He leaves whatever he’s doing and stands behind me.
What’s going through his mind? The person who communicated with him on the first transmission had told him to appreciate the majesty. “Is it majestic?”
“It is new, and so it is the most powerful.”
Power equals majesty.
His hand brushes my forehead.
A lock of hair was hanging in my face. He tucks the stray lock behind my shoulder and smooths the others.
…What?
The silver in his irises glimmers as his gaze snags against mine.
Then he recedes beneath the hood until only the curve of his temple, jutting chin, and jawline on one side are visible.
Nerves squiggle in my belly.
Is this curiosity?
Or a hint of caring?
Can I prompt him to take care of me?
To protect me?
He casually, thoughtlessly, doomed my shipmates because he couldn’t wait the extra clicks to non-destructively connect our ships.
It would be so very easy for him to do the same to me.
We’re flying into a nest of killers just like him.
I really don’t know what’s going to happen next.
Six
Sithe
The Spiderwasp is a top-class dreadnought.
As Catarine turns her odd eyes away from me to it, her expression is the correct one.
Fear.
Its planet-ending array makes even me a little uncomfortable. It was built for one purpose.
To establish dominance.
No one will ever best the Arrisan empire. We will strike first. We will strike hard. We will force all others to cower before us, and no race in this universe will ever threaten us again.
Her hair is long and textured, finer than mine, and a darker brown than her eyes.
I can still feel the threads against my fingertips.
“What kind of ship is this?” she asks quietly.
“A dreadnought.”
“And what do you do on it?”
“Conquer.” Is there any other thing that you do on a ship?
She taps her fingertips against the screen. “What about your ship? Is it as big as the dreadnought?”
I flick a finger at the screen she’s touching. The schematics of my ship appear in ghostly outline against the Spiderwasp. It is a smaller version, but all Arrisan ships are all built on the same principles.
She must note the similarities. “Is it a sea creature too?”
“It’s a sinusoid.”
Her head tilts and that little frown reappears. “A wave or a blood vessel?”
“A type of seed. Mine is optimized for space travel and speed.”
Originally, the sinusoids were all our race had that could escape the Harsi. When their deadly maws crushed our great ships, our stations, our planet, the smallest seeds slipped through their teeth. And though we have modeled the dreadnoughts on some of their technology, we are still most comfortable in sinusoids, I think.
“Does yours have a name?”
“A number.”
“Oh.”
In the worst case, my ship contains genetic materials as well as tools to implant a host. There is enough food to last several generations so long as everything is properly recycled. And it has, of course, weapons.
We can restart our race anywhere so long as one of us survives.
Arris will live so long as one ship survives.
We pass into the massive array.
Long threads dangle, nearly invisible, electrified, capable of cutting us into pieces. The ship navigates them, although the gravity inside is at odds with the movement, and she sways.
These long wires are necessary. Dreadnoughts have instant communication abilities with Arris Central and the other ships of the empire. In the worst case, it could become the new command center around which all fragments of our race would rally.
We pass through the communications array to the weapons.
Each barrel fixes on us—autotargeting—and then deactivates.
“Those guns…” She watches the biggest one power down. “They look powerful.”
“They can push planets out of orbit.”
“Like what happened with Humana. You pushed us a little bit so that we would have more perfect growing conditions for your food.”
Did we? “Every planet must contribute to the empire.”
She offers a small smile but it does not seem to indicate happiness.
No one feels happiness when they’re being swallowed by a dreadnought. I dislike yielding control, but their loaders can pilot my ship through this nasty course and into the cargo bay better than I can.
Perhaps I will research Humana during my next rest.
I can imagine her standing within the waving fields of nutrient vines, her hair flying in the desert winds, the lessers she calls family crossing to help her harvest cubes as the evening turns a comforting shade of twilight maroon.
Probably this is an image of Arris I have superimposed over her world, but she looks at peace.
The screens flicker as we approach the open bay. It is nearly time to dock. The ships communicate their codes, and the passageway unfurls to my cargo bay.
I lead her to the airlock. She stands beside me, sober and brave.
And then suddenly, she opens her small bag and brings out the square of her family. “If I don’t have the chance, could you send this back to Humana? I didn’t get to see my dad for a long time because of my illness, and I’d really like it if he could know that my last thoughts were of us together as a family.”
It is highly unlikely I will be able to do this. How many ships fly from Humana? I have never encountered them before, and my assignments have sent me over a large region of the empire. “You should hold on to it. Or cast it into space. It will arrive faster.”
Her chin wrinkles. She nods abruptly and jams the square into her bag. “Sorry. I understand.”
Good, then.
The lock light turns off.
They are opening my airlock?
Because of the environmental factor, right. They will open in near space to suck out any potential foreign objects in vacuum. It’s a reasonable precaution, but a problem, obviously.
With no warning, I crack my suit and swing my arm around her. The suit flaps against her. I pull her hard against me.
She squeaks against my chest.
My airlock pops.
The suit suctions tight around us. It is designed for my size and compresses her uncomfortably hard.
The puff of air exiting my pressurized ship pulls us out into space.
Only us, because everything else in my cargo bay is secured.
Gravity is less here, and we rotate gently. My stomach dives for my throat.
She trembles against my bare skin like a small animal. Her palms splay across my pectorals. Her head rests against my shoulder.
This is a strange feeling.
She must be at the right angle to see out through the hood, because she gasps. “Stars.”
Yes, they rotate above us.
I time the rotation as we and my ship coast the rest of the way into the dreadnought’s cargo bay and step back onto the lip of my ship just as the Spiderwasp’s gravity takes over and sets us down inside. Atmosphere floods my ship. I release her.
She stumbles back, resting her palms on my ship’s wall for balance, disheveled, mouth open, and nostrils flared. Her eyes silently communicate her total fear.
It is appropriate.