part0086

The water in the shallow basin was torturously cold. Sela splashed her face and neck until her skin felt numb. Finally, she sagged against the compact silver sink of the waste rec room. Eyes shut, she rested her forehead against the mirror. She released a long pent-up breath, opened her eyes.

“What are you doing, Tyron?” she muttered at her reflected twin.

Wrong . It had all been wrong. But right, at the same time.

Little wonder there were the rules of Decca to prevent fraternization between subordinates and their superiors. Sela had imagined being with Veradin, but always in a vague sense. The way you crave something in an absent unrealized manner, thoughts buoyed up without a hint of reality for support—a self-indulgent daydream.

Just as she had confessed to Jon, it did not truly matter to her that he was Human. His persona had not changed with this discovery. In fact, it showed the consistency of his character: he was willing to carry the burden of this life-rending discovery alone rather than risk losing her.

But it had changed her.

Things were complicated enough. They were unwitting pieces in some strategy that neither of them was likely to glimpse as a whole until it was too late. And she had permitted this self-absorbed fantasy to play out. She had succumbed to a baser desire to have him.

Now it was done. Out there. Irreversible.

Their vulnerability was complete. If Jonvenlish Veradin was her weakness before, now it was far worse.

“Focus,” she said.

It can never happen again. It will never happen again.

She toweled the water from her face and neck and got dressed. She had taken a fresh shirt from Jon’s belongings, doubting he would mind. It was oversized for her, but lacking in bloodstains. She paused. A quiet murmur drifted into the corridor. A voice.

Sela checked the vox panel just over the sink. Its lights were dark. The vox link was inactive. Jon still occupied the bunkroom. That left one thing: Erelah .

The voices grew louder as Sela reached the tiny galley. One voice plaintive and childlike, the other more direct, commanding. It was an argument, but she could not discern words.In the shaft of light cut from the common passage, Erelah sat on the floor, leaning against the bulkhead with her back to the doorway.

“Who are you talking to?” Sela asked.

Erelah turned and looked up at her, wide-eyed, plainly startled. She did not sound entirely certain when she replied. “I wasn’t talking.”

“I heard voices.”

Sela triggered the internal lights. They revealed dark maroon smears along the sleeves and collar of Erelah’s baggy flight suit. Furtively, she turned away, hiding her hands.

“What do you have?”

“Nothing.” Erelah stared straight ahead.

Sela yanked the girl’s hand from behind her back and wrenched the object away. It was a shiv, more accurately a piece of sharp metal from the coms array casing. Still in control of Erelah’s arm, Sela shoved the sleeve up. A crazed pattern of welts seeped blood from the pale skin of the girl’s forearm.

“Why would you do this?”

“I can’t get them off. See? Scales, pushing out of my skin. Like Tristic.” Erelah pulled away and scratched at the injured skin. She looked up at her with those eerie green eyes. She was like a child, pleading. “If I scrape them off, Tristic can’t come in.”

She seized Erelah’s wrists, trying to keep her from injuring herself further.

“There’s nothing there. No scales. Only skin. You’re damaging yourself.”

She had encountered soldiers like this. It always seemed to be the conscripts. They could not hack what they experienced in battle. Fear consumed them from the inside, erasing their pride and reducing them to broken things. It was far worse than a simple case of battle burn. A meditech could not fix their pain. No amount of cajoling could bolster them into being whole once again. They were shipped off if they survived their internal onslaughts. These broken beings became someone else’s problem, not Sela’s.

This one was her problem.

Erelah shook her head and turned wet eyes up at her. “I can’t make her stop.”

Sela pocketed the shiv. “There’s no one here, Erelah. Just you and me and your brother.”

A part of her wanted to tell her to suck it up or rage at her, as she had done with those psych-damaged conscripts. If what Erelah suffered was all in her head, she could control that too.

Instead, she gripped the girl by the upper arms and urged her to her feet. “Come on. You should rest.”

