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

by Mary E. Lowd

  "I assume that's why the lepidopterans traditionally cut them off," Clarity said. "Like Am-lei."

  Irohann nodded. Then he stood up and held out a paw, offering to help Clarity up. Instead, she slid her back up along Cassie's wall, getting up on her own. She'd be doing a lot of things on her own if she couldn't find a replacement for Irohann. She didn't suppose simply being present at Jeko and Am-lei's daughter's Wing Day would make her eligible to become a godmother. Still, it would be some sort of special bond. If she went back to Crossroads Station for a while, she could forge connections there. Without Irohann always fearing he'd be found, maybe she could settle into one place for a while.

  Never mind that she'd loved running at full speed across the universe as much as he had. Settling down would be a nice change. Surely, it would.

  Clarity was having trouble believing herself. Irohann hadn't simply broken her trust in him—he'd broken her trust in herself, since she'd let herself be betrayed by him.

  Clarity led the way to the cockpit, Irohann following docilely behind. He hadn't figured out their relationship was over. At least, she didn't think so.

  In the cockpit, Am-lei was working at the computer station, typing with three talons, standing on the other three. Roscoe was in the captain's chair; he fit perfectly, and Cassie's dangling sucker disks were kissed up to his skull. The bank of viewscreens showed a cheerfully bright, yellow-orange sun in the distance; closer to them were a small cluster of worlds—globes of green and blue, orbiting each other in a tangle.

  As Clarity stared at the cluster of planets, she decided the one with the most complicated lacing of ivory clouds looked the largest; that one had to be Leionaia, and the others were all moons. Very large moons. Five of them, Clarity counted, all covered with sapphire oceans and emerald continents. This was a beautiful planetary system.

  "I can't believe we've never been here before," Irohann breathed. "I thought we'd been everywhere this close in to Crossroads Station."

  Am-lei said, without turning away from the computer console, "I'm told my people like their privacy. They've asked to be kept off of the star maps whenever the system is surveyed. So, anyone can tell there are planets here by observing the light from the system, but they're not recorded as habitable or inhabited on any of the charts."

  "A species can do that?" Clarity asked.

  "Apparently," Irohann said.

  "I believe it's involved no small amount of bribery," Am-lei said.

  As Cassie continued to fly toward Leionaia, a space station like a smaller version of Crossroads Station—wheels within wheels, all rotating—came into view from behind one of the smaller blue-and-green moons. With all of the diversity in the universe, it always amazed Clarity to see the way some things still stayed relatively universal. If a species wanted gravity in outer space and hadn't developed the technology for artificial gravity generators yet, then spinning wheel stations were the way to go.

  Of course, some species didn't care about having gravity on their space stations. One of the most beautiful stations Clarity had ever visited had been built and was run by a species of sentient icthyioids. Their whole station was filled with water, and aliens like Clarity—gas-breathers—had to wear oxygen masks inside of it. From the outside, it looked like a glistening bead of dew, glowing and floating in space.

  "Remember the first time we visited Ob'glaung?" Clarity asked Irohann.

  The canid nodded, silently absorbed in the view on Cassie's bank of viewscreens.

  "It's like a present, waiting to be opened," Clarity said, dreamlike. "Beautiful, full of promise, but you really can't know what it's like on the inside until you... open it."

  The closer Cassie flew to the cluster of Leionaia and its moons, the smaller satellites became visible, suspended in the space between them. Little chunks of metal, tiny pockets of atmosphere encased in armor, caught in a moment of their complicated orbits. On a large timescale, the ships and tiny stations were zipping between the atmosphere-covered worlds, all in a complex dance of gravitational pulls. In the moment, only a glimpse of the arcs of their orbits could be seen. Like clouds floating across the sky—moving fast enough you see the changes but slow enough you barely notice them happening.

  The wheel station on Cassie's bank of viewscreens grew until it filled the entire view, and the blue-and-green moons surrounded them on all sides. Then the wheel station slid off to the side as Cassie edged up to one of the docking berths.

  Roscoe shook his head, flailing his long ears, and the hanging sucker disks flew away from his head and withdrew upward. Their cords coiled up in tangles under the tips of the spiraling spikes. Clarity hadn't known they could do that.

