NightPiercer

by Merry Ravenell

  “Forest sprite? What am I doing back here?” She managed to use her abs to drag herself upright. Rainer steadied her, she hissed at him, but he didn’t move his palm. “What the hell happened to me?”

  “You don’t remember what happened?”

  She paused and tried again. Rainer had a strange look on his face, and he smelled a bit weird, but everything seemed strange and foggy. She couldn’t remember anything beyond some very vague memory of going to Medical, and she barely remembered saying goodbye to Rainer. “No.”

  Rainer propped her up with one strong arm, cradling her against his side as he untangled her legs from the blankets with his other hand. “Crèche had you sedated in one of the iso-pods in Medical. You consented to it rather than remain awake waiting for your euth order to be confirmed. Nobody figured out about feeding you, hydrating you, keeping you in gravity restraints or otherwise maintaining you. I carried you back here thirty-seven hours ago. We’ve had a few conversations when I wake you to make you drink and medicate you, but you must not remember any of it.”

  She searched her fragmented memories again. Nothing but blanks, interspersed with strange sensations, echoes, and even a strange taste. “What did we talk about?”

  “You don’t remember telling me how much you liked those?” He gestured to the paintings over the bed.

  “Ah, no. But I do like them,” she said slowly. Something in Rainer’s scent caught her attention. “Did ah… I say anything stupid?”

  “No.”

  “But now I’m a little forest sprite?”

  “You seem to have a particular fondness for the autumn tree and a very pretty laugh.”

  “I said something stupid, didn’t I,” she sighed.

  The floor was too hard on her ass. She tried to move her arms and winced. The tiny muscles of her shoulder cap screeched in protest. Her legs trembled and seared with tearing pain, but held her weight. She staggered upright with Rainer’s hands steadying her. She ignored him and shuffled towards the front room.

  “Slow down, Lachesis. You’re going to rupture your aorta.” Rainer’s hands hovered close. “You have AGRS.”

  Artificial Gravity Recovery Syndrome. Muscles and blood vessels quickly atrophied and weakened, blood thickened, retinas tore, eyeballs warped, cerebral-spinal fluid pooled, liver and kidneys failed, bone marrow shut down.

  Rainer helped her into the living room and shoved her (gently) towards the big chair. “Sit.”

  He tucked her feet up around her so she’d be comfortable, just like she preferred.

  “What do you think sunlight would feel like?” she asked, staring down at the rug. Maybe it would feel amazing. Sun lamps felt amazing, but every log entry from a Generation Zero survivor said they were a pathetic imitation of the real thing.

  Rainer didn’t reply. She shook her head, but the muscles of her neck and jaw squawked in pain. “Aren’t we divorced?”

  “We have been married. Again.” He brought her a cup and sat down on the low table. “Drink this. Careful. Your hands are going to be slow.”

  “They hurt,” she said, staring at her bruised hand. “Why am I bruised?”

  “Microtears in your muscles.”

  The liquid was sweet-salty and tasted of limes. Many, many limes. She winced at the sourness. “Why can’t I remember anything?”

  “You’ve been in twilight. When you’re sedated that heavily, your brain doesn’t have a chance to form short-term memories, so you lose everything for up to half a day before the sedation, and for several days after you come out things can be murky. You may not even remember this. We’ve had this conversation several times already.”

  “We have?”

  “Keep drinking.”

  “But we’ve had this conversation before.”

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “You seem a little too patient.”

  “I can be very patient.”

  “So why are we still married?”

  “You mean how are you still alive?”

  “That too.”

  “I succumbed to curiosity and read the letters you asked me to send to your family.”

  “I encrypted them.”

  “You used a low-level encryption protocol and on-device key, and that particular protocol has a command backdoor. But at least I had to use that and didn’t easily guess the password you used.”

  “You weren’t supposed to know any of that. I didn’t want you to know. Couldn’t you have respected that? I didn’t want you to know!”

