Exile

by Rayann Marse

***

  Aurora had a hard time believing she would actually be exiled, until the doors opened and a troop of armed guards came to escort them. Then she looked up at Ignu, saw the dread and sadness on his face, and it all came crashing home.

  The nearest colony. Some terrible place, it must be. A hard place, a frontier land of cold and violence. Some far-flung wasteland. For an ‘indefinite period.’ And so, she couldn't even return to Earth if she wanted to now. She had fallen through the cracks of Menin justice. Or perhaps it was more apt to say she had been grounded up and spit out.

  Her one consolation was that she would be with Ignu. If they were separated, him exiled to one world and her to another, the only course of action would be to take her own life. With him, she could find a way to handle anything. But without him... alone, in a foreign place where nothing was familiar...

  Stella was crying. Sobbing, really. Her earlier breakdown, paused during her time at the Mindseat, now resumed. And it seemed to be at its most intense stage. Not a hundred feet outside the doors, she collapsed to the ground; the guards had to carry her. Gyrch, the servant, tried to break in and take her from them, but one of the guards slammed the butt of his spear into the servant's crotch. He doubled over, falling behind as he winced and cursed his way through the pain, and caught back up to them a minute later.

  As soon as a ship was prepared, Uklu had said. Aurora decided this meant they would be housed in some in-between place until the ship was ready. Most likely a jail of some kind.

  And she was right. They were brought into a long corridor lined with cells and shoved into them. They were separated, each with their own individual cell. To one side of Aurora was a wall. To the other side was Gyrch. Beyond Gyrch was Ignu, and Stella at the other end. This had been done on purpose, Aurora assumed. With nothing to say to their neighbors, they merely sat still and waited.

  Stella's crying continued at first but gradually faded away into tiny whimpers and gasps, like a toddler at the end of a tantrum.

  Chapter Ten

  How long did it take for a ship to be prepared? Stella first imagined it would be like a plane that needed its wings de-iced, or to have some piece of hardware replaced. An hour or two, tops.

  Time had a way of dragging in a jail cell, with no one to talk to, but Stella was pretty sure they had been waiting for eight or nine hours. She had slept twice, woke for a cold meal shoved through her bars in between fitful naps on the hard floor. Later, a duel happened right outside their cells between two males she did not recognize. It was actually a good fight, in that it lasted a long time and was evenly matched. Once Stella grew numb to the violence, it offered a shred of entertainment. Something to kill the time with.

  Ignu, her neighbor, watched the fight intently. He kept balling his hands into fists and whispering angrily. She half expected him to break through the metal bars and join the fray. But of course, not even he would be strong enough for that.

  Finally, having exhausted all avenues of thought and daydream, Stella crouch-walked her way over to the bars of the neighboring cell and held her translator up so that Ignu could see it.

  "Hey," she said. "Any idea where the nearest colony is? What kind of world we're going to?"

  He stared at her a long time, then finally shook his head. "You are weak and fragile," he said. "You should hope that the colonists are gentle folk. Because colonies stand far beyond the Mindseat; they are lawless places, where people do everything and anything they can or need to do in order to survive."

  Ignu looked over his shoulder, launching a wad of spit in the direction of the dozing servant.

  "He has never fought or struggled," Ignu added. "He cannot protect you."

  Scooting forward, he reached through the bars and pulled the translator closer.

  "I can speak to Aurora," he said quietly. "If she wants me to, I will take you under my wing. I can protect you. I am your best chance at surviving."

  Stella stared at him, too afraid and traumatized to respond. He smiled nastily then drew back and turned to face away from her.

  His words echoed in her mind for a long time after that. In her heart, she knew he was right. Gyrch would try his best, she knew that, but he would be no match for hardy colonists, who had probably been sent to whatever world they lived on for political reasons. They were probably a lot like Ignu, she decided.

  But perhaps her and Gyrch could move off on their own somewhere. This was no guarantee of protection, but it might be her best shot at a good life.

  If she went with Ignu, who would protect the servant? And what sort of happiness could he find, with even the faint hope of her love stolen away from him?

