Chapter 24
CHAPTER 24
Deacon
“ N o good deed goes unpunished,” Ode muttered in a wry tone as we listened to the retching sounds reaching our ears.
I winced as we waited for Elizabeth to leave the toilet room. Her vomiting seemed to have slowed, but she was still in there. I knocked gently.
“Are you going to be alright?” I asked in concern. “Is this something you do regularly?”
Her sister, Jenny, laughed. “Leave her be. I’m sure she’s going to be fine.”
“Are you certain?” I gave her a skeptical look. “She has been in there for near an hour.”
“She is spacesick, Deacon,” Ode said. “But she will be fine. Relax.”
I pursed my lips in irritation at her. “I cannot relax, Ode. I am wearing the wrong body, and Sarah’s sister is broken!”
Jenny giggled so much like Sarah it made my heart sick. “She’s not broken. Elizabeth has the weakest constitution of anyone in her nursing classes. She was almost booted for it. She’ll be fine, Deacon.” Then she paused, her brows furrowing as she looked me over. “What do you mean, you’re wearing the wrong body?”
Ode and I shared an uneasy glance before I turned back to Jenny to explain. “There is more to everything than you know. Much more, in fact. But I had hoped to tell you and your sister both at the same time.”
“Well, I assumed there was more to it than what you said,” she replied, her eyes and expression filled with anticipation, not anxiety or fear, like most humans would be projecting considering the situation. “I mean, look at us. We’re on a freaking spaceship.”
A tight smile stretched my lips, and I tried to remain calm so I did not push her past her mental limits. “Once Elizabeth rejoins us—"
The toilet room door finally opened and Jenny’s sister walked out, her face pinched in dismay. She was pale and sweaty, too.
“Could I get a Sprite?” she asked.
I glanced at Ode in confusion. “Why would she request a fairy?”
“It’s an Earth beverage,” she explained, before addressing Elizabeth’s request. “We don’t have any of that, but I have other things that will help settle your stomach. Why don’t you both join me in the infirmary, and we can continue our conversation in there.”
Jenny took Elizabeth’s arm and we followed Ode to the infirmary. The rest of the crew milled about with whatever their regular duties required and tried not to gawk at our guests. All of them still spoke English and looked human. None of us enjoyed our disguise. It created an unspoken tension in my ship.
Once inside the infirmary, Ode gave Elizabeth water with herbs and said, “I can also give you a medication for the nausea, if you would like.”
“What is it?” Elizabeth asked suspiciously, even as she sipped the drink Ode had given her, without question. “I’m a nurse. I don’t take anything illegal or—"
“No, it’s nothing like that, I promise,” Ode assured her with a smile. “It’s an antiemetic. Similar to dexamethasone.”
“Oh, okay yeah. I’ll take that.” An appreciative look replaced Elizabeth’s initial mistrust. “Thank you.”
Ode produced a jet injector and reached for her arm. “This won’t hurt.”
“I would imagine not,” the other woman said as she looked around the infirmary, taking in all of our advanced equipment, while Jenny did the same. “I’d be willing to bet you have all kinds of tools we could never dream of on Earth, considering all your technology. I’m ready.”
“I already did it,” Ode said.
She looked down at her arm. “Where?”
“Right there.” Ode pointed to the injection site.
“I didn’t feel a thing.” Then, Elizabeth frowned at Ode in disapproval. “You didn’t even sterilize it.”
“There’s no need with our tech.” Ode set aside the jet injector. “In fact, unlike Sarah’s entrance into our biome, you won’t need to take a fungal dip and I don’t need to run too many tests on either of you, because my genius boyfriend—” Treg blushed and waved at them when she pointed at him in the corner, “—reprogrammed the entrance frame of the ship to do all of that for us.”
“Fungal dip?” Elizabeth asked, sounding and looking mildly appalled.
“A standard practice for humans we take on board, until now,” Ode said. “Our biomes are not as robust as yours in certain ways, including our gut microbiome, so we are susceptible to some fungi and other things that are normal for your bodies to handle. Feeling better?”
“Almost normal, thank you,” Elizabeth said, taking another sip of the water with herbs. “Or as normal as I can feel going…how fast are we going right now?”
I said, “There is a complex mathematical formula involved in that answer, but essentially, we are going far faster than light right now.”
She slowly nodded and muttered, “Huh.”
Jenny jumped into the conversation. “Ode, you keep saying human and our , like you are different from me and Elizabeth. And Deacon said he was wearing the wrong body. Does anyone want to clear that up for me?”
She was such a curious and vivacious thing, compared to her staid sister, Elizabeth. “As I was saying earlier, there is more to all of this than you know, and I want to be completely honest with you both, but I do not wish to cause you further distress, either, so I find myself in a quandary over how to move forward.”
