by C. Gockel
“I had no idea they were from the Republic.” The thoughts whispered through his mind in her voice.
To the android, Alaric said, “Ko can take you to the … your …”
“My fellow 6T9 unit.” He looked down at Volka. Taking her hand, he kissed her cheek.
Heat rose in Alaric’s face, and his hand twitched at his side. So … not just friends, anymore. Of all people, that Volka would shamelessly enter such an unnatural relationship …
Volka’s ears came forward, and her thoughts erupted into his mind. “You said our relationship was unnatural, too.”
He narrowed his eyes. That was different. What could the machine possibly give her?
“Everything,” Volka thought, her hand wrapping around the android’s. He saw bright flashes of a bridal dress and children—impossible things for her.
“Not impossible in the Republic. Although, I would be happy just with the fact he acknowledges our relationship publicly.” The thoughts dripped venom.
“Is everything all right, Captain?” The words were the android’s.
Realizing he must have been unnaturally still and silent the duration of the exchange with Volka, Alaric’s face flushed. “Fine.” He waved at Ko.
Kissing Volka’s hand, Sixty said, “Lead away, Commander.”
Ko nervously glanced at Alaric. Alaric managed a captainly nod, and the commander said, “This way, sir.”
The pair walked toward the far door. Alaric snapped his hands behind his back. He felt Noa’s and James’s eyes on him and heat still in his face. He knew small talk was expected but could think of nothing to say—and frankly thought if anyone attempted some, he might snap. Turning away from the retreating pair, he heard the android ask a blithe question about Police Chief Strom, and Ko stutter a reply.
Gazing at the pair, Volka’s eyes went wide. Her ears perked, she blushed, and her lips parted in shock. Alaric knew that look. It was the same expression she’d had when his uncle had a male “guest” overnight.
So … there had been something more to Ko and Strom’s relationship than professionalism.
He rolled his eyes. This was the problem with men and women serving together. The eyeroll inconveniently put his focus on Noa and James. They had served together and saved his world.
Noa smiled at him as though nothing was wrong. James stared at him through narrowed eyes that said that a lot was wrong … and James was right. Alaric remembered the water exploding behind the wall and reaching toward the shuttle for all the world like a grasping hand.
Volka wanted out of Alaric’s thoughts. It felt like cheating.
It was also terrifying. His mind kept replaying a watery hand, clawing at her …
She shook herself. The team was in an enormous stateroom on the Uriel’s lower decks. Alaric was shaking hands and playing host. But the watery claw bubbled in the background of his thoughts. Perhaps that was why as a host he looked stiff and uncomfortable. Or maybe it was just how much he hated this sort of thing.
Trying not to focus on him, she studied the room. His old ship, the Merkabah, had been utilitarian, cramped and gray. The meeting rooms and officers’ cabins had been bare, almost like jail cells. This stateroom wouldn’t be out of place in a Luddeccean New Prime mansion. Granted, there were no gaudy chandeliers, just recessed lighting in the silvery ceiling. Titanium, she guessed. Where the ceiling met the white painted walls, there were fancy engravings in the edging—and the same at the borders of the floor. Gold framed paintings of Luddeccea decorated the walls between built-in bookshelves. The books were hidden behind glass doors—she suspected so they wouldn’t become dislodged if the gravity faltered, or the ship was hit. The books had gold on their leather spines—and there were books! A ridiculous extravagance on a ship. The titanium chairs—bolted to the floor—were upholstered in silk. Carl, Isssh, and Solomon were curled up in a ball upon one, snoring softly. Luddeccean Guardsmen circled through the room, serving appetizers and drinks, playing the part that weere would fulfill on Luddeccea. There was a thick rug on the floor, Luddeccean green where it wasn’t gold.
For a few moments, she was able to distract her brain with the surprising opulence of the place, but as the room grew fuller, her thoughts, as though pulled by gravity, began to blend with those of the people around her. She tried to cling to just one mind, thinking of something innocuous, and fell into the thoughts of a weere priest who was talking to Lieutenant Young and Dr. Patrick about similarities in hoverband design and time gate band design. His thoughts tracked his spoken words and seemed like a boring, safe place to park her consciousness. But then the weere’s ears went back, his hair rose, and he began frantically scanning the room.
