by Kym Dillon
“There is a story that is told, a fairy tale of sorts, that once upon a time, the people of Ferex and the people of Terra, uh, Earth, were one. We came from the same stock, and there are legends about our two peoples longing for one another ever since without knowing why or what exactly they were missing.”
“That doesn't tell me why...”
“Which means that we are capable of interbreeding. We are capable of legally marrying in Ferex, of standing before a council of the clans and declaring ourselves truly House Mordra.”
Stella held up a hand.
“All right, you've obviously got a lot of story here. Tell me where I come in. What am I doing here? Tell me why you grabbed me off of Earth.”
Zan's face went slack, and when he spoke again, it was with a distant tone as if he were telling a story that had happened to someone else.
“When I was but a boy of twelve, my clan was destroyed. I was a child, but I still remember what it was to see my father run through with a steel blade, and my mother screaming over his slain corpse.”
Nothing could have prepared Stella for his flat words or the way her heart clenched. She made a small sound, instinctively, but Zan continued.
“Clan Mordra was not large. We occupied a beautiful valley on the southern continent. We were well off, as far as these things go, well-respected and strong. It was enough for envy, I suppose, and one of our neighboring clans, the upra of Clan En, invaded with the intent to destroy us. He had fabricated a story about betrayal, about treason and offense, but at the end of the day, it was all an excuse to fall upon us and to purloin what was ours.”
“H-How did you survive?” asked Stella, her voice hushed.
“I nearly didn't. I remember running towards my mother in an attempt to save her, screaming, and then being struck from behind, a hard blow to the skull. As my vision blackened, I thought I was not long for this world and that at least I would be with my parents. But, that blow saved me. It was not an enemy, but a family friend who saw what I was about to do, knew it would be suicide, and knocked me out. She smuggled me away, and for six months, hid me, moving me from place to place.”
“That sounds terrifying,” Stella murmured breathlessly. He smiled at her, a touch of pain still haunting his gem-like eyes.
“I was too numb to know if it was or not. I assumed she hoped that there would be someone who could claim justice for me, someone who would come and help. Six months later, and there was no one, so she conspired to get me off planet.”
He paused, clearing his throat slightly.
“I'd never been off planet before. I was, in fact, rather sheltered at the time. She gave me clothes, some food and money, and more important, an address. She booked me on a shuttle under an assumed name. The story was that I was going to apprentice to a distant relation. As we said our goodbyes, she told me never to return to Ferex, or Clan En would kill me.”
“Did you go back?” Stella asked. No matter what situation he had put her in by dragging her—light years?—from home, she couldn't stop herself from aching for him, a lost boy with everyone in his world taken from him, grieving and sent out into a universe which must have felt endless. And she thought she had it bad.
“Of course I did,” Zan said with a mirthless grin. “In less than five years I made it back, a hundred brawls under my belt, more than eighty firefights in the various mercenary companies I signed on with. I challenged the upra of Clan En to single combat for my clan rights, which he held.”
“And?”
“I wanted to challenge him at a council of the clans, a great meeting held every three years. They wouldn't even let me enter the proving grounds to issue my challenge.”
“What? Why not?”
He sighed and leaned his head against the back of the couch. “Because it is law that only an upra may challenge another upra. Only men of a certain rank are allowed to issue and respond to challenges. I had that right as the upra of Clan Mordra, but at the moment, I am not that.”
Stella scowled.
“Upra... upra-sa... these are words I have heard you say before. They don’t translate through my thingie. What do they mean?”
Zan stood up from the couch and strode to her. She resisted the urge to shrink back, instead looking straight up into his eyes.
“On Ferex, every clan has an upra, a male leader, the word would translate most closely in your language as king. The upra-sa, his wife and the head of his females, is his queen.”
“Excuse me? Did you say head of his females? As in more than one?”
“Yes. To even begin to be considered a man of standing, a man must have a wife, a upra must have an upra-sa.”
He lowered his eyes briefly.
“Women are fewer than men on Ferex. Of four babies only one is female. Women are an essential part of our culture, and a man without a woman bonded to him, a woman of our kind, will never be considered to have any standing. Females are valued more highly than the rarest of minerals, or finest of jewels. An upra may have many under his roof that belong to him.”
Stella's head spun, and she looked up at Zan incredulously.
“So where you come from, women are... what, a status symbol? Some kind of trophy that every big man hangs on the wall?” Her voice was rising, she could hear I but she was powerless to stop herself.
“I am sorry if it offends you. I am simply stating the way it is. I have no power to change it, and in fact, it is far more complicated than I have stated,” Zan said with a shrug. “There are legal rights, and there are free women, women who want to be independent and will live as unbonded women, who will never make a formal alliance with a man. There are many factors to consider, and many ways women might come to power on her own, but the matter at hand is as I have said.”
“You want your family title back. You don't have a proper wife…queen… upra-sa. You can't get one because the women on Ferex are scarcer than the men.”
Zan flinched a little.
