by Rhonda Mason
Maybe it was just a reflection of her own shame that she put on him.
She wanted to know so badly. She wanted him to let her in, share his pain with her, his memories of their five years apart. She wanted to know him like she used to—she couldn’t feel whole without that sense.
She remained a mute.
A wave of longing, of despair, threatened to drown her, but he was there, sensing her struggle and supporting her. Meeting her despair with hope.
::It’ll happen soon, I know it.::
She nodded, pushing the failure aside to concentrate on the moment. It was the only way she knew how to deal with it.
Around them, the crew of the Yari had attached themselves to the Radiant’s crew, asking questions about life in modern Ilmena. They must love newcomers after five hundred years with the same people. Five hundred years of history were being discussed while tiny aliens traveled interdimensionally from one corner of the room to the other.
This is kinda frutted up, Kayla said, laughing despite herself.
::Exactly my point.::
Kayla focused her attention on Kazamel.
“We hid, mostly,” he was saying. “It was clear as soon as we were pulled into the debris field from our hyperstream that we weren’t flying a tanker anywhere. We clamped onto a huge metal wreck that could have been the remnants of an asteroid outpost, killed the engine, and sat down to wait.”
His ship could be seen from the viewports. A half-ruined hulk with two rooks floating nearby. “The creatures didn’t come around until later,” he continued.
Kazamel’s story of their time in the Mine Field was as odd as you’d expect from a captain arriving in a ship with no engine, traveling by rook.
“The squids—” He paused, glancing at Tia’tan. “Fine. The rooks, as you say, didn’t know there were people inside the ships. They could tell the spaceships that entered their hunting grounds were artificial, but they didn’t get the concept of a being riding inside a creation like that. Or so we think.”
Kayla arched a brow in a nearly identical expression to Tia’tan’s.
“Communicating with rooks”—he held out a hand and wobbled it side to side—“is an iffy thing. It’s mostly images and the associated emotions being shared telepathically. There’s no language that I can understand, beyond that.”
So we’re just guessing? Fantastic.
::And I’m supposed to believe this guy when he says the rooks are ‘safe…’::
Kayla mentally shushed Vayne.
“If they thought spaceships were just constructs,” Kayla asked Kazamel, “why did they tear them apart? Sport?”
“Yeah… About that.” Kazamel gave Tia’tan an apologetic look. “I hope you’re making progress on that hyperstream drive, but unfortunately… the rooks ate the fuel.”
Tia’tan blinked. And blinked again. “Ate it? All of it?”
“I’m not sure if ‘ate’ is even the right word.” He shrugged helplessly. “I don’t claim to know how they work. I just got the impression that anything that fuels hyperstream and subhyperstream drives is like candy to them. Something about the fuel makes them happy, and they are ecstatic when they are chasing it down through space.”
Kayla’s head hurt. Badly.
“We were hunkered down, running as dark as possible, but apparently our hiding spot was near where one pack of the miniature rooks hang out. And when I say pack, I mean millions. They got curious and came to investigate without calling for the full-sized rooks.”
“They certainly seem curious,” Tia’tan said, cautiously watching a rook that had sidled into Kazamel’s lap.
“Insanely so,” he said. He placed his hand atop the mantle of the rook and it seemed to snuggle in deeper. Its light all but faded, the tentacles only distinguishable from the rest of its ebony body by the dim, slowly pulsing blue glow at the tips.
Kazamel gave a little laugh. “This one likes me: don’t know why.”
If Kayla or anyone aboard this ship ever lived through the fight for Ordoch’s freedom, no one would believe the tales they told afterwards.
“Once a few of the miniatures blinked inside—and adapted their senses for our atmosphere and got used to gravity pulling them down—they were startled to discover living beings in the ship. They started communicating right away, in such a barrage of chaotic thoughts that we all thought we would go crazy from it.
“They were delighted that we were a ship specifically designed to carry not only its own fuel for propulsion, but an entire ship’s hold’s worth of fuel. They eventually communicated that they would like to have it—with some horrifying images of pulling other ships apart to feast on their fuel that I think they meant to be reassuring. We communicated—successfully, it would seem,” he said, smiling at everyone in the room, “that we wanted to live and not be pulled apart by the rooks in their search for fuel.