The girl came with her, compliant and weak as they stepped back out into the common passage. It was clearly dangerous to let her roam the ship alone. Sela guided her back to the storage space that served as Erelah’s room.

It was not until the backs of the girl’s knees hit the edge of the cot that she looked around, as if suddenly aware of the change in setting.

“Don’t lock me up again!” She attempted to pull away.

Sela forced her back down.

She squatted to her level, hands still gripping Erelah’s arms. “Listen to me, Erelah. You have to fight this. If you are anything like Jon, you have the strength to do that. You have made it this far. You have survived nearly two years on your own. Do this for your brother, if you cannot do it for yourself.”

She folded under a choking sob.

“Maintain, soldier. Am I clear?” She released her hold and straightened, standing over her.

Erelah swiped at her eyes. She opened her mouth as if to speak but then nodded ardently, like a child fearing a reprimand.

A bleating sound echoed down from the command loft.

What seemed like ages ago, Sela had programmed the nav-comp to alert her to course changes. She did not trust the flight computer, or more accurately, was not about to place blind faith in the contents of Phex’s stellar nav charts.

There were quite a few things on this ship that she didn’t trust. Even if the girl seemed calmer now, it was unwise to leave her unattended.

After one long judging stare, she turned to leave. “I’ll wake the captain. He’ll tend to you.”

“No. Don’t tell Jon.” Erelah grabbed her sleeve. “Please.”

Sela pulled away with an irritated grunt. The girl’s theatrics now challenged the last of her patience.

“I know you don’t trust me,” Erelah said. “It’s not your fault. It’s how First made you.” She looked up at Sela with queer solemnity. “But I know what you think.”

As she met the girl’s stare, Sela felt a sudden surge of heat. It prickled from the base of her skull and down her neck.

She took a step back, retreating to the threshold. There was something very wrong with Erelah Veradin. It was as if the girl bore some contaminant. Sela wanted no part of it.

“I am a danger. I am a liability. They should just retire me. Like any one of those battle-burned ‘scriptors.” The expression on the girl’s face became stony. The meter and tone of her words drew out, became measured, precise. Her heavy Eugenes accent flattened into perfect Regimental. A chill rose on Sela’s skin as she realized the girl was doing a nearly perfect imitation of her voice. “End me so I can harm no one. Retire me…like you did cadet Stelvick.”

Stelvick . Sela’s heart flattened.

“What did you say?” she hissed. The hairs rose on the back of her neck. She had told no one. Ever. Not the drillers during the inquiry. Not the other booters in her cluster. Certainly not Jon. In fact, the story she had told him, though highly edited, was the only confession she had ever made about Atilio’s conception.

Erelah sagged back to the cot. She dropped her head into her hands. Her mass of dark hair fell over her face.

“Now do you see?” she sobbed. “I’m hollow and stuffed full of other people. I open my mouth, and someone else talks.”

Sela stiffened. Her eyes began to water. “This is some trick. How do you know about Stelvick?”

Erelah shook her head. The lilting Eugenes accent was back when she spoke again: “You knew you had to be the one to stop him. The drillers wouldn’t have cared. And when you did it, you were sad for him. It was the first time you had ever killed. You never looked away. He slid down the wall. There was blood everywhere. You stayed, and you watched…and you watched…until he stopped breathing. No one else was going to get hurt by him. You made sure—”

“Stop it.” Sela backed away. This was impossible. How could she know?

Sela refused to believe in such fantasy as mind-readers and oracles. They were stories for children and entertainments on the holo-web. No one could delve into the mind of another and see their secrets.

It was a fractious, pleading rush. “You can do what I can’t. Kill me. Before it gets worse.”

“Madness,” Sela seethed, triggering the door shut just as Erelah opened her mouth to speak.

Without a backward glance, she made for the command loft to the call of the nagging nav-comp. Once the course correction was satisfied, she would wake Jon to deal with his sister.