by Chris Reher
“I’m a navigator. Any of those shipping companies will take me on. I don’t need you to get off this rock.” She strained against him. “Are you done feeling me up?”
He pulled back but tightened his grip on her arm when she tried to squirm away. “Are you done acting like an idiot?”
“Don’t talk to me like that!”
“How is this not idiotic? The place is crawling with Shri-Lan. Chances are they’re looking for you up at the station, too. They’ll have your picture. They may even have your DNA if they got to your boss. So you have a choice.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. You’ve done your sworn Arawaj duty and had your escape attempt. So now you can behave and let me take you away quietly, or you can do something stupid and draw attention.”
“That’s kinda the point. You can’t very well keep a gun pointed at me up there.”
“Don’t be so sure of that. Station admin won’t help you if you’re with me. Shri-Lan will try to take you by force and they will succeed, in case you actually believe any of these grain traders are going to help you. And you can be sure your Arawaj pals have cleared out by now.”
“I can find my way. All I need is to get to Magra or Pelion. That won’t be difficult for someone like me.”
“Well, you’re not, so quit arguing.”
Her eyes widened at something behind him. “Look out!”
Taking no chances that this might be some ruse, he gripped both of her arms and swung her around and down, barely ducking the butt of a rifle swinging at his head. He pushed Ciela aside and drew his gun to fire at their assailant. The man went down, leaving two others to take his place. A bullet strafed past his head and hit the wall above Ciela. Seth launched himself at the Caspian woman with the pistol, taking her down into the dust. A few quick punches stunned her but something heavy struck his back and he rolled away to look up at a massive Human apparently made entirely of muscle. With more distance between them now, the rebel turned his rifle and aimed.
Seth stared in disbelief when Ciela launched herself at the man from behind, nimbly scaling his back to jam her fingers into whatever orifices his face presented. The Human howled in pain and surprise, staggering backwards, arms flailing to dislodge his attacker. She rolled out of the way when he crashed to the ground and quickly returned to heave her boot into his groin.
Seth found an opening and shot the Human, then turned to also take down the Caspian who had recovered enough to grope for her gun in the dust. He rolled onto his back, gasping, waiting for the dull pain across his back to recede. Ciela crouched beside him. “You all right?”
He looked up at her smudged face and coughed a helpless laugh. “Yeah.” He let her pull him up and then leaned against the warehouse wall to catch his breath. He pulled off his blood-stained jacket and tossed it behind some empty pallets. “So you really want to put up with these bastards on your own?”
She looked at the bodies. “Be easier if I had a gun.”
“You’re too dangerous with a gun.”
“Don’t mock me! I can handle myself.” But after a moment the scornful look on her face faded and she slumped to sit on the edge of the pallets. She suddenly looked so lost and frightened that he almost felt sorry for her. Unlike her little act earlier this day, she now seemed genuinely helpless. “Can’t you just let me go?” she said. “Can’t I just go back to Velen Phar?”
“He doesn’t want you, Ciela. That’s pretty harsh but he is giving it all up. And he thinks the best place for you is with the Union. Doesn’t that tell you anything?”
“He sold us,” she said, trying to find some reason in this.
“He did not. He asked for nothing. He just wanted someone to come and get you so he can disappear. I’m sure he’s put plenty aside for his retirement.” He put his hand on her shoulder. “Look, Air Command wants you because you’re a spanner. They need spanners. Turning yourself in can help us find your friends. You can’t do that on your own.”
She looked up. “You think they’ll go after them?”
“They look for all spanners. And when they can, they pick them up, one way or another. It’s the best way of slowing your rebel friends down for a while.” Seth watched her ponder this for a moment, seeing a glimmer of hope lighten her expression. “No one will hurt you, I promise.”
“I’m not worried about getting hurt. I worry about betraying my people.”
He bent to grasp the lifeless hands of the Human rebel, preparing to drag him into the warehouse before someone else came around here. “Yes, well. Some of us have to live with that every day.”
* * *
“That’s your ship? It’s so small.” Ciela peered through the observation window set between each of the access tubes to the cruisers parked along the upper concourse. They had arrived, tired and disheveled, at Tayako station after Seth entrusted a warehouse driver with their currency to purchase seats for them aboard a shuttle. The gamble paid off although the price of the passage was apparently exactly the amount he handed over.
“Yeah, but it’s home,” Seth said, meaning it. Returning to the Dutchman after their unpleasant trip to the surface felt like he had arrived somewhere important. Like he had, in fact, returned home. He smiled happily, eager to get into the decon and into some clean clothes, and waved her into the airlock.
Once identified, the ship allowed him and his passenger aboard and through the cargo space into the main cabin. Ciela looked around, taking in the worn but comfortable seats and work table, the tiny galley separated from the central area by a high counter, and the lounger built into the wall, obviously serving as Seth’s bed.
“I know,” he said. “It’s a mess. You can have the crew quarters. That’s an even bigger mess.”
She shrugged. “Looks comfortable.”
Seth didn’t mention that, when necessary, the cabin had outside locks that even she couldn’t hack through. He poked into a cabinet and then held up a few shirts for her inspection, not surprised when she reached for the bright blue one. “We’ve got a little while before we can shove off. That door over there is the decon. The steam cycle is nice.”