“Not only because of that,” he said stiffly. “I am a man of no limited means. I can easily afford to pay a dowry for a good many women. No, it’s…Because of what I am, and what I do.”
“And what is that?” Stella demanded, thinking of the battling sounds she had heard the previous day. “What exactly is it that you do?”
“The Righel is a raiding ship,” he said. “We board ships, strip them of their cargo and let them go. We do our best to ensure that no one is harmed. All we want is the cargo.”
“You’re a pirate! A space pirate?” Stella exclaimed. “Lovely. I heard guns yesterday. You mean to tell me no one got shot. And you certainly didn’t escape injury.”
“It does not always go as well as might be hoped. We occasionally meet resistance.”
“Oh, what, when you come to steal their possessions, sometimes people fight back?” she said acidly.
Zan was silent, and she glared at him.
“So let me get this straight. You just... grabbed me from my home planet, pulled me onto a raider's ship, and now you are taking me back to your own home planet... to be your wife?”
A faint deep purple blush spread over Zan's face. He was actually embarrassed? Zan, the great, fierce, mighty, commander of the raiding ship Righel was blushing. It was maddeningly endearing, and Stella was irritated that she had to bite back a smile.
“How could you just take a person, though?” Stella said, her voice a little softer. “You stole me away from my entire life. It wasn't... a great life, but it was mine. And in the space of an instant, you decide that you know better, that you have right…”
“Of course I don't have the right,” Zan said, and his voice was as harsh as a winter wind.
“And yet?”
“I care nothing of rights. I stopped caring about what was right many years ago,” Zan said, and in his stern voice, she thought she could hear a hint of the heartbroken child who had seen his family murdered and his home taken from him in an act of harsh brutality.
“You even g
oing to say sorry or anything, are you?” demanded Stella, and his gaze hardened.
“Why should I?” His gaze narrowed. “I'm a raider. I make no apology.”
For some reason, up until this point, Stella had thought that she would get a rational answer for all of this. She had thought that she would be able to at least negotiate for something, that her life was still somehow under her own control. Now, she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it was not.
“You're horrible,” she spat. “You're just as bad as the people who took invaded your clan.
Zan growled, and that was all the warning she got before he was nearly on top of her. His large hands closed over her shoulders, and with a gasp, she found herself pinned to wall behind her.
“Do you know what those men did to my family, my family's friends, their servants? Shall I show you?”
Stella could feel the anger vibrating off him, a kind of violent anger that she had never been so close to before. It terrified her and she couldn't stop tears from prickling at her eyes.
“No,” she whispered. “Please, no...”
Sanity returned to Zan's eyes for a moment, and he took two large steps back, a fleeting look of confusion followed guilt rolling over his face.
“You are afraid. You thought…I would…Stella, I would never harm a defenseless female no matter how angry I become...”
She wiped the tears out of her eyes with the back of her hand, the terror giving way to anger.
“Open the door. I'm leaving,” she said.
Zan frowned at her.
“Leaving where? The ship is in interstellar space now. Even if you could board a shuttle pod, to launch would mean certain death. Not even a skilled crew member would be so foolish as to attempt it.”
She shot him a withering look.
“I'm a goddamn waitress. I spend all my time counting my tips, faking smiles, and trying not to kill the restaurant patrons. Up until a day ago, I didn’t even know there was anything beyond Earth’s solar system. I know damned good and well that I am not going anywhere off this ship. But I don't want to be with you right now.”
Zan's face was stone, but he nodded. She followed him to the door where he placed her hand on the reader, typing in a few commands in a script she didn't recognize.
When she placed her hand on the reader, the door slid open obediently, and she stepped through. She refused to look back.
As the door hissed closed behind her, she heard Zan’s quiet apology.
“I’m sorry I frightened you.”
If Stella hadn't known that the Righel was a spaceship, she would have mistaken it for a warehouse that people had entered illegally and built over with separated spaces. She couldn't guess how large it was. The twisting passages inside seemed to go on forever, with no logic to them and no map to guide her. Once or twice, crew members trotted past her, sparing her a curious glance as they went by, but no one cared to stop or talk.
Of course, Stella thought angrily, they know that I’m the claimed property of the commander. No one's going to mess with me.
That killed her fledgling idea of befriending a handful of the crew to recruit as allies to help her escape. She resumed her wander.
Farther on, she saw what she realized were damages from the fight in which Zan had been hurt. There were crew members with what looked like heavy soldering irons effecting repairs on a portion of a hallway that was blackened with soot, and even now had a low heat radiating from the joins.
“Careful there,” one of the repair workers said to her in a voice that sounded like running water. “It might still singe you if you touch it.”
“Is this common?” she asked helplessly. “I mean, do you suffer this type of destruction and violence a lot?”
The alien who had originally spoken to her, tall and willowy with a face that reminded Stella of a whiskered catfish, made a gurgling noise that Stella realized only belatedly was a laugh.
“Bless you, no. We could only dream of a job this good. This will be enough to set my brood-mother up with a place of her own, nice and snug.”
Stella wasn't sure what to say, but the catfish-faced alien nodded.