Elizabeth sighed hard and set down her cup before crossing her arms over her chest. “Deacon, you already got me on your spaceship, so I’m smart enough to realize that there’s more to all of this than meets the eye. Right now, I feel like I took a strong dose of mushrooms or something, but since Jenny is here and seeing the same stuff I’m seeing, I kind of feel like this is all too fucking real, so how about you just come out with it, because I already feel like my grasp on reality is snapping.”
I grimaced. “That is what I would like to avoid, in fact. No mental snaps of any kind. But I need to show you things you may wish you had not seen. If you decide you cannot handle what we have shown you, Ode can drug you into believing this was all some strange dream, and we will return you to Earth, but then you will not be able to help Sarah. Would that solution work for you?”
She and Jenny looked at each other, seemingly having an invisible conversation with each other. Then, Jenny looked up at me and said, “Show us whatever you want, and we will make our own choices.”
Her sister nodded in agreement.
“Very well, then. I am going to look quite a bit different momentarily, and you will not be able to understand my language, though I will be able to understand you.” I took a breath and pressed the de-mog button on my belt. The transformation back to myself was painless, and I was just over eight feet tall, so I suddenly loomed over them.
Both of the women jumped back, their eyes huge.
Elizabeth muttered, “The fuck?”
But Jenny grinned up at me, so like her other sister. She studied me with open curiosity, from my head all the way down to my huge feet, then back up again. “You’re so tall! And big. Huh.” Then, she walked around me and gasped in delight. “Oh my god, he’s got a tail!” She peeked around me and asked Ode, “Do you have a tail?”
Ode laughed. “All Ladrians have tails, unless they have a birth defect or were in a terrible accident.”
Elizabeth stared at my face in fascination, before she looked at Jenny. “Really? A tail?"
Jenny nodded in excitement. "Yeah, come look, it’s furry like a dog!”
“I’m not furry like a dog,” I grumbled.
Jenny startled at hearing my new language, then glanced at Ode for clarification. “What did he say?”
“He whined that he is not furry like a dog.”
I huffed indignantly. “I didn’t whine.”
“It really is furry like a dog,” Elizabeth said, now equally as enthralled with my tail, as her sister was. “It even dips when he’s embarrassed.”
“I am not embarrassed!”
The Hollinger sisters giggled together, then Jenny asked Ode, “He’s being fussy, isn’t he?”
“Yeah, he is.” Amusement tipped up the corners of Ode’s mouth. She was enjoying my predicament way too much. “I can give you our language, so you can speak to him yourselves.”
“How?” Elizabeth asked.
“Another injection. That’s how we all learned English before we landed to pick you up.”
But the nurse was unconvinced. “That…that’s not how language works.”
Ode gave her a reassuring smile. “It’s like you said—our tech is more advanced than your tech. We’ve unlocked a lot of abilities your people do not yet have. I can show you, if you agree to the shot.”
“I’ll do it,” Jenny said immediately.
Elizabeth, the cautious one, hesitated. “And it’s not some strange drug?”
Very calmly, and with more patience than I would possess, Ode said, “No, Elizabeth. It’s not a drug. Not how you mean the word.”
Elizabeth considered her options, and much to my surprise, she decided fairly quickly. “Okay, then yes. I’d like to know Ladrian. And any other language you’ve got laying around here. I’ve always wanted to learn French.”
“Later,” Ode said with a laugh as she grabbed a different jet injector from a drawer. “We try to do one language a day, so we don’t overload the language center in the brain.”
Elizabeth stuck her arm out for Ode and received her Ladrian language shot. “This is…I feel so…I feel fine. Just foggy.” Her brows furrowed. “Is that normal?”
Jenny tipped her head at her sister. “What did you say?”
“It’s normal. Don’t worry,” Ode explained in our dialect. “Your brain is sorting between the languages and that can take some getting used to.” Then she turned to Jenny and, in English, said, “She’s adjusting to Ladrian. Are you ready for your shot, too?”
Jenny nodded eagerly. “Yes, please.”
Ode injected Jenny, and the two sisters talked back and forth, giggling at the way they sounded.
Once they were comfortable speaking in Ladrian, Ode asked, “Would you mind if the rest of us went back to our normal appearances like Deacon? We didn’t want to do it all at once and overwhelm you.”
From the corner of the infirmary, Treg spoke up. “I’m the only one here who isn’t Ladrian, and some people find the way my species looks to be off-putting, so if you want me to stay human, I will.”
Jenny smiled at him. “That’s very considerate, Treg, but please, I think we would both be happier if you were all comfortable, whatever way you look.”
