The Heights of Perdition

by C. S. Johnson

  Aerie breathed in deeply and clutched at her forehead, trying to relax against her pillow. Arguing with herself after a long day of work proved to be too exhausting.

  “I guess I don’t know what to think,” Aerie muttered.

  “Don’t tell me I’ve succeeded in brainwashing you already.”

  Exton’s voice hit Aerie hard. She nearly fell off her bed as she shot up. She glared at him as he causally stood in her doorway.

  He was just … maddening, she thought.

  “Hey,” she exclaimed. “You’re not supposed to be in here.”

  Exton grinned at her, and she hated that she liked it. “Come on, Aerie. You know I can charm you when it suits me.”

  “So I guess earlier on the Command Bridge, that was not a good time?”

  “I agreed to your fight,” Exton reminded her. “It was your idea. I don’t see how that could be anything less than what you wanted.”

  “Is that why you’re here?” Aerie demanded. “Are you here to see about our rematch?”

  “No.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a familiar ball of fur.

  “Moona!” Aerie hurried forward and grabbed her. “There you are.”

  “Tyra came off-duty and mentioned you were worried about her,” Exton told her. “So I thought I’d bring her down to you.”

  Aerie ignored him while she set Moona down on her bed and hurried to get her some water. She could feel his eyes on her as he continued talking.

  “Seems she’s pretty small still, so you might need some extra pillows or blankets to keep her warm. I thought you could use another dish for her, too, since personal rooms don’t usually have that many, so another one will be here with the mail later on.”

  Aerie watched as Moona kneaded her claws into her space blanket; she cringed, hoping the fabric was sturdy enough to withstand her cat’s claws. “Maybe an extra blanket for her wouldn’t be a bad idea,” she conceded.

  As she turned around, she almost collided with Exton.

  He didn’t just move quickly, he changed quickly, too. He had somehow managed to change from enemy captain to cat caretaker.

  As he closed the space between them, Aerie felt her breathing falter. He was close enough that she caught his scent, an intoxicating blend of menthol and musk. “What are you doing?” she asked, her voice sounding weak to her own ears.

  “Checking your head,” he told her, as his hands came up and felt the scrape on her scalp. A moment passed before he threaded his fingers through the rest of her locks. “Touching your hair.”

  Heat pooled in her stomach as his touch went from coolly impersonal to tenderly coy. “Why?”

  “If you don’t want me to,” he said deliberately, “you can tell me to stop, and I’ll stop.”

  She felt like she was screaming at herself, telling her body to move. But she wasn’t listening. “No,” Aerie whispered. “It’s okay. I just don’t usually let people … touch my hair.”

  Her eyes met his, and Aerie felt the last ounce of any front she could have mustered against her feelings fall away.

  She liked him. Against her better judgment, her father’s wishes, and her nation’s orders, she liked him.

  Aerie thought back to the moment at graduation, where she’d looked up at his portrait as Captain Chainsword. I was right about him, she thought ruefully. He was dangerous, in all the wrong ways.

  His hands fell away from her wound, falling down to caress her face. Her breath stopped, her eyes widened; she saw the challenge in him, along with the hesitations, the questions. Before she could decide on her answer, Moona interrupted them.

  “Mew.”

  Aerie nearly jumped at the sound of her kitten’s call, and even Exton seemed surprised at the disruption.

  “That reminds me,” he said, withdrawing from her, “I have her food here, too.” He walked over to the door and pulled in a bag that had been sitting outside. “Here.”

  “Thanks,” Aerie said, blushing. “I appreciate it.” She took the bag and put it on the small table behind them. “So, um, you’re off duty now?” she asked. Way to go. You sound like a moron.

  Exton nodded. “For a while. It’s enough time to get something to eat and relax a bit.” He grinned at her again. “I don’t suppose you’re up for that rematch, now that we both have a full day of work behind us?”