“The miniatures’ excitement brought the full-size rooks, and the whole ‘conversation’ began again.” He shook his head, and Kayla could see he wasn’t as sanguine about it all as he seemed. He looked at the rook in his lap, seemingly cuddled up like a kitten. He petted it, and the baby’s tentacles wriggled slightly. Kazamel finally brought his wondering eyes back to Tia’tan. “They really aren’t the mindless beasts they seemed to be initially: they just didn’t know there was any intelligence in the ships.
“It took time… it took a long time… to get them to know and trust us.”
Tia’tan patted his leg. “Seems like you’ve been gone forever.”
Kayla felt like she’d left her old life behind and been trapped in a new, warped existence on this ship. What was it like for Corinth and Vayne, Tia’tan and Noar, having been here that much longer?
Kazamel continued: “We agreed to let them have our fuel, if they would try to get us to the Yari. They all knew what it was, as soon as we sent the image to them. Their response to the Yari translates to something like, ‘Holy frutt, do not go near that stick of death! Pain! Pain and Burning! No like!’”
Ida laughed. “Good to know we are having that reputation now.”
“They didn’t believe us that the Yari could be friendly, no matter how many times we showed them images of people inside, made up stories of how nice you all were, how dear to us…” He trailed off, and it was quite clear that he was specifically not looking at Tia’tan. Past lovers? Unrequited love? Either way, the torch he was carrying seemed to irk the void out of Vayne.
The idea of Vayne being jealous of anyone over a woman was so foreign that it left Kayla uncomfortable, and uncomfortable with being uncomfortable.
Get over it, Kayla— she kept that thought to herself . Vayne had taken a lover before, just as she had. The affairs were always fleeting and didn’t affect the ro’haar–il’haar bond. Plus, who was she to be jealous, with her love for Malkor?
She shook herself out of that ridiculousness. “That’s why they came to the Yari, not because of the stress test on the engine.” It made more sense now. “They were investigating us.”
“Yeah,” Kazamel said, “sorry about that. This field is so distorted, we had no way to get a message to you, to warn you. I told them to lay flat on the ship, guessing that you wouldn’t be able to hit them with weapons that way.”
He looked around the room at everyone. “Hey, what time is it, ship time? It’s midday for us, but you all look like shit, to be honest. We can talk more in the ‘morning.’ Just show us to the food synthesizer for lunch and you guys should get some sleep.”
Everyone protested, including Kayla. There was so much to know, still. Plans to make. Reports to Ordoch to be sent.
Kazamel held up a hand. “You all are a bit overwhelming, I could use a break.” His eyes cut to Tia’tan. “And need to speak with Tengku Riab Tan Tia in private.”
There was nothing to be done, not when he was so clearly evoking a protocol.
Ida stood. “I to get you RFID tags and security codes.”
“And weapons,” Kayla added. “Let’s have a
quick chat about the security situation we have going on, then we’ll see you in a few hours.”
18
THE YARI, THE MINE FIELD, IMPERIAL SPACE
Kayla grabbed an hour or two of sleep, then woke with a head full of crazy dreams. She lay there on her side, musing. Everything had been out of focus and strangely lit and colored, and at one point she was outside of her body looking
up at herself. Then there was violence. Lots of it.
Wait— Had those been dreams? They felt more like things being sent to her.
::Kay, are you coming?:: Now she remembered what woke her up: Corinth mentally poking her, jolting her in his excitement. ::You’re missing breakfast.::
She rolled onto her back and something bunched under her head.
“Hey!” She sat up and reached to rub her neck, but her hand bumped into something squishy. Damn baby rooks. It must have been tangled in her hair, because the weight of it pulled on her scalp when she stood up.
“Oh, just blink out of there, you tiny nincompoop.” Not that it could understand her. She didn’t even know if it could hear in the traditional sense. It figured out the solution quickly enough and blinked away, leaving her with tangles and the smell of singed hair. Lovely.
