Stellarnet Rebel (10 page)

Can you not find some way to end injustice? I might understand if you cannot bring yourselves to aid an alien. But Genevieve O’Riordan is one of you. She loves you. And I am grateful that she loves me, as well. I will do what I can to free her.

Will you?

***

She was awakened by the sound of the door opening. When she saw who it was, she thought she was dreaming.

“Seth? Why are you here? Are they detaining you, too?”

“No, I’m escorting you to the transport ship.”

“The ship to Titan? I don’t fucking think so.” She scrambled into the corner of the bunk. “You just try to drag me out of here.”

“I will if I have to.” Seth grasped her by the shoulders, which wasn’t easy to do while she kicked him. “You don’t want to do this the hard way, Genny. They’ll drug you and carry you out on a stretcher.”

“Leave me alone. Get off me!”

“Stop it and look at me! Look.”

And then she saw it. Words tickering across his forearm, blocked from the cell cameras by Seth’s back.

Go with Seth. At Sector M, take the first stairwell up. Head to Sector W. Duin is getting you out of here.

She looked into Seth’s face, inches from her own. Not long ago, when they were like this in a bed, it had meant something so different.

“All right,” she said.

Duin is getting you out of here.
 

Seth took her by the arm and led her out of the block.

“I emailed your parents. Left out the part about you and the alien. But I guess the whole universe knows about that, now.”

“Why?” The hallways and thoroughfares were quiet, and she saw only a few other Airmen.

“Your frog blogged it.”

Duin was able to post.
It brought her a sense of relief. He was free to access the Stellarnet. J.T. and her followers would know what was going on. Maybe Duin would be taking her to Earth. INC’s main offices were in the European Union. She might seek asylum there, beyond the reach of her own government.

“That thing said you loved each other. Is that true?”

They were approaching the edge of Sector M. From there, according to the mysterious words on Seth’s bracer, she would need to go up one of the stairwells, then cross the Colony Square toward Sector W. Her heart was racing.

“Yes, it’s true,” she replied.

Seth looked ill. She tried to pull away from him, but he tightened his grip on her arm.

“This is the square,” she whispered. “Shouldn’t I go?”

“You think Imma let you go, now?”

“But your device said—”

“The colonel can suck my dick. I’m not part of his plan anymore. Your father will make sure you have a good lawyer and the charges will be dropped. Then they’ll bring you to Earth, where you belong.”

“I don’t want to go to Earth.” She twisted in Seth’s grasp as if she were an angry cat he held by the tail. She was strong—courtesy of the standard gen-mods—but he was stronger. Still, J’ni had one thing he didn’t. Intelligence mods were outlawed, but she came by her cunning naturally.

She stopped struggling and wobbled on her feet.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

Her knees buckled. Seth eased her to the floor.

“C’mon, Genny, don’t lose it.” Seth’s voice held true concern. “You’ll be fine, I promise you.”

She moaned. “I think Dr. Geber was wrong about alien diseases. I feel sick.” Rolling onto her side, she began convulsing.

“Oh, shit, no.” He recoiled.

That’s when she sprang to her feet, kicked him in the face with her booted foot and ran like fucking hell.

At the nearest stairwell, she went up. It was open and unguarded, and she emerged in the midst of the Colony Square. Running past colonists, over pipes and through the maze of vendor stalls, she headed for Sector R, four hundred yards away.

“J’ni!”

Duin was standing on a crate, head and shoulders above the crowd. J’ni ran toward him.

“Genny!” someone yelled, and she heard voices repeating, “It’s Genny.” Several colonists used their devices to watch the live feed as she ran across the Colony Square, even as she passed right by them in person.

Seth came up the stairwell. Blood dripping down his face, he shoved the residents of Asteria aside. “Move, you fucking relos. Get outta the way!”

Taking great leaps of ten or twelve feet at a time, Duin bounded across the tops of the vendor tables and the large pipes criss-crossing the floor. He jumped past J’ni, landing on his feet between her and Seth. She hugged Duin’s back and whispered. “Seth’s not helping us.”

