by Meg Ripley
“My light cannon seized up during the last skirmish on Mars II,” she mentioned, brushing a stray onyx curl away from her face. “Almost got fried by some piece of Yazulian trash, but then my cannon unfroze and I shot a double-pulse at him. Knocked his bot out of the sky in under a second. I love our new fighting pods, they’re so much faster.” She smiled, remembering the fierce sense of satisfaction that shot through her muscles as she watched the Yazulian’s spherical black pod start to smoke and fall toward the soil, sending up an orange mushroom cloud of debris as he slammed into the ground. No one died during the skirmish, human or otherwise, but they’d destroyed every weapon the rebels were attempting to carry past the peace border. It seemed like no matter how many of the Yazulians they got to join the struggle for peace, half as many rebels violently rose up to squash the attempt. After a hundred years, the war’s front had been pushed back past Earth, Yazul, and even Luna, Earth’s moon; Yazul’s forces were finally diminished enough to contain the fighting and start working toward a tangible, significant peace. Truthfully, Jenna loved her job; ever since she’d been a little girl, she dreamed of defending her planet from the humanoid beasts that tried so hard to claim Earth for themselves. She kept hearing that peace would be achieved in the next five years, but she wasn’t ready for peace. She was still getting her taste of war.
“I’m gonna go do some research,” Victor said suddenly. He picked up his lunch tray and rose from the table. “Luna’s library is way better than Earth’s. Wanna come with?”
Something in his tone made Jenna look up, and she noticed his tattooed fingers were tapping against the tray like they were keeping time in a tempo only he could hear. His eyes were darting from side to side as though he were trying not to look at something in the wide cafeteria, and Jenna turned to try to find out what had made him so antsy.
Her gray eyes scanned the rows of tables, split by species for the most part, but she didn’t see anything out of sorts. Toward the middle of the cafeteria, the more peaceful humans mingled with the friendlier Yazulians, creating fifteen or twenty tables of mixed company. The cafeteria’s eighty-five humans in their varied tones—from soft white to deep chestnut brown—looked dull compared to the Yazulians, whose skin came in every imaginable shade, but who all shone softly like they held some secret flame inside. Nothing out of the ordinary struck her eye, still, so she gave up the search.
Jenna started to ask Victor what was wrong—and tease him for his jumpiness— when her gaze was pulled toward the center of the room.
A Yazulian was standing motionless near a table of humans who were trying hard to avoid catching him in their line of sight. He had shining copper skin like a brushed penny, and his bulging arms were crossed with boxy black letters that Jenna knew were prayers and incantations in a lilting language she’d never been able to fully grasp, even though it had been taught to her in the years since her enlistment. His face was astoundingly symmetrical and smooth, unmarred by burns and cuts, meaning he was likely a younger warrior. His short-sleeved shirt had gleaming square gems in deep purple at the shoulders; she knew they were power sources, but couldn’t recall exactly what weapon they powered. It wasn’t on him, she reminded herself, so it didn’t matter anyway. The Yazulian was looking directly at their table—more accurately, directly at her; Jenna felt a river of tension start trickling into her stomach as she realized it was the Yazulian from the skirmish earlier that day on Mars II. As soon as she thought it, the warrior smiled.
“You go ahead,” Jenna said to Victor, keeping her eyes on the Yazulian. “I’ll catch up later. Besides, I’m sure Lizzie’s missing you.” She kept her voice light at the mention of her old commander, but she felt a ghostly tug of pain at her heart as she spoke. It’s been six months, she thought. Move on.
Victor seemed to notice too, and he hesitated, sadness etched into his features. “Jenna—”
“Go.” She tried to smile, hoping it was warm enough to make up for her lingering bitterness. Victor was still her best friend, and he deserved happiness. What did Lizzie used to say? The heart wants what the heart wants.
