back towards the gangway, and she turned to find the others already stepping safely onto the metallic surface. But she hesitated.
“Cara?” The rebel paused. Ellie’s brow dipped, determined. “Thank you. If you ever start to see my perspective on things…” She shrugged. “Come say hi, I guess.”
Her eyes were unreadable as she watched Ellie make her way towards the ship, and Ellie forced herself not to turn and try to decipher the expression.
She did glance back once as she reached the door, but the platform was clear, only their battered transports left behind. There were no sirens, no explosions, no gunfire—only the muted bustle of the space harbor as ships flew past on their own journeys.
This was it: the end of her life on CL-32. She would probably never come back, she realized with a jolt, one foot inside the ship already and one on the metal gangway. Helik’s hand was still clutched in hers, and he waited in the doorway of the ship, watching her patiently.
“You ready?” he asked, his deep voice soft.
“Together?”
He nodded. “Together.”
Ellie moved through the portal, stepping into her new world.
Her new life.
Epilogue
Three days later.
Helik exited the bridge with a curse on his lips and a splitting headache. He’d been arguing with the captain, who was adamant about setting their course for CL-6, despite Helik’s misgivings. CL-6 had some of the most developed levekk cities in the Constellation, but Helik doubted that they’d be able to fade into the crowds there. Rather, more levekk civilization meant more stringent checks, and if the CL-32 government decided to get serious about pursuing them past its borders and sent out a Constellation-wide check…
Helik would much rather head somewhere that was less rigorous in its record-keeping, but the crew Roia hired had only been contracted on a temporary basis, and they needed to go where the contracts were. They’d made it clear that CL-6 would be the last stop, so unless Helik was willing to give up his ship and get dropped off somewhere else, he had to follow captain’s orders.
On his own ship.
Helik seethed, his claws clicking against the metal floor as he stormed away from the bridge. He moved at a quick pace toward the tail end of the ship, having already learned in the past three days where to duck and where to lift his feet to avoid banging into things. On the first day, he’d almost put a dent in his plated head when he entered the upper-level kitchen, but now he dipped into it easily, hoping to find Ellie.
He glanced around, finding no one but Devis in the small kitchen, emptying a sachet of something white into one of two mugs, and sighed.
“Hey there,” she said in greeting. She looked him over, her eyes narrowing. “How goes the bridge?”
“Atrocious,” he snapped, moving to lean against one counter. “That cicarian won’t listen.”
“Did you suck up? Bow a little, call him ‘Captain’?”
Helik made a noise deep in his throat. “Fuck no.”
His friend rolled her eyes, slipping each of the mugs under the hot water faucet. “Ever the negotiator. Didn’t you used to be better at sleazing on people?”
“Would everyone just make up their minds, please? First I get in trouble for lying, now I get in trouble for saying what I think.”
“Don’t be an infant. You know the difference.”
Helik huffed, crossing his arms. He glanced at the mugs, watching Devis delicately stir them with the flat, shovel-like sliver of plastic that apparently counted as a spoon on a decades-old freighter. “What is that, anyway?”
“Cicarian herb tea with some of that human sugar that sub-species find so addictive. Scott made me try it,” she added, shrugging when Helik gave her a dubious look. “We found enough of the herb tea in the hangar to last someone an eternity, so we commandeered some. I never liked the stuff—too bitter, even by my standards—but with the sugar? It ain’t bad.”
Helik cocked his head, still unconvinced. “Try not to steal too much from the crew, or we might not even make it to CL-6.”
“Nah, it’s the dummy product that Roia had added. Not someone’s personal store.”
“Right… Have you seen Ellie around?”
&nb
sp; “No, I—”
The door to the kitchen opened behind Helik, and he turned to see Scott strutting inside. What he saw of Scott made him immediately avert his eyes, however. He was wearing trousers—thankfully—but the pinkish skin of his torso was exposed, and Helik was careful not to look at him as he crossed to Devis’ side, slinging an arm around her waist. The human, as Helik had already discovered in the few days that they’d been on the ship together, had a far more casual approach to nudity than any levekk, and Helik still grew uncomfortable when faced with the strange, fleshy sight of the man’s chest.
