They allowed me to overtake Kore's ship and once I was within visual contact with Kore, I gave a manual hand motion as to what I wanted to do. She nodded her head once through the plazglass of her vessel, indicating that she understood my plan. It must have been providence because the Ouder ship did not obliterate me in the process. Maybe by the time they realized I was trying to intercept her vessel, I would be too close to her to risk shooting down.
Our luck was holding. Just before we both dipped back down below the clouds, I saw the Ouder had released a tracker. This would fit nicely into my plans. I allowed the tracker to come close enough for the ship to bump and cause its malfunction, although that was not my intention. She opened up her catching station and caught the tracker with a magnetized arm. After pulling it in, I knew it would be mere moments before she had it reprogrammed. In moments, her ship's tracker would surface after her vessel broke through the vestiges of the cloud banks. With minimal time to execute the plan, I motion to her to slide the side panel glass open of her cockpit.
I called out to her hoping that the Ouder would not overhear us due to the wind shear, "Cut yourself and bleed out onto the seat! Then put in these coordinates, RA 2h 39m 15s | Dec +81° 42′ 36″ into the AFS." Her ship would now be destined for Urania, which I hoped the Ouder ship would follow. Her tiny spacecraft did not have a chance to reach the planet though, based on its fuel capacity, but it was in the opposite side of the solar system from where we were headed.
I could see her looking around for something to cut herself with, and finally, she settled on a corner of a metallic panel. Blood splattered onto the window from the extreme wind, and then she gave me a nod. At least, she still bled red like a human.
I looked up and saw the clouds stirring above us. Our time was running out. I motioned for her to fall into my ship. The radiation screen moved into place over the closed portion of the window, shielding a direct view into the cockpit. Then she slipped out of the window onto the short wing and closed the window back. I moved my ship directly under hers and slid the cockpit window open.
Wind buffered down with abnormal force as the Ouder ship began to break through the clouds above us. She landed roughly onto my lap, and before I had time to accommodate her landing, she slid the opening closed again and activated the radiation screen. I saw that she had bound her wound, and while it as not bleeding all over me, the wrapping was soaked.
We raced through the sky for the next few tigs, while the ship's coordinates set in, and then it veered up. I held my breath to see what would happen next. The Ouder ship paused. We continued further away from it, and then the smaller ship destined for Urania slipped out of view as it disappeared above the cloud bank with its tracker trailing it. I craned my head around her and checked the radar. A small drone escaped their ship and took off after us. My plan had only partially worked. My guess was that they were not entirely certain she was aboard the other and put a tag on this ship to keep track of our whereabouts. It would be a race to the refueling station, and then who knew what the future would bring us.
Chapter 23
She shifted off of me and went to the tiny cargo hold, which was intended for rock and newly discovered animal specimens. I inputted our new coordinates and after setting the auto pilot, I opened up the small first aid kit and splashed antiseptic over her wound. I rewrapped it and sat in front of her. Her expression was shuttered.
“Did they try and contact you?”
“No.”
“How much of a lead do you think we have?”
“It does not matter.” She refused to look at me.
“What do you mean?”
“They could have taken me anytime they wanted. They let us believe we were able to deceive them, elude them. They let us go for their own motives.”
“What? Do you think they were testing us?”
“Perhaps.”
I frowned. “How much time do you think we have?”
“As much time as they want to give us.”
We both sat in silence for a while. I finally said, “You wanted them to catch you, didn’t you?” She did not move an inch, nor did she say a thing. “Do you want to be caught?”
“I do not want them to capture you.”
I got down on the floor, grabbed her shoulders, which I am sure she also allowed me to do, and said, “You don’t get to make my choices.”
“They have no use for you.”
"Do you have a use for me?"
She did look at me then. I could not help myself. She looked so vulnerable and sweet. I pulled her closer and pressed my lips to hers. She began trembling, but whether it was from our kiss or the adrenaline crash of our escape, I did not care. All that mattered was this moment, this decision.
I deepened our kiss, and again she allowed it, but after a moment of indecision on her part, she returned the kiss, and my heart beat desperately for release against my chest. I crushed her to me, and I felt that all the trouble she had brought me, had all been worth it, if only for this one perfect moment.
She eventually pulled away and said, “This is hopeless.”
“Hope is what makes us human.”
Her face lit up, and she laughed the maniacal laugh of the desolate and desperate.
“Do you have feelings for me?”
She sobered up and said, “As much as I am capable of doing.”
“Which means what?”
“I do not wish for you to die.”
“But do you want to be with me?”
“What? Here? I do not think there is enough room in this vessel for both of us to live comfortably.”
It was my turn to laugh. However, it was short-lived. "No, I mean do you want to stay with me, when this is all over?"
She answered me by smiling sadly and said, “I have lived a long time. Maybe my end time has come.”
“But if you allow yourself to be caught, they will use you. They are not nice. They are destroying the planet with all its fantastic flora and fauna. And people. People with lives, thoughts, plans, and… feelings.”