Victor was strong, but Jenna could be forceful, too. He turned on his heel and marched away, shooting her one last glance as the doors opened for him and he disappeared out onto Luna’s surface. She pushed her emotions down and turned her eyes forward, her nerves brittle and her blood roaring in her head.
The Yazulian started to move toward her as if he’d been given a cue. Jenna hadn’t known he’d been waiting for Victor to leave, but she could see it in his eyes as he approached the table. He was wearing casual clothes, a slim black top and pants made of a strengthened hybrid material that protected his skin from the elements. Fear rose to the surface of her mind, but anger soon followed, creating a toxic cocktail of emotions that colored all her panicked thoughts as she watched the alien approach. Maybe it was being reminded of her unrequited love, but she was itching for a tussle. This is it; one of these fuckers want revenge, and I’m gonna let him have one swing before I take him out. I’ve been waiting for an excuse to wail on someone.
The Yazulian stopped in front of her table and planted his hands on his hips. Up close, he looked less threatening, but that put her even more on edge. He was a head shorter than she was, and his pupils were dark brown and flecked with a luminous golden tone, close to the shade of his own skin. His nametag had his name and rank in blocky Yazulian script, and underneath it was its English translation: Leo 17. His eyes flickered to her name tag and read Jenna A. Horizon on the silver rectangle.
“A-Level,” he said, and his voice snaked across her skin and made her shiver; it sounded like something she heard in all those examples of cheesy radio dramas from Earth’s early twentieth century: pompous, velvety and dark, seductively sinister but utterly commanding. It was the voice of a villain or an anti-hero you were inexplicably drawn to. She hated it.
“Yeah, I’m A-Level. What’s it to you?” Jenna shot back. “You’re a level 17. Want to keep stating the obvious?”
The Yazulian smiled, and his teeth were too white. “Sure, why not? You’re eating a shake. Everyone else has solid food of some kind.”
“And?” Jenna spat, curling her hands into fists. “You’re about to be eating my boot if you don’t cut the crap. Or maybe crapping my boot if you’re not careful.”
“I guess you need less food if you’re not doing real fighting,” he continued, rolling his eyes up toward the ceiling as he pretended to think. He stroked his chin and screwed up his face in mock concentration in an uncanny impersonation of what Victor had done moments earlier. “Pushing a joy stick around isn’t nearly as taxing as, say, saving your old Commander’s life.”
Jenna stood up, and a sharp silence fell over their part of the room. “Excuse me? You fight in a pod, too. I don’t see you out there working up a sweat. Oh, wait!” Jenna gasped theatrically. “Your kind does that every time you try to think. No wonder we’re crushing you.”
More heads were turning their way. The Yazulian’s slim nostrils flared, and a pale Yazulian in the far corner rose and started inching toward them. Jenna thought about going for her laser pistol and remembered it was on the ship—no weapons were allowed on neutral ground. She didn’t understand why he was reacting this way when she was only being defensive because he attacked her first.
“I suppose I should forgive you for that,” he said finally, but his voice shook with barely contained rage. “You guys put such a high premium on your status, evolutionarily. I guess it’s hard knowing you’re not as special as you thought, or as strong. And you’ve learned that so very often during the war…on the field and off. I can’t imagine feeling so weak.”
“Stop,” Jenna warned, her heart racing. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t I?” The Yazulian took a step forward. “Everyone knows what happened after that fire, Horizon.”
“Don’t!” The word came out a screech.
“How upset did you have to be abou
t that woman choosing your best friend over you for you to switch brigades? After all those years of that incredibly attentive…” the Yazulian’s smile widened as he paused, “…service?”
The pale Yazulian was ten feet away from Leo 17, but Jenna was already raising her fist back behind her head to strike. Rage unfurled inside her and her vision narrowed down to a point as she launched her fist toward his mouth. There was a resounding crunch as her punch landed, and the dizzying high of victory lifted her spirits and pulled her mind away from her bloodied knuckles. Leo 17 crumpled to the floor, clutching his bleeding mouth and grunting in pain and rage. The pale Yazulian was trying to pull him away, but Leo put all of his energy into trying to retaliate, straining toward her without gaining any ground thanks to his friend’s hands. Jenna stood just out of reach, smiling and examining her aching hand as though it didn’t hurt at all. She locked eyes with him and felt another surge of bitter satisfaction.
