NightPiercer

by Merry Ravenell

  Tsu waited a few moments while tempers simmered. Then he told the wolf, “You are stripped of all rank and seniority. You’re a trained set of hands, so you’ll remain in Engineering. Commander Rainer, reassign his duties, make sure he’s directly supervised at all times, and reassign his junior reports. Commander Bennett, coordinate the Operations and Crèche details of the demotion. Gribbons, flag his comm. He’s to be monitored at all times for the next thirty-six solar months.”

  Bennett asked, “Are we suppressing this or disclosing the real reasons?”

  “We disclose,” Rainer said. “Don’t suppress it on my account.”

  “I was thinking of your wife and crew,” Bennett said with a bitter smile. “Maybe she doesn’t want this ship to know her husband can’t keep his dogs on their chains.”

  “Or that she jumps to conclusions,” Keenan said meaningfully, raising both brows at her. “We don’t put potential murderers in the Pool here on NightPiercer.”

  Lachesis flushed and kept her mouth firmly closed. Keenan’s tone sent shivers down her spine. The Second Officer had taken that accusation personally.

  Tsu waved it off. “We’re not covering this up. Rainer’s going to have to take this one on the snout. There are already many bad feelings around Rainer and Crèche and his marriages, and it’s obvious the bad feelings rise all the way to the top of the ship.”

  Tsu looked pointedly at Bennett.

  The Captain continued, “Lachesis is going to have to weather this one with Rainer. And Keenan is going to have to take it on the knuckles too. She’s the one who pulled all the levers and pushed all the buttons. And I’m the one who paid the bill.”

  Rainer growled. “I’m going to find who put a collar on you and tugged your leash, little dog.”

  “Start in Engineering,” Tsu said. “I put up with a great deal from you, Rainer, but until you’ve clawed your way through your own den, don’t you dare start looking in anyone else’s.”

  Née

  Voices chirped into his ear from his comm. Half-a-dozen inquiries about what had happened. Rainer pulled off his comm. It’d have to wait until the urge to lock that wolf into the cricket cages passed. “He didn’t even try to kill us. I feel like a fool for giving him that much credit. Someone else put him up to it and sold him on that stupid plan. Tsu says it was Engineering, but no one in Engineering would think that plan would embarrass me. It came from outside Engineering.”

  Not a botched prank. Someone had been playing a more dangerous game with him, but Keenan and Bennett had both been so smug and exasperated and annoyed that their scents had told him nothing specific.

  He counted to ninety-six before realizing Lachesis was watching him. She had pulled off her own comm and thrown it down next to his. From somewhere she’d produced two bone pins and had her hands full of her red hair. She asked, “Is that why you wanted me to stay here? You heard those rumors?”

  Quick twists of her hands bundled her hair on top of her head, and she deftly stabbed the bundle through with pins. Tendrils escaped and cascaded around her shoulders.

  Everything he’d thought he’d known didn’t fit into what confronted him. He’d expected a bolt of fine wool. He’d received undyed silk thread: precious, fragile, and easily ruined. He’d counted on being able to at least not tear or stain the wool, then eventually figure out how to stitch it into a crude square-shaped pillow. Silk thread was several orders of magnitude more difficult, with much smaller margins for error.

  He grasped around for words, digging in the scraps he’d picked up over the years. She knew the little wolf wasn’t the end of this, and those autumn-hazel eyes needed him to say something. “There hasn’t been a new packmember in thirty-three years. There have been misunderstandings since you arrived. I’m trying to protect you. If you were Bennett’s wife it’d be different, but you’re mine.”

  Mine echoed inside him. Mine.

  Her pupils dilated slightly, engulfing the beautiful sky-and-autumn hazel of her irises, and her scent shifted. She didn’t break eye contact with him. Her gaze was so direct and expectant.

  We understand each other. Or we will. One day.