“I’m shocked.” Duin did not take his large eyes off the Airman. “Are you shocked?” he asked Seth, raising his hand. Bio-electricity crackled over his palm. “Would you like to be?”

Seth wiped at the blood on his face and glared at Duin with seething hostility. “It should have been you. Not her. They should have arrested you.” He glanced at several Air & Space Force MPs who were trying to push their way through the crowd. “It’s not too late,” he sneered.

“More running,” Duin suggested to J’ni. His webbed hand grasped hers and they sprinted for the Sector R stairwell.

Descending to Level One, they could see several Air & Space Force troops a few blocks down the public thoroughfare. Duin pulled her into the next closest stairwell and clanged the door shut.

“Stop!” yelled an MP, who lobbed a flashbang. The wall rang with the repercussions of the stun grenade. Duin winced.

“Where are we going to go?” she asked.

Duin slapped the control panel on the opposite wall. It sparked and the door to the private hallway opened. “I can go anywhere I choose. I am
free
to move about the colony.” He barked a defiant laugh.

They cut through Sector R with the U.S. military in close pursuit until they reached the 90s, the last thoroughfare before the Sector W spaceport. When they opened the last stairwell door, they found themselves in a crowd. The sound of cheering reverberated from the metal walls.

The crowd parted to let them pass and then closed behind them. J’ni could see live feeds of their progress on nearby devices. The walls of the thoroughfare were covered with large windows of the same, and of the MPs trying to make their way through.

“Move out of the way,” ordered an Airman.

“I don’t think so.” A line of civilian police met the military troops. The exchange could be heard over several bracers as J’ni and Duin pushed on.

“Your jurisdiction ends at the edge of the military zone, flyboy,” said one of the spacecops.

“You are interfering with the detention and relocation of a citizen of the United States,” replied the MP.

“I work for the Extrasolar Space Colonization Consortium, not the United States,” said the spacecop. “Any act of aggression against colony residents will be construed as a violation of the Intergovernmental Space Colonization Agreement, and a violation of Article 11 of the Interstellar Declaration of Human Rights. You want to risk having the United States thrown out of Asteria, or you want to turn around and go back to the military zone?”

Duin and J’ni entered Sector W and left the crowd, the cops and the thoroughfare behind.

She was breathing hard, but the run didn’t seem to affect him in the slightest. “What just happened?” He led her to the bay containing his Tikati ship.

“Smart mob. Impromptu real-life assembly, mobilized via the net.”

“And Seth?”

“Asshole. Irrational real-life dickweed, motivated by his fucked-up principles. I had to kick him in the face.”

“I tried to tell Blaze it was a bad idea to enlist his assistance. But the colonel believed Seth was your friend and would want to help.” Duin pulled out a data key and opened one of the doors.

“Yeah, well, I guess he did want to help. He wanted to help me straight to Adiri and then to Earth. He’s a little jealous of you, I think.”

The Tikati vessel was a big disappointment, compared to the vast catalog of alien craft created by human imagination. It wasn’t saucer-shaped, or chrome, or very alien-looking at all. An exterior plating of dark metal gave it an insectlike appearance. But, other than that, it was dart-shaped and conformed to the laws of physics like any airplane, commercial space shuttle, or military cargo transport from Earth.

“Are you well?” Duin asked with deep concern as he helped her into the ship. “You were imprisoned for several hours.”

“I’m fine. I slept.”

“Slept?” Duin shook his head in disbelief. “You astound me. I would not have been calm enough to sleep. I would have been hysterical. Glin don’t deal well with confinement.”

“Are we going to Earth?”

Duin strapped her into one of the seats on the bridge. The size of the halls, the shape of the chairs and distance between navigational instruments made her wonder about the physiology of the Tikati.

“No,” he said. “This vessel cannot shift through space.”

“Glin, then?”

“How I wish that I could.” He sighed with longing. “But no. You will be safer with the
Wandant
.”

“What’s that?”

“Not a what, a they. They are the Finders.”

