Stellarnet Rebel (19 page)

“I wish I was in Carrickfergus, where the castle looks out to sea; I would swim over the deepest ocean for my love to be with me. But the sea is wide and I cannot swim over, nor have I the wings to fly. I wish I had a handsome boatman to ferry me over, my love and I.”

She looked at Belloc, her “handsome boatman,” and the tears came again. Not out of pain or frustration, but gratitude. J’ni got up and went to the pilot’s seat.

“What would we do without you?” She hugged his shoulders and brushed a grateful kiss against the side of his head. “I know you don’t like me to thank you, but thank you. For coming to get us. The diplomatic immunity idea was brilliant.”

He didn’t reply. She crouched down so she could look up into Belloc’s face. He looked so forlorn, like something was broken within him. “What’s wrong?”

He answered her in Glinnish.
“I didn’t know anything about
‘diplomatic immunity.’
I asked for Duin, but I never thought they’d let him go. You’re the one who tricked Kitik. I don’t deserve your praise.”

She blinked, and tears slipped down her cheeks. He looked at her, looked into her. His pain arced through the air between them and stunned her, just as she had felt his terror the first time their eyes met on
Wandalin
.

Cupping her chin in his hand, he lifted her face and looked into her eyes. “I came for
you
,” he said in her language. “You are the only reason I’m alive, J’ni. And the only reason I’m not alone. You are everything to me.”

“You’re not alone.” She removed his hand from her chin and squeezed it.

He didn’t move, and when Belloc didn’t move he didn’t fidget, his eyes didn’t shift, his fingers didn’t twitch. He didn’t even appear to breathe. But his lips parted and he spoke. “I never told you how my mother died. She died in a Tikati prison ship, before the Finders discovered us and took us to
Meglin
.”

“Did the Tikati…?” J’ni left the question unfinished.

He understood what she didn’t say. “No. They didn’t kill her, not with any weapon. But she was too weak to survive the voyage. She was sick. All my life, I think, she’d been dying, only living for me. She had suffered some great loss, something that frightened her deeply, after I was born. I never knew what it was, but we were running from it all my life. I didn’t grow up in a village like Duin’s
Willup W’Kuay
. There are no hunts or singing circles or hut building in my memories.”

It was as if a dam had broken within him and words spilled out. Belloc was a watcher, a listener. He had never spoken to J’ni about his past before.

“My mother was the only family I had. She kept us apart from others, and she kept herself apart even from me. I knew very little about her. I learned more about you in two months than I learned about her in twenty-one years. Before she died, she told me I was born in a silver lake, but I’ve never seen it. I called her Hadi, but her real name was Vindael Nidenn. Now you know it, too. I want you to know. And I have another name, too. Kehlen Nidenn.”

She repeated the name, and his eyes turned white.

“No one’s ever called me by that name. It’s as much a stranger to me as any father, or silver lake, or kindness, before I met you.”

He reached as if he might touch her hair, then seemed to change his mind and touched the control panel instead. After a time, his eyes cleared, but he spoke no more. J’ni moved out of his way so he could continue flying the ship. She checked on Duin, who was still asleep, and strapped him in. Strapping herself into the seat beside Belloc, she asked if he would turn off the false gravity. It was giving her a headache.

She began composing a blog post about her recent experiences on Glin and when they were in range of Asteria, she sent it on ahead of them. J’ni also sent her vids of the Tikati compound, with accurate translations of the interviews. In response to Duin’s torture, she suggested immediate UN sanctions against Tikat, intervention by Amnesty, and support for the Glin insurgency. But she left out the part about him being caught in the middle of an arms deal.

That’s when Belloc spoke again, as if there were no lag in the conversation.

“Duin acts as if every Glin shared his strength and his decency. But they don’t. Even you know that, J’ni. You have lived among them, and you’ve seen them as they truly are.
He
sees the Glin in the reflection of his own spirit, but he is the best of them. Believe me. I have seen the worst.”

“I believe you.” She loosened the straps on her chair and twisted sideways to face him, bending her knees and pulling her feet underneath her.

