Aftermath (16 page)

Read Aftermath Online

Authors: Ann Aguirre

BOOK: Aftermath
13.46Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
Here, I feel whole. But I cannot stay; I would die. As with any living creature, grimspace would drain me and cast me adrift as one of its infinite ghosts. I care too much about those I carry on this ship to let that happen, though I imagine making the jump alone someday . . . and never coming back. I used to dream of retiring on Venice Minor, but I am far past such innocent hopes. The best I can imagine now is dying here, where none can know to mourn me.
Hit gives no sign she’s aware of these thoughts as we prep for the return. I use the new pulses to find Gehenna, then make the fold that permits us to pass through. Hit responds to my mental directions, following with seamless skill. We return smoothly, emerging a few thousand klicks from Gehenna.
Even at this remove, I see the streaks of gold and orange, flashes of red that make it so spectacular from the ground. I can’t imagine what led them to build here, where there isn’t even a breathable atmosphere, but it’s a rich man’s paradise, artificial and full of glamour. They say you can buy any extravagance on Gehenna, provided you have the contacts and the credits. I know from my time with Adele that there are lords of vice who have built their kingdoms on the sins of strangers.
Adele gave me shelter when I needed it most. She awakened a hint of spirituality in a soul that had previously lived only for pleasure. In short, she was the mother I always wanted, and I treasure my memory of my short time with her. I learned so much about human kindness.
Hit taps the comm. “Gehenna authority, this is the
Big Bad Sue
, requesting clearance and coordinates.”
I grin and mouth at her,
The
Big Bad Sue
?
She shrugs and mutes the mic for a second. “It came with the moniker, and Dina liked it. Like
I’m
gonna tell her no.”
“I like it, too.” It just strikes me as funny because this little ship clearly isn’t a big bad anything. Sounds to me like the prior owner had a sense of humor.
“
Big Bad Sue
, what’s your purpose in port?”
“We plan to visit friends and relatives, enjoy your fine hospitality, and spend a few credits.”
“
Big Bad Sue
, you said the magic words. Are you carrying cargo today?”
Hit shakes her head though only I can see her, as they haven’t engaged the vid—no need and it distracts the pilot. Too many crash landings by those of lesser skill, and they learned better. “Negative, authority. Personnel only.”
“Stand by for docking bay number and trajectory for your arrival. We will, of course, need to scan for contraband.”
“And then tax us on it,” Hit mutters.
I stifle a laugh because that’s so true. They don’t much care what you bring into the dome, unless it’s Morgut, but you damn well better expect to pay the powers that be a cut of the profits. They won’t find anything interesting on us, however; we truly are here to see old friends . . . and trade in information.
Hit takes us in smoothly though she does calculate to make sure they’ve given us the correct trajectory. I haven’t trusted docking personnel since they killed my lover, seventy-five Conglomerate diplomats, and nearly ended my life as well. But the port authority here has no reason to want us dead; they want us to land, clear customs, and spend our credits inside the dome. After landing, it doesn’t take long to pass through the red tape. A routine scan, and we’re on our way.
Gehenna is a wonderland. Even in these difficult times, when interstellar travel is only beginning to recover from the blow I dealt it, the spaceport bustles with activity. Cargo ships from the outskirts whose tired crews look as though they hauled straight space to get here unload crates of raw herbs that will be processed and used to create kosh—one of the more expensive designer drugs, available only under the dome. It’s madly addictive, but it provides penultimate euphoria, or so I hear. I never did kosh; liquor was my drug of choice.