Volka spun away, but she heard Young ask, “Are you all right, sir?” and Dr. Patrick say, “Can I get you something?”
“No, no, no,” the weere priest replied. “I just had the sensation that someone walked over my grave.” He didn’t say aloud, “Or one of those damned werfles was picking through my skull.”
Nor did Patrick or Young say, “Superstitious Luddeccean,” but they sure thought it loud and clear.
Volka swiveled her ears, purposely putting out of her mind the angry, guilty lust one of the Luddeccean officers was feeling for Dixon, who was thinking, “Where can I get some more of this cheese!” And then she was thinking with Dixon about sheep, thankfully not in a lusty way—in a cheese-making way. For a moment, she was transfixed, and he was none the wiser. But then he wondered if his family had already finished shearing the sheep for the season, and she learned about “dags,” the locks of matted wool and other things that hung from sheep hindquarters. The thoughts were vivid and made her stomach swim.
Swiveling her ears, she tried to eavesdrop. It was less impolite than telepathy, she reasoned.
One of her System 11 weere crew exclaimed to a Luddeccean weere priest, “We’d heard that you were treated as second-class citizens on Luddeccea!”
She didn’t hear the Luddeccean priest’s response; she was too tangled in his mortification. And then one of the priests said, “We thought that Time Gate 11 had enslaved you.” The System 11 weere didn’t realize he wasn’t joking and laughed like it was the funniest thing ever. One of the priests, who had been drinking because, in his exact thoughts, “unlike most weere, he could handle it,” asked, “How do you serve with females all year long?” It was an allusion to the season, and Volka’s face flushed. The face of every Luddeccean in earshot did, too. A System 11 weere woman answered loudly and without shame, “The boys’ kits come with olfactory blockers just in case our hormonal suppressants don’t work!”
And one of her male companions asked, “You don’t have them? How do you live like that? It’s great when you want it to happen, God knows the humans miss out, but when you don’t … why, you’d get yourself killed in a combat situation!”
The weere woman grinned, showing sharp canines. “Or get yourself into a combat situation you didn’t intend!” All the System 11 weere howled with laughter at that.
The shock at their forthrightness almost made Volka laugh, but then she caught sight of Alaric and saw the water hand in his mind’s eye, stained black by his or her dread.
Sipping her mug of broth, trying to find comfort and distraction in its warmth, she scanned the entryway, hoping for some sign of Sixty and seeing only Guardsmen.
She looks as uncomfortable as the captain. As well she should. I can’t believe they let his weere into a formal function. Association with the Galacticans is destroying us.
The man’s thoughts were so loud, for a moment Volka was sure they had been spoken. But no one else’s mind recognized the comment. Conversations and thoughts continued to buzz around her in a hundred different eddies and currents. No one was looking at her, and no thoughts continued in the same voice.
Her hand tightened on her mug. It was such an unfair accusation. Alaric wasn’t uncomfortable because of her—he was worried about the Dark, and the power it had displayed. She wasn’t
uncomfortable because of Alaric, either; she was worried because he was worried, and because her telepathy was driving her crazy.
The door to the stateroom flowed open, and Volka looked up expectantly, but it wasn’t Sixty. It was the archbishop seated in his wheelchair, a weere priest pushing him forward, and two more at either side. The archbishop’s eyes met hers, and she felt a zing of discomfort from the old man, though he was happy to see her. He pulled his glasses off and began cleaning them.
Alaric greeted him. The archbishop barely nodded, and yet, Volka felt that he was pleased Alaric was there. That there was no better captain of this ship in his opinion.
To the man behind his chair, the archbishop said, “Please take me to Volka.”
In that moment, Noa saw her brother, and her emotions blocked everything else out. Volka was filled with Noa’s longing and happiness, the sensation of something beautiful and fleeting, like a rare snowfall in the subtropics that turned the world into something magical and clean.
