by Huss, JA
This is the truth for everyone, not just me. I’m just better at it than most.
Everything that happened back on Harem Station before Luck and Nyleena walked us through the spin node was predetermined.
Not just by me. ALCOR played a part and so did Crux.
But this—what Valor and I are doing now? This is all me.
“Where are we?” Valor asks.
One thing I kinda like about Valor? He’s curious about weird shit the way I am. If this were Luck he’d be bellowing about plans, or demanding answers. Valor doesn’t demand much. He’s patient, too. Like Crux.
“Tray,” Valor says. “Where the fuck are we? I thought Booty was picking us up? Why are we working on this ship? What are you doing?”
But there’s a limit to that patience. He doesn’t sound panicked yet. But he’s definitely starting to get worried.
“Help me with this, will you, please?” I point to the tool I need with the tool I have, and meet his eyes.
“Why?” Valor asks, still calm. No squeak of fear like he used to have when he was young. Valor was always second-guessing himself growing up. That’s why he latched on to Luck. Luck has all the confidence Valor should have, but didn’t back then. Luck has more confidence than he deserves, actually. But they don’t call him Luck for nothing. Sometimes you can win a battle on conviction alone.
I figured out this dynamic between Luck and Valor early. Maybe even before we escaped from Wayward Station. But honestly, I wasn’t paying much attention to anyone back then. I was wrapped up in my own little world with my father. It was a world dominated by computers, and the station AI, and technology. It was actually his little world. I was just a guest there until he took me into cryogenetics the week before we made our great escape and changed the course of my life forever.
“Because I’ve changed the plan,” I tell Valor.
Valor looks around at the docking bay where we’re now standing. This wasn’t where we landed after walking through the spin node. We were up in the main engineering hub. And that first walk down to the docking bays was dark, and quiet, and creepy as fuck. Everything was frozen. Both in time and literally. There was a layer of ice crystals covering everything and an air of wrongness to this place. Something invisible but solid all the same.
Like power, I think. You can’t see power, you just know it’s there.
We weren’t wearing suits so we were cold and shivering, our breath blasting into the air as puffs of steam, our teeth chattering and our muscles quivering.
Getting heat was our first priority. It wasn’t too difficult. Does anyone really think that ALCOR trained us all how to fix shit back when we were kids because he wanted us to have job skills?
It’s kind of funny when I say it like that.
But actually not very funny.
ALCOR is many things, but innocent isn’t one of them. I need to remember that. I cannot let myself forget that. He’s not innocent. He planned this shit. Probably all of it. Probably this very moment I’m in right now.
“Stop it,” I mutter to myself. Because I think about that shit way too much. The power of ALCOR can be debilitating if you dwell on it too much. I dwell on pretty much everything else though. Constantly. My mind can’t help it. I run all the scenarios through simulations, trying to pick the exact way forward to make sure me and mine get off this ride alive.
“What?” Valor asks.
I ignore Valor. It’s been my standard response to his questions since we walked through the spin node and came out on this station. Besides, I wasn’t even talking to him. Just muttering to myself.
I’ve got a pretty good handle on the situation but here’s the thing I don’t really understand about myself. Even after running all the scenarios though my obscenely powerful brain.
My father.
Because try as I might to fit ALCOR into the whole plan of how I was made, none of it adds up. ALCOR didn’t have anything to do with what my father did to me back on Wayward Station when I was a kid.
I wish that wasn’t true. Not because I don’t like what I am—I do like what I am. And not because I’m mad at my father for changing me without my permission, because honestly, my father was a pretty good guy, all things considered. I trusted him back then and if he appeared in front of me right now, I’d still trust him.
But there’s a crack in my theory about ALCOR because of this little inconsistency and it bothers me to the point of distraction.
I’m missing something. I know it. It’s like that creepy feeling of wrongness on this station or the idea of power.
I can feel this missing something. I know it’s there.
“Tray,” Valor says with practiced patience. “Can you just fucking talk to me?”
Before Valor and I became close a few months ago I saw him exactly the same way I saw Luck. They are both a little too handsome. A little too capable. A little too good at pretty much everything.
I’m not talking good at salvaging the way Jimmy is good at liberating bots, or Serpint is good at hunting down Cygnian princesses, or I’m good at computer code and hacking. It’s like Luck and Valor excel at everything.
They are easy to talk to. People like them. They walk through life in command of shit. People look at them and see everything at once—a challenge in their eyes, an easy greeting on their tongues, a relationship waiting to be forged, and a deal ready to be made.
They are both problem-solvers. I’d go so far as to call them fixers.
Which is good for me. It means that Valor is amicable and easygoing.
“I’m still working on it,” I answer.
“Still working on what?”
I stop what I’m doing and point up at the ship with the tool I’m holding. Like… duh. Then go back to work and my own internal thoughts.
Heat is on in the station and the place is warming. Slightly. Life support was working when we arrived but the air was a little thin for a while, so we found suits and wore those until it all evened out. But right now it’s breathable except in the docking bays, unless you’ve got them inside an airlock like this one.
