by Dave Walsh
“That’d be great, yeah.” Kat seemed uneasy still, but at least Jace didn’t have to scramble for his hidden gun.
Katrijn
The quarters aboard the Pequod were small but inoffensive. Jace seemed alright enough, but she kept an eye on the door, with her concealed knives and gun in reach just in case. The whole dead wife thing kind of took her for a loop and broke down her ability to keep a gun trained on him, but she didn’t exactly trust him just yet. Trust was in short supply for her, especially after what had just happened aboard the Goliath. She replayed the last few moments aboard the Goliath in her head and shuddered at the thought. She had trusted Rodan and even paid him well enough before a transmission came through from the Andlios Republic. Cronus’s power was absolute, after all, and if he wanted her dead that is how she’d end up sooner or later. That journey she had booked to Cyngen had cost her every last credit she had left, but she knew that she couldn’t have stayed much longer on Omega Prime after the last sweep from the Republic, considering how close she came to being captured. Rodan had seemed like a good guy until a better offer rolled in.
Life on the run wasn’t easy for Katrijn, but it had been all she had known for most of her life. She cursed the name of her brother, Cronus Freeman, night and day for refusing to give up on his relentless search for her. Their father, Jonah Freeman, was the hero of Andlios and had kept the peace for years, but her brother was another story altogether. It was a reign of terror from the beginning, with there even being whispers of Cronus being responsible for their father’s death. She knew it in her heart that he had something to do with it, that him accusing her was just an elaborate smokescreen, a way to focus the rage over losing the emperor for the people. The convenient apothecary who claimed she had bought poison from and who Cronus promptly executed was all the convincing she had needed to go into hiding and she was never able to look back.
After a brief nap, she stretched out, checking the charge on her pistol before deciding to do some exploring. Some might call it prying, but she needed to know who she was aboard this ship with. The last time she had trusted someone aboard a ship it turned bloody in a hurry and ended with the ship being blown to bits and her left for dead, floating alone in a luxury life pod. She shuddered. There wouldn’t be any luxury life pods aboard this ship, she thought to herself.
She pulled open the heavy door to the quarters, which was mildly obnoxious considering she had come from a ship that was automatic everything, but it was somewhat endearing to be aboard a ship that had some character to it. This ship had nothing but character, although perhaps a bit too much for her liking. Standing on the other side of the door was Jace walking by to his quarters, almost suspiciously.
“Oh, hey,” he turned red. “I was just going to read for a bit or something. I had to come up with a new course, but everything is back on track to arrive at Cyngen in about four days.”
“Great,” she smiled, fixing her hair and straightening out her jacket.
“Hey, since you don’t have a gun pointed at me this time, how about I give you a tour? I figure you should be comfortable for the next three days after all, right?”
“That’d be good, yeah.” She stretched out. Kat still didn’t feel quite comfortable around him just yet, but he was mildly endearing in some puppy dog kind of way. Not endearing enough for her to leave the gun behind, though.
“Well, you already know the quarters down here,” he nodded at the door to the room she was staying in. “You’ve been to the galley and the cargo hold, let me show you to the control deck. Although, fair warning, it is pretty messy.”
“That doesn’t bother me.” She appreciated his honesty, laughing to herself at how he projected the image of a tough loner but that was undoubtedly a front. He did a poor job of hiding how much of a front it was.
“Okay, good.” He motioned for her to go in front of him, which gave her pause. She stood frozen, shaking her head, letting him walk in front of her, carefully walking through the narrow hallway to a set of stairs. Most of the ships she had been on that were this size had a lot more of it personalized. You wouldn’t find bare metal steps, instead, there would be some level of customization, like even some rough carpeting thrown over it to pad it, but not on this ship.
She stepped up past the last step, walked into what looked like a small lounge only for Jace to come up from behind her. “Yeah, this is kind of a place to hang out or whatever, I’m not sure why it’s right by the control deck, but I didn’t design this ship.”
