by V. K. Ludwig
All the while, I hoped Katie wouldn’t wake, the effects of the jarring unpredictable at best. She’d wake with a massive headache, perhaps even a concussion, and yet it would have nothing on the pain in her bruising knee or the agonizing memory of Kidan.
Reaching a stargazer I could fly was way too easy. I flung Katie over my shoulder, freeing one hand to steer Grace around crates of cargo. Workers moved around incoming goods from Cultum and other planets, while engineers dangled in harnesses underneath the ships, maintaining fusion panels.
We weaved our way toward the stargazer at the end of the bay, the cargo allowing us to do so unnoticed. A swipe over the exterior panel and the ramp opened with a hiss. That was when Grace lost her nerve.
She stumbled backward, her eyes darting between the entrance to the ship and her mother, her face going ashen. “What er ye doen? Ei’m not stppn’in that theng.”
My stomach clenched. First Vetusians stared our way, shifting their weight while cocked heads tried to make sense of that panicked voice echoing through Cargo Bay.
As much as I wanted to explain things, I had no other choice but to grab her shoulder a bit tighter. I pushed her up the ramp and into the vessel, her screams shattering louder from the metal interior, the smaller the gap to the outside grew.
I lowered Katie onto the ground, ignoring the way Grace slammed her fists against my back. That girl screamed, kicked, scratched, and shoved me away from her mother.
“Melek help Katie,” I said once more, but those tears rolling down her cheeks made it clear my words didn’t promote a sense of safety.
I activated the control panel; programming two negative matter jumps during our course to the only place I knew promised refuge. Fusion panels powered up with a hum. The hologram followed me around while I rummaged through overhead compartments, searching for healer packs, weapons, and that language chip implant gun we desperately needed.
Bam. Bam. Bam.
I startled at the noise, the vibration of it still rattling through my soles. Grace leaned over Katie, her mumbles drowning underneath sobs and wails.
Bam. Bam. Bam.
The metal floor shook once more, sending a paralyzing fear down my spine. Had they found the body already? If they shut down the airlock, we’d be done. After all, I was a healer, not an engineer trained to manually squeeze through it.
Shouts hollered from somewhere underneath us.
I walked up to the center hatch in the floor, the metal handle vibrating with each additional bam.
I grabbed the handle, turned it, opened the hatch.
“What the fuck is going on here?” The engineer shouted, red blotches covering his sweaty face. “Who issued permission to take this stargazer out? I wasn’t done with mainte… what are you doing?”
His eyes darted to my hand where I held his harness with one hand, bracing with my legs against his weight. With the other, I fumbled on the clasp that attached him to the vessel.
“What are you doing?” he asked, glancing back over his shoulder and three levels down before his eyes came back to me. “If you drop me, I’ll break a million bones.”
“Don’t worry, you only have a little over two-hundred.”
“No… no… don’t do this. Don’t do this!”
At that, I clinked off his hook. What were a few broken bones compared to Katie and Grace safe? Unless…
“Hey, you got a language chip?”
He shook his head. “What?”
“Alright, no chip then —”
“Whoa, wait, yeah, I got one. English and Spanish.”
I placed my second hand onto his harness and wrapped my fingers around the stiff material. My thighs strained and burned as I pulled him up and into the vessel, the hatch falling shut right after.
Fumbling him out of his harness, I immediately used the same thing to tie his hands behind his back.
“What are you doing?” he shouted, groaning each time he wiggled.
I grabbed the gun I’d found in one of the overhead compartments, not charged, but that wasn’t something he knew, and he flinched the moment I pressed it against the back of his head.
“You will translate for me,” I said, grinding the barrel against the few wisps of hair he had left. “Word for word.”
“Okay, okay, no problem.”
“Your mother killed Kidan.”
He turned around, and he would probably have given me a what-the-fuck kind of look if I hadn’t poked him with the barrel. “Nothing will happen to you. Just translate.”
His head bounced into a nod his words obscure to me though I had no other choice but to trust in his translation. “Anything else?”
“I’m taking them to Odheim where her mother can’t be prosecuted,” I said, letting my eyes search for Grace’s. “Tell her that I’m here to help them, not hurt them in any way. My language chip is broken, but I’ll try to fix it as soon as possible and explain everything. Until then, I need her to trust me, no matter how hard that might be.”
I waited until the guy stopped mumbling.
Grace flinched and stared up at me, time stretching to eternity between us before she gulped down a hard swallow. Then she nodded, lowering her head onto Katie’s chest right after. She remained there, crying silent tears into the dress of her unconscious mother.
“What about me?” the engineer asked. “I want nothing to do with this.”
“Working on it,” I said and rummaged through the healer pack, retrieving a sedative from it.
I rammed the pin into the side of his neck, catching his shoulders just as he collapsed to the side. Propped against the wall, he would be out until we reached the amnesty planet. As much as I needed him to translate, I didn’t need a snitch.
The vessel shook all around us when the autopilot went through the airlock. Dozens of yellow overhead handles tossed and swayed. Overwhelmed and exhausted, I sunk to the floor by the row of seats lining the wall. I reeked of sweat, vomit, and whatever food I had dropped onto my uniform in the past three suns.