Her sister nodded. “We are guests in your home. We’re not here to make you uncomfortable or judge your appearance. That would be rude of us.”
Treg appeared a little nervous. “Alright, but if you prefer human me, just let me know.”
Then he pressed the button on his belt and de-mogged. He was taller than them, to be sure, but I assumed it was his green gelatinous body that made them jump back and gasp.
Very quickly, Treg said, “I can switch back to human anytime—"
“No, no,” Jenny said quickly as she walked up to him, fixated on his new appearance. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude. But what species are you?”
“Gorrk.”
“And this is how all of you look?” she asked, eyes wide as she took in his shape and size. “Translucent and brightly colored?”
“Jenny, don’t call him colored!” Elizabeth chided her. “And stop staring. You’re making him uncomfortable, can’t you tell?”
“I’m so sorry, Treg,” Jenny said, immediately sounding contrite. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”
Treg chuckled and his body jiggled. “You didn’t offend me. The few humans on Orhon, some of them scream and run away from us Gorrks, so being asked respectful questions is a lot better than what I had expected, being your first Gorrk. And to answer your question, we come in every color, some that are outside the spectrum of human vision, even.”
A wondrous smile wreathed Jenny’s face. “That’s fascinating.”
But Elizabeth asked, “ On Orhon ? What’s that mean?”
I explained the basics of Orhon and some of our situation to them, while everyone else de-mogged. I was careful not to mention my union with their sister. I didn’t know how they might react to such news. “I am sure that is a lot to grapple with all at once, but—"
“Actually, that answers a lot of questions I’ve always had,” Jenny said with astonishment in her eyes. “I always thought there were aliens, or well, people from other planets. Seemed silly to think we were the only intelligent species to exist, you know? Is aliens an offensive term? I don’t want to be rude."
“It’s fine,” Ode said, then warned her, “But where we’re going, you’re the aliens.”
“Understood,” Jenny said with a nod.
Elizabeth frowned, most likely having trouble sorting through what I had told them, which had been a lot. “So, there’s an evil ruler on Orhon named Justice Bateen, who executed your father, and your father is now a ghost on a micro-planet called Halla, which is in the orbit of Orhon, do I have that right so far?”
“Yes.”
“And our sister, who has always said she saw ghosts, is a powerful medium—which you call a conduit—and she has been possessed or has possessed an evil bastard called Rex Terian, right?”
“All correct.”
She laced her fingers together and her brow furrowed. “And you’re not all part of some cult?”
Jenny laughed and patted her sister’s arm. “No, silly. They’re a part of the rebel force against Justice Bateen. I thought you caught that part.”
Elizabeth shot her sister an overwhelmed glance. “I’m just trying to wrap my mind around all of it, Jen.”
Ode stepped in and explained further. “By possessing Rex, your sister has done something the resident experts on the matter didn’t know was possible, and possession can work like an addiction for the host. Sarah seems to believe that there is a remnant of Rex in her, and a remnant of herself in Rex. Whether that’s true, no one but them can know for sure. What we need from you two is to be there for her and remind her who she is.”
“So, then…you’ve come to collect us for Sarah’s intervention?” Elizabeth slowly asked.
Ode shrugged. “In a manner of speaking, yes.”
“Oh, okay.” That easily, Elizabeth accepted things. “Where do we go now?”
I frowned at her. “ That you understood?”
Elizabeth raised a brow at me. “Honestly, that was all you needed to say in the first place. She’s my sister. If she needs an intervention for her addiction, I’m in.”
I had no idea what an intervention was, not the way she spoke of it. But as long as she was on board with the plan, I was satisfied. “Okay. Eh, well, Jenny, after learning everything, are you—"
“Oh, I’m in,” she said without hesitation. “I get to help Sarah, my sister who has been missing for a year, and I get to travel to some new world? I’m so in.”
After a sigh of relief, I checked in with Drift on the comms, and he responded, "We’re about to break atmo on Halla in two.”
“Excellent. Thank you, Drift.” Then I turned to the sisters. “One more thing. We had to send a team to retrieve Sarah from a dangerous city called Faithless. That is a long story, but they are excellent at what they do, and will be back before we land, but Sarah needed to be rendered unconscious to get her out of Faithless. Otherwise, she wouldn’t leave.”
“How did you render her unconscious?” Elizabeth asked.
“A special conduit formula, some ancient serum for conduits,” Ode explained. “It’s supposed to help them retain their abilities while still sedated. I swear to you, she will be fine.”
Tiger walked into the infirmary in his Ladrian form, and Jenny blatantly looked him over, not at all put off by the purple tinge to his beige skin, judging by the inviting smile that tipped up the corner of her lips before she tried to hide it.
“Hey,” she said in a soft, sweet voice.