She nodded but looked around the cabin for a while longer, then peered down into the cockpit. “That’s some pretty pricey Air Command gear you have. They must pay well.” Her eyes lingered over the additional shield reverb he had bartered from an Ud Mraki salvager a while ago. “You got that to play nice with Union issue? Impressive.”
“I have a good mechanic.” He pulled his shirt over his head, wincing at the dull ache of his bruised back. “I think I’ve got a cracked rib.”
“Where’d you get that scar?” Ciela squinted at a long scrape across his chest and arm.
He looked down. “Ex-girlfriend shot me.”
“No, really.”
“Really.” He noticed a signal indicating a waiting message and went to the com console. After a moment’s consideration he decided that he wasn’t expecting any super-secret messages and relayed the packet to one of the forward screens.
The image that appeared was of Colonel Carras on Targon, drawing a sneer from Ciela at the sight of his uniform. “We received your message,” the Centauri elder began. “We’ve dispatched some yachts to meet your friends. We’ll make sure they’re looked after. It’s not necessary for you to travel all the way here. We’ll give your regards. Sorry, no biscuits.” The colonel leaned forward to end the transmission but then looked up again. “Do try to find some explanation for that subspace scanner you picked up on Magra. It costs more than your ship.”
“What did that mean?” Ciela wanted to know when the message ended.
“I am interested in subspace. It’s a hobby.”
“I mean all that other stuff.”
“Oh. That. I told him earlier that you and your friends were here. He’s going to see if he can head off Sebasta at either the Feron or Mrak terminus. See? I told you they’d be interested in finding them. We’ll have you all together again in no time, I’m sur
e.”
She watched him work with the ship’s control console. “Are we leaving now?”
“Shortly.” He glanced to where she lingered uncertainly in the entrance to the cockpit. “Are you worried?”
“Wouldn’t you be?”
“Probably.”
“How long before we get to Targon?”
“I’m not going to Targon. That Union ship that chased off Sebasta will be here very soon. I have no idea why they are here, but they may as well take you back. You heard the colonel. My services are no longer needed for this.”
Her face suddenly seemed very pale in the dim light of the cockpit. “You’re just going to hand me over? To Air Command? To them?”
“I told you: no one will hurt you. They’ll have officers on board.”
“Can’t you take me to Targon?” she said in a small voice.
He shifted his eyes away from that troubled expression. Guarding a prisoner over what would be at least a ten-day trip ranked fairly low on his list of interesting things to do. He had seen her deal with the looters on the surface. She had swiped the knife without him noticing. There had been no hesitation in her attack upon the Shri-Lan at the warehouse. He did not doubt for a moment that escape was foremost on her mind. She claimed not to be a pilot but since when did he take any rebel’s word as fact? He could easily imagine himself not waking up due to her knife lodged in some important body part.
“No,” he said but for some reason he wasn’t happy about it. There was something undeniably interesting about her. And oddly fascinating. Some mystery, perhaps. Carras had been quick to pull him off the scent here which just smacked of classified goings-on. Seth’s interest in things other people didn’t want him to know bordered on the obsessive and he itched to learn more. “We’ll fly out to meet them. I have to get back to the jumpsite anyway. I’ll make sure they treat you decently.”
He turned away to start his preflight routines. The ground crew had delivered his coolant order; the supply bin was secured in the hold. He’d restock the galley once they were underway. He heard her sigh and a moment later close the door to the decon chamber.
The preflight checked out, as it usually did, and he barely glanced at the more routine housekeeping reports that popped up on the display. One of the items, however, caught his attention and he called up more information. The report was the result of the automatic scan that happened in the cargo hold. The Dutchman’s sensors analyzed anything that came aboard, looking for pathogens, allergens, disease, weapons and other things that shouldn’t be allowed into the main part of the ship. Both he and Ciela had passed the initial scan and now the more routine results waited to be acknowledged and filed. He read about the scrapes and bruises they had sustained on the surface and there was a recommendation of additional meds for him to ingest after having taken a few mouthfuls of swamp water no doubt swarming with all sorts of creatures.
But what was this about Ciela? He queried the system again, frowning, but the information was indisputable.
“Ciela?” He left the cockpit when he heard her exit the decon. She gathered the small bath sheet tighter around herself when she saw him and slipped into the crew cabin.
“You could have told me you’re not a GenMod,” he said.
He waited through a short silence before she said, “Huh? What did you say?”
“You heard me.”
She peered around the corner. “Why are you saying that, I meant.”
“Passing yourself off as a Human GenMod. That joke didn’t make it through my scanners.”
She came into the main cabin, wearing her tights and his shirt. She gave him a tense smile. “I don’t know why you’re saying that. Your scanners aren’t interpreting things properly. That’s not uncommon with us.”
“Don’t bother. You know exactly what I’m talking about.”
“I’m sure I have no idea—”
He grabbed her arm and spun her around to bend her over the galley counter. She tried to pull away when he yanked up the back of her shirt to expose her skin there. As he suspected, a line of fine dark hair grew along the gentle ridge of her spine. He pinched some of it between his fingers to give it a sharp tug.