  “No thanks,” Aerie replied breezily. If he could tease her, she would more than return the favor. “I’d like to catch you when you have a clear disadvantage.”

  “That’s hardly fair.”

  “Well, we’re not equal anyway,” Aerie told him. “So if we’re going to be on unfair footing anyway, I might as well try to make it as good for me as possible.”

  “When you use the words ‘fair’ and ‘equal,’ they are not actually talking about the same things. You realize this, right?”

  “Yes,” Aerie admitted with a sigh. “But I was hoping you wouldn’t notice.”

  “It’s part of my job to notice things like that. Once you realize how much the URS uses language to confuse people, it’s impossible not to notice.”

  Aerie frowned. “I don’t intentionally do it,” she objected.

  “You just did it.”

  “Okay, not a lot.”

  “You still did it.” When she looked down at the ground, feeling angry and guilty, he reached for her.

  She flinched.

  He faltered. “You’re allowed to argue with me, Aerie, but that doesn’t mean you’ll win.”

  The tension in her shoulders relaxed slightly. Her arms crossed her chest in defiance. “So good to know I have your permission, Captain.”

  “That’s another thing they do. They allow their emotions to get in the way of discussion.”

  “No they don’t.”

  “If disagreements come up, they always bring up the issue of survival,” Exton reminded her. “What does it mean ‘to survive,’ according to them? It changes, constantly; not that change is bad in itself. But there are a lot of things you can make a person do to survive. You can easily make a person lose his humanity in the name of survival.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Exton arched an eyebrow. “It’s a shame when people lose their humanity, even for survival. Morality’s usually among the first to go. Truth is redefined over and over again, until there’s nothing left—or just enough left to allow someone to control the chaos. Love is as a liability before eventually becoming unlike itself. Acceptance means agreement. Dissent means hatred and defiance.”

  “Death means death,” Aerie countered. “You can’t do anything if you’re dead.”

  “There are much worse things than death.”

  “I find that hard to believe.”

  “Then I’ll bet anything you’ve never wished you were dead.”

  Aerie thought about how terrible she’d felt, unable to gain her acceptance into the military. She had thought about dying. But Exton was right. She had never wished to be dead. “Have you?” she asked.

  “Have I what?”

  “Have you ever wished you were dead?” Aerie wasn’t sure he would even answer, but she couldn’t regret asking the question. She wanted to get to know him better. He’d been kind to her—much kinder than she deserved as a prisoner of war, and much kinder than she knew the URS would have treated him. If truth was such a big deal to him, she would force him to give her his.

  Exton moved, shifting his weight in discomfort. “When the URS killed my father, for one,” he finally replied.

  Whatever else Aerie had been expecting, that was not it. She felt her lips part in shock, with silence as her only reply.

  “Yes, death is death,” Exton said, repeating her earlier arguments and making her recoil. “That’s why what we do with life matters infinitely more.”

  There was such conviction in his words. The two ideologies—the URS and Exton’s—clashed inside of her mind. While she did not disbelieve Exton, it was hard to dismiss the question of whether or not the St
ate acted rightfully.

  Emery’s earlier words on how the State dealt with those who rebelled echoed inside her mind.

  “Emery told me,” Aerie said quietly, her voice close to a whisper, “that your mother died a few months after your dad. Did the URS kill her, too?”

  “No.” Exton shook his head. “But they might as well have. She loved my father more than anything. Without him, she wasted away. In some ways, they would have been doing her a favor by killing her.”

  His fists clenched as he turned away from her. “But I suppose it’s a long history, and one I don’t have time to tell you today.”

  “Exton.” As he looked back at her, Aerie found it hard to keep her eyes from watering. “I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t want your pity,” he scoffed.

  “Then what do you want? Tell me,” Aerie demanded. “Tell me the truth.”

  “There’s no point in telling you the truth,” Exton told her, “if you don’t trust me.”

  She felt trapped. “I might trust you if you tell me the truth.”