  Rainer took the cup and checked to make sure she’d swallowed all the liquid before he answered. “Because I hate Crèche.”

  “You’re important. I’m not. My life has never had value. Crèche decided that years ago. That’s why my sister was born. You should have let me protect you.”

  His eyes narrowed a hair, like a predator remembering a hunt. “And lose you? No. My team helped find you, and they helped me get to you. I did have to put my claw through the door so Tsu would understand the sincerity of my threat. They were being unreasonable, so I was willing to be violently unreasonable.”

  She pulled back, horrified. “I’m a cull, you stubborn mule! You matter, you are important, and this ship needs you, and you were going to throw it all away or create another Sunderer? You never wanted me anyway! What the hell is wrong with you? Let them turn me into mulch!”

  Rainer gathered up the cup and headed back towards the kitchen.

  “Answer me!”

  “I’m not going to listen to you saying your life doesn’t matter.”

  “You not listening doesn’t change the truth. Don’t you hate how Crèche manipulated you again? Tsu lied to you.”

  “Yes, he did,” Rainer said. He walked back towards her, his expression melting into a feral grin that sent her taxed heart fluttering. “But I am not going to be too incensed. I played all of them at their own game, and they haven’t realized it.”

  It was too early in her current spate of consciousness for Rainer or his games. “What are you talking about?”

  Rainer sat down on the low table and faced her. He leaned forward on his knees. “Crèche only knows what I wanted them to know.”

  She chilled. “What are you talking about?”

  “No, this is going to have to wait. You’re too fragile—”

  She clenched a clumsy hand around his collar. “Start talking. All of it.”

  Rainer leaned into her hand so her knuckles dug into his throat. “Crèche didn’t choose you. They think they did. I chose you.”

  Her hand fell away. “…w-what?”

  “I wanted a Navigator for the ship. Our system is out of date, and with the new engines, dangerously inaccurate. I knew if I insisted on one I’d never get it. I looked through the duty rosters of the other ships to see if there was a she-wolf Navigator from my generation to marry. If Crèche caught a whiff of my being willing to marry again, they’d pounce on it and cram it down my throat.”

  Her hands dropped to the blankets.

  Rainer pulled her shirt straight where the too-large neck hole had slipped towards her shoulder. He didn’t smile, but his face had illuminated, as had his scent, with the memory of the hunt. “You wanted to know my secret, Lachesis.”

  She whispered, “What have you done?”

  “I found you,” he said softly. “I found you.”

  “You aren’t making sense.”

  “It wouldn’t have mattered if Gaia Herself had arrayed a thousand Navigators before me and told me to take my choice. It could only have been you. Everything else was an answer to my prayers.”

  “Prayers are dangerous things,” she whispered, but so was the madness coming out of the Commander’s mouth.

  His fingertips brushed her cheek. “Depends on if you think someone is listening.”

  “Who heard your prayers?”

  “My mother is highly placed in Science. I told her I was closer to thirty than not and reconsidering a family. That I’d found a she-wolf on A
rk I thought would be a good match, but I needed her to put Keenan on the scent.”

  “Who does that?”

  “Our ancestors, for thousands of years.”

  She pulled away from his touch. He’d just been browsing the rosters like she browsed ram semen inventory.

  Rainer smiled a little more, reeking of domination and smugness. “She did, except she told Keenan she had found you. Keenan liked what she saw and presented the idea to me. I resisted enough to let her think she’d won the final battle. With blazing purpose she championed it to Tsu. Eight months later here we are.”

  She sat, astonished, at his gall and brilliance, and the tiny little dance of political particles that he’d set into motion with an even tinier flick of his finger. He was like a hunter who had stalked his prey through the undergrowth, placing each paw with care to nudge his prey along, but never make it bolt. Not until he was ready. And then it ran right into his maw.

  You are the means to an end, Lachesis.

  “So I’m here because you wanted a navigator, and you tricked Crèche into delivering you one.”