  Fierce excitement tapped over his nerves. There was so much information, every small nuance, every shift of her scent, all of her. She was speaking a language he didn’t understand and for which no translation existed.

  The pings on the large screen wanted to summon him. He ignored them and ignored the not-voice urging him to find out what her lips tasted like. Too soon. Patience. “I am in no frame of mind to devote the several hours to this it will require. Since we’ve firmly established I did not try to kill you, would you like to come with me for a normal stroll down on the market levels? That is a very married couple thing to do.”

  “So you were locking me in here because you thought I thought you were trying to kill me?” She cocked her head to the side, scent shifting to annoyance and some anger.

  Damit. Time to try again. “I thought we both might enjoy doing something that is considered normal.”

  Her eyes crinkled slightly in the corner. Damit. He’d said the wrong thing again.

  But then she half-smiled. “I think that sounds like the most normal thing you and I will have done. Should I change into casual clothing?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I’m going off duty.”

  She pulled the pins out of her hair again, set them on the low table, and separated her hair into five thick chunks. She deftly twisted the chunks into a single plait while he watched, then wandered into the bedroom to find a strand of yarn to tie the tail with, then wrapped all of it into a bun at the nape of her neck, and re-secured it all with the pins.

  Tendrils of red hair escaped around her ears and brushed her shoulders. She returned to the bedroom to change.

  He fought against the memory of her naked body, and what that red hair looked like cascading down her spine, leading his gaze to the smooth strength of her rump and thighs…

  She doesn’t want you, Rainer. Not yet. You won’t use her like Crèche wants.

  The chilling effect was instant.

  Senior staff was a celibate existence. Fraternization was strictly forbidden. Not even he’d push against that rule. He’d been keeping himself company for years now, and he’d been warned by Counseling that many unmarried senior staff waged a daily battle with their libido. Not him. Crèche had kept him painfully aware that his genitals served a practical, medical purpose. They’d used him as a stud wolf.

  The casual sex friendships that happened in the bunks had not improved his outlook. Everyone was told to keep it casual. He had not realized casual meant interchangeable until one of his regular playmates had told him I’m in the mood to fuck Someone Else tonight.

  He couldn’t remember who Someone Else had been. It had just been Someone Else, and she’d been in the mood for Someone Else. Like choosing jelly for toast. She’d never wanted him. No one ever had. They’d wanted the biological machine that was his body to produce pleasure in theirs. No different from Crèche using him to produce an embryo.

  He could not help how things had begun between them, but he’d be damned if he made Lachesis feel like a sack of organs when the time came.

  The market on NightPiercer spanned two vertical decks, although not all the horizontal space, ending with the chambers where the senior command staff held public forums, trials, and inquiries. The area functioned as a public forum, theatre, and festival space. The top deck housed the museums, the bottom deck the handful of shops that the ship could support and the workspaces for Dying Arts that couldn’t fit into quarters or bunks, like weavers who inherited the looms, or dye-makers who needed vats.

  Passer-bys could watch if they wanted, but outside of curious School kids who came to be introduced to these Arts, most had already seen it by now. The main attraction of the level was the line of old birch trees that ran down both sides, like an old Earth avenue. Fences kept people from getting close to the trees and stripping them of all their bark,
branches, and leaves. People still waited for ‘spring’ to see the fresh leaves, and ‘autumn’ to collect fallen leaves. Many came to sit and gaze at the trees, but Medical and Counseling monitored this closely. Occasional wistfulness was fine, but the trees had a tremendous allure. There’d been some debate about cutting them down.

  Biome access was controlled for the same reason. People—but especially the werewolves—lost themselves. The trees, with their branches shifting in an artificial, variable breeze, and the artificial but as-true-to-sunlight as they could manage, dug at something deep in both species’ brains.

  Lachesis gazed at the trees.

  She felt it too.

  “Nothing like this on Ark?” he asked.

  “The Biomes,” she said softly, “and people have little potted plants.”