“All that and only for five casualties.”
Stella's eyes widened.
“Five crew members were killed?”
“No, from their side,” said the alien victoriously. “See, over there?”
Before she could think about what she was doing, Stella turned to look where fish face had indicated. What she had assumed were piles of gear or loose cargo turned out to be nothing of the sort. They were too lumpy, too low to the ground, and now she could see that the brown coverings were dark and soaked in...
Stella's hand flew up to her mouth, and she gasped. She knew she must have mumbled something or other, because the alien looked at her with a hearty curiosity. Stella didn't care, however. Instead, she took to her heels and ran, spinning around and narrowly dodging someone with a rack of heavy horns on their head.
Raider, murderer, possibly worse... her mind chanted at her, and it was all true. God, who had abducted her? Worse, she’d willingly slept with him. There were five… creatures who were dead simply because they were defending themselves against this…this savage brute, and he was dragging her back to a planet that had shaped him.
She was just beginning to think that she had lost herself entirely when she stumbled into the familiar engine room, the solar heart pulsing with a gentle beat that had so lulled her on her first moments aboard the ship.
“Are you trapped too?” she asked the golden thing sadly. “Is it a sin to keep you trapped to fulfill another’s purpose?”
She had taken a few breaths to calm herself down when she heard a clattering of feet and then a thump before a pair of long arms wrapped around her in a hug.
“There you are, Stella!” said Terani. “I am so glad to see you!”
For a moment, Stella simply relished the pleasure and comfort of being held, and then she pulled back to look at the ship's engineer. To her shock, most of Terani's face was covered with a pale bandage, leaving only one gleaming eye showing.
“You're injured!”
Terani shrugged bashfully.
“Yes. Somehow, one of the Hunarians made it all the way down here. I don't fight, don't know how, and I'd be bad at it anyway, so I wasn't able to defend myself much. I got a little plasma pistol, but I was more likely going to shoot myself than the Hunarian before Commander showed up.”
Stella bit her lip.
“The Commander …?”
“Saved my life,” Terani said with a little note of worshipful admiration in her voice. “Again. He came right in and bashed that Hunarian...”
Stella must have looked a little green, because Terani stopped her gleeful speech and dragged Stella back to her little sleeping alcove. Graciously offering Stella one of the small stools there, Terani got to work making her a bright red tea that she matter-of-factly heated up on a long steel pole propped close to the solar heart. The result was a rich, almost chocolaty brew with a bright citrus taste that Stella found quite delicious.
“Thank you, Terani, that feels better,” she said with a wry glance. “I'm sorry, I just don't know what to do. I've been kidnapped from my home, and... I don't know what's going to happen to me.”
Somehow, it all came out of her at once, the fact that Zan was taking her back to his home planet as a wife and a prize. For some reason, though, she didn't tell the little ship's engineer about Zan's past. Stella had never been a gossip, and Zan’s story was his to tell. Lord knew, she had a past of her own, being shuffled from foster home to foster home, which she preferred to keep private.
Terani listened carefully, and she shook her head.
“That's a pretty pickle and no mistake,” she said. “I don't know what I would do in your shoes. I know the Commander, however, and I know he's a good man.”
“Even if he steals and kills?”
Terani was still for a few moments, rippling her fur in
a way that Stella came to understand meant that she was deep in thought.
“I used to think that maybe you could get by in the world without stealing and killing. And maybe there are places where you can. Then I signed up on board a ship, and realized that in space, especially in the fringes... maybe you can't. Maybe all you can do is what you need to do to survive, and hope it doesn't involve too much bad stuff.”
Terani looked down.
“The commander 's always been good to me and the crew. Even when he didn't have to. There’s not a one of us aboard who will say different. He does well by us, and he never kills unless he must defend himself or one of us. It's what we do to survive.”
Stella felt a rush of guilt as she hugged Terani tight.
“And I'm glad you survived because I have been so happy to meet you,” she said, the alien engineer brightened up a little.
“I wouldn’t be here if the commander didn’t always make sure to protect me. I think he will do his best by you, too,” she said hopefully. “He takes good care of us, and he'll take good care of you as well.”
Stella smiled as their talk ranged to other things but deep inside she wondered. How the hell she was going to finagle a way home?
Stella learned that the ship had no night and day cycle. Everyone was on staggered work schedules, and they could rest as they chose, so there was a constant feeling at all times of it being late afternoon. People were always bustling around and doing work.
Stella could feel a sense of exhaustion nipping at her bones as she found her way back to Zan's quarters. There was a stubborn part of her that wanted nothing more than to curl up in Terani's alcove or in some out of the way corner where no one would bother her. The only reason she didn't was because that might mean that Zan would come looking for her, and she wasn't sure that she could take being hauled around like some kind of puppy.
When she came back to the room, she placed her hand on the reader. The door slid open, and for a moment, she was struck by the trust that Zan had put in her. She might not have been able to rob him blind, but she could enter quietly, slit his throat, and no matter what happened to her afterward, he would be dead.