I read that Iowa was once a flat farming region, but that’s hard to believe. Fissures from the invasion’s cataclysms break the ground in such a way that it’s impossible to use the land for much of anything. The gangplank of the bulbous, alien-looking intergalactic cruiser rests on glassy rock that still smells like sulfur.
At the bottom of the gangplank, I give my mom a farewell hug. Her body is soft and comforting, just like the fuzzy blanket she wrapped me in last night. “Did you listen to the chip?”
“I will,” she says. “After.”
After I leave.
After it’s too late to change her mind.
She pulls back. Her eyes are red-rimmed again.
It’s okay that her tears are all gone. The tears I spill right now are enough for both of us. “Tell Dad I say goodbye.”
She nods.
I don’t want to hurt them anymore.
When I’m gone, my mother will finally be able to go join my dad again, and they can be together. That will be a good thing. I hope I remembered to say that in my recording.
Please be happy, Mom and Dad.
I wave goodbye at the top of the gangplank and then enter the spaceship.
The cruiser is just as my mom promised. There’s a common area, a cafeteria with a fish tank, and I have my own room.
But the best thing of all? There are other women like me!
Not that I’m happy for them, but I’m so grateful I’m no longer alone.
They also know what it’s like to go into a blind rage near their innocent male relatives. They’ve stalked dark alleys seeking a cure for a sickness that no one else can identify.
What’s wrong with us?
Why did we get singled out?
For the first few weeks of our journey, we puzzle out the mystery.
We’re from different continents, ethnic backgrounds, ages. One woman’s sickness started a few months ago, and another has suffered for over a decade. Of course we’re all humans. Nobody from the other conquered worlds ever visits our backwater planet. That’s why I wanted to go out and make allies.
We give each other nicknames. I don’t know who started it, but it’s easier to be your nickname than who you really are.
I’m the diplomat because my face betrays little emotion, but the neurolink cat ears will constantly perk up or lie flat.
And I’m the only one who gets mental fog. The others all suffer different effects that worsen the longer we’re in space, away from any men.
One woman faints. We call her the ingénue. Every time her heart rate goes up, she goes down. She has to wear a helmet to avoid head trauma. I carry her food trays in the cafeteria and stay with her until she wakes up. A sneeze knocks her out for two hours.
“Thanks for the nice cat nap.” She stretches and tweaks my neurolink ears. “Get it? Because you have nice cat ears?”
I get it, and I want to compliment her, too. “Nice, um…nice…”
She waits patiently as I fumble through the brain fog to finish my thought, as pointless as it is. She says she doesn’t mind my rambling, and that we have to stick together because we have the worst side effects.
“…head…thing,” I finish.
She beams and taps her helmet. “It also doubles as a battering ram. I know my fainting makes me pretty useless, but if you ever had to break a pane of glass and I’m unconscious, just get another woman to grab my arms and heave-ho.”
I want to tell her she’s not useless, but it would take too long to construct the sentence—if I could even get it out—and so I just nod encouragingly. She gives me a bumpy hug.
The other women are just as kind.
For example, the housewife watches over us to make sure we eat our vegetables and brush our teeth. The kingmaker stalks the halls with me, tall and proud and fabulous.
The ace is classically beautiful and loves to pamper herself, which somehow makes her self-loathing all the more tragic.
There are others who suffer, but I feel worst for the ace. The rest of us don’t hate sex. For her? It’s a terrible curse.
Please let the Vanadisans find a cure.
Our small group, from a defenseless, conquered planet, travels alone with no weapons. We are a little raft in the black interstellar ocean.
But for the hope of a cure, we’ve all agreed to face any danger…
Right before dinner one night in the cafeteria, proximity sirens turn on.
Something—or someone—is about to hit us.
The emergency lights flash.
“Hull breach imminent,” the computerized voice warns.
There’s screaming. Chairs are overturned. Empty food trays clatter. A glass shatters.
“Evacuation sequence engaged,” the computerized voice continues. “Enter the escape pods and await further instructions.”
Evacuate? Us?
We’re in the middle of space. The middle of nowhere.
I find myself in my cabin.
The captain drags one of us— the ingénue; she fainted—down the hall past me toward the escape pods. “Go!” she screams.
But…?
She comes back for me, grabs my elbow, and drags me down the hall. We pass empty portals where the other pods have all detached. She throws me into one of the last two pods. “Yours is broken. I can’t seal it from inside the ship. Hit the red button to detach.”
The captain closes me into the pod. She taps the glass. Through the tiny vacuum of space separating my pod from the main ship, I hear nothing. Her mouth moves. Red button!
My finger hovers over the red button.
She flinches and jerks her gaze behind her, then disappears.
Shadows darken the hallway.
Not human. Alien.
Wait.
Do I sense…?
Heat radiates from my center, pouring itchy lava into my veins. My sinews pull as taut as the strings of an instrument. My back arches, fingers flex, and the mental fog liquefies into primal need.
Uh-oh.
My brain is clever.
It remembers the safety pamphlets and complicated diagrams I read in the beginning. The captain locked me in the pod. But there is an override.
I stumble back into the cruiser.
The hall is empty.
But the burning ozone scent is familiar. I smelled it at the attack sites my father used to take me to as a child. Sites from the day the Arrisans discovered our planet and cracked it open like an egg.
There is also another scent.
Someone’s coming.
A man.
No, men. Men are coming.
I turn and open my arms.
No normal person would do this.
I do not want to be like this.
This is a sickness.
It curls into my brain and drives me forward like a zombie.
I had dreams.
And now they are all gone.
All that’s left is the craving.
Yes, come for me.
Two
Sithe
I slide into nearspace like a held breath.
All comms are quiet. Battle armor sealed. Power to a whisper.
The Eruvisan pirates huddle over their kill: an outdated vassal-planet cruiser belonging to one of the many lesser races my warriors have conquered. Escape pods scatter like broken shards, and the slim pirate vessel, a modified missile carrier not capable of lengthy space travel, has attached to the cruiser like a parasite to a helpless bird, breaking the wings as it drains the fluttering vitality.