“How’s that for weak, asshole?”
The pale Yazulian squealed in terror and turned to run, and the humans and Yazulians around him quickly followed. Jenna frowned.
“It wasn’t that bad, guys,” she said, moving to step over Leo 17’s hunched body. “Well, I could’ve chosen a better insult, I guess—”
A white-hot pain buckled every muscle in her body, and her breath stopped in her throat. She went crashing to the ground in slow motion, and finally registered the motion behind her. Two figures in gray masks held up long, silvery batons, both crackling with the energy they’d just used to incapacitate her. As Jenna’s vision faded away and she slipped out of consciousness, she thought she saw the Yazulian smile.
****
She woke up on a surprisingly soft surface, and every cell in her body was alight with pain. She couldn’t do anything besides breathe, let alone move the muscles responsible for opening her eyes to see where she was. Where am I? Three short words echoing through her mind, weaving in and out of the havoc of her tortured senses. Thinking was hard when there was this much pain, and it had been so long since she remembered that fact—too long. She’d promised herself she would remember this pain after what happened with Victor and Lizzie.
Victor.
Lizzie.
Leo 17.
Everything came rushing back to her at once, and the memory slapped her so hard that it gave her the jolt she needed to push open her eyes. Her pupils shrank as light hit them, and the ceiling slowly came into focus. It was gray and unlined, nonporous and dark. One turn of her aching neck told her the walls to her left were the same, and as she rotated her head to the right, she realized she was on a bed about two feet off the ground in small room—a cell, by the look of the heavy iron door. There was another bed against the wall opposite her, and she wasn’t surprised to see Leo 17 sitting upright, gazing at her as though he’d woken her up himself.
“Morning,” he said. “Man, you snore loud.”
Jenna tried to sit up, but a wave of nausea forced her to lay back down. “Shut up,” she spat, but it had none of the venom she felt before. She looked at her arms and legs, but they didn’t look any different in her dark blue jumpsuit; why couldn’t she move?
“If you’re wondering why you can’t move,” Leo 17 said, his tone conversational, “it’s because they zapped you with their prods about six times.”
“I only felt it once,” Jenna said weakly, but her memory was awfully hazy at the moment.
“That took you down,” the Yazulian admitted, propping his elbows on his knees and leaning forward as he addressed her. ‘Then you got up after they cuffed you and started swinging at everyone.”
“Everyone?” Jenna echoed, surprised.
“Everyone,” Leo 17 repeated. “You took the Gray Men down before they realized you’d gotten up, and the only reason you didn’t hit me again was that I was hiding under a table while you went nuts. Once you broke the cuffs off you even started swinging at the humans behind you.”
Jenna moaned, a long noise filled with all the misery she could muster. “How many people were hurt?”
“Just the Gray Men, besides me,” Leo 17 said, and he sounded impressed. The Gray Men were the highest form of policing they had, made up of anonymous soldiers from all across the galaxy who wore gray fabric masks after completing their rigorous training. “You did seem more focused on them since they were intent on taking you down. I guess anyone else struck would have been accidental, but you’ve got a wide range, so it’s surprising that you missed.”
Jenna sighed in relief, and some of the ache went out of her muscles. She tried sitting up again and scooted sideways so she could lean against the wall and face Leo 17. “Why do you sound like you approve of me all of a sudden?”
He laughed, and the sound was strangely comforting. “Do you notice anything about my face?”
Jenna studied it, feeling awkward examining him so closely. He wasn’t bloody anymore, but there was a darkened patch of skin on a corner of his cheek next to his mouth that looked like the imprint of her knuckles.
