Chapter 3 - Sweet Gaia
Sweet Gaia
I’m prepared for the ache in my bones. What I’m not prepared for is the face hovering over mine. The shriek that rips through the cabin forces it to pull back.
The captain. It’s just the captain.
Flopping back onto the rug, I press a hand to my haywire heart. “For all that is cosmic,” I hiss.
“I called out three times,” she says, her voice softer, maybe even slightly apologetic.
I turn my head to the side, where I end up staring at her boots.
They’re immaculately kept, straight-laced, symmetrical, and polished to a shine.
I need a few more moments to gather myself before I can even think about getting up.
The exhaustion feels bone-deep and even after that nap, I’m groggy. Still, I have questions.
“Are you the captain?”
“Yes.”
“And your name is...”
“Tanisira.”
She says it like tuh-niss-urah. That piques my interest, and I finally force myself into a sitting position, suppressing a series of winces as I do.
The name is Suryavan, traditional and rolls off her tongue beautifully.
Her accent is negligible in speech, though I can now attribute the melodious lilt of her words to Surya-Vaani.
I hadn’t taken note of her features before, but I do now, searching for the colony in her appearance.
Her skin is the shade of copper; not because of the red soil, as some people believe, but as a result of generations of intermingling.
Racial divides are a thing of the past in the colony, but Tellurians are somehow still hung up on them—proving that, soon, racism will be older than the name of our planet itself.
Renaming the Earth was supposed to usher in a new era; as the Mars colony was being established, as the globe turned away from environmental damage, as society made an effort to do better.
My own dark skin still occasionally invites discussion from older generations, even in Neo-London, a city that has always been a melting pot.
When the Thames flooded and the capital was moved further north, the diversity came with it.
But with society’s advanced healthcare, life expectancy is longer.
Those grouchy fuckers still have voices, but we might shed our bigots yet.
It would be difficult to peg a Suryavan by their features alone but the one thing a lot of their people have in common is epicanthic folds.
And Tanisira’s almond-shaped eyes do have these folds, as well as veins of olive green that streak through amber and stand out against her skin.
It’s an uncommon enough combination to draw attention, and it’s ridiculously pretty.
Each of her earlobes is threaded with a tiny hoop, the metal shimmering iridescently in the light with hues of deep red and purple.
It’s unlike any material I’ve ever seen before. It could be Martian.
She must realise what I’m thinking because her mouth softens, infinitesimally, in one corner. It makes her broad face look a little less harsh, even with the fierce slash through her left eyebrow. In any other circumstance, it might have mellowed my opinion of her.
“You recognise the name?” she asks, giving me a quick once over.
I’m as Tellurian as it gets; plump, average height, brown eyes, wide nose. Even with all the mixing amongst Tellurian continents, neither of us could pass for the other.
“I do. Tanak velari navesh,” I incline my head.
Technically, it means nice to meet you, but from what I remember is literally translated as meeting you is joy.
Such a beautiful language. It’s a more informal greeting but it can’t hurt to try to relate to her, butter her up a little. “So, you’re flying the ship home?”
Surprise slackens Captain Tanisira’s expression and then it tightens again, closes up.
I wonder which part of what I said bothered her.
She sweeps past me without comment. I watch with curiosity as she taps away at the coffee table.
Her height is such that it looks uncomfortable to bend that low - still, she does it with a certain grace.
It’s my curiosity that finally gets me off the floor but when I go to peer at what she’s doing, she shuts it down. The table reverts to clear glass again.
“Are you going to let me out? You can’t keep me here; this is kidnapping.” I don’t mention the obvious. I remind myself that I can catch more flies with honey than vinegar.
Tanisira straightens so quickly that I have to step back to avoid a face full of shoulder.
“It’s not kidnapping if the person I’m detaining is a stowaway. So no, I won’t be letting you out to roam as if you were some kind of pet. You’ll stay here until we dock at Red Horizon and then I’ll hand you over to the station police.”
I cock my head. The authorities? Tanisira may be the captain of the Midas but it’s Dominik’s ship.
Shouldn’t she report me straight to him and let him handle it?
