CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Jei
Her normally cinnamon-agate skin was pale, as pale as the stream that used to flow from the industrial laundry center at Fort Jehu, bubbling and frothing with silvery cleaning chemicals that bleached the earth. One of her shoulders hung lower than the other, the bone bulging forward with a deep hollow above it—a tell-tale sign for dislocation. Dark circles like bruises ringed her eyes. Her irises still glowed a strange pale blue, but she could see me now, and their normal deep chestnut color was beginning to seep back through in streaks.
We disappeared into the jungle without much fuss. There were a couple of alleyways behind the spaceport, and the other Frelsi were pretty busy now. If anyone saw us, Lem had her atmosphere hood up, and most people knew better than to bother me when I looked like I had somewhere to be. Most lower ranking soldiers and cadets sympathized with me against command anyway—even before discovering this massive power-up last year, my skills had saved enough lives that everyone not trying to control me genuinely listened to me.
Which was … a weird thing. I’d always gotten along best with my superiors. I was the kind of person you might even accuse of being a privileged pet if you didn’t watch me excel every day of my life. And now I was walking a wide berth around my own team in the dark, rustling underbrush like a newly minted cadet shirking off work to pick herbs while I plotted a diplomatic excuse to my commanders.
Bloodseas, I missed Captain Rana. I even missed Colonel Win—he went out guns blazing against ten of our own tripods the day everything went to hell at Fort Jehu. And that was after rescuing two full barracks’ worth of soldiers, carrying them out of the haunted halls on his back one at a time. They said he still went back in even after being shot eight times. And he kept going back in until every single living person was out.
Sergeant Strong was kind of unbearable after losing his best friend. He was another one who’d pushed for Lem’s exile. But he was also smart enough to recognize her practical value, and that was what I needed to lean on, because now I needed to get her out of here. An uneasiness screeched within me: Diebol’s cryptic message lined up with Lem’s suspicions about Bricandor, right before she blossomed into an electric flower? Not a good set of coincidences. We had to get to planet Forge.
Gah, the metal casing around my wristband really itched in the heat, all wet and hot. They’d designed it to shock and power me down if I tried to rip it off, but it was more symbolic than anything; they underestimated me, and I could live with being powered down for an hour or so if I had to remove it. It was just this constant reminder that they didn’t trust me anymore, that they feared me, that I wasn’t one of the “good” ones—that mental shackle was more soggy and itchy and frustrating than anything. I only wore this filking thing so they could feel safe.
“We’re up ahead to the left,” Lem said. Even without a space-lemur nose, even in the dark, and even after a year away she knew this forest like most humans knew their bedrooms, and we’d fallen back into our old roles: she always found our way on the ground, I always found our way in the air. I hadn’t even paid attention as we walked, and we were already breaking out into the clearing with the gurgling waterfall, where the needlecraft parked on the riverbank sparkled in the light from Luna, Guetala’s twin in the sky.
Lem dropped down onto the riverbank with a quiet groan; her back made a splat in the mud.
“Unless you want to knock out everything that drinks in this clearing you need to neutralize the stuff on your suit,” I said, tossing her the can of powder from one of the pockets hanging on my utility belt. She nodded and caught the can, but set it down next to herself, and sat up to wrap both of her wrists around one knee with a wince. With a quick jerk backward and a clunk she set her shoulder back in place and then lay back down, breathing hard but otherwise giving no indication that the maneuver hurt like murder.
I gave her a moment, and dusted myself down, pulling my gloves back off and undoing my jumpsuit. The heat blasted me as soon as the atmosphere-controlled material peeled away from my chest and arms, but after draining myself with my own power surge earlier, even my undershirt seemed heavy. I wanted to sleep.…
But I wanted to get into space first.
“Whatever that was, it happened after I got some blue on me,” Lem said.
“Makes sense. It comes from an erythroidine, I believe. Like an atropine anticholinergic paralytic, but mediated by nicotinic receptors. That’s what allows the skin delivery, but then there’s the GABA component for central nervous system inhibition.”
“Wait, but that stuff paralyzes people and puts them to sleep. So this is the opposite of making sense,” Lem said.
“It’s a paradoxical effect. As long as sedatives have existed some people have the opposite reaction to them. Probably something to do with the biological capacitors in your nerve endings,” I said. “Or maybe inhibition was just the wrong thing for you. Maybe your spinal reflex system or higher control is always keeping your abilities in check, and the inhibitor turned off that control mechanism. It’s not unheard of. Medications for hyperactivity disorders never worked by inhibiting the brain, but by strengthening and exciting the brain’s natural inhibition neurons. This would be like the inverse.”
“Hm.” She had her atmosphere hood and jacket off now, and powder all over the riverbank next to her, and all over the tunic she’d tossed aside, and on her sleeveless undershirt, and smeared on her ankle—
“Bloodseas, Lem, you don’t need to inhale it,” I teased. Shyte, I was so tired.
She didn’t laugh. Her still-glowing eyes trained on me in the darkness like one of those electric sabertoothed cats you never wanted to run into out here.
“We’re going to Forge to check out your lead on Bricandor’s new rock-collecting hobby,” I said. “And see if I can find you a relaxation aid.”
The glowing eyes narrowed. “I’m not broken.”
“You’re the one who’s worried about some kind of doomed fate. I’m going to find you a backup solution just in case.”
“What’s on Forge?”
