“My dad’s side died in the Second Flood,” the ingénue had piped up. “An Arrisan ship by my mom’s house blew up so big that the clouds gathered and it rained glitter for twenty-seven days.”
“My kin died in the Great Quake.” The kingmaker had crossed her arms and leaned against the wall. “I’m just saying that some people are naturally pretty, but you have to work on it.”
“Mm.” The captain’s tone had turned dry. “Thanks for clarifying.”
But I have none of the captain’s tools. And even if I did, I don’t know how to use them.
I do know how to swear. I slam the button again and again, chanting it like a prayer. “H. H. H.”
H stands for the worst thing that can happen in space. Hull crack. What I’m afraid is about to happen again.
And it also stands for—
The door closes. The red light turns green. Sealed.
Huh. The captain was right. Swearing did fix it.
The wall jolts beneath my shoulder.
No time to celebrate.
I run into the shower and rinse off the mess, tensing for the drizzle to hit any cuts, but the Arrisan ointment is miraculous and it never stings.
Ah, I left my medical kit in the cafeteria.
But I am going to an Arrisan ship. The ointment is only precious because we have so little of it on Humana. They have plenty of it in their ship.
Please don’t let me die.
I finish my shower and send my dress through the cleaning cycle. The shower seals and my ears pop. The shower windows tint and then return to normal, and it unseals with a hiss. I put the now-cleaned, slightly ozone-scented garment back on.
It’s still my best chance to connect with Sithe. I am a lesser to him, but I must try to make myself as similar to him as possible. It’s a psychological principle that people like and are more drawn to others who look or act like them. Sithe isn’t human, and this principle barely works on Humana anyway, but alone in space surrounded by threats, it’s all I have.
Outside shoes. I definitely need outside shoes.
A knock echoes from the wrong side of my room.
Unsettling.
I finish dressing and scoop a few things into a day pack.
What about my cat ears?
I sit on the bed, holding the clean pair.
November first, I awoke with a massive headache that morphed into cramps and then a throbbing bone ache in my hips. It lasted weeks and scans couldn’t find anything, but it marked the first symptom of my descent into madness. That year for Halloween, I’d been silly and dressed up like a black cat for my workplace party. The ears were simple fabric. They have neurolink ears for all sorts of animals, including unicorns. I think I focused on cats because it was the last time I was normal.
Sithe’s voice comes from the intercom. “Open the door.”
I leave the ears behind.
The button works a lot better at opening than at closing.
His silver eyes take me in, and then he recedes into shadow. Turning his shoulder, he strides silently down the hall to the escape pods, away from the pirate ship.
The cafeteria looks undisturbed. I must have been wrong about him cracking the hull.
Until I reach the escape pods.
A mouth like an anglerfish bites into our ship. Long jagged black teeth pierce the metal frame. A shadowed interior gusts cold air.
A gaping hole has been carved out of the hull and rests in the middle of the hallway.
That’s not going to be okay. “Wasn’t there any way to connect our ships without damaging ours?”
“Not in ten clicks.”
No apology. No reasoning. He has irrevocably damaged our cruiser, at least as badly as the pirate ship did. Probably a lot worse.
When the captain comes back, how can she connect to the cruiser? She isn’t wearing an evac suit in her pod.
My stomach churns.
What will happen to everyone?
What will happen to me?
He strides over the jagged barrier and into the gray interior, a shadow moving deeper into shadow. “Come.”
I cannot remain here.
I hug my day pack.
There’s only forward now. No backward.
I walk into the mouth of the beast.
My footsteps echo, boots clattering loudly.
As I move, the tunnel shrinks in, closing up behind me the way his clothes seal over his body. I hurry to catch up to him. The tunnel terminates in a small hollow just a few strides across, like hitting the back of the throat. The way I’ve come seals and smooths like skin or fabric.
I’ve been swallowed.
He turns around to face me and leans against the far wall, wrists down, hood back, eyes staring straight ahead.
The ship walls fold around him. His fingers twitch. The air between us tints. He’s facing me, but I don’t think he sees me at all.
Are we moving? There’s no sensation of movement.
Everything is still and silent.
Should I be still and silent too?
But I can’t forge a connection in silence. “What’s happening?”
“We are matching velocities with the Spiderwasp.”
We’re flying, then. It’s not cold, but my fingers are like ice. “Can I see?”
The walls around us change to show the outside, and it’s not like the viewscreens in our cruiser which have an unreal patina. It’s like looking through glass, which is insane because I know how deep we are in his ship…although it’s nothing like the ships I’ve been on. Humana has received the dregs of technology, and this is the pinnacle of the empire, so I guess I don’t know anything about it at all.
Behind me floats our cruiser. It was such a pretty clam-shaped spaceship with a pearl glued onto the widest part—the communications array for the movie theater, which was actually the bridge.
The pirate ship hangs off its back like an ugly tick.
There’s a sad puff of debris by the gaping hole from which we’ve just detached. The other women’s memorabilia have been sucked into space. I wish I would have figured out how to close all the doors at once, but it’s also a stark reminder that none of us can ever go back.
Which bits of dust glittering among the stars are the escape pods?
Hopefully, the captain can see we’ve left and everyone is still close enough to be pulled back.
It’s a lot more likely someone will find our cruiser than a pod.
But it’s also really unlikely anyone will ever find our cruiser.
It’s still moving at hundreds of actungs per cleg, but looks like it’s standing still against the background of stars. Since we must be increasing velocities to match the other ship, we’re leaving it behind.
On the other side of Sithe lies our destination.
I walk around him—because it was a trick of the optics and he’s actually leaning against a column in the center of the room, not a dead end—and rest my fingers against the false glass.
There is the Spiderwasp.
A giant evil haystack. Haystack? The top is blunt and rounded like a fist while the bottom tapers to straw-like strings. I think of a spider wasp as a flying insect that preys upon tarantulas. A number survived the cataclysms, and we keep both—wasps and tarantulas—at a healthy distance. This is something different.
“What is a spiderwasp to an Arrisan?”
“A sea creature.”
Yes. The tentacles hang down as some sort of jellyfish that stings. We maneuver to rendezvous with the underbelly. These tentacles, in fact, do sting. All the ends are guns.