  The external view of Leionaia with its lace-like covering of clouds disappeared from half of Cassie's viewscreens, replaced with images and videos of fluttering butterflies, a riot of orange, black, and yellow. Clarity recognized a few species from Ancient Earth—monarch, swallowtail, painted lady. But many of them seemed to be extraterrestrial species.

  Roscoe hopped out of his captain's chair and walked up to the bank of screens, where he'd left his walking stick leaned against the wall. The lapine man said to Am-lei, "The Leionaia System doesn't seem to have a process for accepting guests from other star systems, but Lo'riana station has agreed to allow us to berth Cassie here."

  "Will you be staying aboard?" Am-lei asked.

  "Actually, Cassie has asked me to accept your invitation to Lee-a-lei's Wing Day celebration," Roscoe said. "She wants me to bring back first-hand memories of the cotillion dance to share with her."

  Am-lei's proboscis coiled in a skew, like a corkscrew, in a way that might have been a smile. The images of butterflies and the lacy surface of Leionaia reflected in the many facets of her disco ball eyes. Flashes of frenetic color, alternating with placid snowy lace. "Jeko will be so glad," Am-lei said.

  "And you?" Roscoe asked.

  Am-lei rearranged her six twiggy limbs, stepping away from the computer console. Her antennae lowered. "And me, of course. I'm just so..." Her antennae waggled, lowering even farther. "I don't know how to feel. I keep remembering my own Wing Day party on Crossroads Station. It was so long ago, only a month or so after I first met Jeko. We were children ourselves then. I think that's when she fell in love with me—when she saw me, emerged from my chrysalis, resplendent with wings I haven't worn since that very day." Am-lei crossed four of her twiggy limbs tightly over her thorax. "I'm sorry. It's overwhelming. I don't mean to be so open."

  Roscoe's fuzzy face spread in a smile. "We were both hijacked from our lives by a crazy universe-destroying—or maybe universe-saving—robot. We're family now; you can tell me anything."

  Clarity’s brow creased as she watched this moment of tenderness between two such disparate aliens. Though no more disparate than Am-lei and her wife, Jeko. Clarity wondered if, by this argument, she counted as family too. Her life had been hijacked. But she had sided with Wisper earlier than either Roscoe or Am-lei. Perhaps this club was smaller, too private to include her. She had played the role of antagonist, trying to force them to honor their contracts with Wisper, and enabler, bringing Wisper to each of them in the first place.

  Clarity glanced around the cockpit until she saw a ridge in the wall between the mouths of two of the vein-like hallways; it probably opened into the vesicle-like closet where Irohann had allegedly stowed Wisper's body. Clarity wondered if she should try to take the body with her, possibly return it to Maradia. If Wisper hadn't arranged to pay her properly for the work she'd done, then she would probably have tried to sell it. With Wisper's payment—assuming the payment went through—she wouldn't need to.

  And she didn't especially care for the idea of dragging an awkward, bulky, metal statue of a dead body around Leionaia System with her. She would leave Wisper here for now. And she did not need to see her.

  "Will Cassie be okay here alone?" Clarity asked.

  Roscoe gave her a look, a glare really, making it perfectly clear he didn't f
eel like she had the right to worry about Cassie after the way she and Irohann had treated the little starwhal. Even so, he answered her question: "Cassie knows she's one of my grandbunnies now. I'll be coming back to her. And she was without a pilot for most of her life until our lot kidnapped her. Besides, she's not staying here. She's going to go explore the asteroid belt around a gas giant we passed further out in the system. I can call her by radio when we're ready to be picked up."

  Clarity felt properly rebuked. She was growing hardened to the feeling though. "I'm glad Cassie has you now," she said, trying to sound gracious. She was afraid it came out snarky instead, as if she were still complaining about how long it took Roscoe to come around to fulfilling his role in this mission.

  The lapine man didn't seem bothered though. He hopped by, one paw on his walking stick. With the other paw, he reached out and took Clarity's hand, gave it a squeeze. His fur was shorter but silkier than Irohann's. "She's not mad at you," he said. "Disappointed, hurt. But not mad."