As she made her way from her cabin to the commissary, the rook returned, following alongside.
When Kayla walked in she found not just Corinth, but Noar and Larsa in the commissary as well, eating what looked like a leisurely breakfast. She’d become so accustomed to the trio taking their meals in the engine room while they worked that it was a shock to see them, not to mention Trinan and Vid. In fact, the commissary was packed with people: octet members, crew from the Yari, from the Radiant, and the rebels from Ordoch. It was kind of nice, actually. Or, it would have been, if she didn’t recall that the reason Larsa, Noar, and Corinth could join them all for breakfast was because they had neither engine fuel nor a qualified engineer to help them build the Yari’s hyperstream drive. No point in tinkering with the thing, now.
Kayla stopped by the table where Trinan, Vid, Hekkar, Toble, and Corinth sat on her way to the food synthesizer. “Any word from Malkor this morning?” She hadn’t caught up with him again last night before bed.
“He and Rigger are already planning intelligence-gathering missions with Ygreda and Aarush,” Hekkar said. “We have zero intel to go on and we need to get the Influencer away from Vega ASAP.” There was a pause while glances were shared between the octet members.
“When are you leaving to join him?” It was obvious that he had requested their presence. The octet could be of more use planning and executing ops against imperials than they could be guarding the ship against psionics.
Vid spoke up. “He asked for you, too, and anyone else who wanted to join us.”
She glanced at Corinth. As much as he loved the octet he seemed uncertain about the idea, which was for the best at the moment. She wanted to go with the octet, wanted to be with Malkor, and most of all, she wanted to go home.
Her gaze searched out her sister. What Kayla wanted didn’t matter as much as what the sovereign of Ordoch wanted from her. If Natali wanted her here, then she’d stay. It was her duty to support Natali, not just as the ruler, but as a sister and fellow ro’haar who had been through so much and was struggling to come back from it all.
The difficulty would come when Corinth and Vayne made their wishes known on the subject, but she’d cross that bridge when she came to it.
“I’ll think on it. First things first, though—breakfast.” She gave them a wave and went on her way to the food synthesizer. Her baby rook hopped, skipped, and interdimensionally jumped its way there to float by her head while she synthed up some coffee and hot cereal. Since both came out looking edible, she felt like she might finally be getting the hang of the Yari’s food selections.
Kayla carried her tray to the table where Vayne, Natali, Tia’tan, Kazamel, and Noar were eating breakfast—Vayne and Natali sitting at opposite ends of the table, of course.
“Morning.” She set her tray down, and just as she threw her leg over the bench to sit beside Vayne, the rook blinked out of nowhere and flopped down on her seat. “Shoo, you!” She swatted at him, careful not to actually touch him. He swirled up into the air, lights blinking with his displeasure, and waited for her to sit.
“It likes you,” Kazamel said with a grin.
“I’m not so sure about that.” Even as she reached for her mug of coffee, the thing perched upright on her wrist and wrapped its tentacles around her arm to keep itself in place. “I had thought so, but then I woke up to find it had slept in my hair.”
Vayne laughed, and she shot him a dark look. “Trust me, it sounds a lot cuter than it was. And I remember what I think were dreams, but they might be the rook talking to me with images instead.”
“Were they weirdly colored, the positive and negative values reversed? And out of focus?” Kazamel asked.
She nodded. “It kept sending me images of rooks with tentacles getting torn off, rooks with burn scars, rooks with ship debris embedded in their skin…” Kayla shuddered. “The overwhelming emotion was one of concern, but now I’m starting to wonder if it was a death threat and he’s warning me of my demise.”
Two rooks appeared in the center of the table, skimmed around the one on her wrist, and flew off. Hers followed, leaving her to drink her coffee in peace.
“Nah, that’s the way they say ‘sick’ or ‘hurt.’ They all think you’re broken because you don’t speak to them with your mind the way we do. It wants to fix you.” He said it with a smile, but the words felt like a hard slap right across the mouth.
