Entanglement Bound: An Epic Space Opera Series (Entangled Universe Book 1)

by Mary E. Lowd

  "We're inside a sentient spaceship," Am-lei said. "I don't think we exactly have to worry about her straying off course. It's not like she's going to just throw herself into the nearest star."

  "Actually—" Irohann glanced nervously at Clarity.

  Clarity put a hand to her head. This could not be happening. "She might if she'd been goaded into running away from her home and then she heard her pilots arguing over which one of them has to pilot her, because none of them want to."

  Roscoe looked around the room wildly, at every corner, including the ceiling. His long ears flipped from one side to the other as his head turned. "Can she hear us in here? Can she hear us everywhere?"

  "I don't know," Clarity said. "But she doesn't have to be able to hear us in here. I'm pretty sure she can hear us on the bridge, and..."

  Clarity and Irohann looked away from each other guiltily.

  Roscoe let out a series of growly chirruping sounds, probably swearing a blue streak in his mother tongue. When he finally switched to Solanese, he said to Irohann, "Have you tried talking to her since then? Is that what you were doing in the cockpit?"

  "I tried," Irohann said. His triangular ears were as flat as they could get. "She's clamped up all of her sucker disks and won't commune with me. I tried typing into the computer console, but she blocked out everything I typed with... well, pictures of bunnies."

  "You're all a bunch of foolish, spoiled kits," Roscoe grumbled. "I'd be better off in a spaceship run by my grandbunnies."

  Clarity knew he thought of them all as whippersnappers.

  Roscoe hopped off the end of the bed, picked up his walking stick from the floor where he had stowed it, and hastened out of the room with a lilting hop. Am-lei unfolded her twiggy limbs and skittered after him, using all six limbs as legs. Irohann followed; his fluffy tail still didn't swish, but it hung loosely behind him, not tucked between his legs.

  "You may get your wish," Jeko said, startling Clarity who had been watching the rapid exodus from the room.

  "What do you mean?" Clarity asked. She gave the Woaoo doll clutched to her chest a little squeeze and stared at the fleshy, curved walls of the room. The dark purple looked the same, but the constellations of bioluminescence seemed less brightly pink. The light had grown paler, pallid, more like a bloody, dull red.

  "Roscoe's stepped up," Jeko said. "Perhaps you can get off this freight train of disaster at Leionaia with Lee-a-lei and me."

  "Right," Clarity agreed. That was what she wanted. Cassie was not her problem; she'd promised to make sure she was safe. But if a nice grandfather lapine like Roscoe was taking over, then Clarity had played her part.

  Clarity sat down on the foot of the bed where Roscoe had been. The patchwork quilt was still warm. She set down the Woaoo doll beside her, carefully arranging so it sat nicely on the bed. Its little glass eyes stared up at her, charming, sweet, and hollow. "What do you know about Leionaia?" she asked. Maybe she could find a lepidopteran toy while they were there, begin building her collection again.

  She wasn't sure they'd mean as much without Irohann ribbing her about each and every one as she bought them. Maybe she'd get a Heffen doll for her new collection. Replace him with a little orange ball of fluff with shiny glass eyes.

  22 Arriving in Leionaia System

  Clarity fell asleep on the bed in Jeko and Am-lei's room, listening to Jeko tell her about Lee-a-lei as a baby caterpillar. When she woke up, she'd been tucked into bed with the patchwork quilt pulled up neatly to her chin. She had a vague dream-like memory of Jeko pulling the blanket up with her nose. The elephantine lady seemed like a wonderful mother.

  Clarity was kind of old for a mother to tuck her in, but she wouldn't turn down a scrap of warmth and kindness. Not today. She had no pride left to protect. She was a middle-aged woman who'd spent her life building a house of glass. And she'd watched all of the elegant spires and towers ground down to powder. Nothing left.

  Clarity was strangely touched to notice Jeko had left her alone in a room with the cargo crate holding little Lee-a-lei in her chrysalis. Even if the crate was still locked. The way Jeko had acted before, Clarity wouldn't have been surprised if the elephantine woman had hauled the crate out of the room and hidden it rather than leave it alone with someone other than her or Am-lei.

