Chapter 4 #2
“I sound like death, but I feel much better,” she said, tilting her head deferentially. “Your hospitality for frozen strangers is commendable. I expected nutrition bars and intravenous fluids. I am not used to luxury like this.”
“Bah, that was barely luxury. Everything probably tastes amazing when you’re half dead.
Plus, it seems a little rude to wake you up and not help you return to the land of the living with ease.
” He stepped forward and plopped down on the floor, matching her criss-crossed pose.
“Speaking of the, uh, stealing. I’m sorry you had a bit of a rude awakening.
It can’t feel good to wake up disoriented, in a weird place, with a stranger for your welcoming committee.
We weren’t — aren’t — in a good spot to host guests. Tensions are a bit … high.”
She wheezed out a laugh that surprised even her. “This is tranquil compared to what I expected. Tensions were also high last time I was— What is it they call it? Topside?” She cocked her head to the side, one hand pointing up and the other pointing down. “Why is it called topside?”
“I think it’s because we call going unconscious ‘going under’? That’s my best bet.” He offered a shrug and another dimpled grin. “Wait, hold on. We’re circling back to your expectations. Were you on the run or something?” His thick brows knitted together in concern.
She wasn’t sure if that concern was meant for her, or for what danger she might bring into this unstable little home in the sky. Lies were hard. Lying to someone who looked at her with eyes like that was impossible. Omission was easier.
“Not pursued, but we were preparing for some unpleasant circumstances to…” She made a fluttering motion with her fingers. “Blow over, I think, is the term?”
“Well, did they?”
“No,” she began, looking down at her hands. “Quite the opposite.”
He looked so crestfallen on her behalf that for a moment she forgot he couldn’t hear the Chorus. He couldn’t feel the cloud of hopelessness that hung around her. But he seemed to understand the severity of it, in his own strange way.
“Nothing to be done about it. The only thing to do is press onward,” she said with a slight waver in her voice.
The futility of it all hung so heavily, but wallowing would do her no good.
“So do not fret. I am not being pursued. It sounds like I have interrupted in the middle of a delicate moment. Your brother, yes?”
Davik nodded, scooting to rest his back against the bed with his feet touching the opposite wall. Her quarters on the Fleet seemed spacious by comparison to this cramped cabin.
“Delicate is a hell of an understatement. It’s a long story. My brother was — well, still is — in cryoprison. We were trying to spring him. Our intel must have gotten some wires crossed, because instead we got … you. No offense, you just weren’t who we were expecting.”
She let out a snarl of disgust. Cryostasis was an Icthian technology, one of the few they had shared with humanity.
Another gift the Federation befouled and twisted. I shouldn’t be shocked.
“Stasis is not for punishment. It is a tool to extend life, to explore, to—” She cut her impulse to go on an impassioned rant short with a click of the tongue. “And it is not your fault that it is being abused. You and your brother are victims of this desecration. How long is he being kept?”
Davik sighed and slicked back his wavy dark hair. His deft hands, the way the tendons tensed when he moved them, were fascinating to observe. Given that he seemed prone to gesticulating as he talked, there were ample opportunities to do so.
“On the books, he’s down for fifty years,” he said, bringing her focus back to listening rather than intently observing.
“But really, it’s down to the bail. And his is steep.
A solid five million cred and some change.
And we’re short on collateral, or goodwill with anyone who can pony up a loan.
” He leaned forward with a wry smile, examining Fia closely.
“How backworlds are you? They don’t do stasis sentences where you’re from? ”
“I came from a place where people are not plucked out of the flow of their lives to punish them,” she stated, pressing her palm to her sternum with a proud trill to her words. “A place where cryostasis is a means of survival. I resent the implication that this is backworlds thinking.”
She heard the past-tense in her own words loud and clear. There was no way to know if the Fleet she called home was truly gone, but every little detail that fell into place did not give her hope.
“Never heard of a settled system that sounds like that. ‘No binds, no bail’ is a movement that those tee-kip nut jobs are always on about, but it’s never gotten traction in the thirty years I’ve been alive.
” He dragged his hands through his hair, his shoulders drooping.
“I’m a little worried we bonked your noggin’ or something when your pod got towed in here. ”
“The tee-kip?” She squinted intently as she tried to parse the phrase, garnering another laugh from Davik.
“Damn, you’re really a tourist?” He cocked his head to the side and smiled as he gave her a once-over, sweeping glance.
“Well, we don’t get a lot of tourists in Tau Ceti.
TC, as we call it. And the movement, T-C-I-P,” he said, enunciating the acronym one letter at a time.
“They’re the Tau Ceti Independent Party.
It’s a movement, but it’s not getting a lot of movement lately. ”
She drew her knees up to her chest in a tight squeeze.
Everything was spinning too fast, it was too much to process at once.
This place was too loud, too bright, and too heavy.
She wanted to get back into the cryo pod, close the door, and wait to be awakened in a world that held some semblance of familiarity.
“You okay?” he asked, his smile fading as he watched her curl tighter into herself.
“I am adjusting poorly,” she murmured, looking at the timestamp on the wall. It read: 2:45 pm Universal Terran Time. March 17th, 3262.
“Ah, yeah. You were down for— What was it you said? A decade or so? Gotta be hard to adjust when you’re missing gaps like that.”
She looked at him, then at the date on the screen. She cleared her throat, hoping he could put two and two together and save her from saying the painful part aloud. To save her from making it feel real.
“More than that?” he asked, his voice softening.
It had been two hundred and sixty-five Terran years. A lifecycle for her, twice over.
A part of her wanted to tell him, to share with this stranger the true depth of her pain.
Sovereign Fleet conditioning was a powerful thing, though.
Powerful enough to remind her that obscurity is one step towards safety in uncertain territory.
Admitting that she had traveled here at the peak of a long-lost war would be foolish.
“Sixty-five years,” she murmured. A quarter of her true gap in time, two hundred years less than her true anachrony, but enough to explain her loss and disorientation. “The passage from star to star was not meant to take this long, but it seems my awakening was … interrupted.”
He held a hand out towards her. “Up, up. You’re getting up.”
She accepted the hand tentatively, and she found herself being led — or more accurately, dragged — out of the room and towards the mess hall.
“There is absolutely no way,” he began with an indignant huff. “There’s absolutely no way that you let me feed you leftovers as your first meal in this century!”