Noa politely extricated herself from a conversation she was having and walked over to her brother. James shadowed her, hands locked behind his back.
“Archbishop,” Noa said politely, sidling up beside his rolling chair and falling into step beside him.
“Big Sister,” the archbishop replied, not, Volka couldn’t help realizing, to be impolite, but because he missed Noa calling him “Little Brother.” Though he was younger than her by a few years, he looked much older than Noa. He was frail, his skin wrinkled and sagging with age. In the Republic, science kept marching forward, and age-defying technologies with it. In Luddeccea, such things stood still. Once, Volka had believed that divinity had kept the archbishop alive—he was over a century old—now she knew that he was most likely kept alive by Republic technology, but the Luddecceans didn’t want him to appear too young, or perhaps they simply didn’t have the latest tech.
Even if his longevity wasn’t divine, Archbishop Sato was the only reason weere were allowed to be priests on Luddeccea. He was one of the few humans who treated weere as people deserving of rights. That seemed divinely inspired.
The archbishop glanced up at Noa. He smiled, but Volka felt how the eye contact was too much. He missed Noa. He didn’t really miss his parents or his other siblings, but Noa was different. His gaze moved away from his sister, to James, and guilt stabbed through him and right into Volka. His face drained of color, and he looked away, not just guilty, but afraid. Noa instantly knew why he was upset, and Volka marveled at how well Noa knew her brother. Noa wanted to tell Kenji that James wasn’t human, and he didn’t feel like a human. Noa’s voice flowed through Volka’s mind as clearly as though the admiral was speaking aloud. “You don’t have to be nervous around James, Kenji. He isn’t human. What you did was wrong, but he’s already overwritten that code.”
Volka swallowed. She glanced up at James. His expression was neutral, but Volka’s eyes caught on the long, dark scar on his face.
Kenji didn’t hear Noa’s silent injunction. He was a step away from Volka, and his mind seized on what he had to do, as though that task was a life preserver and he was drowning. Gazing at his lap, he said, “Volka, you’ll keep us honest in our dealings with each other, won’t you?”
He knew she read minds. Had Isssh told him? Had his declaration just informed anyone else?
Her skin prickled, but a quick scan of the thoughts around her told her that except for Noa, no one registered the true meaning of what he’d said, not even the weere priests on either side of him.
She felt a tug in the waves. The archbishop was hanging on her answer, though he was looking at his hands, now clasped on his lap.
“I will do my best, sir,” she said.
He smiled up at her. “Good. It is so …” Someone spoke very loudly, and he took a deep breath. There were too many conversations in the room, all skittering in different directions. Too many faces to focus on. The volume increased, and Volka’s ears folded protectively, but it didn’t diminish. It took a moment, but she realized that the volume was the same, she was just hearing the room through the archbishop’s ears. He hated the noise and the confusion.
She looked around and spotted an open doorway, and perhaps, beyond it, a dining room. There were two guards in Dress Greens just outside the door, but surely, they’d let the archbishop in? Bending down, eyeing the doorway, she whispered, “Maybe we could go through there?”
The archbishop followed her gaze. A smile deepened the lines on his face. “Darmadi’s office is through there. It has a porthole.” To his priest, he said, “Let Volka push me, please. I would like to speak with her and Noa for a moment.” His brow furrowed. “Mr. Sinclair may come, too.”
“I think I’ll go speak to Captain Darmadi about fusion,” James replied. With a bow, he left them, and the priests visibly relaxed. The man behind the archbishop nodded politely, and Volka took his place. Noa laid her hand on the archbishop’s shoulder, and he clasped it in his. For a moment, they were more than happy, and their more-than-happiness spilled over to Volka. “More than happiness” seemed a clumsy description for their emotion, but “overjoyed” wasn’t quite right. It was love, but not romantic love, or a child’s love for a parent, either. Sibling love, she decided, should have its own word.
Those thoughts occupied her mind as they exited the main room between saluting Guardsmen. Noa, Archbishop Sato, Volka, and Bracelet—still doing a very good job at being incognito—entered a dining room, and it was just as lavish as the room they’d just exited. Archbishop Sato indicated a door, and Volka pushed him in that direction.