  Clarity pulled the patchwork quilt over her head, slipped her pocket computer out, and scrolled through the information while hiding under the covers. Like adults do, at least, when they're having the worst day. At this point, it was more like the worst week, she supposed.

  When Clarity reached the bottom of the file containing all of the inscrutable physics equations and data for Am-lei, she found a surprise. A note from Wisper: "I've included an encrypted code in this message; forward it to any instance of myself—basically, any computer associated with a Wespirtech base—and you'll receive your original agreed upon payment, in double."

  That was all. But it was enough to lift Clarity's spirits a little. She had a reason to get up out of bed. Double the original payment meant 900,000 credits. Combined with the fact that Irohann had been hiding their money—meaning there was more of it than she'd thought—she would definitely have enough to buy a new spaceship. A starhopper easily. Possibly even another Solar III Class vessel, if she could find a good deal on a used one.

  Clarity was going to do exactly what Jeko said—get off this freight train of disaster and buy herself a new home.

  Clarity pushed back the patchwork quilt, swung her feet out of the bed, and set off to the scullery. She thought about trying to program the food synthesizer to make a version of the pancake loaf she'd designed back on The Serendipity, but it didn't seem worth the trouble. She wouldn't be staying here long enough to reap the benefits of programming in a complicated recipe, so she synthesized a simple mix of complex carbohydrates, sugars, and proteins—one of the default settings that produced a colorless slurry in a bowl. It tasted okay though. Sweet. Somewhere between buttered grits and cinnamon oatmeal.

  While she was eating, Clarity watched the view on the large viewscreen: stars streamed by, silver lines streaking across the blackness. Cassie and Roscoe must still be jumping between stars. Clarity wondered how many jumps they'd done; or maybe, it was only one, but she was taking it slower. Come to think of it, Clarity wasn't sure how much time had passed during her interstellar jump while bonded to Cassie. She'd been so overwhelmed by the sensation of deep space flowing over her body like water, she hadn't exactly been checking the clock.

  As Clarity returned her emptied bowl to the food synthesizer, she noticed the quiet buzz of Mazillion mixed in with the orchestral sounds of Cassie's body all around. She tilted her head, listening closely, and realized the sound was coming from near the udder-like organs. She went over to look more closely and found Mazillion had spread out inside of a trough-like indentation along the wall, under the udder-like organs. Occasionally, a few of Mazillion's bodies separated from the rest, flew up to the udders and milked them, letting the golden liquid drip down on the rest of their bodies.

  "You're already on the mend," Clarity said. There had to be three times as many insectile bodies clustered in the trough, drinking Cassie's milk, as there had been when Mazillion squeezed into Clarity's spacesuit with her. "Are you... feeling better?" She wasn't sure she was asking the right question. But she couldn't think of a better one.

  Mazillion's buzz didn't change, but the surface of their swarm body reconfigured, reshaping itself until Clarity's own face reflected in folds and dimples of its surface. Clarity wasn't sure what that meant, but it seemed friendly.

  "Will you be getting off at Leionaia with Jeko and me?" Clarity asked. "I think your part in this adventure is done."

  "Not done," Mazillion said. The shape of Clarity's face disappeared in the roiling surface of insectile bodies. "See through to end."

  Clarity felt rebuffed, but she said, "Good for you. Roscoe and Am-lei could probably use someone with your resilience and commitment keeping an eye on
them." Clarity wanted to say more, perhaps something about how it had been good working together. But it hadn't been. It had been awful. If she could go back and never meet anyone on this ship, she would. She supposed, the universe might have ended suddenly around her. If it were sudden enough, she might have never known about it.

  Clarity thought she'd like to die in a bar with a fancy drink in her hand—something sweet and complicated with layers of color and multiple textures; something the bartender had to spend minutes whipping up before it was ready for the tiny umbrella on the top. And she'd like to have a box full of new toys in front of her.

  Maybe it was less the drink and the toys that were appealing... and more the idea of not worrying any more.

  Clarity left the scullery and headed to the cockpit, hoping to find out how much of the voyage to Leionaia was left. But she didn't make it far. She collapsed in the middle of one of the vein-like halls, doubled over by the hysterical sobs wracking her body.