  ***

  Finally, the guards returned. It had been so long that it was a different outfit entirely who retrieved them. Evidently, the shifts had changed at least once.

  They were brought back into the main hall. Or rather, a mirror image of it that ran parallel. Through huge doors, into a hangar where a black, lens-shaped Menin ship waited. An elevator led into a hatch in its bottom; the exiles were sent up alone into the empty cabin.

  "Sit," Ignu said, gesturing toward a row of Menin-sized seats.

  There were harnesses here, seatbelts, but there was no chance they would fit snugly on Stella. She flung them aside and sat down, letting out a huge and involuntary sigh. Gyrch took the seat next to her and began fiddling with one half of her seatbelt. Trying to adjust it to fit her. It was a hopeless task, but it was good that he had found something to do.

  Aurora was about to sit in the next seat down, on the other side of Gyrch, but Ignu put his hands on her hips and gently moved her aside. She gave him a cheeky look over her shoulder — the look that launched a thousand cocks, Stella might have called it — but Ignu's focus was elsewhere. He sat beside Gyrch and gave the servant a nod, as if to acknowledge the two were now on equal ground and could converse freely. Stella knew the brute didn't really believe that Gyrch was his equal in any way, but she was glad to see him making an effort.

  "I have noticed something curious about our ship," Ignu said.

  Gyrch smiled, nodding along. "As have I."

  "Care to share?" Aurora asked, leaning far forward in her seat so that she could see everyone.

  "We call this type of ship a Lancer," Gyrch said. "They are used to travel middle distances. Not long enough to require fugue."

  "Suspended animation," Stella supplied. "The long sleep."

  "Yes. The 'long sleep' is an apt descriptor."

  "So... what does that mean?" Aurora asked.

  Gyrch turned to look at her. "It means we aren't travelling very far. A light year, at most."

  "Wow, just a single little light year." Aurora nodded. "Just a few trillion miles or so, no big deal."

  "Whichever colony we are going to, it is nearby," Gyrch continued. "And..."

  He cut off, casting a nervous glance at Ignu. The warrior gave him a nod of encouragement, a gesture to urge him on.

  "I have a good knowledge of all our colonies," the servant said. "There is no record of Menin ever coming to this area of space until now, let alone establishing a colony here. If there is one within a light year of us now, it is not shown in our history at all."

  Stella looked forward, pondering what this meant, and had a moment of panic and confusion when she saw stars and blackness through a window. They were already flying, having dropped out of the ship sometime during their discussion. She hadn't felt a thing.

  Chapter Eleven

  Aurora was determined to find a private place.

  But the ship was small. It consisted of a single narrow corridor, leading across the diameter of the ship and bisecting it. There was no cockpit — the ship was fully automated, it seemed — so both ends of the hall led to nothing much. There were rooms, but they were too small to get acrobatic in.

  The largest space was the kitchen. It was sized appropriately for two or three Menin to occupy it at once. Once Aurora discovered it, she hatched a plan. She was desperate fo
r a fuck, and not because she was just plain horny. She needed it to ground herself, to make her feel real again. She had always felt a bit of contempt for women who attached such layers of emotion to the act of sex; she thought they were sabotaging themselves, putting too much baggage and weight into such a fun activity. But now she could kind of understand it.

  Ignu was sat in his original seat, staring around the ship with a look of extreme boredom on his face. Stella was asleep, or at least trying to get there. Her head was resting on the shoulder of Gyrch, who stared forward and frowned with distant eyes. She didn't want to know what harrowing thoughts he might be having. She decided that the servant was probably a coward, overthinking the dangers ahead of them, but he clearly knew more than Ignu did about the colonies. If he was frightened, they all probably had a good reason to be frightened with him.

  All the more reason to get their minds off of it. Aurora had a feeling that Gyrch and Stella would be sleeping together before their ‘indefinite’ exile was up, but they weren't there yet. How very sad for them.

