Authors: David Welch
“You would take me to the Commonwealth?” Chakrika asked hopefully.
“Heck, why not. Consider it part of your pay,” Rex spoke. “Still want to go back to Igbo?”
Chakrika held out a minute before slowly shaking her head.
“Good. Let’s do this then.”
He moved through steps one and two, injecting the nanobots into each of them and finishing with himself. Chakrika grinned like an excited girl, her wariness toward the microscopic robots long gone. Before the third step, he took out a small syringe, coded for the infant.
“You want to retard his growth?” asked Lucius.
“Just disease killers and cell repair. You don’t get the age treatment until you’re fully grown.”
The baby wailed at the injection. Chakrika cooed to sooth him. She scratched at one breast.
“They itch,” she spoke, “I suppose it’s working.”
“Probably,” Rex said, taking off his shirt. They looked at him, odd expressions on their face.
“It’s best to strip down to your shorts for part three. Side-effects of the drug, gives you one hell of a hot flush.”
“For how long?” Chakrika asked.
“Twelve hours or so. Back home you usually spend the day in a clinic naked in a cold bath. Don’t have the water for that here.”
Down to his boxers, Rex dropped to his stool. Lucius slowly removed his outer clothing, making sure that his face reflected his displeasure at this. Chakrika pulled off her short skirt and top, sitting naked on the bed, drawing Lucius’s gaze.
“We left in a hurry! I didn’t have time to go back and throw on some underwear!” she spoke, more an accusation than an explanation.
“Nothing I haven’t seen,” Rex smirked and then retrieved the chemical treatment from a compartment on the wall. “Decrease room temperature to sixty degrees Fahrenheit.”
The air began to cool. Goose bumps pebbled their skin. Rex administered the final injections, doing his own last. They sat for a moment, not noticing any difference. Then beads of sweat appeared on Lucius’s forehead, followed by Chakrika’s.
“If you didn’t start the treatments until you were full grown, how have you gone thirty years and still look in your twenties?” Lucius spoke.
“It’s not an exact process. Normally you look in your twenties until mid-fifties, thirties until your eighties, forties until one hundred or so, fifties up to one twenty, sixties to one forty, seventies and eighties up to one sixty. It’s not as effective in old age, so you do start aging a little faster after you hit a century.”
“And how many years do we lose for starting this late?” Lucius asked.
“What are you, twenty-five?” Rex asked.
“Twenty-six,” Lucius corrected.
“You’ll maybe lose a year or two. No huge deal. Same for Chakrika.”
“I’m only nineteen,” she replied.
“Really?” Rex asked, genuinely shocked. “You’re only nineteen?”
“Yes,” she replied, her voice dark. “Why?”
“Oh,” Rex said, looking supremely awkward. “If I’d known, I—”
“You’d what?!” she demanded.
“Wouldn’t have hired you,” he replied. “Where I come from, that’s considered…young.”
“You consider that young for sex?” Lucius asked.
“Perspective here, people. We don’t get out of primary education until we’re twenty-one!” Rex asserted.
“So what you’re
not
saying in all this is that I look old for my age,” she replied.
“I figured mid-twenties, forgive me,” he said with a sarcastic wave.
Chakrika gave him a dark look and turned her attention back to the baby. Rex sighed, too many thoughts and feelings rushing through his head to be organized right now. Best to just get on with it.
“Set a clock,” Rex ordered. “Twelve hours. Alert me if we come into contact with any other ships.”
“
Twelve hours set
.”
Rex stretched his arms and then looked at his new crew.
“Elbow-to-elbow in a small room in our skivvies,” he grumbled. “Best way to get to know someone…”
* * *
“Much as I’ve enjoyed an hour of utter silence, maybe we
should
try to get to know each other,” Rex commented, fidgeting to stave off boredom.
He was greeted with more silence. Lucius still sat on his bed, blinking as if trying to clear his vision. Chakrika had stretched out on the other bed, lying on her back. The baby rested on her stomach, sucking aggressively at her breast. It was too soon for him to be getting anything, but the motion soothed him. Rex didn’t have a huge amount of experience with kids, but he was smart enough to leave a happy baby be.
“Guess I’ll go first. Hi, my name is Rex Vahl. Technically, I think I’m still a lieutenant in the Commonwealth Fleet, but it’s hard to be sure. They loaned me out to the intelligence boys, and they sent me out here.”