  Then the lapine man gave Irohann a look, and the canid's tail started to swish, hesitantly, expectantly behind him. Irohann clearly hoped Roscoe had kind words from Cassie for him as well, absolution for not wanting her and for fighting in front of her. But Roscoe shook his head. "She doesn't know what to make of you, Irohann," Roscoe said. "Nor do I."

  The lapine man hopped on into the vein-like hallway leading to the airlock. Am-lei skittered after him on six twiggy legs with her abdomen, wrapped in its shimmery cloth, swinging behind her.

  23 Improvising Through a New Environment

  Clarity stepped onto Lo'riana Station ready to start a new life.

  Lo'riana Station might look similar to Crossroads Station from the outside, but on the inside, it was totally different. The wheels of Crossroads Station were divided up into floors. If you'd cut one of the curving tubes in half, the cross-section would look like a layer cake with one floor on top of another. Not Lo'riana Station. The lepidopterans who'd built it had gone for an entirely open layout. No floors divided the interior of Lo'riana's wheels into layers; instead the open space was interlaced with narrow walkways attached to small platforms.

  As soon as Clarity stepped out of Cassie's pinkly bioluminescent airlock, she looked up to see ladders and stairways, long poles with fluttering sashes of color hanging from them, and lepidopterans like giant praying mantises clambering everywhere. She was on the inside of a hive. She was at the bottom of a painting by M.C. Escher, like the one where giant ants crawled along a lattice-work Mobius strip. The sight was dizzying. She'd never seen anything like it before, and given all of her years traveling the universe, that was saying something.

  Beside her, Irohann's muzzle split into a wide grin, and his tail swished. The canid did love adventure. It made Clarity's heart ache to step away from him rather than to lean close and whisper something, anything about what they were seeing into his triangular ear. On her other side, Roscoe shifted his hold on his walking stick nervously, possibly trying to work out how much trouble he'd have navigating the labyrinthine walkways above them.

  Am-lei shifted nervously too; her antennae kept waving in wider and wider circles. This was her home, at some primal level, yet she'd never been here before. For her this was more than an adventure—it was a homecoming, complete with all the emotional risks involved. Her elephantine wife held a heavy gray-skinned hand out toward her, but Jeko didn't let go of her hold on the handle of their cylindrical bio-matter crate even to comfort her clearly discombobulated wife.

  Mazillion had chosen not to join the others as they ventured out into Lo'riana station. Clarity wasn't sure whether Jeko had invited them to Lee-a-lei's Wing Day celebration with the others. But Clarity had made a point of checking on the swarm being before leaving the ship, and Mazillion had insisted they were still too busy recovering, although hey'd looked like they were back to their full size to Clarity. Whatever was in Cassie's milk was clearly good for them.

  Clarity had her duffle bag over her shoulder with her spacesuit stuffed inside of it. Wherever you go in space, it's always safest to bring your own spacesuit. She'd changed into a different pair of clothes from the limited options in her duffle bag. She wanted to buy new clothes soon but wasn't sure she'd have much luck shopping in Leionaia System. She didn't think any of the clothes here would fit her.

  As far as Clarity could see, other than her own band of misfits, the only people in sight on this station—in any direction, all around, straight up, or any angle in between—were lepidopterans. Like Am-lei, they each had six long, twiggy limbs, and their abdomens were swathed in cloth. Though unlike Am-lei, all the wingless butterflies here seemed to have chosen to make up for the removal of their vestigial wings by wearing bright, garish colors. Reds and oranges, blues and purples, greens and pinks. Am-lei was the only lepidopteran Clarity saw dressed in a somber, serious blackish-gray. She looked like she was dressed for a funeral, not her daughter's Wing Day celebration.

  Although, for all Clarity knew, once they got to the Wing Day celebration, all the adults there would be dressed like Am-lei. Dark and serious. Perhaps a Wing Day party was a serious, somber affair. Clarity had to admit, she felt a flutter of excitement and anticipation—dare she think it? like butterflies in her stomach—trying to imagine the celebration to come. There was an impenetrability to the very near future right now—she couldn't imagine it. She couldn't have imagined the inside of this space station, and she couldn't imagine Lee-a-lei's Wing Day celebration either. She didn't know what to expect, and for a seasoned traveler like her, that was exciting.