“Hey!”
“You are one hundred percent pure Delphian,” he said, both angry and a little embarrassed at having been fooled so easily. Few field agents had as much in-depth knowledge of Trans-Targon’s sentient species as he did. He spoke enough base languages to usually get along without a translator stuck in his ear. His onboard library rivaled that of most Union archives. And yet, this slip of a rebel had managed to dupe him for hours now. “There isn’t a single tweaked gene in your body.”
She twisted away from him and tugged her shirt back into place, once again hiding the telltale line of hair on her back. Now that he knew, other signs stood out quite well. Her narrow face and angular body were common among both Delphians and Centauri but the tilt of her eyes and cheeks was Delphian. Humans tended to be shorter and stocky. No doubt the natural blue color of her hair and eyes, along with subtle tinting of the skin creases had been changed chemically rather than genetically. She had lacquered her nails black to hide the blue beneath them and no doubt used lip stains to hide the cyan cast common there, as well.
What had fooled him most of all was her utter lack of mannerisms valued so very much by Delphians. Although capable of great warmth toward each other or those they knew well, Delphians practiced a social detachment that precluded even smiling in public. Emotions were private and shared only within their clan of friends and family. Their highly evolved minds achieved several level of consciousness that allowed them to appear composed even under great stress and hide their moods behind a veneer of indifference. So far, Ciela had displayed none of that behavior.
Of course, no one would suspect a Delphian among rebels, Seth reminded himself, perhaps to feel better about having failed to see through the charade. The methods used by any rebel faction ran so counter to Delphian sensibilities that any partnership was simply unthinkable.
“So what?” she said angrily. “I can’t very well walk around looking like a Delphian, can I?” She turned her back to him as if she meant to stomp off somewhere but the Dutchman provided precious little stomping-off room. “No reason to rip my clothes off.”
He raised his hands in an unfinished gesture. “What… I mean, how did you end up here?”
“You damn well know how I ended up here.” She turned to face him. “You mean how did I end up with the Arawaj? I was raised by the Arawaj. They took us in when the good people of Delphi threw us out.”
“What? That’s not possible.” Seth berated himself for his crude reaction to his discovery. Was he so used to treating rebels as they seemed to deserve that he could not be kinder to this woman? He gestured to the galley. “I’m sorry. It’s been a rough day for both of us. How about we eat something and you tell me your story?”
She watched him walk around the counter and flip the lever on the tea press. “Berry, please,” she said grudgingly. “What do you have to eat?”
“Sit down and be amazed by my ability to heat a tray of space slop by magically touching this panel with my finger.”
Her lip twitched in what might have been a smile. “I don’t have a story. My parents were rebels. Living on Delphi. When they were found out they were put on a ship and banished along with a bunch of others.”
“Others? Other Delphians?”
“Yes. Seven or eight. And their children.”
“And you ended up on Tadonna?”
She sipped from her cup and then stared into it. “Eventually. We… we were hunted down by Air Command. My parents were killed. The others, too. I don’t even remember them. It was so long ago. The children survived the attack when the Air Command raid was defeated. We were taken to Tadonna. There were others there like me…” She ran a hand over her nearly black hair, likely without realizing it. “Seven of us. We lived there until we were old enough to make ourselves useful as
navigators. Seems that Delphians have the knack for it.”
“That’s a modest way of putting it.” Seth busied himself with his simple tasks. He could not fathom any group on Delphi even conceiving of banishing a family from the planet. They had rules of conduct among themselves but people were free to choose. Many of them had left Delphi to seek adventure within the Union as explorers, engineers, even pilots, and, although it was frowned upon by the elders, no one stopped them. Certainly, should any group decide to join the rebels, that too would be accepted simply with a sad shake of the head. But never expulsion. Delphi’s population was shrinking at an alarming rate – any solution was better than to banish anyone, not to mention children, from the planet.
“How old are you,” he asked finally.
“Twelve.”
“Tadonna, you said?” He consulted his data sleeve for a conversion. “That makes you almost fifty on Delphi.”
“So?”
“Delphi doesn’t have a fleet of ships. But they have a massive interest in space exploration, especially astrobiology and physics. The Commonwealth is pretty keen on them sharing their discoveries and so they provide them with the ships to explore with. It’s not likely that they’d use one of them to banish a bunch of dissidents.”
She frowned. “How would you know?”
“I’ve been around them long enough.” Seth tapped around on the screen he had pulled from his data unit over the back of his hand. “I thought I remembered this right. About fifty years ago a number of Delphian science expeditions disappeared. It was assumed they failed to navigate some keyhole. But there is also suspicion that they were taken by rebels, which is why all of their trips are protected by an armed escort now. They don’t take children off-planet anymore.”
“Taken by rebels? Why?”
“What do you do for a living? That’s why. Delphians do not work for rebels. They don’t care enough about the Union or rebels to get involved unless it suits them. We could all disappear into subspace forever and they wouldn’t even notice. So the only way to get a Delphian to work as a rebel is to grow your own.”