  “More likely you’ll decide if the truth is something you want to trust or not.” He shook his head. “Maybe we’ll have this discussion another time, later on. I have a meeting with the Ecclesia to attend in a few moments, and I wouldn’t want to keep them waiting. I just came to drop off your cat.”

  “That’s not fair,” Aerie insisted.

  “You’re right, but not in the way that you think.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Aerie,” Exton began, “the URS has only guaranteed you survival. You’ve survived, and you’ve been doing it for what, seventeen years or so?”

  “Almost eighteen. My birthday’s next month.” She frowned. “I don’t see how that matters, though.”

  “I’ve been against them for more than ten years,” Exton replied. “I’ve been on this ship for six years. I know my place. You,” he told her as he turned away from her again, “have been on this ship, an enemy ship, for less than a week. I’ve guaranteed you nothing.”

  “You’ve given me some things,” Aerie said.

  “Yes, but I’ve also taken quite a few things away. Your freedom, your ‘unit,’ because I would never call it ‘family,’ and your future with the URS as a normal cog in their machine. And you can’t forget what I did to your precious Memory Tree.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “How could you trust someone like me? Take my word as truth?”

  She said nothing. Her own logical arguments, her own barriers to trusting him, agreed with his reasoning wholeheartedly.

  “And that’s just the beginning,” Exton told her. “How could you forgive me for the trespasses I would commit on your home in the future?”

  “You’re going to attack the URS?” Aerie asked, taken aback. She felt her legs go limp at the thought. She felt around for the chair behind her and slumped down.

  “What if I do?” He shook his head. “You might be in my world,” he told her, “but you still live in theirs.”

  Aerie watched as Exton walked over to her bed. He reached down and patted Moona on the head. “I’ve got to go,” he said. “If you’re determined to stay an enemy, Aerie, you’ll stay away from me.”

  “Exton, wait.” Aerie pushed herself up and hurried after him. I don’t want you to leave. She reached out and grabbed his arm, just as she had before in the med ward.

  “I told you before I’d most likely lie to you at some point,” Exton replied. “This is one thing I won’t lie about. I don’t trust you, Aerie.”

  Stinging pain tugged at her heart, sending a surprising rush of tears to her eyes. Before Aerie responded in equal ire and inflicted reciprocating wounds with her words, his hands took hold of her shoulders.

  “But,” he continued, “I’m more than tempted to.”

  Aerie saw the icy hardness of his eyes melt—felt herself fall, sinking into him as he pulled her in close. Her eyes closed as he pressed his lips against hers.

  His kiss, quick and even chaste, boiled up a storm of fire inside her. Nervous anticipation blossomed into shy curiosity.

  Aerie felt her fingers reflexively reach for him, wanting to keep him close even as she knew it was better to push him away. A shiver went down her spine as she braced her hands against his chest.

  Before she could stop him, Exton let go and backed away from her. Aerie swallowed a moan of protest, wanting nothing more than to pull him back.

  As if he knew her dilemma, he headed toward her door. “I’ve got to go. I’ll see you again soon.” He waved and gave her a quick smirk before he disappeared from view.

  She felt like she watched the door for a long time after he left, feeling more witless than ever.

  ♦♦♦♦

  The Perdition might have just descended once more behind the moon, but Exton no longer felt the pressure of surrounding darkness; he’d savored his taste of sunlight, one that would burn inside of him, keeping him warm throughout the long night.

  He glanced out the window in the Captain’s Lounge, the small room more freeing and suffocating than ever.

  A small part of his mind—the sensible part, he decided—cringed in fear over what he had done.

  He ran his finger over his bottom lip, reliving the moment when he pressed his mouth against Aerie’s, giving in to his desire to steal a taste of her. He once more felt the wild rush of longing, the rising satisfaction as his curiosity had been gratified, even as a growing, possessive hunger ignited inside of him.