“Diebol will be. Do you remember the experiments I told you about, that Diebol was doing with Mera’s blood? I—have a bad feeling that he may have made progress. But Mera’s abilities had two parts: one a calming pheromone, and one a pulsatile series of neurotransmitter signals. Maybe the calming pheromone could help you get control.” I rubbed my palm against the back of my neck; oof, it was the first time I’d said it aloud.
Lem didn’t like it. “Are you filking kidding me? She poisoned you for months and you want to give me some of her stuff? From the hand of the guy who literally drugged us over and over ’til we couldn’t see straight?”
“Just because she was wrong doesn’t mean everything about her was worthless,” I said. I kept harshness out of my voice, even though something hot welled up inside me with the memory of the dying soul in the burning building. “What she had—what she could do, how her mind worked—she could’ve been amazing for a lot of people.”
“And I’m sorry, but I’m not here to give some kind of posthumous purpose to her life, Jei,” Lem said. She too, fought for a strained kindness—she’d had a somewhat different experience with Mera than I had.
“I know. Maybe there’s nothing for you there. Bloodseas, Lem, I’m obviously not trying to put you under some kind of mind control for Diebol. But whatever we do, I think it’s time we at least tried to hunt down some answers for you. And whether that’s by uncovering Bricandor’s new obsession with neodymium crystals and heat death, or by breaking Diebol’s mind-control experiment, I think we’ll find something on Forge.”
“I don’t want to, but I don’t know why I don’t want to, and I’m too beat to disagree. So let’s go,” Lem said. She heaved herself to her feet and trudged across the shallow river, splashing with every weary step—not like the “leave no trace” space-lemur child at all. When she reached the bank, she turned back, glowing eyes piercing the distance between us: “I don’t think I want to see Diebol again. I have a bad feeling, like a—final—feeling. I think you shouldn’t see him either.” She turned away, and threw her hands up in the air—well, one halfway in the air, still obviously sore. “But I don’t have any logic for it, so let’s do this.”
She was asleep behind me in the gunner’s seat, snoring like a day-lizard choking on a peacock-feathered guinea pig. The front viewscreen of the needlecraft showed Luna Guetala floating below us, two colorful marbles in a dance around each other against the backdrop of stars.
And I was arguing with Sergeant Strong on my wristband.
“It worked, didn’t it?” I said. “I got you Retrack City. What’s it been, ten years under Growen control? And let’s not pretend I don’t know why you were willing to trial the nonlethal control. This pacifist shyte looks great for the media blitz. You and I both know how big this is.”
“You’re in space! I can see on your read-out, you filking horn-muncher, you just up and went into space without signing out!” His Hoernig roar peaked over my speakers.
“I figured you wanted me to make absolutely sure we didn’t knock out the power grid of the whole city, sir,” I smiled through my teeth.
“And what if your power’s knocked out, spine-kisser? It looked like standard EMP protection didn’t matter, so what if you don’t even have backup life support? You’re in space, you brain-dead vegetable-cruncher!”
“Well better me than an entire city, I guess,” I said. “Unless you’re saying I’m worth more than that? If that’s the case, well sir, your very expensive super-weapon needs to request temporary duty to investigate a lead on Forge that could shut us all down.”
There was a silence—a rare thing for the volatile leader. “How did you find out about that?” he asked.
Lem was right. They didn’t want me to know. “It would be helpful if you would send me the mission files on the Forge neodymium investigation, sir,” I said. His new promotion honorific still didn’t quite sit right in my mouth. “In the interest of full disclosure, I’ve also received more intel from Diebol that I think is relevant to the biological control experiment he started last year.”
Another long pause punctuated by wet Hoernig breathing. “There’s no reason you can’t do that alone,” he grunted. “Something’s up with you, space-singer. Either you and Miss Crazy planned that whole heart-attack-in-the-sky today, or you lost control of your asset. You’re good at what you do. But you’re young and hormonal and you make bad decisions.”
“I’m not going to argue with that,” I said. “But I still stand by the assertion that if Lem had felt anyone would believe her, she wouldn’t have had to desert, and maybe she would’ve prevented the Anomaly.”
His voice rose again to violent, speaker-blasting peaks; it was a testament to Lem’s exhaustion that she didn’t wake up. “Are you blaming Colonel Win for the Anomaly?” he seethed.
No, but I might be blaming the Admiral, I thought. Aloud, I said: “No. I don’t think it’s useful to find a scapegoat, sir. I think it’s useful to find things we all could’ve done differently so we don’t screw up moving forward.” I was done. I wanted to sleep. I was starting to wonder if I even needed command’s good graces anymore. How were they going to stop me if I wanted to do something? What army would the waning Frelsi forces send against my power? The shock in my wristband would only give them about three hours to catch me. I’d bowed and kowtowed to their disciplinary fronts for a year, but in the end, they couldn’t afford the loss and the only thing giving them sway over me was my guilt, my own personal penance for my role in slowing down Sterba’s assassination. I carried the weight of three planets on me, and so did Lem, but in the end, we were the only people actually taking responsibility for something everyone had caused.
Strong’s screaming faded in the background of my thoughts, and his words only stung in theory, in memory. I’d always wanted the glory and the stripes and the accolades; I loved to win, to succeed, with a biological, primal competitive drive; and I’d loved the approval of people who maybe represented my father in some shadowed way. But I saw them all now as aching wounded animals like myself, and I showed them respect only out of kindness for their shared suffering. I wasn’t going to desert them, or ignore their words, like I did last year. I let them think they had something over me so they wouldn’t be afraid. And I let Sergeant Strong finish chewing me out.
But then I set my autopilot on a course for Forge, leaned back in my seat, and fell asleep without a backward thought.