“No, Jett, those are your people.” And just like that, she sided with the Ouder. “They could have killed you easily enough, but whether they sensed my distress at the prospect of doing that or whether they thought you were simply too inconsequential for them to be bothered, I cannot say. But Jett, I do want you to live.”
I felt something rise up from my gut and I told her, “We’ll figure it out.”
“What if they could right the planet or rescue the survivors?”
“At the cost of you?”
She said nothing, but her gaze said it all.
The ship’s control panel beeped, indicating that we had broken through Icharus’s gravitational pull. We were more than three oras away until we reached the refueling station on Sepia. I scanned the immediate perimeter, both radar and visually, and thus far no Ouder ship, but the drone still was trailing us. I turned on a tractor beam. After capturing it, I pulled it hard against the hull, smashing it. Then I released its lifeless hull back into space.
I turned back to her and asked, “What about us? What about these feelings I have for you? Don’t they count for anything?” While I had never known anyone to experience what I felt for her first hand, I had heard others mention it. Usually, it was right before Damus killed them, they would prattle on about someone or other.
“What does it matter, if I cannot return your feelings? I can respect and admire someone. Would those be close enough to count for something?”
I looked down guiltily. I had slept and used Astrid’s body for my own lusts, even though I knew she felt something more for me than I did for her. Now faced with Kore's inability to return my blossoming affection, I had to decide how I felt about that. It was not her fault that she could not feel emotions. Maybe a gene had been turned off somewhere in her DNA, and even if we could reverse that gene, would it change her in other unforeseeable ways? Would it be worth changing her? If we left things as they were, could I l
ive out the rest of my natural lifespan with her, knowing she could only logically care for me? Would it be enough for me?
Life commitments were something to be disparaged in our society. Did these strong emotions cement people together, even after people logically drifted apart? You could enjoy the way a d-pack made you high or the taste of a fried junip on your tongue. You could have faith in our governing Council, but to care for an individual person was frowned upon. Frack, it could also get you reported. More than a few had been slated for early termination because of it, and I had been a participant in their extermination. I had been the death broker for emotion’s demise. Could she accept me for who I was on logic alone? Maybe she could be the only person in the universe that could.
“Is your curiosity more roused by exploring what could be between us or with what the Ouder are?” I finally asked.
She looked away, but then faced me with something akin to anger, “I have been locked away in a small cell for more than two of your typical lifetimes. I have never been off my leash until a tad ago. I had sworn off your entire planet’s population as heartless stratholes. I have adapted to a new way of life. I have abandoned this planet for another. I have discovered that I might be more of another species than the one I have known my entire life.” She paused to catch her breath and then added, “I have no feelings. Something apparently every other living creature on that planet seems to have had but me. I care for you, but can you give me a little time to decide what I want; the very first time I have ever been given this opportunity in my life?”
I touched her shoulder. She was right, I was acting selfishly, but it was all I had ever known too. “Take what you want, because it might not be there tomorrow.” Well, now was that tomorrow, and I was still grabbing at everything I wanted. Despite my aspirations towards altruism, I was still Jett. I had thought Kore was the catalyst I needed to change. Maybe time is what she needed to change too. Could this feeling I have for her be learned? Were emotions instinctual or learned behavior? Despite what our society tried to do to relieve us of them, they persisted.
“Let’s focus on just getting to Sepia and that refueling station.”
“If it is not already destroyed,” she added.
“If it isn’t, then we’ll have some help. I should be able to scrounge up some former allies there.”
“Your friends did not help us on Icharus.”
“One gaffe at a time.”
• ѻ ● Ѻ • ○ ☼
The planet came into view first. The past three oras were a waste of time. We could have done so much more, but even I could understand her body language of being curled up in a ball. A bittersweet heaviness weighed on my chest. I knew she liked me, why was that not enough anymore? How I wished I had some synth to abuse, to pass the time in which she was not talking to me, kissing me. I was not going to get any more of those artificial feelings anymore. I sighed, reminiscing about how I once had so much that I had been trading it for favors.
She finally stood and crouched over me, looking at the approach of the planet. Its moon, a tiny dot that was circling it, leaving a dark spot on the swirling icy world below. The mining rigs and gas gathering machinery would remain out of sight below its cloudy surface, but the moon mechanizations should be easy to spot once we drew closer to it.
I engaged the comm and asked for clearance to land. No one responded.
“Does that mean that the moon has been abandoned?”
“I don’t know.”
Missing my personal oculus, not for the first time, I cut the comm off and approached the moon with caution. "Let me know if you see any movement as we approach."
“There are no other vessels in the air. Is that unusual?” she asked.
I grimaced, “Yes, it is.”
The gravity on an above ground landing would be impossible since there was only one g-suit on board. I turned off the automated pilot and guided the ship towards the primary refueling station located on the surface of the moon. Its desertion was troubling. Ultimately, our true destination was my people's illegal trading post on the surface of the planet. They would have fuel there, and the docking would be easier. I wondered if the ARC might have called ahead and alerted them to our potential arrival. The best case scenario would be if the post had been abandoned. I knew they had an over-abundance of illegally stocked fuel that we would be essential for our escape, but whether that was to the ARC or Kahel was anyone’s guess.