  She couldn't buy a new spaceship alone. She didn't want to get a fancy drink in a bar or buy new dolls alone either. She hadn't been away from Irohann in thirty-odd years. She didn't know who she'd even be without him.

  And yet, when Irohann found her, still crying in the hall, curled up against Cassie's bioluminescent flesh, she wouldn't talk to him. Couldn't. She couldn't risk him hurting her again, and she wouldn't even look at his face. But she couldn't help finding a sad comfort in looking at his hind paws on the floor with their tufts of orange fur between each of the toes. His husky voice was comforting too, but she refused to listen to the words. Instead, she stared at his feet and cried.

  Irohann brought his muzzle close to her face, and the feel of his warm breath was delicious against her cheek, soothing as it rustled her hair. But she turned away, burying her face against her knees. She felt Iroh's paw on her back, the steady press of his paw pads and the light touch of blunted claw tips. She wrestled internally between letting herself enjoy the comforting weight and forcing him to reckon with how much he'd hurt her. Finally, she brought herself to jerk her shoulder, knocking his paw away.

  Iroh sat down in the hallway beside her. She felt his presence, his warmth. The ends of his long fur brushed the bare parts of her arm and the edge of her ear. It tickled on her ear, and she turned her head farther away. She scooched a few inches down the hall, never looking at him. He respected her space and stayed where he was.

  They sat in silence except for her occasional sobs, mostly diminished down to shaky whimpers and hiccoughed gulps of air. Irohann had given up on talking to her. He let her cry herself out. She wanted to take comfort from his presence, but she couldn't. Didn't dare. He'd made his position clear—he was more afraid of a distant evil queen, an under-the-bed-bogeyman, than he was attached to traveling with her. He was ready to throw her and The Serendipity aside at a moment's notice. He could not be relied upon.

  Another set of footsteps came down the hall, soft against the spongey floor but heavy. Clarity peeked a glance and saw the trailing calico cotton folds of Jeko's dress.

  "She won't talk to me," Irohann said.

  Something touched Clarity’s head softly. She looked up to see the wrinkly gray tip of Jeko's nose, petting her hair softly; the rest of the nose broadened and coiled away up to a face looking down at Clarity with wise, gentle eyes.

  "You were such a generous host for my family on your spaceship," Jeko said. She smoothed out Clarity's green hair with her nose, arranging the locks around her tense, hunched shoulders.

  Clarity tried to remember all the way back to the pancake dinner on The Serendipity, and the other meals she and Irohann had prepared for Jeko and Am-lei. Mostly though, she remembered Jeko's nose coiled around her throat, threatening to squeeze the life out of her if she didn't help rescue the bio-matter cargo crate from The Serendipity's death throes. She didn't feel like she'd been a good host. She'd tried to leave Jeko's daughter to die.

  "I would like to invite you," Jeko said, nose tip now resting gently on Clarity's shoulder, "to join us for my daughter's Wing Day celebration."

  "Wing Day?" Irohann asked. Then a moment later, he added, "Daughter? Are we going to Leionaia to meet your daughter?"

  "My daughter is still in her chrysalis in the bio-matter crate I've been guarding," Jeko said. "But she will emerge soon."

  "You missed that conversation," Clarity said, trying not to blubber up the words with the remnants of her tears. She rubbed the streaks of tears off of her cheeks with a fist. "You know, while you were moping over the consequences of your own bad behavior." She couldn't resist adding the hissed word, "Traitor." And even so, talking to him—acknowledging him at all—felt a little too close to forgiving him.

  "I wondered what that—" Irohann cut himself off. Clarity looked over to see him watching Jeko with a measured gaze. "I mean, when I saw the crate open earlier, I didn't realize that was a chrysalis hanging inside."

  "Most beautiful thing I've ever seen." Jeko trumpeted like a proud herald, celebrating the coming of her daughter's butterfly form.

  "She is beautiful," Clarity agreed. "I'd love to come." She'd rather live Jeko's life today than her own, so if Jeko was offering, then Clarity was borrowing. Vicarious experiences were so much better than the sadness soaking through her whole body.

  "You're invited too," Jeko said to Irohann.

  The canid nodded. He didn't answer. His answer, of course, depended on whether Clarity would let him come.