  Higher-ranked individuals sometimes had precious plants. Captain Tsu had an old ficus tree that had come from Earth that had been in his family. The thing had survived getting transported to the ship, across space, and was still pushing out leaves at almost a century. Tsu’s wish was one day the tree would actually get back to Earth, although the transition off the ship would probably kill it.

  He picked up something on Lachesis’ voice. “You mean in the bunks.”

  “Yes.”

  “How do people in bunks manage that?” He’d never seen it or heard about it outside of the high-status smaller-count bunks that had tables. But even then, plants were very valuable, and the dirt they grew in even more valuable. They needed light, water, fertilizer, air flow, a container to grow in.

  “I see you didn’t spend much time in the bunks,” she said, tone a bit dry.

  “Truthfully, no. I was married the first time at twenty. How did dirt get out of the Biomes?”

  “Fair enough,” she said. “Maybe it’s not a thing on NightPiercer since you have this. There are varieties of plants on Ark that tolerate low artificial light. It’s not impossible to source small pots, small amounts of dirt, and these woven harnesses out of scraps of rope and yarn and even strips of torn uniforms. They weave a harness for the pot and hang the plant off the bunk. The idea came from pictures of hanging plant cradles on Earth.”

  He rubbed his chin. Yes, he’d seen something similar, but couldn’t place where. Probably when he’d been a pup and fascinated by Earth until his parents had warned him too much interest in what had been was dangerous. Even if they went back to Earth, it wouldn’t be the Earth they’d left. “How do junior staff in bunks manage that? Dirt is priceless.”

  “Well, card games for one,” she said, smiling faintly at him. “People will make dirt by composting table scraps. Or just go to the Biomes for a hunt, and instead of taking the prey, take an ounce of dirt instead. Biome management will accept that if you inform them when you request your slot. They’ll let you into one of the fallow Agriculture Biomes.”

  Intriguing. “We don’t do that here.”

  “The plants are valuable. Takes years to get all the pieces. People keep them like pets.” Lachesis stopped in front of a small shop where a weaver worked over a clacking loom. On the walls hung half a dozen hanks of spun thread in bright colors. The weaver didn’t acknowledge them. She had on casual attire, but Rainer recognized her as one of Bennett’s subordinates. She was in Operations when on duty.

  Lachesis looked at the thread with unmistakable wistfulness before moving on.

  It wasn’t crowded except at the official ship shops where half a dozen people lined up to purchase supplemental rations or browse things that had been put up for sale by other residents. He was in casual clothes, but people still went out of their way to avoid being close to him.

  “Does it look familiar, or was I too distracting your first time through here?” Rainer asked.

  She sighed at him. “That’s not funny. I was running for my life, not taking in the sights.”

  So much for that conversation starter.

  “Or I thought I was running for my life,” she added, tone bitter. “Turns out just an idiot on the loose.”

  Rainer couldn’t call the wolf an idiot in public. It wasn’t appropriate for an officer to degrade anyone under their command, and ultimately, it was his responsibility someone under his command had done something out of line. His lack of a reaction, though, caused a flicker of injury across her face and scent. Then it fled behind her neutral expression.

  The opportunity to try to bridge the gap between them waved at him as it bounded away.

  In the center of the long first floor the rows of trees stopped, and the shops ended, and instead it became an open park where people paused to chat and mill about while musicians played. The metal floor was etched to resemble cobblestones scattered with leaves, although the etchings had worn smooth in many places over the years.

  “Hell,” he muttered under his breath. He hated this part of the market levels. It was where screens displayed public notices (although everyone could just access them online), and more screens were inset into an engraved metal wall. She noticed it instantly and wandered over. Of all the things for her to show interest in. “You don’t really need to see this, do you?”

  She glanced over her shoulder at him, her tone dulcet. “Why? Are you embarrassed?”

  “No,” he said, “exasperated.”