I activated my com and called the only person I knew would keep us safe, no questions asked.
“Melek,” Adora’s voice came through the com, still holding the same warmth it did all those sun cycles ago, back when she took me in. “What happened that you call me this late? This is the busiest time of all.”
“I’m in trouble.”
A chuckle went through the line. “You wouldn’t be Melek if you weren’t. Trouble follows you around.”
“You noticed that too, huh?” I let the silence grow for a moment before I continued. “Can you meet me at the abandoned dock? I’ll put a tracker on the vessel so you can see what time we’ll get there.”
“We?”
“I’m coming with my anam ghail and her daughter —”
“Oh!” she breathed, and I pictured her fanning at herself. “I had no idea you found your fated one. We’re so happy for you.”
I sighed. “She killed her Vetusian mate, and I need a place for us to stay where she can be safe.”
“But you just said —”
“It’s complicated. I’ll explain everything once we get there.”
This time, Adora let the silence expand, the way she pursed her lips and smacked them audible. “Melek, I just got rid of someone wanted for murder.”
“I get that, and I’m not looking for handouts. Put me to work. I have no problem earning our keep. You need a healer, don’t you?” When she said nothing, I added, “They could deactivate my com at any moment. Can I count on you or not?”
She let out a deep sigh. “Alright. Put the tracker on the ship, and we’ll meet you at the old dock.”
“Hey, you have humanoid pleasure droids, correct? Do you know if they come standard with all Earth languages installed?”
“Yes.”
“Fantastic, bring one of them with you.”
My com turned dark just as the vessel calmed, the window of the cockpit showing nothing but vast blackness with the occasional star
passing.
I got up and walked over to Katie, gesturing Grace to stay calm as I removed the remnants of those panties from her ankle. Grace stared after the piece of fabric as I tossed it behind me, her blue eyes so full of pain when they found mine.
She was almost mature herself, the way she sucked in a breath and held it, making it clear she hadn’t noticed that thing dangling there before. And all I could do was shrug, embracing that sense of guilt swamping every fiber of my body.
If I wouldn’t have pushed Kidan, perhaps this wouldn’t have escalated. Actually, if I wouldn’t have snorted that hit, none of this would have happened.
Maybe I was inadequate because Katie carried the proof of it scratched across those thighs I pushed together to contain whatever decency Kidan hadn’t ripped from her. It was written all over her knee in purple and blue bruises. Etched onto her sleeping features as raw fear and deep-rooted betrayal of her trust.
I grabbed another sedative pin from the healer pack and took Katie’s hand into mine, warming her fingers. Her mind needed rest, her body medical help I didn’t have the tools for. Neither did I find language chips. Grace watched me warily but didn’t interfere when I pricked her mother.
Yesterday I was a sgu’dal once tried for medical malpractice.
Now I was all that plus a criminal, helping two Earth females escape to a place that held the dirt of my existence. Everything I never wanted Katie to know about me, she would now become part of.
Four
Melek
* * *
I stepped outside the stargazer, my boots grinding into the familiar gray soil of Odheim. Cones of light shone from the ground, reflecting on the floating particles of the atmosphere, and dipping the planet in a purple hue.
“My lost son finally returned,” Adora said, those four sets of arms she swung around me quadrupling the comfort they held. “Look at you, Melek. Strong. Healthy.”
Even after the five decades since she’d left her home planet Heliar, her voice still couldn’t hide that hint of a lisp.
“I do clean up nicely, don’t I? Except for the current state of my uniform perhaps.”
She chuckled. “Where are they?”
“I sedated Katie, my anam ghail, until I can take care of her injuries.” I jutted at the stargazer. “Her daughter is asleep. Listen, we have to approach this carefully, alright? Transition them slowly. This is a strange planet to them with even stranger species. Did you bring the droid?”
“Zera,” she shouted toward the skycar hovering behind her, graying strands of hair tossing at the motion.
The android climbed out of the vehicle, her hips swaying with each step just like the Empire programmed them to. “Yes, mistress?”
“I need you to come with me and translate between English and Vetusian,” I said. “You’ve got Earth languages pre-installed, right?”
“Yes, baby. Whatever you want I’ll do.”
At my questioning stare, Adora rolled her eyes. “What did you expect? She’s a pleasure droid.”
Adora followed beside me with stiff legs, the wrinkles on her face deeper than the last time I saw her. Even at this short distance, she huffed through the slitted nostrils on her flat nose, showing me once more just how long I’d been gone.
I stopped her at the ramp. “How about you stay outside until I get things figured out in there? They’ve never seen a Kokkonian, Adora.”
“Right, right, I will wait out here.”
I walked inside together with the droid, trying to wake Grace without startling her. She thrust herself up anyway, glancing around the vessel as if she had expected all this to be nothing but a bad dream. Who could have blamed her?
“Tell her we reached Odheim,” I instructed. “I will bring her to a safe place where she can rest. Katie will remain sedated for a bit longer until I have everything I need to take care of her knee.”