“His freedom-loving people are a race of selfish assholes.” His eyes seemed to be watching the replay of old memories, not the lights of the control panels. “There were times when my mother and I almost starved to death. If we were seen by others, we were chased away. When I was young, they didn’t like us because we were filthy. My mother would wipe mud all over us, to hide our color, so we wouldn’t attract attention. But being dirty in a world of water is bad enough.”

“You and your mother were the only blue Glin?”

“My mother wasn’t blue. I am the only one.”

“Your colors remind me of some places on Earth, certain beaches and islands. Maybe there’s Glin like you somewhere in the Great Ocean.”

He shook his head. “The ocean Glin are different. My mother was silver, like the lake, I guess. But even that was unusual, and would attract unwanted attention. Once, when I was a small child…” he paused, and his face grew more stern than J’ni thought possible. “My mother was raped in front of me.”

“No,” J’ni gasped. “Belloc, I’m so sorry.”

“I tried to stop it, but I was pushed down into a mud puddle. I got stuck and almost drowned. But I learned, very quickly. I learned how to fight back. And how to move silently, so no one noticed me. By the time I could hunt, we avoided all other Glin.”

“Until the Tikati found you.”

He gave a small shrug of acknowledgment. J’ni sensed that the flow of words had ebbed, and he was sinking safely below his perpetually calm surface again. She couldn’t imagine living with such horrible memories, growing up the way he did. The only way she could deal with his horror was to offer hope.

“The silver lake, it exists somewhere on Glin. Maybe Duin has seen it. You might find other Glin like you, the rest of your family.”

“It doesn’t matter, J’ni. There must be a reason why we never returned. I prefer Asteria. How long do you think they will imprison me?”

“Why would you be imprisoned?”

“Because I stole this ship.”

“You
stole
it?”

“I also hurt several people.”

“Oh, no.”

“Yes, I’m sorry, but I had to bring you back. Some Airmen tried to stop me and alarms went off. There were military police involved.”

“Yet you still managed to get to Glin.”

“Elder Blaze let me go.”

“Of course he did.” It was Duin’s voice, behind them. He was awake. “The colonel always tries to do what’s right.”

As they got closer to Asteria, they passed several U.S. spacecraft heading out to Glin. The ships were going to assist in recalling the remaining members of the UN, in light of the information J’ni sent ahead of them.

When they reached the colony, Blaze himself came into the hangar to meet them, with a large number of armed and well-armored MPs.

Duin walked down the ramp with J’ni. “Thank you, Blaze. Again,” he added quietly.

“Yeah, well, bake me a fucking cake.” The colonel glared past Duin as Belloc stepped out of the ship.

Belloc handed J’ni his gloves, and held his bare hands out, palms up, in a gesture of surrender to Blaze. “Did I kill anyone?”

“No, but you put quite a few in the med-block. You’re going to have to pay for that—” the colonel took one of Belloc’s open hands and shook it, “—by telling us exactly how similar the Tikati and Earth ships are. And by telling us how to fight like a Glin.” He looked from Belloc to J’ni, and then to Duin. “I tell you what, I’m beginning to feel like I’m walking a tightrope between hell and high water. Medic!” he hollered. “You need to see a doctor,” he told Duin.

Duin waved his hand, as if fanning the idea away. “I’ll recover.”

“Sure as getting laid on prom night, but you’re seeing a doctor because I want a full, official report detailing your torture at the hands of these shitheads, for all of Earth to read. Quick like, before you’re all healed up.”

“I want to rest, and to get this rag off of me.” Duin tugged at the
bava
with disgust. “It smells like Tikati. I’d suggest burning it, if it wasn’t an oxygen violation. I think I could like fire, so long as anything from Tikat was burning in it.”

“If it were up to me, Duin, that’s what we’d do,” said Blaze. “We’d give ’em hell and let ’em all roast.”

Duin touched J’ni’s cheek. Slowly, he traced the edge of her jaw and ran his fingertips along the curve of her neck.