  “Sounds like the same thing to me.”

  He schooled his expression into his well-practiced ice mask. Another thing he couldn’t explain in public.

  The wall was engraved to look like old marble, and featured an old-style organizational chart, with all the Command staff and section leads of NightPiercer pictured. Like those old-Earth Employee of the Month or Your Grocery Store Staff Welcomes You displays. Captain Tsu had the dubious honor of being at the top, wearing formal officer dress, while another, smaller screen under him supplied the usual critical details to anyone who had been living under a rock and not on NightPiercer their entire life: age, generation, spouse name, section.

  Keenan, Bennett, and himself were directly below Tsu. Then there were the other section leads that weren’t Command officers.

  Her name had been added by his. SPOUSE: Lachesis (née Ark)

  “Née?” she asked the air around her.

  She hadn’t asked him. Did she really hate talking to him that much? Was there no coming back from this? He’d proven he hadn’t tried to kill her. He said, “It’s an old Earth word from when people had multiple names, and they’d change their name when they got married. You were previously Ark. So there’s no confusion about where you’ve been all these years.”

  Now she shifted her attention to him. “That’s an obscure bit of information to have in your brain.”

  “I tend to collect obscure bits of information,” Rainer said. His semantic memory was something of legend. The downside was he rarely remembered how or when he acquired a piece of knowledge. It could make for some awkward conversations. Especially if people thought he was too traditional, or too focused on the past. His parents had urged him to leave history to the Historians. The Archives would be there if they ever needed them, and the Historians there to help everyone put it into perspective.

  Lachesis, however, took it at face value. “So what’s this wall for anyway?”

  “So senior staff will be known on sight. I’m told people find it reassuring.”

  “Ark just says look up the senior staff online.”

  “I wish I could get NightPiercer to agree.” Getting plastered on this wall was unnecessary. He didn’t need a monument to himself, like he didn’t display his commendations earned before he had become a section lead. Medical thought he was worth keeping alive and growing spare skin, nerves, and organs for him. That was his commendation. He was a leader. He was supposed to do his job exceptionally well.

  Lachesis moved on to the other side of the square.

  He was going to have to explain himself when they got back so she didn’t think he was ignoring or dismissing her. She wasn’t interested in talking, but she seemed content enough to
have him nearby, so he tried to mentally rehearse what he’d say. How much of the truth did he tell her, in what order, and how? Counseling always said to be honest, but there was an art to honesty.

  Someone trotted up behind them. “Commander.”

  He turned around. One of his most junior Engineering staff. The human’s gaze darted nervously between him and Lachesis. After a second, he said to Lachesis, “Ma’am.”

  She nodded, expression nonplussed.

  “Commander, you’re needed in Engineering,” the crewman said, trying not to sound nervous. “This duty roster—”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Captain Tsu has already asked for an update,” he said nervously. “Your comm wasn’t on, so Lieutenant Juan sent me to find you.”

  If Juan had summoned him, Tsu meant now. Normally his core crew shielded him from everyone else’s imagined emergencies and urgencies. Tsu must have shaken Juan out like last week’s laundry.

  “You have to go?” she asked, looking up at him with those striking autumn-sky eyes of hers, her tone neutral, but her scent a little… he searched through his brain for the right word. Despondent, perhaps.

  “I thought I could put this off a few hours, but the Captain wants the matter resolved.” He moved closer so he could lower his voice and catch her scent. She tensed, but didn’t move away. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” she said. “I know you’re the Third Officer. I don’t know what that entails, but I’m sure this will happen all the time.”

  He risked reaching for one of her hands. His fingers curled over her palm. A jolt charged through his arm. She tightened all over, her pupils dilating slightly, and her scent bloomed into shock, not-welcome, and a confusing, heady blend of scents he couldn’t untangle. He held her hand tighter. He couldn’t flinch now. “We’ll talk when I get back. I’ll try to explain everything.”