“The Finders taught me how to fly this ship,” he said, sitting down at the controls. “I still don’t know everything. So there’s some amount of risk involved.”

“Risk like you might break something, or risk like you might crash? Or risk like the Tikati might find you?”

“Yes.” His hands danced over the glowing touchscreens.

“Should I be worried? I’m not feeling very worried. So much has happened, I don’t think I have any worry left for this.”

“Or, perhaps, you have the utmost confidence in my abilities.”

“That, too.”

He threw her a smile over his shoulder, and then she heard the industrial-sized fans sucking air out of the Sector W hanger, followed by the exterior doors opening. The floor of the bay shifted like a conveyor belt, rolling the vessel backward and ejecting it from the colony.

In the golden light of Centauri A, the ship’s windows turned dark red, casting the bridge in a sanguine glow. Several digital markers and readouts appeared on the thermal glass, including five flashing icons corresponding to five objects in the sky. A voice filled the bridge as Duin turned the ship around on the tarmac.

“This is the United States Air & Space Force. You are ordered to remain on the ground. Do not attempt to leave Asteria.”

“Will they be able to stop us?” she asked.

“They can try.”

The ship shot forward, lifting off at a low angle. They left Asteria’s gravity and slung into the weightlessness of space.

“Isn’t that fun? I can only do that on Asteria because there’s no atmosphere. On Glin, the ship would burn up.”

She wasn’t sure she would call it
fun
, even with the gen-mods for motion sickness and space travel. But it still wasn’t as bad as shifting. He touched the control panel and she heard a faint hum. False gravity pushed her into the chair and gave her a mild headache.

“Are they following us?” she asked.

“Doesn’t look like it.”

“Can I get up?”

“Anah.”
He removed his own restraints and began checking the displays around them.

J’ni squeezed between Duin and the instruments, to kiss him. They fell against the control panel, setting off the rattling of an alarm. He reached past her and turned it off.

“Are you glad to see me?” He rested his forehead against hers.

“You don’t know how much. It drove me insane not knowing what was happening to you, and whether or not I would ever see you again.”

Duin related what happened to him after she was taken from the colonel’s office.

“Now I regret all of the terrible things I said about Blaze while I was locked up. But why would he go out on a limb for me?”

“Idiom,” Duin said.

“Going out on a limb, a tree limb, that might break from his weight. Taking a risk for me.”

“I suspect the limb is well fortified and the risk is minimal. The colonel is not a careless individual. But he
is
a good one, and good enough to know that goodness requires action, even disobedience, in order to persist.”

She moved out of his way as he zig-zagged across the bridge. “And who are the Finders?”

“A sentient race from another star system. Earth doesn’t know about them, from what I could l’up on the net. We didn’t know about them, either, until after the Tikati came. Finder technology is beyond my comprehension. It’s much more advanced than human or Tikati, I think. But they don’t have any warships or weapons.” This he said with obvious disappointment. “Still, they do what they can to help us. There is a temporary settlement of my people on their world. What I think you would call a refugee camp. We call it
Meglin
.”

“In this star system?”

“No, no, it’s out there.” He swirled his hand in the air. “Way out there. Somewhere. I don’t know the Earth names for all of the stars, yet.”

“I wouldn’t think so.” She laughed at the thought.

“The Glin don’t name them. To us, the stars are
tah baheet
, the glistening of the sky ocean, rarely glimpsed through the clouds. Of course, we understand now that we were wrong. Now that humans have come. And Tikati. And Finders.”

“And these Finders call themselves
Wandant.
”

“No, they call themselves something like
Urkey Hurripted
, but with more chirping than I can manage.
Wandant
is Glinnish. It means
Finders
. We call them that because they find things—resources, information, food. Last rain season, they found some Glin in a Tikati prison ship and gave them refuge. Then they found me on Glin—I don’t know how—and taught me to fly the Tikati ship.
Wandan
is singular, one Finder.
Wandant
, plural.
Wandalin
, their world.
Lin
indicates a place.” He sighed in frustrated self-recrimination. “I should have taught you my language.”