“It doesn’t look like you’ve done much with this ship at all if I’m honest here,” she said. “Looks kind of stock.”
“I don’t really spend much time in most of it.” He scratched the back of his head nervously before running his fingers through his hair. “Pretty much just my quarters and the control deck. The rest of the ship isn’t really ‘me,’ but those two places are. Just look.” Jace pulled open the door to the control deck, and Kat had to step back to avoid the door while it moved on its hinges. As the door opened, it unveiled a control deck that was carpeted and littered from top to bottom with books—old, hardbound books—and photos all over the cockpit.
“Wow.” She truly felt taken aback at the sight, leaning over and picking a book up off of the ground and thumbing through the pages. “That is a lot of books you have in here.”
“I’m shocked you even know what they are.” He sat down in the pilot’s seat and leaned back. “Most people have only heard of them and have spent most of their lives reading on holoscanners.”
“My father was obsessed with books.” She found her thoughts drifting, only to shake herself back. Kat looked down at the book, closing it to inspect the cover. “VALIS,” she said aloud. “Not sure that I’ve ever heard of this before.”
“It’s kind of weird,” he said. “It’s old, really old. In fact, I’m shocked that it survived this long.”
“Especially with it being on the floor in here.” Kat looked over at Jace only to find him not laughing. “I mean this is old and valuable and sitting on a pile up here.”
“Sure, sure,” he threw his hands up. “Rag on the guy for living his life the way he wants to.”
“You just said that it was rare.” She tossed the book onto the ground back into the pile where she had found it. “Is that how you care for valuables?”
“It’s not like it’s the last one in existence or anything, or that if the hard copies disappeared it would be wiped from our consciousness. You can find it via holoscanner like everything else in mankind’s sordid, confusing history.”
“Oh, Freyja. You aren’t one of those Mankind Truthers, are you?”
“What?” He looked up at her, puzzled. “No. Look, alright, there are some things that need answers and I’m not sure that—”
“You are, wow.”
“Hey, our history is fucked up,” Jace said. “I’m not sure where we came from, what came first, you know.”
“You mean the chicken or the egg?”
“What?”
“Nevermind.” She shook her head. “So is this your play, then? You take a girl into the cockpit of your ship to show her your book collection and your devil may care attitude?”
“My play?” He grimaced.
“You know what I mean.” She walked around the cockpit, inspecting the photos along the wall before stopping on one of Jace, looking a bit younger, with a woman. They looked happy together. Katrijn plucked it from the wall, pointing the photo at him. “Is this your wife?”
“Ugh,” he groaned, snatching the photo out of her hands and almost bowling her over in the process. He traced his fingers along the hull, finding the exact spot on the wall where the photo was and sticking it back into place, rubbing it a few times with his fingers to ensure that it stayed put. “Do not fuck with those, please.”
“I’m sorry,” she found herself reaching for her knife at her waist just in case, but holding off. “I didn’t mean anything by it, I just…”
�
��No, it’s fine,” he took a few deep breaths. “I’m sorry. I just get touchy about Ro’s stuff sometimes.”
“I understand,” she said, thinking back to the spot she found herself in. He seemed harmless enough, but she would feel infinitely more comfortable when she was off his ship and on Cyngen.
“So let’s talk about why you are on the run here,” Jace stared out the window, fidgeting with a few controls absent-mindedly.
“I thought that was off limits?” She tsked.
“It was,” he turned back to her, smirking. “But so was anything about my wife, yet here we are.”
She let out a sigh, turning the copilot’s seat to face her and sunk down into it. The leather felt cold to the exposed skin of her back while she let the chair envelope her. Katrijn didn’t want to give away too much about herself, especially to Jace. He seemed alright and all, but she had learned her lessons the hard way about trusting someone while on the run. The chair turned to face the window, Katrijn gazed out into the abyss, stars streaking past the window like a giant blur of light.