Tiger stared right back as if mesmerized, taking in the streaks of blue in her dark blonde hair and her curvy stature. Awareness flickered in his golden brown eyes, and I watched as his own mouth curved with a sheepish smile.
“Hey,” he replied.
Interesting…
“Need something, Tiger?” Ode asked.
His eyes remained on Jenny, but he held out his arm to Ode as he said, “Cut my hand moving boxes in cargo.”
Ode sighed and started to work on cleaning and bandaging his wound, but still, he didn’t look away from Jenny. His tail told on him, wagging happily and thumping against the exam table. Jenny giggled when she noticed it and kept watching Tiger.
Elizabeth didn’t miss the flirtation between them and nudged her sister. “Stop that.”
Jenny’s cheeks flushed. “Just being friendly, Liz.”
Elizabeth glared at her sister. “Don’t call me Liz.”
Once Tiger’s hand was patched, he walked out of the infirmary with his eyes on Jenny, still. Then, he walked smack into a wall in the hallway. Jenny giggled again and leaned out the door, still watching him as he headed back to work.
Not sure what to make of all that, I frowned at Ode, but the doctor didn’t seem as concerned as I was and gave me a pointed look. “I think we’re almost home, so maybe you should focus on what you’re going to tell Sarah when you get there, instead of concerning yourself with other people’s business.”
Feeling duly chastised, I nodded once and left the infirmary for the café, so I could see where we were. In the early morning light, Father’s and Sarah’s cottages were in sight, but Sovereign was missing. Anxiety took hold.
They should be back by now. I tried to assuage my sudden fears with logic and failed.
As we landed, I was anxious to get off the ship and speak with Father, but knew I needed to be gentle with the sisters to ease them into this new world of ours. I also could not let them see me panic. Hysterical humans would not be useful.
I returned to the infirmary and said, “We are here, but Sovereign is not. Ode, can you—"
“Take care of everyone while you find out what’s up?” she asked, already knowing what was going through my mind. “I’ve got this. You go and do what you need to do.”
“Thank you.” I launched out the door and found my father in his cottage. “Have you any word?”
“No, and I do not understand why not,” father said, pacing in his small living room area. “Jac’s match was a flawless victory against a skentha. He was supposed to meet with Sarah afterwards, right?”
I nodded, feeling completely unsettled. “Meet with her, drug her, bring her back here with Omen. That was the plan.”
“Do you think Rex has something to do with the delay?” father asked.
I let out a growl of frustration. “It is either him or Sovereign is having tech issues, but since Treg is a genius engineer and looked everything over before they left, I do believe it is the former.” Anger rose in my throat along with bile. “I must go to Faithless.”
Father frowned at me. “I thought you were banned from that awful city.”
“That is immaterial.” I didn’t care about Rex’s sanction against me, not when it came to Jac and Sarah and bringing them safely back home. “I must go.”
The Hollinger sisters walked in behind Ode at the front door.
I turned to them and smiled, trying to seem calm so they would not become panic-stricken with what I needed to tell them. “Jenny, Elizabeth, this is my father, Valor Ladrang, and yes, he is a living ghost. This is his home. Sarah’s cottage is next door. I must away to retrieve her and the others in Faithless. It appears that something has gone awry. You will wait here, and I will be back—"
“What do you mean?” Elizabeth interrupted me, a surprisingly fierce look in her eyes.
“They…Sarah and the others. They should have been back by now,” my father said.
“I know that ,” Elizabeth said impatiently.
Father and I frowned, thoroughly confused. “I do not understand your question, then.”
“Let me clear it up for you.” She braced her hands on her hips. “What do you mean, that we will wait here? Because there is no way I have come this far, learned your weird language, and tried to accept that all of this is Sarah’s life, only to sit on the sidelines while you hop to the next city to go save her.”
Jenny stood next to her sister in solidarity and nodded. “What she means is, we’re coming with you.”
“Absolutely not ,” I responded immediately. “Rex is a dangerous man who runs a perilous city. You could get hurt—"
“Which means Sarah could already be hurt,” Elizabeth said, closing the distance between us and reaching up to poke me in the chest with her finger. “And if you think we are staying here to wait and worry and pray that she’s okay, then you are out of your damned mind.”
“Yes, what she said.” Jenny’s chin lifted a stubborn notch, reminding me so much of Sarah. “So you will take us with you, or we will tell Sarah you were mean to us.”
I was taken aback by her claim. “But, that is untrue.”
Beside me, Father chuckled. “I believe she is trying to blackmail you, Son.”
I huffed in frustration. “You are both as headstrong as your sister. Fine, get back on the ship. But if you get hurt, Sarah will kill me, so please do not get hurt.”
“No promises,” Jenny said with a giggle.