She sighed in her sleep, and he watched his
nagyx
rising and falling with her chest as she breathed. He had never offered his soul stone to his wife. When they began mating, Ullu wanted his body not his soul.
Which is more than enough when one is ten rain seasons
. Duin smiled. He loved his wife and he missed her. He missed their descendants and the misty days when he’d had nothing to worry about except listening to village disputes, teaching Oon how to make clothing, and keeping Luin out of the marsh grass.

Luin would be old enough to start a family now, and Duin wondered if his fifth child turned out to be male or female.

His eyes and thoughts were drawn back to J’ni and the
nagyx
. He believed that the currents of the Great Ocean had carried her to him not only to liberate Glin, but to bring him joy after so many losses. He would never entirely abandon hope, but Duin had found nothing of his family on any of his many trips to Glin. Earth was unable to garner any information at all from Kitik, and even the Finders couldn’t help. It had been three and a half years with no sign of them.

But, he had J’ni. Here and now. His hand continued over her breast, across her stomach, under the blankets and then grasped the curve of her hip. As he kissed her shoulder, he wished he could make children with her. But it wasn’t possible. Dr. Geber explained that to him.

“Good morning,” she said softly.

“I think it’s after 1300.” He kissed his way up to her ear. “What’s for lunch?”

“What do you want?” She shifted so that his hand slid over her thigh.

“Ooh, more of those spring onions, please. Those are good. And some nori. And oysters. We ran out.”

“We ran out because you ate everything.” J’ni yawned.

“And something to wear other than a United States Air & Space Force police uniform.” He made a face as he gestured to the pieces of spacesuit and military-issue clothing loaned to him by Blaze, which were scattered across the floor of the compartment. “I feel like a
stetl
, like a…a…crab, wearing that.”

Arching her back, she stretched in an enticing way. “Do I have to go?”

He sat up. “I could go, but I don’t think they want me walking around the colony unclothed.”

“Nude. Bare. Naked.” Her fingers glided over his knee and up the inside of his thigh.

He was glad she didn’t suggest he wear his
bava
. Any
bava
would remind him too much of the Tikati. In the past two days, J’ni had done the most wonderful things to help him forget the pain they’d inflicted. He didn’t want anything to dislodge these newer, much nicer memories.

Rolling onto her stomach, she opened a picture of Duin on the wall. Then she opened a clothing catalog and began dragging outfits onto his image. As she clicked through the selections, he ran his hand over her backside.

“Humans are odd that way.”

“How are we odd this time?” She said it with a smile. J’ni was very patient with Duin’s ongoing observations about humanity.

“You fill the Stellarnet with countless vids of yourselves with nothing on. But going out in real life with nothing on is considered inappropriate. Why is that?”

“I don’t know. Tradition? Or maybe cuz human junk is more visible than Glin parts.”

“Junk?”

“Yours is all tucked away, until you need it. Ours is out there, all furry and dangling on things. It’s one thing to see it in vids, but another to have it right in your face. What kind of clothes do you want? There’s digital latex, retro-Asian, vintage-fusion, Bollywood, spray-on—”

“Duin?” It was Belloc’s voice, coming from Duin’s bracer. J’ni was down to one bracer again, the other was back on Duin’s arm now that the liaison was no longer on Asteria. Duin was glad he didn’t have it when he was detained and tortured.

“I’m here.” He transferred the call to the wall. A small window of Belloc appeared above the clothing catalog.

“I’m sorry to interrupt.”

“No, no, it’s fine.” Duin returned his hand to J’ni’s bare skin. “What do you need, Belloc?”

“Engineer Gorski wants to know if the relative galactic orientation display was linked to an automatic course correction system.”

“I don’t know. I watched the displacement vector and corrected manually.”

“That’s what I told him. He said doing it that way would use more fuel.” Belloc conferred with someone offscreen, then he addressed Duin again. “And would be impossible.”

“Tell that to all of the colonists drinking Glin’s water,” Duin said.

Belloc conferred again with someone offscreen. Then he said, “It would be a readout with green and red dots, possibly linked to the directional thrusters.”

Duin tilted his head and moved his hands in the air, as if he were touching the various control panels of the Tikati ship. It was back in the hands of the Tikati—along with the weapons he’d waited so long to acquire—so he could only provide information about it from memory. When his hand reached a spot to the far upper left, he nodded. “I think it was above the object proximity alert and all of those other sensors.”