“My father is dead,” she started, carefully selecting her words. “After that happened, everything fell apart. I had a lot of expectations for me, but it was too late for me to fix anything. He was so blind.” She had compartmentalized all the trauma from it over the cycles on the run that she was finally able to control her emotions while thinking about it. “He didn’t see what was happening. I had to run, I had no other choice but to run. If I stayed, I would have been killed, just like he was. They didn’t want me in their way. So I ran.”
They both sat in silence, Jace pretending to be engrossed in the readouts in front of him but clearly just trying to avoid saying anything else. She felt bad about making him uncomfortable, but she was so used to being uncomfortable and on edge herself that it came naturally to make any situation she was in a lot worse. If he had known who she was and how much of a bounty was out on her head what would he do? she wondered.
“That’s terrible,” he finally broke the silence.
“That’s life,” she tugged her leg up onto the chair, hugging it close to her chest. “What can you do but just deal with the hand you were dealt?”
“Ro was killed by one of Freeman’s men,” he admitted, the words tumbling out of him clumsily, awkwardly filling up space around them. “She was an activist, rallying against his repealing of the Information Freedom Act that Cronus’s daddy dearest had passed before his death. Cronus had them all slaughtered, right there in the street, in front of the whole world to see. We weren’t allowed to collect the bodies, they were left to rot out in the streets to leave a message, I guess. I, just…”
He didn’t finish his thought, but he didn’t need to. Rumors of Cronus’s abuses of power had spread throughout the Republic, although many didn’t believe them and felt that they were exaggerations. He had many faults and, sadly for Jace, one of those was his affinity for the dramatic. Cronus had a particular disdain for activists and anyone who attempted to undermine him in public. Usually, the families of his victims were given hush money in hopes of them not going to the press. They were forced to sign legally binding agreements that forbade them from speaking publicly about their ordeals, by the punishment of death. She never thought she’d actually meet someone who lived through that, especially not out here.
“So that’s how you got the money for this ship.” She hugged her leg closer and shivered.
“Yeah,” he let out a sigh. “It was her last gift to me. There was a video from one of the reporters that was on the scene…” He paused, looking visibly angry. Jace took a deep breath. “But because I was a coward, because I took the damned money, nothing could come of it. I still have the blasted thing tucked away in my bunk, too.”
“I knew it was bad.” She rested her chin on her knee. “But not that bad.”
“We are all just pawns in Freeman’s little game at this point.” He stared forward, his eyes fixed on the screens. “That’s why I’m out here, that’s why I’m away from all of it. I make my living doing odd jobs for people out on the fringes and keep my distance from the heart of the Republic.”
“I know what you mean.” She bit her bottom lip. “I’ve been running my whole life. We aren’t that much different in that way, I guess. By the way…” She pushed off of the dashboard with her right leg, spinning toward Jace, catching her foot gracefully on the side of his chair to stop her momentum. “What exactly is it that you are delivering anyway?”
“Just supplies, mainly,” Jace said. He looked sullen, clearly having some repressed memories stirred up had jarred him. “Each of the fringe planets are habitable in their own ways, but they all lack a few things that make human life comfortable—or even possible—so what I do is go from planet to planet making deliveries of the stuff they need. So we are headed to Cyngen and while Cyngen has lush forests and wildlife there, for a planet full of Cymages, it lacks any significant source of silicon.”
“Really? Silicon?” She said. “So you are transporting a bunch of silicon? I thought that stuff was everywhere and pretty common?”
“It is, but the trace amounts that were on Cyngen have either been used up or it isn’t electronic grade. They don’t use it for much anymore, and most complex electronics need only small amounts of it, but it’s still integral. So I’m coming from Kriyar, which is a desert planet that has an abundance of silicon but doesn’t have much fruit. Kriyar and Cyngen have a pretty good system set up where they trade with each other and I’m the middleman. Both sides pay me upon delivery.”
“So you just go back and forth between those two planets?”