Still, it’s cold. Like space. This makes me think of ALCOR. Out there spinning around that gate all alone. Not that I care that he’s alone, but I don’t like the cold. And space is practically the definition of cold. To me the association is always there. Cold and ALCOR.
“So what’s the new plan?” Valor asks.
He knows I’ve been lying to him. At the very least, he feels it.
“Do you trust me?” I ask him in a flat voice.
“No,” he says.
“Well.” I look around. He looks around. There is nothing left if he has no trust. Because even if he doesn’t realize where we’re at, he feels it. “You do not appear to have much choice, Valor.”
“Yeah, I get that. So here’s my next question. And I want a fucking answer.”
“What is it?”
“Do you trust me?”
I smile at that. I cannot even remember the last time someone has made me smile. “Yes,” I say.
He nods. Pauses. Then he says, “OK.”
And he hands me the tool.
It doesn’t matter how long it takes to fix the ship I’m working on, it must be fixed. And besides, time isn’t of any concern to us at this point. Valor doesn’t know where we’re at, but I do. I’m not talking about what this station is, I’m talking about where and when this station is.
Though the ‘what’ is also pretty mind-blowing.
The point is, time doesn’t really exist here so we have plenty of it.
So we work. And we eat. There were rations stored inside the ship. Not anything tasty like we’ve become accustomed to all these years living in luxury on Harem. But it will sustain us.
And there’s a water generator. It wasn’t working when we arrived and the design is considered ancient. But we know this design. We’ve been working on ships like this since we were teenagers.
I don’t think Valor understands how
smart and important he is and I’ve always liked that about him. He’s not cocky like Luck, or Jimmy, or Serpint. And right now he’s not confident like them, either. Beauty’s death shook him to his core. Which is a good thing for me because if he was still attached to that life he, and Luck, and Beauty made for themselves out there as salvagers, he wouldn’t be here with me right now.
And I need him.
I can’t explain why I need him. Not exactly. I just know that I do.
Valor is crucial to my plans.
Without Valor I will fail.
Eventually the ship is fixed.
Valor and I don’t talk much as we walk the empty station gathering up supplies. In fact, we go whole spins without talking.
Every once in a while he’ll ask me how much time has passed but I always give him the same answer. “Time isn’t of any concern to us now.”
So he stops asking.
Once we’re all supplied and the ship is working we spend all our time inside it. The life support system is chugging along just fine. The heat is circulating, the autocook is cooking, the water generator is generating, and the only thing left to fix is the navigation system.
Valor excels at gate mapping and nav systems. ALCOR made sure he did. So fixing it isn’t going to be a problem. Valor probably thought that one day he’d be commanding warships like his father, so gate mapping was something he understood. It was in his blood. Maybe he even thought it was his destiny.
So of course, he gets it running.
“Spinning it up,” he says, fingers flying across the ship’s navigation screen.
This is the moment of truth for me. Because once our position is locked, he’s gonna know something’s wrong. And then he’s gonna realize we’re not where he thinks.
We’re not even close.
The gate screen comes to life in a brilliant flash of yellow and blue as the software powers up. Animations begin to play. Music. Nice touch. A little 3-D vid action as star systems whiz by.
I watch Valor, not the screen. He’s squinting his eyes like he’s thinking hard about the letters that begin to appear.
“What the fuck?” he mutters. Then he turns to look at me. “What is this? Where are we?”
I smile. He has that effect on me. I have come to like Valor over the past several months. He’s easy to look at, that’s for sure. And he’s not confrontational like Serpint, or Jimmy, or Luck. He’s a lot like Crux, actually. Even-tempered, thoughtful, always thinking of others.
I’m not very confrontational either, but I would not call myself thoughtful. Valor balances me in a nice way.
“What the hell is this?” Valor asks again, pointing at the screen.
Specifically, he means the language on the screen. It’s not our language, but he’s seen it before. If I had chosen Jimmy to be my partner in my little scheme, he’d have no clue about this language. But Valor knows a lot more about the galaxy than Jimmy does. He’s been to all the old sectors. He’s seen all the old languages. Written on walls, and stamped on parts, and hidden inside large treasure tombs filled with so-called ancient artifacts.
“Who were these people?”
“All good questions, Valor. But…” My eyes do that side-to-side thing they do when I’m considering my options, and I frown like I’m being thoughtful. I’m really not. I’ve already established that he’s the thoughtful one on this team. “But they’re gonna have to wait.”
Valor sucks in a breath of air. He’s sweaty from being deep inside the navigation panels fucking with electrical components for the better part of two days. His hair is messy and he could really use a shower and about ten hours of sleep.
He’s glaring at me. He’s been patient, that glare says. He’s been patient and now he wants answers.
I’m just about to explain to him that answers are coming, but the gate-map screen lights up and begins cycling through positional coordinates, trying to pinpoint our location, and… well, that explains everything for me.
There is no way to pinpoint our positional coordinates.
Not where we’re at.