“I couldn’t remember.”

“Because I never showed it to you. I didn’t know what it was for. Is there anything else?”

“No.”

“Voo.”
Duin tapped his bracer and Belloc disappeared from the wall. He reclined beside J’ni. “As soon as I have something to wear, I want to visit Mose and the children. I haven’t seen them in a long time.”

“You’ve been busy with important things.”

“Oh, children
are
important, J’ni. If they’re not, then what’s the point of everything else? They inherit all the results of our actions. They will be our elders when we return in the next life. They are—Great Rain, what is that thing?” His image wore a horrible, frilly bunch of fabric.

“You don’t like the ruffles?”

“I’d look like a giant
della
.”

“Alright, how about this one? It sort of looks like a Glin suit. Long-sleeved, fitted, flexible and sort of…”

“Shimmery,” he finished for her. “Yes, I like the little pattern of shiny threads. Does it come in olive or tan?”

“It comes in any color with an RGB hex code.”

Using his bracer, he opened a color chart on the wall. “How about 999933?”

“Too yellow. I think 999966 would match you better.”

Duin compared his arm to the color on the wall, and agreed. He input his measurements and placed an order that went into immediate production in industrial block S-73 L-1.

“I still need a vest of some kind. With pockets. I like pockets.”

“We could get something sent from Earth.”

If he was getting anything from Earth, he wanted it to be metal and kill Tikati. “I’ll make something.”

“What about boots? You’ll have to get your feet scanned so they can be molded to fit.”

“Eventually. The military boots are satisfactory, at the moment.” He kissed the back of her neck. Between kisses, he said, “Can you go to the market? Please? I’m starving.” His mouth moved to the spot under her ear, where she was ticklish.

“Yes.” She squirmed. “You’re impossible. I should make you eat chocolate.”

“Your cruelty surpasses even the Tikati.”

“Oh, don’t say that, Duin. How can you joke about that?”

“I must laugh about what happened, or it will consume me.”

He watched her get dressed. Antibiotic underwear.
Mellump
pants. Mysteria t-shirt. As she bent over to pick each item off the floor, her breasts hung in such a lovely way he wished he were underneath them. Time enough for more of
that
, after more sleep and more food.

“I’ll be back soon.” She kissed him.

“As you say.”

Back soon
meant at least two hours, whenever J’ni went to the Colony Square. She might decide to stop by Aileen’s, or find something to blog, and then she’d be gone even longer.

“Na oola vinishay,”
she said.

“Pa na oola vinishay,”
he replied.

As soon as the door shut behind her, he stretched himself out across the entire bed and fell asleep.

***

“Duin.”

It was Blaze, calling on his bracer.

“What’s wrong?” Something
was
wrong, he could hear it in the colonel’s voice. Duin checked the time. J’ni had been gone for about half an hour.

“I’m sorry there’s no rest for the weary. But the goddamn Tikati have sent another liaison.”

Wide awake, Duin sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. “When does it arrive?”

“It’s already here. Goddamn thing didn’t give us any warning. It’s circling Asteria while I wait for orders from Earth.”

“Great Ocean, shoot it down.” Duin started picking up the military uniform and putting it on.

“I can appreciate the sentiment, but what if they want to talk about withdrawing from Glin?”

“Oh, they don’t.” Duin transferred the call to the wall, so he could talk while pulling on his boots.

“They weren’t happy campers when Earth enacted its first application of interstellar sanctions against them.”

Blaze was interrupted by someone Duin couldn’t see. “Colonel, we’ve lost contact with the darkside patrol. They’re not responding, and we can’t get a signal from them.”

“Why?” Blaze looked off to his right, either speaking to someone in the room with him or in another window on the wall.” Are we having satellite problems again? God’s balls, you’d think we were in the ass-end of space. Oh, that’s
right
. We
are
.”

“I’m telling you, shoot the Tikati down, Blaze.” Duin removed the bracer so he could finish getting the suit on, and then replaced it over his armored arm.

“Hang on!”