“Not exactly. I work with about half a dozen planets right now on the fringe that all interact with each other in some way. I’m not the only one who does this, but my reach is probably the widest thanks to the Pequod being the ship that she is.” Jace reached out and patted the hull of the ship.
“Well, at least you aren’t smuggling or anything,” she laughed, turning back to the window.
“Who says this is legal?” He shook his head. “It should be, but the Republic tries to have its hand involved in all trade. Thankfully their security out on the fringes is a bit more relaxed than it is in the core.”
“That is actually a weight off of me.”
“What do you mean?”
“That means that we are both outlaws.” She raised an eyebrow at him playfully. “It means that we both have a lot to lose by getting caught. Jace, I think that I might be able to trust you for a while.”
“That’s good.” He scratched his head, looking uneasy. “I guess?”
001. The Princess in Exile
Alva
Alva gripped her mechanical right fist and outstretched her arm, still amazed that it was an extension of her body. Of course, that amazement wasn’t the same as the shock at her still being alive and half machine.
“Princess.” From the recesses of the cold, sterile room came the subtle hiss of a mechanical voice. It was softer and more saccharine than the usual harsh Cydonian voice. This voice was unmistakable—it was the voice of her Trella. Throughout her time on the Cydonian planet of Cyngen, she had never grown accustomed to the abrasive tones they spoke in, but Trella’s had become lyrical to her ears, especially in comparison to the buzzing that emanated from their leader, Trallex.
“Yes, Trella?” She turned to see the Cydonian woman, her long black curls falling from the back of her mask and her hood uncharacteristically riding on her shoulders and not covering her head like it usually did. “What’s on the agenda for today?”
“How are you feeling, Princess Alva?” Trella asked. When Alva had first awakened inside a CyTank from her nightmarish death, screaming out in horror, it was the face of Trella that greeted her. Alva’s last memory was fresh in her mind when she woke up: the image of an Earth Ministry soldier swinging her own pulseaxe down at her face while brandishing a sadistic smile. When Alva leapt from the CyTank a naked, screaming, crying mess into the arms of Tre
lla, the Cydonian did not pull away but did her best to assure her—in her own, cold way—that everything would be alright.
“Better,” she nodded, flexing her right hand. Alva had grown up since then, and was now a young woman with her red hair collected into a traditional Krigan braid as well as the figure and experiences of a woman. She was more muscular than the average woman, but she was definitely a woman, a sharp contrast to her youth when she was often confused for a boy. “Stronger, that’s for sure.”
“Good,” the Cydonian nodded. Alva had gotten used to Trella’s subtle cues over the years. The Cydonians showed very little emotion, so even the slightest gesture had to be analyzed to be understood. Trella was pleased. Her new life on Cyngen was all about understanding these cues.
Cyngen was a strange, barely habitable planet, but the Cydonians had done wonders with it in the last twenty cycles. Cydonia was at one point the last true metropolis on Andlios for the Cydonians, unscathed by outsiders for over 1,000 cycles. Cydonia was not only the birthplace of their people but also the place where they had flourished and nurtured their culture without concern of outside influence. Jonah Freeman’s Andlios Republic quickly remedied those cycles of isolation and the great doors to the city were opened up to all. The secrets of the Cydonian way were still neatly hidden beneath from the outsiders, but quietly the heart of Cydonia moved off-world to Cyngen. Cyngen was the living vision for what Cydonia should have been: unimpeded technological advancement and a place where Cydonians could evolve the way they chose to. Cyngen was still technically a part of the Andlios Republic but it was located on the fringes with many other planets and moons that escaped the icy grasp of the new emperor, Cronus Freeman.
“You should wear your hair down like that more often,” Alva remarked, leaning over to lace up her boots. “It looks nice.”
“Oh,” Trella buzzed. Alva knew that Cydonians cared very little for outward appearances and that their preferred method of reproduction was via genetic engineering, so sex and appearance mattered very little to them. She also knew they didn’t really know how to respond to compliments, but she did it anyway. “Thank you, Princess Alva.”