“What did you do?” Lucius asked.
“Well, I trained cadets. One cadet was the son of a really high-ranking officer, and he was an idiot. Shouldn’t have even gotten into the Fleet to begin with, but his father’s name got him advanced year after year. His idiocy caught up to him. He was flying a corvette and crashed into a space-station. Killed himself, his two crew-members, and sixteen people on the station. Since he was under my command, dear old daddy took it out on me, despite the fact that I recommended he be dismissed from service on numerous evaluations.”
“So you’re not as equal as you proclaim,” Lucius figured.
“Huh?”
“An officer with power in his name? You Terrans always brag about getting by on your merits and skills,” Lucius spoke. “This high-ranking officer sounds like any hundred imperial noblemen.”
Rex shrugged, “Nobody’s perfect. The commodore himself
is
a skilled warrior—destroyed three Europan capital ships during the war. He just couldn’t admit to himself that talent skips a generation.”
“Do you not feel relief being free of his command?” Lucius asked.
“Hell yeah, but the price of that is running around out here, wondering if I’m going to die the next time I make a jump,” Rex answered.
Lucius thought for a moment, his stern visage twitching.
“A sensible answer,” the Europan finally replied.
“So do you got a story, or do I get to make one up?” Rex asked.
“A woman I loved was killed,” he replied, his body tensing.
“That’s it?” Rex spoke, staring inquisitively at his new gunner. “No offense to her, but you’d have a better chance finding a new love back home, twisted as that home may be.”
“It is twisted,” said Lucius, with no equivocation in his voice. “It was the empire that killed her. The ideas I used to never question, the way I looked down on ‘lesser’ people, that type of thought brought about her death. It was not even considered a crime.”
Chakrika turned her head, paying attention.
“It’s bad in my nation to love somebody beneath your station,” Lucius spoke gravely.
“Your people keep harems of peasants as concubines!” interjected Rex. “You believe all your serfs are wedded to you and must be available to your advances! Clearly they don’t consider it bad—”
“
Coupling
with serfs, no. Before I met her, I had five children by my serfs, all now being raised as warriors to fight your people,” Lucius growled. “But Yvette, the one I
truly
loved…”
“They found out?” Chakrika asked.
“They found out. They killed her…and our daughter.”
Chakrika’s arms tightened protectively around the baby.
“So you saw the light and treated a serf as an actual person,” Rex proclaimed.
“The woman he loved is dead! And the mother of his son just died! How can you be so cold?!” Chakrika demanded.
Silence. Lucius and Rex stared at each other.
“He has his reasons,” Lucius spoke. “Your aunt?”
“My aunt. On Antioch. Your people killed my uncle, a reprisal killing for guerilla activity,” Rex said, turning to Chakrika. “See his grandfathers had a policy of murdering one hundred of our people every time one of theirs was killed. My aunt was taken as a concubine. The man who should have fathered my cousin was killed. Instead, some Europan lord too full of himself to know basic morality spent two years raping my aunt.”
“She kept the child?” Lucius asked.
“Wasn’t the child’s fault that his father was a rapist,” Rex replied.
Lucius nodded, asking, “Yet you still have hired me.”
“I know,” Rex grumbled. “I wasn’t lying. I need a gunner, and you fit.”
“I do not believe as my people do. Quintus was conceived consensually,” Lucius replied.
“Quintus?” Chakrika said, stroking the boy’s back. “I guess you’re Quintus from now on.”
“You have a thing for loving women you’re not allowed to,” Rex noticed.
“You think there is a choice to whom we love?” Lucius replied.
“I’m not sure people love at all,” Chakrika spoke. The statement drew the men from their stare-down.
“What do you mean by that?” asked Lucius.
“Nothing,” she replied.
“No, go on. Tell us about where you come from,” Rex prodded.
“No,” came the reply with an air of finality. A tear escaped from her eye, and then she choked out, “Your peoples are at war?”
“Sort of,” Rex replied. “”Fifty years ago his people—”
“
Former
people,” Lucius corrected.
“His
former
people invaded several of our worlds.”
“We had claimed those worlds several decades prior,” Lucius noted.