I waited for the droid to translate, then she said, “The human is asking if this planet only has Vetusians, or aliens as well.”
A chuckle wormed itself from my chest. “She’s spot on. Tell her she’ll see extra limbs, horns, scaled skin, gray skin, no skin. But I want her to understand that she’s safe. I will take care of her, and I will take care of her mother.”
Grace stared at the ground with vacant nods that could just as well have been shakes.
Yeah, this made no sense to me either.
How could this have escalated to such a degree? Matches didn’t go around murdering each other. For that, we could have adapted to Earth’s marriage concept. Something was so severely wrong with Katie’s link, at this point it scared me shitless. But it didn’t rid that sense of obligation to protect her.
I helped Grace to her feet. “Zera, do me a favor and untie that engineer over there. He’ll be fine on his own once he wakes up.”
I picked up Katie once more and gestured Grace to follow, her steps hesitant, stalled by fear. To my surprise, the girl didn’t scream when she saw Adora, though she flinched a little when the old female wrapped her in a tangle of limbs.
“Whatever happened to transition them slowly?”
Adora shrugged. “A hug won’t hurt.”
“There’s such a thing as juvenile heart attack, you know.”
She guided Grace toward the skycar with one arm wrapped around her shoulder. They slipped inside and I trailed behind them, carefully lowering Katie onto one of the benches. Once Zera got behind the wheel, the hover panels vibrated underneath us.
“You will have the entire apartment upstairs to yourselves,” Adora said, patting a hand against Grace’s trembling knee in an even, comforting rhythm. “We prepared food. Water. A few things you might need. What’s the young female’s name?”
“Grace.”
The teenager looked up, her shoulders hunched, her gaze darting across the crowded cabin. “What’s weth mey?”
“Tell her the name of the lady beside her is Adora, and she’s a very good friend of mine.”
The droid translated, and Grace nodded.
“How much do medical nanites run for on the black market now?” I asked.
“Three-hundred ICs? Might be more.”
“Shit. I’ll have to access my savings before they freeze my account.”
Grace’s gaze soon drifted out the window, taking in the one-level storefronts before the ocean of high-rise buildings. Odheim was a melting pot of cultures. The biggest trading hub in the universe and an essential strategic standpoint. A gemstone, all of its sparkle hiding the rough patches at the core.
“How does it feel to be back home?” Adora asked. “It’s been so long, and you’ve done so well for yourself.”
I gave an internal scoff. Odheim wasn’t home to anything but shattered hopes and broken souls. But as a killer and a sgu’dal, it was hard to ignore that I fit right in.
“Did I do well? I’m living in exile now. This isn’t the life I wanted for myself, and it most definitely isn’t what I had in mind for Katie.”
I glanced down at her, that link of ours running goosebumps up and down my arms.
“Fate is taking you places,” Adora said.
The wrong places.
I had no trouble with fate giving me a run for my luck, but this? How could Kidan have attacked her? How was any of this possible?
“Your neon sign is broken,” I said the moment we pulled up at the back door of the building.
“I had to let the janitor go,” Adora said. “Business isn’t going well. With the majority of the Vetusians pursuing their fated mates on Earth, Jal’zar females aren’t as popular as they used to be.”
The skycar came to a halt, and I slipped out with Katie in my arms, my heart pounding harder with each step we took toward the door. Had it always been this filthy? With the stench of urine and desperation clinging to the old stone?
A step into the building and the musk and sweat lingering the hallway hit me right in the face. Even Grace scrunched up her nose, following behind us up the stairs. We walked
along the corridor on the top level, the dim lights reflecting on the silver embroidery twining across the blue wallpaper.
Doors lined up to the left and right. Most of them stood open, unoccupied, the elegant furniture inside a remnant of better days. But it was the closed doors that made my heart punch against my throat, each moan, scream, grunt, coming from behind freezing my blood.
“Take whichever rooms you’d like,” Adora said, holding the door open for us. “Come speak to me once you have them settled. Zera will remain with you.”
“Hey, do you still happen to have my old healer pack?”
A wink. “Of course, Melek.”
She offered us a final smile before she took a step back, letting the door fall into its lock, trapping me in with Grace’s questioning stares and no excuses.
“Tell her the entire apartment will be ours while we’re here.” I carried Katie into the room right beside the cleaning chamber. “We share the bathroom, which is the door in the middle. Same with the living area. Food and water are over there by the couch in case she didn’t spot it yet.”
I lowered Katie down onto the bed, propping a pillow underneath her head and draping the blanket over her body. Even with her hair tousled and tiny dots of blood clinging to her neck, she was beautiful. I had seen her, of course, at the common area, but not this close, not this… mine.
Was she, though?
It was easy to pretend I would make a decent mate back on Earth. But here? It was as if the filth of my past stuck between the fibers of the carpet, grabbing my ankles, slowly creeping up my legs, exposing me as a lowlife. Perhaps my failings were to blame. Perhaps my issues had messed up her link in the first place.
Something banging against the door made me swing around.
Grace slammed her entire weight against a mattress, the door continuing to fall shut against it, getting it stuck in the frame.
I got up and pulled it into the room. “Where do you want it?”