“I bruised you,” she said. “Great, but so what? Are you one of those sexists who only likes a girl if she can kick his ass?”
“No,” Leo said. “But I am one of those Yazulians with a great healing ability. I can heal any minor damage instantly, and major damage takes only a few hours.”
Jenna narrowed her eyes. “What? What are you saying?” Her eyes flickered to the bruise and then back to his gaze, shakily piecing together what he was telling her. “Haven’t we only been here a few hours?”
Leo laughed. “Horizon! We’ve been here for almost two days.”
Icy fear flooded her veins, and her lungs seized up just as they were getting used to drawing in normal amounts of air. They locked us up for two days…over a fight? The last time she’d been in an altercation on Luna, she was thrown in a cell for about two hours and fined 200 coins for slapping a subordinate. It was a single day’s pay for her, and had been entirely worth it.
“Why have we been in here so long? Are you saying it’s connected to your bruise?”
“No, that’s why I’m curious about you. I expect they’re more curious about how you managed to fight off five rounds of electric charges from those Gray Men’s prods when a human would normally die after three charges from one prod—and you had two on you at the same time.” Leo 17 smiled, and it was so full of excitement that it was as though someone had announced an early start to the war.
Jenna’s mind was reeling, and she didn’t want to believe his words. There had to be another reason they were in there—but why had they thrown them in a top security cell? Her body was awfully achy, and the soreness matched up with being violently shocked into being comatose for two days. But why lock them up at all? Why not put her in a hospital?
Her eyes locked on Leo 17’s, and he smiled.
Anger returned to her body, fast and hot. “What did you tell them? Why am I not being given medical attention?”
His smile faded a little. “You were given medical attention, Horizon. I made sure of that.”
“Quit calling me that!”
Leo 17’s face took on a look of pure confusion. “But…it’s your name.”
“Well…yes, but it’s not my first name,” Jenna said, feeling flustered.
Her words didn’t help the Yazulian. “It matters? I hear humans call each other by their second names all the time.” He frowned. “What would you call me?”
“Leo 17,” Jenna said, and he burst into laughter. “What?”
“Leo is my name,” he explained. “But 17 is not. I don’t speak to humans often, so I never get a chance to correct them on this. The number is something the humans ascribed to our naming system because they couldn’t translate our words into English. The second names we have are all references to our origins. Like country names. They’re simply indicators of our birthplaces, and descriptors of those places themselves. Humans did not understand this, and postulated that since all Yazulians in a given area had the same la
st name, they functioned the same as group markers. We got numbers instead of our names and the confusion has not been corrected in one hundred years of fighting, nor the hundred years of peace before that.”
Jenna stared blankly at him, feeling anger and shame simultaneously in the face of her ignorance. “I’m sorry,” she said. “So, I should just call you by your first name?” Leo nodded. “I didn’t know that.”
He smiled. “There’s quite a lot you don’t know. I’m beginning to realize it’s not your fault.”
Jenna bristled, feeling defensive even though he was being perfectly polite. A sharp buzz sounded through the room, and they both jumped as a flap in the door slid open, and two soft packages of food were pushed through, followed by two long bottles of water. Leo stood and hurried to retrieve the items, and Jenna realized then how very hungry she was.
The Yazulian was already moving toward her bed, the package slit open and outstretched in his hand. “I’m going to set this next to you, is that okay?”
Jenna started to scoff until she saw that there was a glimmer of real fear in his eyes. Whatever she’d done while she blacked out had been monstrous, and it filled her with shame; I’m even more broken than I thought.
“Hey,” Leo said, his voiced panicked. “Uh…hey!” He knelt by her bedside and set the food and water beside her, peering up into her face with a look of alarm. She started to ask what the hell he was doing before she felt the tears rolling down her cheeks.
Jenna raised her hands to brush them away and cried out as pain tore through her again. “Dammit!” she yelled, slumping back against the wall as the sensation slowly receded. Maybe she could just lay there until she died; that seemed like a plausible solution.