The word “broken” echoed in the silence.
“She’s not broken, you asshole.” Vayne’s voice was a growl. No one said anything else.
“It’s okay,” Kayla finally said, even though that couldn’t be further from the truth. It was what everyone needed her to say.
Kazamel, who clearly hadn’t realized what a sensitive subject Kayla’s lost powers were, looked abashed. He opened his mouth—probably to apologize—but she stopped him with a raised hand. An apology would only make it worse, and she just wanted this horrible moment over with.
“What did the folks on Ilmena say when you commed them to announce your spectacular arrival here?” she asked. She forced herself to take a bite of her cereal while she waited for the uncomfortable atmosphere to dissipate.
“That’s what we were just discussing, actually,” Kazamel said, then looked to Tia’tan as if to say, ‘please get me out of the spotlight before I put my foot in my mouth yet again.’
Noar spoke up. “We got a report from the scientists working on a cure for the TNV. It’s a mix of great and bad news.”
“Give me the great news first,” Kayla said. “I need a pick-me-up after a night of a rook’s idea of ‘sweet dreams.’”
“The great news is that they’ve developed a stable nanotechnology that can defeat a TNV virus one on one.”
Kayla blinked. “What? How did you not shout that at me the second I walked in the door? That is amazing news!” A smile broke out on her face. “I don’t care what the bad news is, that’s amazing.” She dropped her spoon in her bowl. “Did you tell the octet yet?” Despite thawing tension between the races, Vayne and the others had chosen a table as far away from the octet as possible, so Hekkar wouldn’t overhear them. She had to comm Malkor. The number of lives that could be saved—
“Kayla, wait.” Tia’tan’s voice caught her. “There’s more.”
Wasn’t there always? “What is it?”
Noar continued. “It’s not a cure, really. What they’ve created is an inoculation against the TNV.”
“I don’t understand. If their nanobug can kill the TNV bugs…?”
“Honestly, I don’t understood the full science of it, not being a virologist or a nanotech scientist.” Noar shook his head. “It’s complicated, but here’s the gist of it. Our scientists created a biological organism that
, when it senses the presence of the TNV, can hunt it down and destroy those cells, the same way antibodies present in our blood react to any virus we’ve been inoculated against. Not that the TNV is truly a virus. Or nanotechnology at all, really.”
“We’re getting farther afield,” Tia’tan said. “Though, I do know how much you love science.”
“Right,” Noar said. “Right. So this organism, which they call 10-22R, will be an effective inoculation in people who do not already have the TNV, assuming they do not receive a massive infection of the TNV all at once.”
That was decidedly less than great news. Her rook returned, materializing above her thigh. It instantly went to work investigating the kris she had strapped to her leg, wrapping its tentacles around the hilt and trying to draw the blade out. Stop it, you little menace. She gently untangled the thing’s tentacles.
“The problem is the replication aspect of the TNV. It is able to break down a person’s body to create more copies of itself, which it does at a fairly steady rate. 10-22R, in turn, can destroy those copies, again at a predictable rate. If the number of TNV organisms is large enough, it can replicate faster than 10-22R can destroy it.”
Kayla nodded. It all made a sort of horrible sense. “And 10-22R can’t replicate in situ without taking material from the host body, which is exactly what the TNV does and why we’re trying to destroy it in the first place.”
“So in theory,” Natali said, leaning her elbows on the table, “you can ‘cure’ a person who is already infected as long as you have a large enough batch of 10-22R?”
“You could,” Noar said. He made it sound like a terrible idea. “It comes down to resources, though. I have no idea what the actual number of infected people in the empire is—” He looked to Kayla and raised an eyebrow.
“There’s no way of knowing exactly,” she said. “Multiple planets, each with populations in the billions, are already infected. And millions of travelers are likely carrying it without knowing because the symptoms haven’t shown up yet. Those millions are crossing paths with people in transit and arriving on other planets, moons, space stations, bringing the TNV with them.” She shook her head at the enormity, the impossibility of it all. “The number is so large it defies the imagination.”