“So had we, and we actually bothered to terraform and colonize them,” Rex replied forcefully, then turned back to Chakrika. “It was a surprise attack. They invaded, killed millions, and traded our women amongst themselves like currency. Took us eight years to take the worlds back and drive them out.”
“Then you invaded Thrace, a world
we
colonized,” Lucius pointed out.
“And liberated millions of serfs! They and their children remain free to this day. You think I’m going to apologize for that, you’re damn crazy.”
Lucius shifted on the bed, saying, “It doesn’t matter. I’m a traitor and you’re stuck in the universe’s bugger-hole.”
“Hey!” Chakrika said. “Bug…Bugger-what? What does that mean? It didn’t sound good!”
“It wasn’t,” Rex replied.
“Let us proceed to the point of this line of inquiry. You’re probing my loyalties. I assure you, I bear no allegiance to the empire. I would gladly kill them all for what they did to Yvette and my daughter. You have hired me for a job, I intend to do it. Beyond that, my only concern is Quintus.”
They stared at each other for another tense moment.
“Well,” Rex said with a nod, “You’ve done well so far. Auto-targeting would’ve wasted twice as much ammo taking down those fighters. Damn computers just can’t read their enemies.”
Lucius nodded warily at Rex’s roundabout words of acceptance.
* * *
The computer projected movies from its memory into the sick bay. They were a welcome distraction from the burning sensation coursing through them. The films, both comedies, had drawn rapt stares from Chakrika. She, apparently, had never seen anything like them. Half the jokes she didn’t get, but she stared anyway. The people, the places, they all seemed to astonish her. Watching her show such curiosity made Rex kick up his respect of her a bit more. Whatever rough life she’d been through and steadfastly refused to reveal, hadn’t broken her completely.
Lucius had watched the movies with a contemplative stare, as if examining the culture portrayed in the film with academic curiosity. He reminded Rex of an aloof anthropology teacher he’d once had back at the academy.
“Oh! Hey!” Chakrika said near the end of the second film. She looked down to find Quintus nursing frantically.
“That feels odd. How do I know when he’s done?” she said, shifting to a sitting position. Lucius smiled at the sight.
“He’ll know,” Rex replied.
“We have no nappies for him,” Lucius pointed out.
Rex cocked his head in confusion.
“Diapers,” Lucius spoke. “If he’s eating he will be doing other things shortly.”
“I think I have some towels in here,” Rex spoke, “They’ll have to do until we reach a planet.”
“May I ask when that will occur? What exactly do you do besides ‘explore’?”
“Next habitable place we find, we’ll stop. I’m moving coreward. We’ll pick up some metals at the next legit-looking asteroid we find; they always sell well on planets.”
“Any particular reason for moving toward the Core?” asked Lucius.
“I’ve been ordered to figure out what’s going on in the space beyond the Achaean Confederacy, on the far side of the quarter. Figure I should make some money on the—”
Chakrika gasped, and Lucius shot to his feet. Rex paused, confused by the terrified looks they gave him.
“—way.”
“Then drop me at the next world. I will not risk myself or my son by going
there
!” Lucius exclaimed.
“Look, we’ve heard the rumors in the Commonwealth—”
“They are not rumors. No person has returned alive from that space. Whatever lives there allows no escape,” Lucius pressed on.
Rex sighed.
“Then I’ll start looking for a new gunner,” he spoke.
“You will not find one,” Lucius countered. “Nobody in the whole of the Quarter, or even in Achaea or Crimea or Valhalla, will go into that space. You are wasting your time.”
“Well I don’t get to go home until I get
something
,” Rex answered.
“Then resign yourself to a career as a trader. You will never get home—”
“There is a way,” Chakrika spoke.
The argument stopped dead.
“What? What do you mean?” Rex asked.
“You don’t have to actually go there to get information,” she replied. A very scared expression crossed her face. Her arm actually shook as it held Quintus.
“Then where do I have to go?” Rex probed.
“I grew up on Maratha. There was a world nearby called Cordelia. On it there was this man and this woman who followed him around. He seemed to speak about that region of space. All he ever said was to stay away, that you’ll die if you go there, but he was always right. We’d hear stories about people who talked to him, ignored him, traveled to that space and never returned.”
“Are you sure of this? This wasn’t just stories and rumors?” Rex inquired.