Devis snickered, noticing his unease, and said to Scott, “I thought we agreed we’d keep the shirt on in communal spaces?”
The human leaned into her. “He’ll get used to it. Thought I might be missing out on gossip since you took so long.”
“No gossip,” Helik said, forcing himself to meet the human’s eye. “I was just wondering if either of you had seen Ellie.”
“We’ve been, uh… busy. All morning,” Scott said with a sly grin. “Haven’t seen her.”
“Great. Have fun.” Helik swept from the kitchen, ignoring the couple’s laughter. He wasn’t upset by their teasing—he knew his discomfort was silly, especially since he’d had no qualms getting an eyeful of a certain other human’s skin over the last few days—but being confronted with Devis and Scott’s intimacy at such close quarters was a new level of awkward for him. Devis was practically his sister, and he had no desire to be reminded that she was doing anything remotely similar to what he did with Ellie.
He shuddered, descending a level to the second deck and pausing when a familiar dark figure appeared, approaching from the opposite end of the ship.
“Roia,” he called, and the xylidian looked up from her wristlet. “Have you seen Ellie?”
“No. How was your meeting with the captain?”
Helik scoffed at the idea of anyone calling their argument a ‘meeting.’ “Not great.”
Roia’s blood-red eyes narrowed. “Lovely. It’s five months to CL-6—four-and-a-half, maybe, with the small amount of freight we’re carrying. At least that gives me time to put our records in order. And for you to think about where we want to go next,” she added, raising her brow.
“I’ll think of something,” Helik agreed. “I want to talk to Ellie about it. Her sister left CL-32 a few months ago, and she doesn’t have any other family left, so…”
Roia’s face softened. “Good idea,” she said, and to Helik’s surprise, the look in his assistant’s eyes was almost fond. “She might be with the other human. Anna. She’s still having problems adjusting.”
Helik nodded, eyes falling to the floor. The human that had rescued Ellie was supposed to be sent back to her family, but Helik couldn’t fault Devis, Scott, and Roia for not delivering on that promise. Not even Helik had expected the frenzy that accompanied them to the space harbor. There was nothing they could have done.
That didn’t change the fact that Anna had spent the last three days locked in her room, only eating when Ellie took food down to her.
“Thanks, Roia. I’ll go check.”
Roia smiled, nodding gracefully before she slipped past him.
Helik continued down the corridor, taking a left to where he was fairly sure Anna’s room was located. It didn’t take him long to pinpoint it, as the sound of the human’s heaving sobs echoed out into the hallway loudly enough to pull Helik up short. He looked up one end of the hallway and then the other, but saw no sign of Ellie. He then crept towards the human’s door, faltering with his hand half-raised to knock, hesitant to interrupt her anguish.
He waited, wondering how to proceed, until there was a lull in the crying. He pressed his head to the door, listening for any sign of Ellie within, but then the wailing started again, and he flinched away.
“Helik?”
He froze like an adolescent caught reading a dirty zine, and turned to find Ellie standing in the middle of the hallway, holding a pile of blankets in her arms.
“Ellie,” he greeted her as she stepped forward. “I was looking for you.” He reached for her, letting out a soft, “Oof,” as Ellie slumped into him, still holding the blankets. He wrapped his arms ineffectually around the entire lot, smiling down at the human, who blinked back, her chin resting on the bedding.
“Did you talk to Anna?” she asked.
Helik grimaced, allowing a guilty look to cross his face. “No, well, uh…”
Behind them, the crying increased in volume again, and Ellie’s smile widened. “I was kidding.” She straightened, relieving him of the blankets. “Gimme a couple minutes, I’m just dropping these off.” At Helik’s curious look, she added in a whisper, “She said she was cold. If you ask me, I feel like it’s warmer on here than any Earth winter, but I think she really just wants to make a blanket fort to hide in.”
He nodded, letting her pass by him and knock on Anna’s door. He didn’t try to peek in as she disappeared inside; the sound of the human sniffling to compose herself was description enough.
Helik waited, hanging in the hallway a few doors down until Ellie reemerged sans blankets. She looked troubled as she took his hand, falling into another hug.
“You okay?” he rumbled.