  Rainer’s gaze weighed heavy on her. “This started because my ship needs a navigator, even if no one else wants to believe it. But three years ago I also caught the scent of a she-wolf in my shuttlebay. I knew, instantly, who she was. The soul Gaia chose for me. The other half of my soul. You weren’t here, you had already left, but when I saw your picture in your file, I knew it was you. You are my mate. Together we are complete.”

  His fingertips pressed gently to the soft underside of her jaw, swept forward, and she almost followed his caress, but froze. He’d manipulated everything, and for what? Because he’d seen her picture and fallen in love? Rainer wasn’t that sentimental.

  She pulled away, shaking as his words hit her like a tuning fork struck a note. “No. Mates don’t exist. You’re deluded or lying. I’m not sure which is worse.”

  “You recognized my scent when we met. You remembered me,” he said softly. “We passed in the darkness but we are back together again.”

  There hadn’t been a pair of wolves willing to claim they were mates since Generation Zero. Even if mates had once been real, they didn’t exist in the void. Gaia had abandoned them. She didn’t care what they did with their souls now.

  “I know you believe in Gaia,” Rainer said, voice steady and low, like it was an accusation, statement of fact, and secret they shared all at once. “I know you keep the old faith. Like I do.”

  She tried to push him away, get some room from his overwhelming scent and presence. “You’re lying to me. You can’t control me any other way so you’re appealing to my faith? You conniving bastard!”

  Rainer grabbed her hand and pushed it over his heart. “I risked everything to save you—”

  “You want a navigator, not a wife!”

  “You’re my mate. To them you’re my wife, but to me you are the other half of my soul.”

  “Don’t,” she snarled, even as her soul trembled. Or was that just her heartbeat? “No. No, we aren’t mates. Mates aren’t real. They never were, they never existed.”

  “Why are you lying? You don’t believe that. I can smell the lie, I can sense your lie. There were never any secrets between mates. You know my soul as surely as I know yours because we are the same soul.”

  “No! Gaia being real explains everything that happened with Earth and why Telemetry can’t image it. If She’s real, She doesn’t sit in Judgement. She’s already judged us. There’s no reward, there’s no River. Our souls are cursed to limbo. This is our Tartarus, and we are all Tantalus, cursed forever to feel the thirst of what we lost.”

  Rainer still didn’t release her hand. His thumb moved over the back of her knuckles. His smile took on a sharp edge. “So I’m the optimist in this relationship. What an interesting turn of events. We are mates. I can’t say we’re going home, but I do know we’re not staying here. And you are going to help me.”

  Go Away

  “I’m not going to help you with anything!” She wrenched her hand away. “You lied to me! You’ve let me think and feel horrible things instead of telling me the truth! I can never trust you! You’re a deluded zealot!”

  He withdrew, expression and scent nonplussed. “I thought you’d be happy to know that—”

  “Happy!” she screeched. She surged up—or tried to, and her addled body crumbled and flopped. Rainer grabbed her before she cracked her face on the low table. She pushed at him. “Get away from me!”

  “Calm down. You’re going to tear your aorta like this. You’ll be dead before you hit the ground.”

  “Fuck off!” But her vision was starting to dim, and her heart rate fluttered weirdly in her throat and a strange flopping started in her chest.

  Rainer deposited her back into the chair.

  She held a hand over her chest, trying to stop the strange spasming. She rasped, “You lied to me.”

  “I’m not arguing with you right now.”

  “Coward.” She whispered as cold, clammy sweat slid down her spine and between her breasts. “You lied to me. You put me through all this and expect me to be happy none of it was true? This is supposed to be better?”

  “I wasn’t sure if I could trust you,” Rainer said.

  “Oh, fuck your logic. You thought I was your mate, and you don’t think I can be trusted?”

  “How can I convince you to be furious later?”

  “Is there anything else you want to tell me since you’re unburdening your soul? Like you plan on leading a mutiny and expect I’ll go along with it?”

  “We kissed.”