On my way out of the spaceport, I pat my pocket to ensure I have the two data spikes, different information, but destined for the same principal. The slight bulge beneath my fingertips reassures me. If I lost this data, it would mean profound failure, and right now, these missions give me a reason to push forward. I need to finish what I started.
Vel touches my arm to get my attention. “Could we call on Adele before our other business?”
“Of course.” She’s the woman who valued him enough to set him free. Back on Ithiss-Tor, I remember he mentioned a human lover, and it hadn’t taken much for me to connect the dots, given her odd words to him when he came for me clad in Doc’s skin. “Would you prefer to see her alone?”
I don’t want to intrude on a private moment.
But he curls his claws in obvious distress. “No, I would like you to go with me. It will be . . . difficult to see her. It was, when I came hunting you. She had changed so much, even then. It will be worse now.”
“Then I’ll go. I do want to see her . . . She was good to me.”
“That is her way,” he says softly. “So full of kindness.”
“I never knew how you ended up with her.” It’s a leading statement because I want to put it in the form of a question, but I shouldn’t pry.
He thinks a moment, head canted. In many months, I have not seen him in faux-skin. These days, he shows his chitin, if not proudly, then with a certain acceptance. But he is the general of the Ithtorian forces . . . or at least, he was. Vel resigned his commission around the time they booted me politely from the Armada. We’re both free agents now.
“You know everything else,” he answers at last. “I will share this as well if you would listen. But it is a story worth telling properly, not in bits and fragments. Would you have all my words, then, at a time of my choosing?”
“Please.”
The tale will be told with all ceremony and formality because of the great regard he bears for Adele even now. It’s hard for me to resign the image of the older, coffee- skinned woman with someone who would take Vel as a lover, but I can’t wait to hear their story. I know this much, though; he’ll share it at the right time and place.
Once we leave the spaceport, Hit and Dina find a romantic lodging house, all pale stone given a sweet, rosy glimmer by the shadows above the dome. Vel and I continue on, closer to Adele’s neighborhood. I know she will permit me to stay in the garret with its glastique walls, but I’m not sure if Vel would be comfortable there. I don’t ask because his body language reveals clear distress, the closer we get.
The crowd parts around us, giving him a wide berth. Even with the increased Ithtorian galactic presence, people still stop and stare. Women pull their children away from him, and I hear whispers about how Sliders steal little children. Because I know him, their behavior infuriates me, and Vel snags my hand to keep me from popping one especially rude female in the face.
“It does not matter,” he says, spreading his claw in an open gesture.
My chip tells me that signifies letting go, how it all flows away. But anything that hurts him sets my teeth on edge, and it’s been a long time since I cut loose. If they keep this up, I’ll wind up in a Gehenna jail. There are few people I’d fight for these days, but Vel is one of them.
He selects a quiet café a few blocks from Adele’s building, and we take a seat inside, where it is all soft shadows. The servo-bot takes our order, something simple that will not distract me from his secrets. I want them because I have none from him. Not now. He’s seen too much of my past while I know so little of his.
“Here. I will speak here.”
And I sit quiet, rapt with the emotion radiating from him.
[Vel’s story, told to Sirantha Jax in his own words]
 