“You still can. I promise to be an attentive student.”

He didn’t return her eager smile. The way he moved from the control panel and reached for her hand, the way he looked at her, she knew what he was going to say, and she didn’t want to hear him say it. Her eyes burned with tears before he even drew the breath to speak.

“I am not going with you, J’ni. I still have work to do here.”

Then he shared the second part of his conversation with Blaze. “Colonel Villanueva has asked me to gather information about the Tikati, their bases, ships and weapons. He called it
intelligence
, but only a fool would go on this errand. It will be much more dangerous than swooping in, scooping up water and flying away. But it’s also an excellent opportunity.”

She nodded. “If you abandoned Glin, you wouldn’t be…you wouldn’t be you.”

He held her to him. “You’ll be safe. Don’t worry.”

“I’m not scared for myself. I…I want you to know how much I admire you.”

“I only do what I
must
do.”

“But you’re the only one doing it.”

“Which is why it’s critical that I continue,” he said.

“I know.”

Holding her face in his nacreous palms, he said, “I admire you, as well,
nagloim
. And I will do everything in my power to make your government see reason.”

“Good luck there, that’s been a lost cause for all of human history. Use my blog, if you think it might help. You know the passwords. And J.T. will do all he can. You can have my money if you need it. They couldn’t freeze my assets without going through the international courts on Earth, and that would require me to be convicted first. But you might want to move the funds, just in case.” She explained how to access her accounts.

“You are generous as well as brave, and I will endeavor to be worthy of your trust.”

Duin opened a small storage compartment and removed her bag. It contained her few remaining belongings, those she’d been carrying the night of the explosion.

“When you reach
Meglin
, find Sala.”

“Sala.” She nodded.

Then he gave her Tucloup’s translator. “You will need this. My current level of linguistic ability will have to suffice, for the present.”

“I think you’ll get by,” she said, amused that he still believed his language skills were lacking.

“The device has a voice-activated mode that works for both languages. I’d stopped using it before we met.” He pushed a button and said, “I love you.” The display produced several Glinnish symbols. Turning the device sideways, Duin ran a finger down the line of characters and read,
“Na oola vinishay
.”

She replied, “I love you, too.”

He pushed another button and the device itself spoke the Glinnish translation with a simulated voice.
“Pa na oola vinishay.”

J’ni repeated the Glinnish phrase. Hearing the sentiment in his own language, spoken from her lips, sent a surge of emotion across Duin’s face. It wasn’t difficult for J’ni to sense his feelings and to respond with more than words.

After a few moments, a clicking sound filled the bridge. They ignored it for a while, but then he pulled away from her to turn off the noise.

“The Finders are here.” With renewed urgency, he grasped her by both arms and his words rushed out of him like a downpour. “I should have explained, before, what your name means to me. I wanted to, but I wasn’t sure you would understand. Not because I lack faith in you, but because I lack faith in my own adequacy for the task. The
j’ni
is a sacred flower on Glin, a symbol of everything my people hold dear. It blooms on the surface of the water, but its roots go deep, through water and stone. No one has ever found the end of a
j’ni
, and legends say that it grows straight into the heart of the world.”

He pressed her hand to his heart as if he might push it through his chest.

“You have gone straight into me, J’ni, so far into my heart that I cannot find where you end and I begin. Which is why I want to give you this.”

Duin removed an object from the pocket of his vest. It was a gray stone that shimmered in shades of green, blue and purple. It was asymmetrical, and had a hole near one end through which it was tied to a braided cord.

“This is a
nagyx,
a soul stone. I have carried it with me all my life, in all my lives. It is suffused with my spirit. If you wear it, it means that I am of you and you are of me, and wherever we go, We are One. Do you agree?”

“I am of you, and you are of me, and wherever we go, We are One,” she repeated. “Yes.”

He tied the cord around her neck, and the stone lay on her chest as cool and reassuring as his touch on her skin. Then he kissed her again, the
nagyx
hanging between their hearts.