  She went striding by, giving Ignu a meaningful glance and putting a little extra sway in her hips. He got up and followed a moment later, grinning and practically beginning to drool. Rounding the corner, he found her bent over with her pants pulled down to the backs of her knees. He sank into her familiar heat, growling softly, gathering her hair into his fist and using it to pull her back into him.

  At her request, he kept it quiet. It was strange; she had no problem being loud and obvious and even exhibitionary on the Menin ship. But now, in such an intimate setting with only two others aboard, she felt self-conscious. Maybe it was just that annoying voice called empathy that piped in every now and then. Stella was having a hard enough time without having to listen to their screams and moans of lust.

  Or maybe it would help. Seeing a fellow Menin giving it so heartily to a human female, Gyrch might be emboldened or at least challenged to make a move on Stella. It could only be a good thing, in the long run.

  Either way, thoughts of anyone besides Ignu were quickly scoured from her mind, and she submitted herself entirely to the pleasure of being with him.

  After, as she pulled her pants up and felt his seed leaking from her; she felt like a new woman. Or maybe she just felt like herself again. That was the magic of sex; she'd discovered it about as early in life as was decent.

  Chapter Twelve

  Stella opened her eyes and at first couldn't tell if she had been asleep or not. But then she saw that Aurora was in her seat again, fresh back from her exhaustive exploration of the ship. And Gyrch was dozing now, head tossed back against the headrest of his seat, mouth hanging slightly open. She stared at him a long time, smiling and feeling something warm and unfamiliar inside her.

  "Hey," Aurora's whispered voice came.

  Stella leaned forward. The Dutchwoman was doing the same, smiling. She stood up, beckoning, and went off down the hall. Stella got up slowly, lifting Gyrch's hand from her thigh and setting it carefully on her seat, still warm from her body.

  In a way, he was touching her ass right now. She was surprised that this thought had even occurred to her. And that it made her feel so happy.

  Aurora was in the kitchen, mixing a powdered drink mix into two huge cups. She handed one to Stella. The liquid inside was unattractive, syrupy, and brown with big bubbles that seemed ready to burst and fart a bunch of swamp gas into her face. But it smelled okay and tasted almost good. Sort of fruity and nutty. The thickness of it made it feel like a milkshake sliding down her throat, and it settled nicely in her stomach. Like a full meal.

  "What is this stuff?" she asked.

  Aurora shrugged and held out the packet she'd gotten the powder from. "I don't suppose you can read Menin, can you?"

  Stella scoffed. "Hell no."

  "Me, neither. I bet Kozue's got it figured out by now, though."

  "Wherever she is."

  Aurora was looking at the packet again. "Probably a lot of fiber. To make you feel full and to keep you regular. I do have that problem when I travel, sometimes. Whenever I stay in a new place, in a hotel or whatever, my body gets scared and just clamps down. Nothing comes out for the first couple days." She giggled, flapping the packet in the air.

  Stella, though she hated to admit sharing anything with the Dutchwoman, had similar experiences.

  "I wonder if it's safe," said Stella. "For us, I mean."

  "Why wouldn't it be? We've been eating Menin food for however long. How long has it been? At least a week, right? The days kind of blur together... And anyway, I've been swallowing Ignu's cum like water, so I don't think a bit of powder is gonna hurt me."

  "Jesus, Aurora!" Stella said.

  The Dutchwoman just grinned at her, opening the packet wide to give it a sniff and a suggestive lick.

  Stella turned away. "You're just too much, sometimes. Please don't make me throw up."

  "Come on," Aurora said, "you're just being a drama queen now. And I think maybe you're a little jealous..."

  "Of you and Ignu? Please."

  "Don't tell me you don't want a piece of action, yourself. I see the way you keep looking at that servant boy of yours. Remember, we're going to a colony. No more class-based society. No more bullshit restriction. You two can start the boning as soon as we get there, and no one can tell you to stop."

  "My God, Stella. Is everything about sex with you?"

  Aurora at first looked a little offended, ready to make a rebuttal. Then she got a sheepish look on her face and gave a little shrug. "I think it is with you, too, Stella. You just like to delude yourself."