“How are we going to refuel the ship with only one g-suit?” I had wondered if she even knew what one was, let alone notice we had only one. She must have downloaded the systems operations manual. I wondered if her alien DNA made her impervious to space’s harsher characteristics. Did she even need air to breathe?
“Hopefully, we won’t have to step out once we land, because there will be someone to refuel our vessel manually for us. But even if we had to, they have an airlock docking area. Pirates think of everything,” I told her.
“What about gravity?”
“There is gravity in the docking station, but due to the moon’s size, it is a little less than on Icharus.” I tried the comm again. “Zori, are you there?”
Static.
Kore laid a hand on my arm. “Jett, there is something we need to discuss.” Hesitation tainted her tone
I ignored her and adjusted the channel frequency. "Lara, are you there. This is Jett." Then under my breath, I added, "Please be there." I was closer to Zori, but Lara was the outpost manager.
“Jett, I have come to a decision.”
“Anyone, I need to land and refuel. Can someone do that for me?”
“Jett.” This time she sounded more adamant.
“Lara, you would be the last to go. I know how you loved this station. Please.”
After a few clicking noises, a female’s voice echoed out from the speaker. “I’m here. Come down into dock two.” Then the clicking stopped. She had closed the comm, not wanting a reply. Our docking would be answer enough.
I breathed a sigh of relief. I inputted the precise coordinates that I knew by heart. Everyone in the family had to know a few of them, and this station's set was one of the prerequisite ones.
“Jett, I’ve come to a decision.”
I could tell by her tone and body language that it was not the one I wanted. “Later. Let’s just get refueled and then we can discuss our next step.”
“I need to go to Kahel.”
Well, frack. Of course, she wanted to go to a dead moon where the mysterious signal was emanating from.
Chapter 24
After landing the ship in the airlock, I popped the lever up to release the door. No one was outside, but that was not surprising, since Lara would be in the control center in the heart of the station. Kore grabbed my arm before I could jump out.
“I really need to talk to you,” she said.
“Why? So you can tell me something I don’t want to hear?”
“Same old Jett, huh?” I heard a woman call out to us from across the hangar.
I shook Kore off and replied, “You know me too well.” I glanced at Kore who still seemed ethereal and lovely – and not mine. “I always seem to have girl troubles.” The difference this time was that I was the one in trouble.
A boxy brunette who was not without looks and charm came our way. Leave it to me to finally find strong, confident women attractive. Too bad I had always treated her more like family rather than a romantic interest. “Lara. It’s been a while.”
She walked up to me, grabbed my arms and gave me a course hug. "Who's the trouble?" she asked as she nodded her head towards Kore, who was clambering down behind me.
“You have no idea.” I made a show of looking around the hangar and said, “Guess you heard the news, huh?”
“I would have to be living under a lava rock in Ostrovo to not know, and I bet those outposts were abandoned long before you left Icharus.”
“I hope so. If they hadn’t, they would be quite crispy by now.”
> “What’s going to happen when Icharus crashes into Aka?” Kore asked.
“I think you better come inside my office. I have plenty of rations for us while we discuss our fate. Then you can tell me all about her.”
I scowled and asked, "So you recognize her?"
“I do, but you know me, don’t care much for politics unless it helps my bottom line. To be honest, though, I don’t think anyone cares about the bottom line anymore.”
We walked towards her office, and I asked, "Why are you still here?"
"Waiting to hear if the ARC is taking any more refugees. If they will, then I'm gone. If not, then I may as well live out what I got left on real dirt and eat like a Councilman until the end. Besides, this station is my baby. I'm not about to abandon it, in case all those refugees need somewhere else to land. I'll get to decide who lives and doesn't."
“Never figured you for a power monger.” Then we both laughed. Apparently, we all had big dreams at the beginning and the end of our lives.
We walked into her office, which was cluttered with crates. After pushing a few aside, I found several chairs. We all sat down and then I asked, "You're not going to report us, are you?"
“Why would I do that,” Lara replied. “I know that this system is doomed, turning her over would mean they would win too.” I liked Lara even more than I did before.
“But you are going to die here,” Kore stated.
"There are worse things than death. My time was running out anyway under the old regime. I wouldn't want you coming after me, Jett, or else I would have had to go to ground.”
“Where would you have gone, Lara?”
“Probably out on one of these moons. Glad I was here when the whole thing went down on Icharus. The way I figure is, I am far enough out I shouldn't be affected too badly by the impending collision. Besides, I have annos here before I run out of stock piled supplies."
"No one wanted to stay with you?" I asked. My last hope was that some of the fleets would still be here, because I needed to smuggle us on board a shipment of refugees that was bound for the ARC. I knew Kore wanted to go to Kahel, but frack, my plans were falling to pieces.
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