  Exton sighed. He leaned against the coolness of the windowpane as he remembered how, at their second meeting, he’d assured her he was only a man after she called him a monster.

  Kissing Aerie had unleashed a vulnerability from deep inside him, one he never thought he would experience again. The threat of humanity, once more swept up in the tides of time, terrified him—even as it exhilarated him.

  He knew better than most the truth of human nature, how deeply in the dark the beast inside the human heart could reside.

  I will have to be careful, he thought.

  Frustration bit at him as he felt the line between man and monster begin to blur.

  ♦16♦

  It was several days later when Aerie woke up, instantly plagued by guilt. Catching sight of the clock in her room, it confirmed what she feared to be true.

  She’d overslept. Significantly.

  “I can’t believe I didn’t hear the alarm,” she moaned to herself as she reached for her uniform and tripped over her blankets. “I’m late for work!”

  Aerie watched herself in her mirror, her eyes wide with impending shame and punishment. As she finished brushing her teeth, she tried to reassure herself she would be fine.

  “It shouldn’t be too bad,” she murmured to herself. “I mean, I’ve been pretty good, right? Olga says my cleaning skills have improved greatly since I started, and Exton, while I haven’t seen him since he kissed me, I’m sure he wouldn’t punish me over this. At least, I don’t think so … ”

  An odd mix of elation and depression swept over her.

  She knew it was best not to read too much into a kiss, no matter how warm it made her feel. After all, Serena was living proof boys could kiss you and it meant nothing to them in the end. And if the rumors about her older sister’s reputation were true, they could do a lot more, too, and still leave you wondering.

  Aerie bit her lip as a new fear took hold of her. What if Exton hadn’t been as affected by their kiss as she was? It wasn’t like he had come see her or anything since then.

  “Ugh, I’ve got to stop this,” she muttered, pulling out the small dish Sean, Olga’s husband, had given to her. He’d made a recipe especially for Moona after meeting Aerie a few days before, and chatting with her just as freely and openly as Olga had.

  Moona twisted around her legs, seeming to agree, though Aerie was hard pressed to wonder if it was at the food or her inner turmoil. “You’re certainly not helping,” Aerie told her.

  “Mew
.”

  The small kitten’s reply made Aerie smile, even as she rolled her eyes. She glanced over at the desk behind her, where she’d stored her small collection of shorthand notes detailing what she’d learned about the Perdition and its crew.

  She ran her hands through her hair impatiently as she scurried around her room.

  They shouldn’t really worry too much, even if I am late. I mean, they should be working to make me happy, if anything. Right? I could go back to the URS and give up a lot of information on them …

  She sighed.

  Each day since she’d started working, she woke up sternly lecturing herself on how to behave, how she needed to do more investigation into the Perdition and its insufferably kind crew, and how to find a way to salvage her loyalty to the URS.

  But as soon as work ended, she somehow forgot the demands she placed on herself.

  After work, she would meet with Emery, who was increasingly open and friendly as they wandered through the different parts of the ship. Children would dart past her in play. She would find herself daydreaming of a pirate’s stolen kiss.

  It wasn’t until the end of the day that Aerie’s concerns about the State, along with her initiative to collect information for the URS, seemed to reappear.

  There was a knock at the door. The sound jolted her out of her thoughts.

  “I’m coming,” Aerie called. “I know I’m late for work, but I can stay late. There’s no reason to—” She stopped mid-sentence when she saw Emery in the doorway, wearing a blue dress.

  “To what? Punish you?” Emery finished.

  Aerie shifted her feet uncomfortably, knowing Emery was right. “Um … well, yeah, I guess.”

  Aerie felt her guilt dissolve as Emery smiled. “There’s no need for that. Today’s your day off,” Emery told her. Seeing her reaction, Emery added, “I guess you were too tired when I mentioned it yesterday?”

  “Most likely.” But then, she knew she didn’t deserve a day off. With all my mistakes on the job, the URS would have demoted me or placed me in Reeducation by now.