Valor stands up, leans over the navigation console, palms flat and eyes squinting.
Then it beeps and an icon lights up that says, You are here. Another nice touch. Simple and elegant.
But of course, “you are here” isn’t pointing to anything.
“What the fuck?” Valor whispers and starts shaking his head. “I think it’s broken. Dammit. I’ve fixed everything. I don’t understand what’s wrong.”
“It’s not broken,” I say. “And it’s not wrong.”
Valor laughs, turning to face me. “It says… it says…” He pauses. “I’m… not actually sure what it says,” he admits.
I get it. It’s hard to believe. “Yes, you are,” I say.
He looks back at the screen. “What language is this?”
“What language do you think it is?”
“I don’t know. I can read it. It all looks very familiar. But… at the same time, it’s different. It’s… something else.”
“It’s early Sol Standard,” I say.
He turns to me, shaking his head.
But I nod. Because it’s true.
Not just that he can read and understand Sol Standard, but that his other suspicion is true.
“It’s… not possible,” he says.
“Luck and Nyleena took our hands, walked us through a spin node, left us on an abandoned station where we not only found breathable atmosphere, but a ship. Waiting for us to bring her back to life. None of this seems possible, Valor. But here we are.”
He stares at me for a moment. Three heartbeats. Then… “What the actual fuck, Tray? Where the fuck—what the fuck—who the fuck—” He goes on like that for several more fucks. Then it becomes, “Whose plan—what plan—my plan—his plan—” And then things like… “ALCOR is gonna kill you, motherfucker. Fucking kill you. We’re supposed to be…” and on, and on, and on.
I let him. I just listen. Because he’s right. About all of it.
ALCOR is going to kill me.
He will, at the very least, try to kill me.
So I’m gonna do everything in my power to see this through so that when the time comes for ALCOR to take his revenge on me for my betrayal, it will have all been worth it.
CHAPTER TWO - BRIGIT
I check the bedroom every ten minutes. But he hasn’t moved. Tray’s dark hair is a little too long and there’s a little lock of it that falls down over his forehead and curls onto the pillow.
He’s breathing. Not that it matters. He’s not really breathing. But it’s a sign that he’s still in there. Inside his head… or wherever he is. And it makes me feel better.
In the ‘real world’ he’s still alive. That’s what the fake breathing signifies.
I walk in and sit down on the bed, sweeping that curl of hair back into place. “Wake up,” I whisper.
But he doesn’t.
It’s not like this is unusual. It’s been our routine since my time here began.
How old am I?
I wonder about this incessantly.
I only have a vague recollection of my beginning for a few reasons. Mostly because I’ve been living here in this virtual world Tray built for me for an eternity. Not a literal eternity because obviously there’s no such time span. But a very long time. So it’s hard to remember back to my early years.
But beyond that it’s all very fuzzy. I remember Veila. I have some vague recollections of a station and the Akeelians in charge. Other girls, like me. But then there’s this foggy grayness about everything. Like I’m drunk or living in a dream.
When Veila first showed up she gave me hope. She was so pretty with her silver-pink Cygnian hair and glowing skin. And all of us Akeelian girls were in jealous awe of her back then.
Everything about her screamed power. She had her own ships, she had her own credits, she had her own cyborgs and bots, and she had a goal. Not that I knew her goal. I could just tell she had one.
I don’t really know if the Akeelians in charge sold us. I’m not sure we were worth much. But it was made clear that Veila was our new responsible party and we were going somewhere else.
Her ship was beautiful, and new, and shiny, and there was so much food to eat and water to drink and bathe with. We had warm blankets at night. And real beds. No one hit us or yelled at us.
At least, not at first. Not while we were on the ship.
Then we landed here.
Well… not here. There.
Here is where my mind lives. There is where my body lives.
At least I think that’s how it goes.
Tray has told me his theory of where he thinks my body is and he’s pretty smart, so I’m sure he’s right. It’s probably frozen in a cryopod somewhere. Possibly Veila’s ship. Or possibly not. Could be a station, I guess. We don’t know where my real body resides, we just know there has to be one. Obviously.
But in the meantime, he built me this world for my mind to live in.
I glance at the large picture window and look outside. Tray and I live on the first floor of a beautiful community building. Out in the grassy square there are dozens of people doing any number of things. Some of them playing games, some of them are pulling weeds in the community garden. Some of them are just sitting at tables, talking and drinking coffee. There’s even one woman painting and a man playing music.
But here is not there.
Here is… fake.
Tray’s virtual. One he made just for us.
This is not my real body, this is not my real face, this is not my real life.
I am fake.
And somewhere out there… wherever there is… is the real me.
I glance at Tray, sleeping so peacefully.
And the real him too.
Wherever he is, whatever he’s doing, it’s not peaceful.
His world is filled with conflict.
I couldn’t even guess where ‘real me’ is. Just the other girls, and the Akeelians in charge, and the station. And Veila, of course.
But then… there’s nothing but a lingering sense of fear until I found Tray.