Sounding confounded—and feeling it, too—the archbishop said, “I thought James would want to come with us. From reading his psych profile, I thought he would not enjoy parties like that.”
“You were right, but he wanted to give us some privacy,” Noa said cheerfully.
“Hmm,” said the archbishop. “I don’t understand androids or people.”
“There are a lot of things you understand that I don’t,” Noa replied, and numbers and theorems flowed through her mind mixed up with memories of Kenji patiently helping her with advanced mathematics, physics, and computer science.
As if reading her thoughts, he said, “It was good for me to break down complex subjects.”
… And Noa wished she’d been able to do the same for him.
They walked through the door the archbishop had indicated into an office that was as luxurious as the other rooms had been, and Volka knew by smell that Alaric never used it. There was a small porthole, as promised. The Skimmers that weren’t docked within the Uriel flew into view, and Volka felt their mental touch and their wonder at the Uriel, a beautiful replica of a living thing that could skim through the universe not as neatly as them, but close.
Volka thought of the beautiful, living Skimmers and the majestic, mechanical Uriel free-gating.
She thought of how comfortable Noa had been in the press of the party. James, Kenji, Alaric, and Volka weren’t comfortable, but Sixty would have been.
She thought of Alaric and Sixty coming to the same conclusion about the Dark devouring itself.
“We start differently, but we arrive at the same place,” Volka whispered before she realized she’d spoken.
The archbishop tilted his head and squeezed his sister’s hand. They didn’t speak, but their minds were in sync. They both thought they had come back to the same place and were fighting a war once again, but this time on the same side.
Volka swallowed. She wished Sixty was back; she wanted to talk with him. She needed his advice. Maybe her job wasn’t to keep the Luddecceans and the Galacticans honest. Maybe it was to help them get to the same place. But how did she do that when she didn’t know where that place was?
6T9 couldn’t believe he’d left Volka behind so easily. He didn’t doubt her loyalty to him—she hadn’t growled once when recalling Alexis and Alaric’s conversation—but he did doubt Darmadi’s intentions toward her. And everyone else’s for that
matter. There were a lot of weere on this ship. The System 11 weere respected him almost as much as Volka, but the Luddeccean weere did not. Nor did they like human-weere relationships. He suspected that they’d like android-weere relationships even less.
And yet here he was. In a mechanical room in the bowels of the ship, sitting in front of a damaged sex ‘bot strapped to a chair. It was 6T9’s own model, though it would be easy enough for the Luddecceans to tell them apart. His doppelgänger had lost half his face and most of his body as well. “Do you have a name besides your model number?” 6T9 asked.
“I’m called Buck,” the ‘bot replied. Its brow furrowed. “Sometimes Dumb Buck, and Dumb Luck, or Dumb Fu—”
6T9 held up a hand. “Buck, who did this to you?”
Buck’s head bowed so his chin nearly touched his chest. “My own people did this.” He looked up at 6T9 and his Adam’s apple bobbed. “I never tried to displease them. Now I am displeasing to everyone.” He flushed and hung his head again. The ‘bot was missing both arms and one leg. The remaining leg wasn’t mobile. Phaser burns on that side of his body had melted synth skin to muscle and left both in a state where they were no longer flexible. The damaged ‘bot reeked of melted synth materials. Sex ‘bots hated being offensive, in appearance or otherwise.
Buck shook his head. “I am only an android. My life isn’t important.” Meeting 6T9’s gaze again, Buck whispered in horrified tones, “But the Luddecceans murdered an unarmed human via stuns to the head.”
It was exactly how 6T9 had reacted when Volka had shot Infected children. 6T9 knew from intelligence that the Infected wouldn’t have felt pain if the Luddecceans hadn’t bothered to execute the man first. The initial stun had been an act of humanity unappreciated by the Dark or Buck.
The ‘bot continued. “Afterward, they dissected him. The proper authorities must be informed. The Luddecceans have asked me for data, but I won’t provide it to lawbreakers.”