  "Well, let me know," Jeko said, swinging her nose with a lightness Clarity hadn't seen in the elephantine woman before. She was truly excited to have her daughter returning to her soon, albeit in a new shape. "I'm going to begin hauling Lee-a-lei's crate down to the airlock."

  "Are we that close to Leionaia?" Clarity asked, wishing there were windows inside of Cassie instead of just the occasional viewscreen. Though she supposed most spaceships didn't have windows in their halls.

  "We entered the system a few minutes ago," Jeko said, already walking away. "You can see the planet on the cockpit viewscreens."

  "Also a lot of bunnies, I'd hazard," Irohann said wryly.

  "No bunnies," Jeko said from down the hall. She didn't turn around. "Just the planet."

  Clarity felt one of the ice chips in her soul thaw a little. If Cassie wasn't showing pictures of bunnies anymore, then maybe she'd finally found what she was looking for by communing with Roscoe. If she had a pilot who truly connected with her, then she didn't need to frantically display pictures of her favorite animal, pleading for dopamine hits from the scientists training her or attention from the cowboys who'd recklessly stolen her.

  If Clarity was going to be a proper cowboy, like in the Ancient Earth movies she'd seen growing up, she'd need a big hat. But a hat would cover her green hair, and it wouldn't soak up sunlight. Clarity reached a hand up to her shoulder and coiled a lock of her hair between two fingers. She wondered if she'd gotten her hair gene-modded to photosynthesize because it made her more like the alien plant queen whom Irohann had been obsessed with for all these years. She'd never wondered that before.

  Now she wondered if he'd wondered about it. She didn't want to ask. She didn't want to know. He could have his phantom Doraspian queen to haunt his nightmares. Clarity was switching teams; she was going to pretend to be part of Jeko's family today. And when the mission was all over, maybe she could give Jeko and Am-lei—and their daughter, she remembered as an afterthought—a ride back to Crossroads Station in The Serendipity II.

  Oh, that name would never do. She needed a new name, a name meaning the opposite of serendipity, for her next ship. Her ship without Irohann.

  Now that Jeko was all the way down the twisting hall, out of hearing range even with her large, flappy ears, Irohann leaned over and whispered in Clarity's ear, "I didn't know that was a chrysalis. When I saw it, I thought it was some kind of experimental organ or some type of vat-grown meat blob. Though I didn't understand why two vegetarian species would have something like that." Irohann leaned h
is head back, looking up at the constellations of bioluminescent sparkles on the ceiling. "It was the ugliest thing I'd ever seen."

  Clarity couldn't help quirking a smile, amused in spite of herself at the memory of Irohann tripping over himself to not reveal what he really thought of Jeko's chrysalis daughter.

  Irohann picked up on her amusement and bumped his fluffy shoulder against hers. "Did you really think that hanging blob of veins was beautiful?"

  "Maybe you had to look at it closer up," Clarity said. "I could see the shape of her wings, all folded up, inside of there." She remembered her roommate's wings from so long ago—like living sheets of stained glass. "Maybe it helps that I've seen lepidopteran wings before. Remember when we first met?"

  Clarity turned to look at Irohann, finally risking looking into his soulful brown eyes.

  "Like yesterday," he said.

  Clarity snorted. "Right, sure." Sarcasm was a tough habit to break. "But remember when we stayed up all night, talking in my quarters? I had a roommate who came by."

  The red and orange fur on the bridge of Irohann's muzzle, just between his eyes, rumpled in concentration. "Maybe," he said. "With wings?"

  "Giant wings." Clarity held her arms out broadly, showing how the wings had been as wide as her entire arm span. "Yellow and blue and gold and purple... All different shades, and all of it a little translucent, so the light could fall through and leave pools of color on the floor. Like stained glass." It had been so many years. She wasn't sure how much she was making up and how much was a true memory. She supposed she'd find out soon enough at Little Lee-a-lei's Wing Day celebration.

  It felt like the perfect end-cap to her relationship with Irohann. Butterfly at the beginning; butterflies at the end. "You should come see the Wing Day thing," Clarity said. "Jeko invited you too. It's an adventure." One last adventure.

  "Sure," Irohann said. "Hey, didn't your roommate's wings constantly knock things over? Always getting in the way?"