  "Well, you're wrong. Sex is cool, but there are other concerns in life. What about you? What about your love of history? How is that about sex?"

  Aurora laughed. "Have you never read a history book? An honest one, I mean. I've written some of my own. There's so much sex in there, Stella, you wouldn't believe it. Anyway, why the hell are we having this discussion? I just wanted to say that you shouldn't suppress your feelings. And there's no reason to waste your time, because you only have a limited amount of it. Life is short. If you like this servant dude, well, go at it. That's all I'm saying."

  Stella nodded, taking a sip of her drink and turning to look around the kitchen. "Thanks, Aurora."

  "Any time. But that's only one of the things I wanted to talk to you about. I've heard some of it from Ignu, but what happened to Kozue? Do you know anything else? I heard she disappeared. Something about... a window in the wall that disappeared?"

  Stella nodded. "That's the extent of my knowledge. I'm afraid I haven't gathered any other information. Shit got too crazy, too fast. But I think the whole 'window' thing is less insane that it sounds. According to Gyrch, Amnay was a kind of tinkerer. A scientist. And we know that Menin technology is way beyond what we have, at least in most ways. So I don't think it's impossible that Amnay built some sort of teleportation device. A way to open a door between two distant points and pass through..."

  "That's ridiculous," said Aurora. Then she gestured around the kitchen. "But so is this. Flying through space in a fucking UFO. With artificial gravity. Can't feel a thing, right? It's like the windows are just screens showing a changing scenery of stars and we're standing on a motionless set. That's how it feels, right? You can't tell we're moving at all. And apparently, we may be traveling up to a light year. For us, that's a huge undertaking. A decades long voyage."

  She started opening drawers and cupboards. Most of them were empty; others had more packets, of different colors and sizes.

  "Now, let me know if you think otherwise," she continued, "but this doesn't look like enough supplies for a journey of decades."

  Stella shook her head. "No. It's not. There are enough empty seats out there to fit, I don't know, thirty passengers. And enough supplies in here to give those thirty-odd passengers a single meal. So, I'd say we're traveling in the scope of hours. Not even days; hours. And the stars... When you look out the windows, even the faint stars,
the most distant ones, seem to be moving along. Crawling along the window. It's very slow, but you don't get that kind of palpable motion unless you're travelling extremely fast."

  "So," said Aurora, "with all that in mind, I guess teleportation isn't out of the question. But I'm no scientist. Is teleportation even possible, theoretically?"

  "Only theoretically," Stella replied. "Experiments in quantum entanglement have engendered teleportation, but only for individual subatomic particles. It's a very different matter to transfer entire beings or objects that are even large enough to be seen with an ordinary microscope. To make it happen, most people would think you would need to open a wormhole. But that involves unfathomable geometry, involving higher dimensions of space. I can't even imagine the science involved to stabilize that geometry to a degree that you would end up with a doorway like what our witness saw, a clear and elegant bridge between two points. It's a real mindfuck."

  Aurora nodded along with all this politely, but by her vacant expression it was clear Stella had lost her somewhere around the mention of wormholes.

  "Anyway," Stella said, "it is possible. A civilization that can cross stars, who thinks a light year is a casual journey that you don't even need a flight attendant for... that's a mindfuck, too. Might as well throw teleportation into the mix. Why the hell not?"

  "Why the hell, indeed," Aurora replied. She set her cup down on the countertop, which rose nearly to her nipple line. "Have you learned anything else? About Sybil?"

  "Just what that elder said. That she's safe, for now. But I'm sure she won't stay that way. And whatever chance we had for helping her, we blew it."

  "Speak for yourself. I was doing my best."

  "Were you, really? Or were you just getting your rocks off with Ignu at every opportunity?"

  As she spoke, Aurora grabbed another cup of out the cupboard and started to fill it with water. Stella made nothing of this at first, but then she became aware of a presence at her back, and of the fact that a computerized Menin voice was dutifully translating her words.