Duin wasn’t sure if the colonel was yelling at him or someone else. Duin heard another voice.

“Several more Tikati ships have been spotted on the edge of the Asteria zone, sir.”

“How many is ‘several’?” Blaze asked.

“Unknown, sir.”

“All right, screw Earth.” Blaze tapped on his desk. “Notify the civvy police we have an all-station alarm, emergency code eight six alpha, repeat eight six alpha. Meanwhile, deploy every fighter pilot we’ve got. Wake ’em up, cancel all leave. Where’s that goddamn Tikati diplomatic ship? Ah, hell…”

Blaze’s window disappeared from the wall.

“Blaze!” Duin pulled up his contacts list and punched his finger at Blaze’s name several times. There was no response. He touched J’ni’s name. “J’ni? Where are you?”

“I’m trying to get your oysters. Kenji didn’t have any, so I’m talking to Van.”

“Forget them, love, and get back here. The Tikati have come and…”

There was a deep vibration, Duin felt it as much as he heard it, reverberating through the colony. He didn’t know what it was, but he quickly fastened his boots. There were other sounds, too, like distant drumbeats.

“Have they come to take you back?” Duin could hear the riot of emotions in her voice—anger, fear, despair. Before he could answer, Asteria’s PR-sim appeared and red icons began flashing on the wall.

“For your safety, please remain in your compartment. Travel between blocks is restricted. If you are not already in your compartment, please return to it immediately.” Through his bracer, he could hear the same message being announced in the Colony Square.

“Blaze wouldn’t turn you over to them. Not willingly.” She had to yell to be heard over the alarms and rising panic on her end.

“Don’t worry about me, just return as quickly as you can.”

“I am. But it’s crowded in here, and everyone’s trying to get—”

“Warning,” the Asteria sim announced. “Oxygen leak in Sector M, Level 3. External damage detected in blocks M-21, M-33 and M-56…”

“That’s right over the market.” She was being jostled by colonists trying to get out of the area. “Duin, what do you think—?”

Her window disappeared from his arm.

“No!” He jabbed at her name and could not reach her. The PR-sim also disappeared from the wall of his compartment. Using the laser keyboard on the tabletop, he tried to open a window. The wall glowed softly but the Asternet wasn’t working. The only thing he could get was a Mysteria icon on his bracer. Duin touched it.

“The Tikati are in our base, killing our dudes,” announced a green-haired Hax on Duin’s forearm. “Mobs are spawning in the Colony Square. All Mysteria players are summoned to Sector M. Equip your body armor and dousers. Real-time LARP. Res-disabled.”

“What in the Whirlpool of
Yaggla
does that mean? Hax?” He tried to establish contact with the Tech Center, but wasn’t familiar with the Mysteria interface. A misty, glowing phantom appeared on his bracer and spoke to him with Belloc’s voice.

“It means that the gamers are playing Mysteria for real.” Belloc spoke through his game incarnation. “And the Tikati are in the Colony Square with—”

“J’ni is in the Colony Square!” Duin shouted at him.

“Why is your glove still working when the Asternet’s down?” This was Blaze’s voice. Belloc must have been in the colonel’s office.

“I will find her,” Belloc promised Duin.

Duin knew how Belloc felt about J’ni. And he knew that if Belloc could make it through the military zone to steal a ship and get them off of Glin, he could make it to J’ni and get her the hell out of Sector M. Or he would die trying. Duin took a moment to appreciate the fact that he hadn’t killed the younger Glin after all.

“Where are you going? Gimme those gloves,” Blaze ordered.

“I need them,” Belloc told the officer. “Use your Mysteria app.”

“I don’t have the goddamn Mysteria app!”

“Use my device, colonel,” offered one of Blaze’s airmen.

“Gossamer Darkmoon?”
Blaze’s voice was fading. “I have to repel a goddamn alien attack as
Gossamer Darkmoon
…?”

Duin searched the “users online” list for Mysteria and touched the name
Gossamer Darkmoon
. “Blaze, it’s Duin. Can you hear me? What’s going on?” Duin ran into his garden and grabbed the vicious, barbed sword he’d created. Sparks danced along its length as he swung it through the air.