I have no mate.
I have no house.
I have no young to guarantee my immortality.
When I die, there will be no one to lay out my body or log the colors of my deeds in the ancient way. I have no colors.
Once, I thought it best that way. I saw my opportunity and took it. The life the stars gave strangled me, and so I ran. I called it by another name, but so many turns distant from the choice, I can name it what it was: cowardice. Shame finds me bare among my own kind, and they know me for what I am. Exile. Outcast. It does not matter that I chose it.
And yet . . .
And yet . . .
For a time, I was happy.
Not in the service of the legendary bounty hunter, Trapper, for all he was a fair man. Without his offices, I would not have survived. That one discovered me quicker than anyone since. He had a knowing to him that I miss to this day. He could look at a thing and tell you its nature. I have never experienced the like.
He alone knew that my name, to my people, means “white wave.” And so, I stayed with him because it was the closest I had to home, though I had left mine of my own free will. An artist may starve in uncertain times, so I laid aside those dreams as the price of freedom. Thus, I learned to stalk and track my prey. I learned to be ruthless. I learned never to back away from a deal once I gave my word. All that and more I learned from Trapper.
Over the turns, I became a legend. I do not say this lightly, but doubtless you have heard the stories. In colonies all over the galaxy, mothers tell their children: “You had better be good, or the Sliders will get you.”
That is not strictly accurate. Since the Axis Wars, I am the only one to break the isolation. I alone turn our native camouflage into something else, passing among humans undetected. Thus, the stories they tell?
They are all of me.
The time I spent with Trapper did not seem long, but he aged like a husk before my eyes. It almost seemed a flicker; humanity flares so bright that it cannot sustain the flame. I find the process fascinating but alarming. So I stayed with him until the end. I was there when he passed. Only I appreciated the irony of being named his heir. He called me son toward the end, and that, too, was a bitter irony.
But I did learn then that credits were power, and that within the guild, wealth might be all that kept me safe if my secret became known.
But that—that is another story.
Without Trapper, I was rudderless, a bounty hunter stripped of any real desire to hunt. I had spent too many turns taking orders from that old man to know what to do with myself once he was gone. And so, as is my custom, I ran.
In time, I found myself on Gehenna, with no quarry in sight. I had wanted a place where one could get lost, outside laws and boundaries. I think I also wanted to be something other than what I was, a pretender in human skin, so I went away from the guild and everything I knew. There, I made myself over.
I do not know if there has ever been such a lost creature as I, standing in that bustling market. Nobody thought to offer a wa, and they seemed blind to body language. To my inexperienced eyes, it seemed a vast carnival of a world, with titian skies that never shift outside the dome and life at all hours. The cacophony rendered me quite mad, even through the false skin that dulled my senses. Roasting meat and spilled blood, molten ore and silicon dust, incense and scented candles, herbal remedies and rare poisons—these scents combined to overwhelm me.
To this day, I think she took me for one who had lost his wits. But there was sweetness in her dark eyes as she touched my arm. Everyone else had passed me by, jostling in their haste. I saw everything and nothing, but the world skimmed down to her face when she touched me. I could not feel it, truly, but I understood what it meant. It was compassion.
“Have you lost your way?” she asked kindly.
I had long ago received an implant, making it possible for me to communicate. Otherwise, I would have been a mute as well an exile. She waited for a response. I am certain if I had not been so shocked, I would have offered something less candid.
“I have nowhere to go.”
“Come.” She smiled up at me, laugh lines crinkling the corners of her eyes.
It should not have been that easy. With the added benefit of turns and experience, I am angry with her now. Her faith in the decency of other sentient beings stood in the face of everything I have come to learn about the universe.
I can still see her in my mind’s eyes as she was then. She came to my shoulder, and she had a softness to her, though her hands were firm.
In the shape I had taken to best cover my true form, I was tall and thin, shaping the camouflage to what was already there. I did not like it when I had to pretend to be more compact. At length it would become painful—and since I had chosen this physical representation to suit myself, it was as close to nature as I could permit. My hair was brown, I think, and my eyes, likewise.
To my surprise, she took me to her dwelling. Only a crazy woman would do that, so I readied myself for some outburst or incipient threat. Instead, she made a drink of boiling leaves, which I was afraid to touch. I had learned there were certain human foods and beverages that I must avoid on pain of death.
“I’m Adele,” she said. “And in Mary’s name, you’ll be in need of work. What can you do?”
It was a fair question. But instead of answering it, I repaid her kindness with scorn. “Is this Mary the god of fools?”
Her wit was quick. “Rather the goddess of rude and rootless men, I think.”
“It was unwise of you to take me up,” I said. “Put me back where you found me.”
“I will not. If kindness is unwise, then perhaps I do worship the goddess of fools. Answer the question.” In her smile lay pure gentleness. At that time, I had not much skill in interpreting human faces, but I did not read her wrong.
So I told her I had some ability to draw and paint, and that I could repair certain machines. Of my darker skills, I did not speak, as that was the least of my secrets.

Other books

Mortal Kiss by Alice Moss
Island Girls by Nancy Thayer
Lily (Suitors of Seattle) by Osbourne, Kirsten
Teardrop Lane by Emily March
Have No Shame by Melissa Foster
Jennie Kissed Me by Joan Smith