  Jeko said, "We're going to go lease a flight down to the planet." Her voice was a brassy tuba in a station full of woodwinds. "I know you all would like to explore—" She glanced with tiny eyes at Irohann, then at Clarity. Roscoe didn't actually look like he wanted to explore. He was looking older and more crotchety right now than Clarity had seen him look before. "—but my baby here's about ready to crack." She stroked the side of the bio-matter cylinder with one of her heavy hands. Her nose was still twisted tightly around one of the handles. The whole crate was hovering slightly; its anti-grav generators were fully engaged. "So you can all explore all you want later, but if you're coming to Lee-a-lei's party, then you need to come with us now."

  "Lead the way," Roscoe said with a gallant bow.

  Now it was Jeko's turn to look nervous. She glanced at Am-lei whose antennae were still whirling with overwhelm. "Honey-sticks, can you read any of the signs here? I know you've been studying some of the lepidopteran languages..."

  "I thought I was..." Am-lei said. "Maybe they were the wrong ones?"

  Clarity sighed and pulled her pocket computer out. "You guys don't travel enough." She held the slip of a computer up and aimed it at one of the fluttering pennants of cloth, a wide orange one with swirling patterns of circles dyed on it in a crisp, clear black. After a few moments, the screen showed, NO TRANSLATION. Clarity aimed the tiny computer at several more pennants with similar patterns on them and got the same result.

  Finally, Am-lei pointed at a green sash of cloth that hung longer than wide and was decorated with wavy, undulating lines like ocean waves in a pale shade of blue. She said, "Try that one. I think the ones you've been looking at are only decorative—no writing, just pretty patterns."

  To Clarity's eyes, the blue lines on bright green were hard to even see, but when she aimed her pocket computer at it, a translation popped up on the screen.

  Am-lei's antennae bent forward in interest. "Does your computer have lepidopteran languages in it?"

  "No," Clarity said. "At least, I don't think so. I think it's just a very clever algorithm. And there's a good chance the translations will be wrong. Well, partly wrong. But it's better than nothing."

  By pointing her pocket computer at enough of the hanging pennants, Clarity was able to find signs leading to a shuttle that made regular trips down to Leionaia's surface. To Roscoe's huge relief, they didn't have to venture upward into the lattice-network of
stairs and ladders. All of the ships docked at Lo'riana Station were berthed along the outer edge of the outermost wheel—or in terms of the inside of the wheel, along the bottom where the centripetal force mimicking gravity pulled down most strongly. Way up at the center of the wheel, Clarity saw lepidopterans nearly flying, wingless but also free from all but the weakest faux gravity.

  Am-lei used her own pocket computer to aid her in talking to the pilot of the shuttle—a lepidopteran dressed in brilliant shades of fuchsia and raspberry—to secure passage for the group of them down to Leionaia. Throughout the stilted, difficult conversation, Am-lei kept looking at Jeko, as if wanting her wife to rescue her, but the lepidopteran shuttle pilot clearly expected to talk to her, another lepidopteran, and not a wrinkly gray mammal unlike any sentient creature he'd seen before.

  As soon as they were inside the shuttle and the bio-matter crate was safely secured, Jeko said softly to Am-lei, "You're doing fine."

  "I feel like an idiot," Am-lei replied, a piccolo squeak from her tightly coiled proboscis. She was struggling with all four of her upper talons, trying to untangle the complicated webbing of seatbelts that all of the other lepidopterans on the flight were already snuggly suspended in. They hung from the ceiling of the craft like flies caught in a spider web.

  Clarity was having trouble with the webbing of seatbelts herself—there were so many different straps! More than seemed to match her modest number of limbs. However, Jeko already had her own elephantine bulk hanging gracefully and was using her long nose to help settle Roscoe into the webbing. Irohann had tangled himself up nicely and spread his arms wide like he was flying. Clarity shrugged his paws away when he tried to help her. Finally, she figured out a configuration that felt relatively secure on her own. A few of the straps cut uncomfortably across her belly. She supposed they were designed for cradling harder thoraxes than her own fleshy middle.