  “We what?”

  “We kissed.”

  Her memories contained nothing, except one of them registered Rainer and the impression of rain and rock, even though she’d never experienced true rain, just the fake rain in the Biomes. “When?”

  “When I brought you back from Medical.”

  “I was incoherent, and you kissed me?”

  “You weren’t incoherent. You were a little loopy. Yes, I accept responsibility—”

  “Beg forgiveness, don’t ask permission?” she growled. “You think you’re my mate so you just get to put your hands on me and your tongue down my throat?”

  “It wasn’t like that. I should have realized before it even happened how far gone you were, but it took a few seconds. I told you to go to sleep, you laughed, and did.”

  “So we didn’t…”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “I have AGRS, and you thought, well, let’s just kiss her?”

  “It was a very confusing moment.”

  “So I have to be drugged out of my mind to turn you on. You don’t like your fuck-buddies coherent?”

  Rainer flinched and stiffened at the barb, and his scent turned to anger. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Of course, because you don’t tell me anything until the damage is done!”

  “You need to trust me.”

  “Why? Why the hell should I trust you? What reason have you given me to trust you? It turns out everything you ever told me was at best a half-truth and at worst an outright lie!”

  “Because we’re on the same side.”

  “Because you think we’re mates? Let me tell you something: even if that was true, being mates didn’t mean happiness. It didn’t mean that fabled love everyone talks about. It just meant Gaia mushed your souls together.”

  “We are on the same side. We want the same thing,” Rainer growled.

  She slumped back into the chair. “Go away.”

  “You can’t be alone and there’s no one else to look after you.”

  Of course there wasn’t. He’d taken her from her family and home. “Then stop talking to me.”

  After a moment to weigh his options, Rainer showed his usual cunning and did what she demanded.

  Next Century Romance

  “How long are you going to be angry?” he asked the next day after they’d had breakfast, whi
ch had been brought up to their quarters.

  Her eyes narrowed. There was no timetable on being angry. It wasn’t like she was sick and it’d take seven to ten days for her immune system to deal with the disease. Rainer had lied to her, he’d manipulated ship command, he’d put her in mortal danger, and now he expected her to be his willing accomplice while trying to leverage her faith against her and expect her to be relieved she knew “the truth” about what he’d done?

  “You are deluded,” she said.

  “I am quite sane. Feral, but sane.”

  “And if that’s true that’s why ferals are dangerous on these ships,” she shot back. “You all but abducted me and you absolutely trafficked me, I nearly got killed on my way here, I ended up beaten by Security, mortified by your Crèche, told I’m worth potato cuttings and ended up on the euth list, now have AGRS, and you’re some religious zealot and think there’s some version of reality where I stop being angry at you?”

  “I’m a realist, not a zealot. We’re going to die if we stay here. I’m not afraid to do what I have to do to save us. If that makes me a zealot, I guess I’m a zealot.”

  “I wonder if that’s what the Alpha on Sunderer said and this is how it started.”

  “If you have your concerns, go to Tsu.” Rainer didn’t so much as blink. “You have more than enough to have me pushed out the nearest airlock.”

  She grit her teeth.

  He approached, crowding into her space. She held her ground even as he leaned down and whispered, “But you won’t. Because you know I’m right. Because you’d have done the exact same thing for Ark if Ark had needed an Engineer like me. Because you’re the other half of my soul, and you know I am not nearly as crazy as you want to believe.”

  “Stop it,” she demanded.

  He stopped talking.

  “If you’re my mate you’re supposed to know when I’m sick, sad, miserable. You locked me in here. You embarrassed me. Instead of telling me the truth, you made it worse. From the moment I met you I’ve been your victim, but I told myself he’s in this shitty situation too, the difference being I asked for it because I was in the Pool, and he wasn’t. You made me think you were the victim of a depraved Crèche system, and you clearly are, but you’ve dragged me into it. Now you and I have to do counseling sessions and I can’t tell anyone the truth.”