Not that I want her to—fucking hell—but it’s interesting that she isn’t planning to.
Matter of fact, it’s interesting that I’m being held here at all. “Whose cabin is this?”
She doesn’t answer. Instead, she presses a wrist to the pad by the door and a holo materialises on the wall beside me.
It’s a digital clock. There are two different times displayed and labelled: Suryavana and Neo-London.
Then she picks up a bag I hadn’t noticed by the door.
I try not to let her silence anger me because I’m so relieved to see the time.
Her answer doesn’t matter much anyway because I suspect I already know the answer.
As she unpacks items, she names them. Splint, painkillers, reader—
“Are you really not going to let me out?” I gape, looking from the reader to her. “I don’t care how many books are on that thing, you can’t keep me cooped up in here.”
“This should keep you occupied. The journey is only five and a half days, you’ll survive.”
“Marlowe,” I snap.
“Excuse me?”
“My name is Marlowe. Maybe you’re having a hard time treating me like a person because you’re pretending I’m not one.”
Her eyes narrow. “I’m not in the habit of rolling out the red carpet for petty criminals.”
“Then why am I in your quarters?”
Tanisira pushes past me just as the panel beside the door beeps. When she commands it to open and it slides to the side, a cart trundles in. There’s enough of a pause before the door closes for me to see no one waiting in the passageway. The cart comes to a silent stop by the sofa.
I’m still thinking about the fact that she just said I’d be stuck in here for almost six days.
The ship utilises two systems and one of them is antimatter propulsion, but Vee didn’t tell me it was this fast. It’s a little dizzying; after all, my ancestor was one of the original colony cargo carriers and each round trip took her about six months.
In her twenties, she spent more time on her ship than she did on-planet.
“I don’t think Gryphon had a brig in mind when he ordered the custom build,” Tanisira says.
She presses a button on the side of the cart, and the lid slides back and notches into the bottom.
There’s a plate of food, a side dish, a glass of water and some fruit.
And, of course, my stomach chooses now to make its hunger known.
It all looks too plump and smells too good to have come from a food printer.
“He is the father of my child,” I enunciate. My patience may be wearing thin faster than I thought it would.
“A man like Gryphon is in the habit of letting his family sneak around?”
Ooh, cursed stars, it takes everything in me not to scoop up the food and fling it at her. I usually have a much higher tolerance but right now, I really want to punch her in the face. I know my strengths, though, and, more importantly, I know my weaknesses.
I change tack, figuring the longer I can keep her talking, the more I might learn. Maybe something that could help me connect with her, to draw out her empathy, if she has any. Maybe something I can file away for later, to use to my advantage.
I fold myself onto the sofa and lean forward, inhaling the aroma of maki aakas.
It looks so good I could drool. I’m smiling before I even realise I’m doing it and when I look up, Tanisira is watching me.
Our eyes meet, but neither of us looks away.
Food is a universal language, is it not? Even more so than Tellurian.
“Vee loves these. He says his dad always takes him to the best Suryavan deli.”
I can’t put a name to the flicker in her expression.
She’s almost like a statue, this captain.
Fine, I think, I can play. I pick up a roll using the chopsticks by the plate and dip it into the little pot of sauce.
The tang ripples across my tongue and I blink in surprise.
“If the deli makes anything as good as that, I don’t blame him for preferring it to our usual sushi place. ”
There. A twitch of her eyes; Tanisira isn’t as stoic as she wants to make me believe. Maki aakas features a form of nori that evolved from Japanese cuisine, and Suryavans don’t like it when people don’t give their ancestral dishes the respect they deserve. Normally I would, but I was curious.
I push the cart towards her.
“Seeing as I’m going to be stuck here for a while. I wouldn’t say no to the company.”
I overshot. She stiffens, rising to her full height. Maybe I imagined a slight tilt to her mouth— it’s certainly not there now.
“This isn’t a holiday camp,” she snaps. “You have any idea how much trouble you could have—”
Her mouth closes, her teeth clack together. And, shamefully, I perk up like a puppy being offered a treat. I point a chopstick at her. “You’re hiding me in here.”