He felt her nod against his chest, and when she pulled back to look up at him, the hairs at the top of her forehead stood on end from the static. “Can we go to the star room?” she asked, running her fingers down his back.
“Of course.”
They traveled back to the upper level without dropping each other’s hands. When they arrived at the rear observation deck—which Ellie had jokingly dubbed the ‘star room’ due to the uninterrupted view of the empty space surrounding them that it provided—they found it empty. The room was large, the back wall adorned with floor-to-ceiling glass windows that were probably meant to allow someone to oversee goods being removed from the hangar below or repairs on the rear of the ship. Helik didn’t know; the most contact he’d had with space-faring vessels had been watching them depart with his mother aboard them as an adolescent. There was a single metal railing that ran the entire circumference of the room, and Ellie went to it now, leaning her hips against it.
Helik moved to stand behind her, loving how perfectly she fit against his chest as he pressed in close.
“It doesn’t scare you?” he asked, watching her as she practically pressed her nose to the glass. “Leaning out over nothing like that?”
Ellie laughed, her breath fogging the glass for a second. “It terrifies me,” she said, glancing back at him. “Sometimes it feels like the glass isn’t there at all and I’m gonna fall out into that. But it’s so beautiful. I can’t stop staring.”
Helik smiled, threading his fingers together over her stomach. “Well, I’ll never let you fall,” he murmured. “So stare away.”
“Pfft, you big cheese.” He rolled his eyes. More human slang, like ‘corny.’ Were all human metaphors food-related? It sounded like an insult, but she relaxed back into him as he said it, making him frown.
“Cheese? Isn’t that the human word for one of those awful milk byproducts that you obsess over?”
Ellie snorted. “You mean ‘delicious’ milk byproducts. Urgh, now I want some—I haven’t had any since Manufacturing, when Augusta would—”
She cut herself off abruptly, her hands coming up to squeeze Helik’s. She wilted in his arms, and Helik felt his heart sink with her. The night before, Ellie had confided in him about her last conversation with her guardian, and for the first time in all the months he’d known her, his human had cried. They weren’t the wracking sobs that Anna was emitting on the floor below, but they’d cut Helik to the quick nonetheless, and he’d held her until the tears dried up and she fell asleep in his arms.
Other than that, she’d been very careful not to mention her remaining family since boarding the ship, and Helik was honored that she’d chosen to share it with him, despite the pain it caused.
“You’re not alo
ne,” he said, before he could second-guess whether it was a good idea or not. “You have me. And Scott and Anna. Roia.” He bit his lip, casting his gaze out the window. “And your sister is out there somewhere. We’ll find her.”
Ellie trembled in his arms and he drew them tighter. “I-I’d love that,” she admitted. She took in a deep breath, and then seemed to recenter herself, twirling in Helik’s arms until she was facing him, caught between him and the windows. “So where are we headed?”
Helik groaned, burying his face in her hair. “CL-6, if the captain gets his way. Which he probably will.” He sighed. “Everyone’s so much harder to deal with when your reputation’s in tatters.”
Ellie giggled, nudging his head out of the way so she could look up at him. “Now you know what the peasants deal with.” She grinned up at him, but her expression soon faltered. “Helik, I… I wanted to apologize.”
He frowned. “What for?”
“I was thinking about… about the Lodestars, and how scared I was when I was trying to get back to you. I didn’t know if you were okay, I didn’t know if they’d somehow get to you before I could warn you.”
“Ellie…”
“It made me think about how you must have felt. Worrying about me…”
That made Helik pause. He had been worried. More worried than he’d ever felt in his life. “It was my fault you left…” he said guiltily, but Ellie shook her head.
“That doesn’t matter. I…” She hesitated, her hands tightening into fists on his chest. “I’ve been wondering if I should have left at all. My sister worried about me for years, always asking where I’d be, who I was going out with, when I’d be home—and that was every time I left the shop. I always found it so cloying,” she said, eyes downcast.
“It would be.”
“But I know now why she did it.” She looked up at him with her huge blue eyes, her breath catching. “It’s so hard, not knowing where she is. I miss her so much—I don’t even know if I’ll ever see her again.”
“You will,” Helik found himself promising, but Ellie continued.