The ship lurched, forcing them to step away from each other and onto their paths into the future.

He accompanied her to the door of the Tikati ship. Duin didn’t touch any controls, but the portal opened to reveal a Finder. It was a being no higher than her chest and resembled something between a Mysteria goblin and a plucked chicken. Symmetrical and bipedal, its rotund little body was braced upon knobby-kneed stick legs and very long, two-toed feet. Its arms were also thin, each bending at one large joint, and ending with long, two-fingered hands. It had no neck at all, and a round lump of a head with enormous eyes set far apart, a broad nose, and a mouth between round cheeks. The eyelids blinked from the bottom up. It was either wearing a very ugly yellow suit, or it was naked, J’ni couldn’t tell.

“Augla, Wandan,”
Duin said, holding out his hands, palms up. He began speaking in Glinnish and J’ni pulled out the translator.

“…to my aid. As ever, I am deeply grateful to you. This is the individual whom I ask you to take to my people on the Finder world. She is under the threat of unjust relocation and imprisonment only because she has dared to help me. So, I am responsible for finding her safety and justice. But more than that, We are One. She is myself, the embodiment of all of my values. Generosity, independence, fairness, honesty, courage, passion, intelligence, perseverance and wisdom. I love her. And all love is sacred.”

The Finder made a pretty little trilling noise, like a bird. Then it spoke in Glinnish.

“Yes, Duin
.”

Beyond the door, the Finder ship looked nothing at all like a Tikati or human ship. It was shimmery and translucent, and she could see the stars beyond its walls.

She turned to Duin. “I am leaving you alone in the dark again.”

“I like the dark.” He placed his hand over the
nagyx
. “And we have never been alone, you and I.”

Everything about that moment was captured in her heart like a vid, and she knew she would replay it again and again while they were apart. She thought she should be angry about being forced to leave. Or sad. But she wasn’t. She was content to know how much Duin loved her.

The Finder touched the Tikati ship and its door closed between them. On the Finder’s vessel there were no chairs or restraints, just benches of the same translucent substance as the walls. The Finder sat down, and J’ni did the same. The seat conformed to support the shape of her body. She didn’t feel weightlessness or a sense of false gravity, but she did seem to be pulled down into her seat. As she had felt a bit too small for the Tikati ship, she felt a bit too large for this one.

The Finder’s ship was attached to Duin’s like a glob of gum. It reconfigured into an orb shape without losing any oxygen, as it disengaged. She wondered if the vessel was made of some kind of organic material, or an intelligent plastic, or if it was something humans wouldn’t even begin to understand.

Studying the Finder, she regretted not having her bracers. First contact with a new planet and a new race. This was Pulitzer material. And only the beginning of what she was sure would be a long string of experiences she would want to record, ticker, or blog. How long would she be away from the Stellarnet?

They were surrounded by patterns of light and color, and she no longer saw stars or the Tikati ship. She assumed they were moving, but she couldn’t hear any engines nor see anything that might be a control panel. It didn’t feel like they were shifting through space.

After a few minutes, she said, “Thank you very much for helping me,” and the translator repeated her words in Glinnish.

The Finder cheeped like a bird, which wasn’t translated.

“My name is J’ni. What is your name?”

“Wandan
.” Finder.

“Anah.”
Sure, she had picked up
yes
easy enough. “But what is your own name?”

“Wandan
.”

“What is this ship made out of?”

“Wandan.”

Maybe it didn’t understand the translator, or it didn’t want to talk to her.

She held up the device and said
nagloim
into it, the word Duin had called her.

“My soul,” it translated.

Her hand went to the
nagyx
and she thought about what he said.
We are One… She is myself, the embodiment of all my values…

It sounded like some sort of Glin equivalent to being engaged. Was that possible? Had he given up the hope of ever seeing his family again? What would happen if he found his wife? It was both a joyous and a dismal thought. J’ni wanted him to be happy, but it would mean losing him, and she didn’t want to think about that. She had lost too much in the past few days.